50 Years of Myths

In this op-ed piece I wrote for the Jersey Journal in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, I talk about the growth of the assassination myths and their potential danger.

In a half century, a multimillion dollar industry perpetuating a mountain of misconceptions, lies, misinterpretations, fantasies, and fallacies about vast shadowy conspiracies behind JFK's murder has risen. Although these theories can all be debunked, does our culture's fixation on them signal something troubling about the times we live in?

THE NEXT BIG THING

Since I've been away from blogging for quite a while, the perfect opportunity to start writing here again came by way of Malachi Stone's invitation to contribute to The Next Big Thing novel-in-progress chain.

So here is my next big thing:


1. What is the working title of your next book?
THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
Should I be embarrassed to say it was inspired by film and reality TV? Well, it actually was. I’ve been fascinated by and a big fan of “found footage” films like the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise, CHRONICLE, and all the dozens of other similar films. So I asked myself how this reality craze could be translated to literature. How about a novel written in the voice and style of a nonfiction book, using devices like footnotes, interviews with experts and commentators on the plot, appendices of excerpts from secondary sources, and a bibliography?

3. What genre does your book fall under?
I would put it under mystery, or perhaps thriller. How about “literary crime thriller”? Well, if it’s “literary” it sort of sounds pretentious and kind of boring, the sort of thing that’s hard to follow and understand and it might scare a mass audience away. So let’s just say mystery. When I feel a bit egotistical I would like to think that it will create its own subgenre…”fictional non-fiction” maybe.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
For my title character, the charming charlatan of a conspiracy theorist Shane Conroy, LOST’s Josh Holloway (Sawyer) keeps popping into my head.

For his ill-fated girlfriend, champion fitness competitor Rose Bedford, I would ask my people to do lunch with Jessica Biel’s people. Remember her in BLADE TRINITY? That’s about Rose’s look…well, perhaps if she pumps a little more iron. Jessica Biel with the Linda Hamilton, TERMINATOR 2 muscles.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Accused of murdering his girlfriend, a best-selling – and completely sleazy and fraudulent – conspiracy theorist becomes a fugitive and an international superstar by claiming he was framed by “a vast global conspiracy” for “getting too close to the truth.”

6. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
About 14 or 15 months, I think. I lot of time went into the crime scene investigation-technique research. That and the trial and error method of the experimental format took quite a while to finish. Actually, making the experimental fake-reality format work is still taking plenty of time in the ongoing revisions.

7. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I recently read STILL MISSING by Chevy Stevens and saw a lot of elements in it that I use in THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST. Stevens’ parallel story lines surrounding a woman’s kidnapping, which are not always chronological in order, are something I use as well. I would also compare it somewhat to the style of Michael Crichton’s THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, reading as if it was the report of a real incident. My description of the plot has also been compared to Elizabeth Kostova’s THE HISTORIAN.

8. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The first inkling of the idea to write this book came to me two years ago because I’m not a football fan. During Super Bowl Sunday I found myself flipping the channels, staying away from the game, and came across a Biography Channel documentary about the real people involved in the Amityville Horror case. In the detailed history of all the people involved in the supposed haunting, the alleged hoax, the books and feuds between various writers calling each other liars and con artists, I realized that the drama of all these people trying to make money off of this obviously phony ghost story was much more interesting than the story of the house itself. So I had this idea of writing about something allegedly otherworldly or fantastic but not focusing on the phenomenon itself but the personalities of all the people surrounding it and the ways they try to exploit it, the way the media help the story distort.

Hmm…Can I call it “Tom Wolfe meets The X-Files”?  Or “Bonfire of the Conspiracies”?

9. What else about this book might pique the reader’s interest?
Think about how outrageously successful some conspiracy theorists are these days. Some of them have top-rated radio shows, web pages getting tens of thousands of hits every day, and best-selling books blaming Midwestern tornadoes, the Batman shootings in Colorado, hurricane Sandy, and just about every single event in the world on conspiracies. Now if one of these people were accused of a crime, what would they say? That they were framed by a conspiracy? And would it affect their success at all, or would their fawning, paranoid fans rally around a “victim” who was set up by “shadowy forces?”

Or how about a tagline: “What if Agent Mulder was the bad guy?”

And now the torch passes to Jennifer B. White.

Looking at conspiracy cinema

This may be a belated start to a new year of blogging, but I am just able to put a new link in to the amazon.com page for my forthcoming book, CONSPIRACY FILMS.

Due this June 30th from McFarland publishers, the book will be one of the most comprehensive histories of conspiracy theory films ever written. Tracing a decade-by-decade chronicle of some of the most pervasive conspiracy theories in modern American culture, the book will then look at the films they helped inspire.

From JFK to Roswell, alien abductions, men in black, secret societies like the Masons and the Illuminati, I document our culture's most colorful fears and the movies they turn up in.

Interview with my favorite person...

I'm quite grateful for the very cool Nigel P. Bird for giving me the opportunity to join some fantastic talent on his blog and talk about my writing an upcoming book about conspiracy theory films.

