Enough With the Olympics Conspiracy Theories Already

As everyone knows, Americans love a good conspiracy theory. With the FBI recently shooting down yet another one by revealing the fact that the anthrax letters mailed a month after 9/11 were not, as some were led to believe by the evil notes’ content, the product of an arab muslim conspiracy but the act of a deranged “lone mailer”, America’s conspiracy enthusiasts needed fresh blood.

They seem to have found it amid the chaotic fanfare of the Beijing Olympics, which in less than a fortnight has generated a series of conspiracy theories ranging from the bizarre to the outlandish to the just plain silly. It is believed by conspiracy theorists for example that the Chinese somehow managed to fake the fireworks during the opening ceremony (because of course there is a shortage of real fireworks in China, where fireworks were invented centuries ago—you can’t beat conspiracy theorist logic even with a spiked 2 by 4, as much as you would like to!) The conspiracy theorists have engaged in wild speculation that in fact the fireworks were somehow “digitally embedded” into video of the ceremonies, which of course begs the question—why do thousands of witnesses think they actually saw a real, spectacular display of fireworks? Did the Chinese somehow manage to digitally embed the fireworks into the sky? The conspiracy theorists don’t have an answer for that of course, but they do have plenty of blurry photographs of the Chinese fireworks that they will force you to look at if you are unfortunate enough to be accosted by them in the streets.

Another favorite conspiracy is that the Chinese had a little girl lip sync the national anthem because the actual singer, another little girl, was not cute enough. Conspiracy theorists do not, of course, provide any photographs of the actual singer—we are supposed to trust them that she was in fact so ugly that a Milli Vanilli was chosen from a secret supply of cute little girls that the Communist government keeps on hand. The moonbats use what they call “video analysis” to “prove” that the little girl seen by millions singing the anthem was not in fact the source of the audio. They point out that the movement of her lips does not precisely match the sounds she is alleged (their word) to have been singing. While the “evidence” they marshall is convincing to gullible people and those who want desperately to believe in the conspiracy, the claims are easily debunked. Light, of course, travels much faster than sound—more than a million times faster in fact, a inconvenient detail that conspiracy theorists ignore. The light that allows us to see the little girl’s lips moving therefore reaches our eyes millions of times sooner than the sound that the lips are producing, creating a delay that easily accounts for the conspiracists “mismatched voice”. As one can readily see, there are perfectly simple explanations for every conspiracy theory, if one actually takes the time to look.

Perhaps the most brazen of the conspiracy theorists’ claims is that the Chinese female gymnasts are not, as witnessed, again, by millions of spectators around the world, 16 years old—but much younger, which makes them ineligible to compete according to conpiracy theorists. They do not, of course, offer any evidence that what they say is true. Neither do they explain how it is possible that multiple athletes could fake their birth certificates, drivers licenses, and every other form of identification required to enroll not just in the olympics themselves but in the olympic trials. Apparently there are hundreds of people involved in the conspiracy—or so the conspiracy theorists would have us believe. Not only the young women involved, but their parents and extended family, officials at local government registries who would have had to be complicit in forging the identification documents, the hospitals were the athletes were born, the media which have all chosen to participate in the deception—in other words, a full 25% (estimates vary, but this is on the conservative side) of China’s 1 billion people would have to be involved. Does this bother conspiracy theorists? Not at all. The Chinese, they say, are easily forced to behave however the government wants them to. As evidence they point out the ultra-precise synchronization of thousands of performers during the opening ceremonies. As one conspiracy website puts it “The Chinese are ideally suited to engage in collective action, which is exactly what conspiracies require.”

As long as there are people, there will be conspiracy theorists, and as long as there are conspiracy theorists, there will be conspiracy theories. As long as there are conspiracy theories, moreover, there will be those sad, worthless people who have such empty lives that they will fill them with anything—including crystal meth, heroin, and bizarre claims about perfectly ordinary events.