February 28, 2005 Whitley Strieber’s rant on the Peter Jennings Reports, UFOs Seeing is Believing.
February 27, 2005
—The Scum Rises: Peter Jennings on UFOs
Friday February 25th, 2005
I’ve seen a couple of harshly worded bits coming out of the Strieber web page, few venomous as his commentary on the ABC, Peter Jennings Reports, UFOs, Seeing is Believing. Whitley Strieber, author and abductee seemed very disturbed about the tone and the subject of the report
The much heralded ABC special on UFOs has come and gone. Predictably, it was more of the same, a large number of lies sprinkled with a few truths.
Lies? A large number of lies? Specifically what lies are we talking about? Certainly the Jennings UFO segment of Peter Jennings Reports was attempting to be objective, to tell both sides of the story. Insomuch as reporting is supposed to about relating both sides it’s not unusual for any news program to air “lies”? just to be fair. Allowing the audience to make up their minds is what it’s all about. Anything else would be sheer propaganda.
It’s pretty clear to the Odd Emperor that Mr. Strieber is not really interested in weighing the pros and the cons. Some of his statements are telling indeed.
“Jennings was somewhat open to the notion that some UFOs might be actual unknowns, and he actually told the truth, for once, about Project Bluebook: it was indeed a publicity stunt.”
Well, no. Blue Book was a public relations office, not a publicity stunt as Mr. Strieber so quaintly states. Not really studying UFOs at all it was (according to some) meant to channel some of the public interest in UFOs and make it appear that the Air Force doing something about them. Why they chose to do something like this is a fascinating (and more or less unanswered) question of the period. The Jennings piece did a much better than average job explaining some of this.
On Roswell Streiber calls Peter Jennings a “prostitute” for characterizing this incident as a “hoax.” Somehow the Odd Emperor cannot recall anything approaching this kind of wording in the Peter Jennings report. They did strongly suggest that the Air force covered up a crashed surveillance device with an initial press story stating a flying disk had been discovered, then yanked it when public interest became focused opposite of their apparent intent. It would seem the Air Force spent decades backpedaling and covering up this embarrassing genie they unwittingly uncorked. Jennings report covered this aspect and also gave considerable time to the people who insist it was an alien crash site. While not perfect it seemed to fairly cover many aspects of Roswell without becoming too judgmental.
According to Mr. Strieber, since *he* met some people who, in all sincerity say that the debris were otherworldly it must have been a case of aliens crashing their spacecraft and any attempt to explain it differently is enemy propaganda. Even when the facts don’t really conclude much of anything? All we have from Roswell is a big fat bunch of anecdotal data, just like most UFO reports. How can anyone make a conclusion from that? Only one who’s already made up their minds on the subject. Since Mr. Strieber already knows that aliens crashed at Roswell he seems to think that the rest of us should just shut up and believe. In the real world though, just believing is not enough. To have a compelling belief, one must have some compelling evidence. In the case of Roswell, all we have is a mass of stories, we don’t even have *one* first hand witness.
Strieber goes on to say
“The ones who debunk it are professional liars or ignorant fools, pure and simple.”
This goes under the “takes one to know one” heading. Seems to me that Mr. Strieber made a bit of money being a professional liar. That is what a fiction author is, a paid liar. There is nothing wrong with this. But anyone who debunks is either a fool or a liar? If ever a statement is poised to bite an author on the ass. Mr Strieber’s entire epistle is an attempt to debunk too, what does that make you sir? A liar? a fool? Mr. Strieber; take your pick.
I wonder what Mr. Strieber’s beef is about all of this. Is it jealousy? He did not appear on the Jennings’s report although they did flash photos of his book covers. He seems bitter and angry that some people have called him a cultist, and labeled his friend Budd Hopkins with a similar moniker. if I am simply sitting back and making a fortune off my books, then where is that fortune? This is assuming all cultist make a fortune and the simple fact is, just like writers, most cultists fail to gain a following or a fortune.
The bottom line seems to be that since ABC news did not consult with Strieber personally on the issue of UFOs they are to be demonized and lambasted. “Since they did not choose to tell only one side of the UFO abduction story, that of the abductee they, (according to Strieber) have made an unforgivable sin not only to journalism but to humanity as well. “
There is a single word description to what Mr. Strieber seems to want from ABC. It’s a word he used many times in his rant. The word is propaganda. Yes; he wants propaganda from ABC but only propaganda emanating from himself and the small cadre of people who “know the truth.” This is presumably so that the rest of us ignorant idiots will somehow become enlightened and awaken from our silly ideas of proof or compelling evidence.
I sympathize with the abductee community to some extent. Assuming the phenomena is real, that aliens are here and interacting with humanity. Is it not incumbent on us to stop feeding at the trough that the aliens have set before us. Since they have purposely hidden their agenda and actively prevent people from obtaining proof in the form of physical evidence, should not people like Mr. Strieber support a news program like Seeing is Believing which seemed to be a real attempt to tell both sides, to actually report and not deliver propaganda. If the aliens exist, it seems clear to me that *this* is in fact what they are doing.