Nigel let me and some great writers, like former Culture Wars guests Joelle Charbonneau, Hilary Davidson, Angela Choi, and Steve Weddle, talk about our work in a format where we pretend to interview ourselves.

Check it out right here.

www.nigelpbird.blogspot.com

Skating Around the Law

With the return of a new season of my radio show, Culture Wars, I am pledging regular updates of this blog as well. Following a summer that has been a bit too eventful, brilliant opinions and commentary will be returning to this blog!

The most important opinion for this week, however, is the need to check out our first author interview on Culture Wars. On September 23, 12:00 pm Eastern Time, we are talking live to Joelle Charbonneau about her debut mystery novel, Skating Around the Law. Joelle will discuss how she brings a humorous edge to the cozy mystery, shaking up some of the staid conventions of the genre.

Published by St. Martin's Press, Joelle's book will be available in all bookstores on September 28. In the meantime, check out her web page right here, and read an excerpt of Skating Around the Law.

Culture Wars, of course, will be once again live every Thursday and available on podcasts at http://www.culturewars.libsyn.com/

Yes!!!!!!!!!!! Sanity in broadcast regulation!!!!

And let me say it again, "Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!" Broadcast regulation seems to have taken a small step into the 21st century at last with an appeals court striking down the FCC's indecency regulations as being unconstitutional. Outstanding!! Check out the story right here.

For anyone with a high enough IQ and enough of an attention span to read a simple sentence in the First Amendment, the idea that the FCC censoring the broadcast airwaves was unconstitutional should have been obvious. Of course, IQ requirements would exclude people like the general membership of groups like the Parents Television Council or Focus on the Family any such fundamentalist, ultra-right wing nutbags. So much fun can probably be had today and over the next few days visiting and reading their web pages and blogs and seeing them make even bigger fools of themselves than usual as they claim that "families are under attack."

The only people who have been under attack until now were Americans who knew how to raise their kids and how to manage their families, families that believed in the fundamental values of freedom of speech and expression and the arts, people besieged by gangs of Puritanical crazies who like to force their values on others.

Just like Barry Goldwater so brilliantly said, "You can't legislate morality," you can't legislate taste either, and you have no constitutional right to censor curse words or sex or violence in broadcasting either. Thank God the courts are showing some sanity at last with decisions like this.

What mental illness is Brent Bozell suffering from?

In light of the most recent rampage of the psycho FCC - prompted by the Parents Television Council's complaints about Fox's American Dad cartoon - I somehow got in the mood to read some more idiocy. Thus, for the first time in a while, I checked out some of the recent essays by PTC and Media Research Center head honcho, Brent Bozell.

Now, you see, the thing about Brent Bozell columns is that they're kind of like daytime soap operas. You can miss a number of them and not really miss anything new. They're all essentially the same, especially when he's complaining that somehow society's mores seem to change over time. At one point Bozell woke up and noticed that we weren't living in the 1950s anymore. So, of course, he complains about this a lot and throws around a lot of childish insult words like "smut," "trash," "sleaze," indecent," and "vile."

But the most recent little hissy fit by Bozell is about the musical TV comedy "Glee." You can check it out here, on the web page of the Media Research Center.

Just scroll down to the bottom of the screen and you'll see his piece, titled "The Glee Agenda." It's a play on the right wing paranoid phrase "gay agenda." Get it? Gay agenda? Glee agenda? If you look at the other Bozell columns, you'll see more of examples of his impish wit.

But reading this piece made me wonder what a mental health professional would make of the twisted mind that wrote the article. Bozell apparently feels like the producers of Glee are a bunch of left wing bullies who unfairly like to beat up on social conservatives. These social conservatives, you see, are really nice and decent folks...aside from the fact that they would like to force certain Americans into second-class-citizen status simply for what they do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Thus, the article goes on and lists all the examples of Glee's meanness and rudeness and all the examples of their persecution of the Christian right. I was certain that at one point reference to the Christian diet of Roman lions would come up.

Just how exactly does Bozell find the audacity to complain about the mean satire of Glee after the sort of prolific name-calling he's been busy with in his editorial pieces? Just look around on the very same page and see Bozell referring to CBS as a "toilet network," to FOX as "television's dung pile," to the old FX show "Nip/Tuck" as "vile," and just browse the rest of his postings for all his sophomoric insults. But his work, of course, is nothing as terrible and intolerant as Glee making a joke about Sarah Palin, is it?

If Brent Bozell truly can't understand what prompts certain TV producers to take shots at social conservatives - especially in light of the censorship campaigns the PTC has been engaged in recently - PTC members should take some of those funds their donors lavish on them and help pay for Bozell's psychiatric care.

By the way, it's disappointing that the Media Research Center page no longer gives the readers of Bozell's columns the opportunity to offer feedback. I wonder why he would not be interested in getting some commentary. But since the PTC loves to mail complaints so much, here are a couple of e-mail addresses at the MRC people can send their own complaints to:

contact.cmi@mediaresearch.org

dgainor@mediaresearch.org

mphilbin@mediaresearch.org

craezler@mediaresearch.org