Accidental reporting

Living where I do, the drooling of Bircherites and other righty tinfoil-hatters eventually trickles down and gets me wet. Here a couple of whoppers I've come across lately:

1) The Radical Muslim Black Christian Nazi Communist Preznit is somehow going to commandeer 2010 Census data as some kind of evil plot to steal your children or somesuch. The Census bureau is even taking this seriously enough that it has dispatched representatives to town council meetings urging them to reassure residents that turning in their census forms won't get them sent to a gulag in Montana.

2) Digital TV converter boxes are equipped with audio/video recording equipment so Big Brother can watch you. I suppose this one was inevitable, since any new piece of equipment or identification which everyone has to buy--except, you know, those who don't--will become a Lindseyan mark of the beast. Bur really, consider the utter absurdity of this for a moment.

It's not that I'm completely unsympathetic to people who are skeptical of government intrusiveness, rather that I'm highly doubtful most of the people pushing these new conspiracies had the same skepticism seven months ago. That's the trouble with conspiracy theories, though, and perhaps it's not just a right-wing thing. Americans seem to be fascinated by conspiracies in inverse proportion to how believable they are. Iran-Contra? WMD's? Extraordinary rendition? Pfft, no one cares. The Masons had JFK killed? Gimme some of that action!

(Yes, I am reading Charlie Pierce's book.)