Conspiracy nuts, attack!

Not that long ago, I was on a little radio show that originated out of Urbana, IL. It was only a few days before the show that I was told it was going to be one of those "call-in" jobbies. Those always make me queasy, mostly because they inevitably turn into complete disasters. You can actually hear the show begin to collapse after the second or third call, and by the end, the English language itself has all but been jettisoned out the nearest window.

If the day got boring back when I was in Madison, my friend Grinch and I would take it upon ourselves to find a call-in show on the radio, and set about destroying it, no matter who the guest was or what was being discussed. I never got the impression that the people who called in to the shows I've been on in recent years were intentionally trying to destroy anything; it just sort of happened. Maybe this is my karmic comeuppance. That's what I would assume at least, which is why I tend to avoid call-in shows if at all possible. Since I was already scheduled to do this one when that little detail emerged, there wasn't much getting out of it.

The host was a very nice man who'd clearly done his research (which always makes things easier). We began to chat, but within the first few seconds of our conversation, the word "conspiracy" cropped up. I thought nothing of it until the first caller popped up less than a minute later.

Most of the time, unless you're talking about sports or politics, you have to beg people to call shows like this, and it usually takes a little while before someone makes that first call and the timbers of rationality and control begin to creak.

But here was one right away?not a good sign at all for an hour-long show. And sure enough, he wanted to talk about conspiracy theories. Fortunately, he wanted to talk about them in a very general, even philosophical fashion. What they mean, why people are attracted to them. That was just fine.

Before he hung up, however, all the incoming lines across the board were lit (or so the host said?I was sitting in my office at the time). Sure enough, as I expected, by the second or third call, things began to weaken, as every conspiracy nut in the Champaign-Urbana area?those without jobs, at least?called in to share their own paranoid fantasies.

The JFK and MLK people called, the Iraq conspiracists called, the UFO people called, the "AIDS was created in a lab to wipe out Africa" people called, and so did the 9/11 people.

I was surprised at how contemporary a lot of the conspiracies were?but was even more surprised when these people started asking me questions. I was just there to sell a few copies of a silly novel, and here these folks were asking me questions as if I were some sort of damned conspiracy expert. Even as the host tried to drag the show back on track a little, the callers wouldn't let him.

About half an hour in, someone brought up urban legends, which led to a bunch of calls from people talking about their personal favorites. That was cool. In fact, it made a lot of sense. Urban legends, like conspiracy theories, are stories we use in an attempt to convince ourselves that real life is much more interesting than it really is. And in that way, if conspiracy theories are our own personal thrillers, urban legends are our horror movies.

Best of all, with everyone calling in to share their favorite conspiracies and folktales, I could sit back and relax, mostly. Even when they asked questions, it was clear they didn't care about the answers?which is good, because mostly all I could offer were verbal shrugs?they just wanted to hear themselves on the radio.

Then one of them brought up an interesting point. I don't recall what the hell I was saying. Something stupid?but it was in the "urban legends" section of the show, and this caller said, "?like that recent 'body in the hotel' story. That was revealed to be an urban legend."

"Really?" I said. "The one where the guy was staying in a hotel in Ohio? And he stayed in the same room for three nights, even though it smelled really bad? And after he checked out, the maid found a rotting corpse under the bed? That was an urban legend?"

"Yeah," he said, perhaps sensing that I was getting a little too excited about this.

The reason I was getting so excited was because it hadn't been three weeks earlier that I had been telling Morgan that story as fact, and I was telling it to her as fact because I had read it that morning on the Associated Press wires.

There's not exactly anything new or unique in that phenomenon. Jan Brunvand, the World's Foremost Authority on urban legends, documents hundreds of examples in his numerous books of urban legends being reported as fact by supposedly reputable news sources. I remember quite clearly back in the 70s and 80s when Ann Landers and/or Dear Abby, on more than one occasion presented the "guy who drives the cement truck coming home early to surprise his wife" story as fact.

But Ann Landers isn't the Associated Press?and finding stories like that in the "legitimate" news?thanks to the speed and power of email?seems to be happening with a greater and greater frequency.

There was, for instance, the story of a British woman who heard a strange buzzing or fluttering sound inside her head. It was intermittent, but was keeping her awake and driving her nuts. Afraid she was suffering a brain hemorrhage or something, she made her husband listen to her ear, but he heard nothing. By morning, it had stopped. Nevertheless, she went to the doctor to get it checked out.

The doctor couldn't see anything, but thought it might be best to flush her ears out anyway?and when he did, out slid a two-inch- long adult moth.

It's nothing more than a new variation on the old "earwig" yarn, but this one made the wires, too, for a day, likely after being bandied about via email for a week beforehand.

There was still another story I remember telling Morgan after reading it on the wires, though for the life of us, neither she nor I can remember the details now. I think it was a variation on the "Mexican Pet" story (you see a lot of those in the news). What I do remember is that when I finished recounting the tale, her immediate response was "That sounds an awful lot like an urban legend," to which my immediate response was, "But, but?I read it on the AP wire!"

I should certainly know better than to say such a thing.

It was funny?the guy on the radio show who revealed that the "corpse in the hotel room" story was a fabrication also complained about the reaction he usually got from friends when he told them that the stories they were passing along weren't true.

"They get really mad," he said. "Like I'm a big party pooper or something." And that's sort of how I was feeling when Morgan first suggested that the story might not be true. I felt like an imbecile for falling for it?and worse, for passing it along. But at the same time, I was disappointed, somehow. I wanted that story to be true. I wanted to believe what I read on the AP wires.

And maybe that's how these things become news in the first place. Some AP hack (or Reuters hack, or UPI hack, or New York Times hack) gets the same email all of his friends has, and sees in it a great story. Better still, sees that it contains a few authentic-sounding "sources" and "quotes," and decides to run with it. It certainly sounds good?and what the hell? It's something you want to believe to be true anyway, so why not?

Come to think of it, maybe it's not their fault. Not much, anyway. After all, a lot of urban legends have been becoming reality lately. There really are alligators climbing out of the New York sewers, and rats swimming up people's toilets. Plus there've been all those stories in the news over the past year about black marketeers in Asia (or was it India?) kidnapping people, killing them and harvesting their organs. For real!

Looking at it that way, in the end, there really is no difference anymore between Destroy All Monsters and some drought in California. And if you ask me, that's the way it should be.