Speaking of crashed saucers, it’s interesting that alien technology within their spacecraft fails from time to time (or the operators make errors, or both) while the various technologies employed in the alleged abduction procedures almost never fail (if we are to believe that thousands, or perhaps even millions of individuals have been abducted, as some assert). We have the alleged Roswell crash, plus Aztec, plus Kecksburg, plug Shag Harbour, and now Mary Sutherland, of the Burlington UFO group is pushing that a crash occurred in Carbondale, PA, as well, the protestations of one of the primary investigators, Matt Graeber, notwithstanding. Throw in some Soviet crashes, and the claims of South African abductee/shaman/gray-alien flesh-eater Credo Mutwa (championed by David Icke and others) that scores of UFOs have crashed into a certain mountain range in Africa, and we have a case that alien technology, and/or the aliens themselves, is anything but fallible.
Yet, in countless thousands of abductions, they pull it off without a hitch. Oh, sure, maybe an abductee resists for a while, but the aliens are persistent and patient, and get their way. It’s smooth, routine, and never leaves any unambiguous evidence of an alien presence, and more often than not, leaves no evidence that anything has occurred at all. Not even when locked, deadbolted houses with video cameras are involved. Yet, if they are so fallible to crash their saucers and kill themselves thereby, surely this fallibility should, at some point, manifest in a very big way, during the abduction process? If they are flesh, and not Gods?
Of course, there’s the extradimensional/surreal angle, which avoids nuts and bolts complications, but what are we to say about the crashes, then? That there are two different sets of aliens, one extradimensional and hence inscrutable, and another set of normal space aliens? Maybe. Maybe there’s 50-odd races of aliens who have their finger in the terrestrial pie, if Michael Salla is to be believed….
Too bad there’s not some objective way of evaluating the efficacy of the anti-abduction helmets, featured here:
http://www.stopabductions.com/
Then we would know that alien technology is fallible. Fallible enough to be subverted by a middle-school style crafts project. Unfortunately, the admission, “I used to get abducted, but now I don’t” doesn’t suffice as evidence on that front. Not for me, anyway.
Curiously, I haven’t found any links on any of the major investigators’ websites to the the above site which outlines an inexpensive, easily made “stop abduction/anti-though-control” helmet. I should think, however, since these are the foremost experts in alien abduction, with the highest level of access to abductees, that Jacobs and Hopkins, et al, would be interested in testing this device, should it actually be capable of preventing alien abduction.
A Google search for sites that link to the site http://www.stopabductions.com doesn’t reveal any links from the major abductology sites–
http://www.google.com/search?q=link:www.stopabductions.com&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-17,GGGL:en&start=50&sa=N
A check of Hopkin’s “related links” at the Intruders Foundation “related links” section reveals nothing of the sort:
http://www.intrudersfoundation.org/related_links.html
Neither does Jacob’s site:
http://www.ufoabduction.com/links.htm
I wonder why not? Because the idea of a helmet that can stop aliens from reading your thoughts and abducting you is crazy? Reminds me of the scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where Roy Neary has just gone apeshit, pulling up all the plants, throwing bricks and dirt through the window, and pulling up the neighbors chicken wire duck-fence. Ronnie has the kids in the car and is getting ready to take off. Roy leans on the door and says, “You’re going over to your sisters? That’s crazy – you’re not even dressed.”
To which Ronnie says, “You said what? You said WHAT?”
(I wonder if the reasons why our foremost abductologists have overlooked the anti-abduction UFO helmet are due to concerns that its “action” – or perhaps more accurately, its placebo effect – might cut down on their stables, or suggest something unthinkable, like…maybe it’s really not happening? Or is it just that the concept is so silly-seeming that it might make their “serious” and “sober-minded” work look silly, in contrast?)
I suppose I’m digressing terribly. It simply perturbs me when someone who has expounded some of the most outrageous shit of the 20th and 21st centuries to the reading public comes along and starts blathering on about “propaganda” and labeling others as “liars” and “ignorant fools.”
Here’s what I think about the Jennings documentary. I suspect that Jennings knew, or believed, that he was going to die from the lung cancer, and he decided to try to give UFOs a fair shake on his way out. But just like the abductees and abductologists who followed Susan Clancy’s study wanted her to give them nothing short of complete, academic legitimacy, so will Strieber, et al, accept nothing other than abject credulity from a hard-nosed newsman’s last gasp before exiting the earthly plane.
It’s pretty easy to see who the truly “dim-bulb” is, here.
Best,
RDB
Yah, always sounded like half-assed human technology. Imagine building starships that crashes because some yokels put a radar beam on them. It would be like shooting a B2 Spirit down with a spear.
