All Hell Breaks Loose on The View After 9/11 Truther Cuts Loose
Controversy: View hosts walked out on Bill O’Reilly for Muslim comments but not Alex Jones for ‘conspiracy theories’
Alex Jones, a 9/11 truther and promoter of other conspiracy theories, appeared on ABC’s The View Monday to defend his friend Charlie Sheen, but diverted the interview into slamming George W. Bush for turning American into “a police state.” Veteran journalist Barbara Walters did not denounce the radio host when he referenced the theory that the government was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Co-hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg, who walked out when they objected to a comment Bill O’Reilly made about Muslims, did not leave when Jones attacked, “[Charlie Sheen] didn’t kill a million people in Iraq. He wasn’t involved with the takedown of Building Seven here in New York.”
(Building Seven, across the street from the World Trade Center, is a key component to those who believe that the Twin Towers were taken down by a controlled demolition, not as a result of international terrorism.) Later, Jones shifted the subject to politics again and ranted, “Let’s compare George Bush, a million dead in Iraq!”
I’m writing this vanity card in Israel. I like it here. Not for the geography, or architecture, or even the history. No, I like it because for the first time in my life I’m surrounded with DNA much like my own. Until I got here, until I wandered around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, I didn’t realize how much my double helix yearned to be around similar strands. Now that’s not to say that I don’t occasionally have that very same genetic experience in Beverly Hills (particularly in Chinese restaurants on Sunday night). But the sheer homogeneity of Israel overwhelms any over-priced kung pao gathering at Mr. Chow’s. The cop, the cab driver, the hotel concierge, the pilot, the waiter, the shoe salesman, the beautiful girl looking right through me as if I didn’t exist — all Jewish! If I had to sum it up, I’d say the sensation is like being at a B’nai B’rith summer camp that is surrounded by millions of crazy bastards who hate the sound of kids playing tetherball, and all the poor little camp has going for it is pluckiness and nukes. Anyway, I have to believe my visceral and very pleasant reaction is some sort of evolutionary, tribal thing. Some sort of survival gene that makes human beings want to stay with their birth group. Which raises the question, why have I spent a lifetime moving away from that group? How did Chaim become Chuck? How did Levine become Lorre? The only answer I come up with is this: When I was a little boy in Hebrew school the rabbis regularly told us that we were the chosen people. That we were God’s favorites. Which is all well and good except that I went home, observed my family and, despite my tender age, thought to myself, “bull$#*!.”
-- Chaim Levine
Chaim asks: Which raises the question, why have I spent a lifetime moving away from that group?