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Gather ye paranoids, where ye may

By Ed Goldman

I realize it’s just possible you’re not going to read my column today. Perhaps you’re nursing a hangover or there’s a lack of internet reception in the Himalayas—which, owing to that hangover, you’re still not certain how you got to. And your yak’s refusing to answer questions. 

In either event, this seems like a safe day to discuss my hope for the New Year—that we’ll develop some new conspiracy theories. Wouldn’t that be great? And if not, why not? Are you a member of the DTC (Doubting Thomas Cabal), someone who remains skeptical about every conspiracy theory from Genesis on? (Was the snake really a snake? And if so, how could it talk? Was it perhaps…Ryan Seacrest?! ‘Eh? ‘Eh? ‘Eh?!”)

Yet if you do doubt the existence of conspiracies, and hang with people who share your view, can’t you see the irony? You’re conspiring with like-minded individuals to deny others the freedom to embrace conspiracies?

Some people who distrust the possibility of genuine coincidence ascribe it to conspiracy. A popular if creepy example includes President Abraham Lincoln’s having had a secretary named Kennedy who urged him not to attend a play at Ford’s Theatre that fateful evening in 1865—and President John F. Kennedy having had a secretary named Lincoln who tried to dissuade him from going to Texas in 1963. Somehow, conspiracists have theorized some sort of cross-country, cross-century connection between both events. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if they went one step farther, wondering why some cars have been named Ford and Lincoln but none have been named the Kennedy nor the Book Depository. Curious! But no more so than the theories that crop circles in Iowa doubled as landing strips for extraterrestrials; that Elvis Presley isn’t dead but works as a greeter in Walmart; that Walt Disney’s brain was frozen upon his death and may return as the literal head of Pixar;  that if you play a certain Beatles song backwards you can hear a secret in-studio message from John Lennon (“Has anyone seen me fags?”); and that the entire global economy is run by an elite chamber that includes Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffet, Jimmy Buffet and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Here are some conspiracy theories of my own I’d like to encourage all of us to consider:

• At the end of February in 2028 a mysterious day will suddenly appear on our calendars, whether pocket-size, electronic, or hanging on a wall at your mechanic’s shop with a photo of either buff firefighters or the Housewives of Van Buren, Arkansas. And just like Brigadoon—the mythologic Scottish town that emerges every 100 years and your only chance to see dancer Cyd Charisse sporting a tam o’ shanter—this mysterious day, February 29, will then disappear again. But only for four years, not a whole century. I mean, that’d just be silly.
• Here’s a conspiracy theory for you physics devotees. Posed initially by Fred MacMurray in the only episode of “My Three Sons” I can remember, the question is: If a mirror can reverse us from left to right, why not from top to bottom? And while we’re at it, why not from Republican to Democrat, vegan to omnivore and Doubting Thomas to Ryan Seacrest?