Oh come one! Do you really think a million-year old star traveling civilization is going to be stopped by a few mms of aluminum foil? Anyone who buys that is got a screw loose in my not so humble opinion. Really, anyone who just accepts the ETH at face value is a few cans short. UFOs probably exist on some physical level, perhaps as a poorly understood EM effect that scrambles people’s brains. It is SO unlikely that godlike aliens that just happen to look like human fetuses are abducting people to gather tissue that I almost don’t have words. It’s far more likely that the PC I’m typing away at will spontaneously become a time machine and whisk me back to the 14th century where I would surly burn as a heretic.
Jennings’ treatment was thoroughly mainstream to the point that I was looking at my watch every now and again. It wasn’t a bad treatment—not unfair or slanted per-say. It was spun in a direction that I favor as I recall, that of continued scientific research but discounting many of the wild claims proponents of the ‘biz’ put fourth.
Heh! No argument there! Be good!
The Emperor wrote:
It is SO unlikely that godlike aliens that just happen to look like human fetuses are abducting people to gather tissue that I almost don’t have words.
Agreed, completely, and it speaks volumes that the credulity of those who swallow the above (no pun intended) is so complete – and so completely divorced not only from the dictates of biological evolution, but from plain old high-school level logic, as well. It initially struck me as rather curious that someone who can wholly embrace such a patently silly idea as this, should at the same time have a problem with a tinfoil helmet. Thinking about it further, though, Clancy gave us insight into this, as far as the abductees beliefs are concerned: it’s not so much lack of intelligence, or that they’re patently crazy, but rather a combination of “schizotypy” (the propensity for “magickal thinking” and to hold “New Age” beliefs) coupled with anomalous (but nevertheless, not “preternatural”) experiences, applied to the standard abduction template provided by “abductologists.” (I find it amusing that both Jacobs and Hopkins close their books with a contact address and an appeal for those who “believe they might have had experiences like this,” to contact them).
As for the abductologists, or the “non-abductees” who faithfully buy into all the baloney they either elicit or read, I can see how a “check up from the neck up” might be warranted. I still haven’t decided if Jacobs is a gold-digger, or if he’s genuinely deluded. A colleague of mine thinks the former is the case, in which case he’s a shrewd con-man, rather than patently “crazy.”
Reading your review of Clancy’s book, and your reply to my intitial missive, here, put me on this train of thought, btw.
As an aside, I just re-read (or rather skimmed) through Jacobs “The Threat,” again, for the fun of it. I’d forgotten about certain “less-than-novel” sperm extraction procedures (handjob/blowjob, in at least two instances). I wonder if the aliens picked this up by watching American porno…ergo, the ubiquitous, albeit tedious and terribly overworked, “moneyshot.” This makes that which is stupid (the belief that aliens are systematically collecting human zygotes) rather more stupid, by several orders of magnitude, at the least. Truly “magnificent” stupidity, I venture.
(for readers who think I’m “incriminating” myself by indicating that I have watched American porno…well…all I can say is, “bl..w me.” It’s not all that different from watching dogs and cats, except it’s naked apes with a larger brain, and a unique capacity to get all intellectually and emotionally hung up about the act of copulation – whether engaging in it, or simply observing it in action).
The aliens need to be abducting people like “Ron Jeremy.” His R-rated autobiographical documentary (very funny in a lowbrow sort of way – highly recommended) discloses that he can “make a deposit on demand,” with an actual verbal countdown to the “event.” Such consummate skill – this is just what the bigheads need – a hairy “milk animal” named “Ron Jeremy.”
Best,
RDB
Talk about tangents!
Well there’s certainly a correlation between UFOs and sex. What I always find amusing I that people who are abducted by aliens are almost always the last people one would expect would make good breeding stock. One would think athletes should reasonably chain themselves to their beds lest some freaky-looking freak suck the juices out of them.
Of course, if UFOs and aliens are some kind of internal concoction the sex thing becomes more than explainable, almost inevitable. Humanity is preoccupied with sex, it’s perfectly natural that concocted fairy tales would have a sexual content.
Hardly the way Clancy approached the thing is it? If you believe in the tooth fairy please contact me?
What? Are they nuts? And yet these are the same people who scream bloody murder when some news show fails to take them seriously.
Talk about tangents!
I try to stay on topic, but the whole damned business is so scattered and “stream of consciousness” that I tend to digress more often than I should.
Well there’s certainly a correlation between UFOs and sex.
Jim Moseley agrees, and has more than once stated his opinion that “UFOs and sex” is one aspect of the genre which has yet to be “fully exploited” for fame and profit. Maybe that will be the next “revolution” in the UFO biz, although what form(s)/direction(s) it might take is anyone’s guess…
What? Are they nuts?
Either that, or gold-diggers. As I mentioned, the latter case is the opinion of my buddy, Matt Graeber: that the most prominent “abductologists” know exactly what they are doing: making money. To solicit “fresh meat” would be in line with keeping a “stable,” as it were. For my part, I honestly don’t know. If they are not gold diggers, however, then they are in some sense, “deluded.”
The third alternative is that it’s all true. Which I just can’t swallow. Nothing about it makes sense; it’s beyond ludicrous.
Best,
RDB