January 2013 – Page 5

WARNING: Off-topic post ahead.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the communications faculty member at Florida Atlantic University who claims that the massacre of elementary school students at Sandy Hook Elementary School last month may have been staged or may not have happened at all.

To recap:

On his personal blog, FAU communications professor James Tracy wrote recently that the entire incident was staged as a means for the Obama administration to enforce gun control.

James Tracy (top) and James Brolin: One and the same?

The “storyline” of the incident, Tracy writes, “was to a substantial degree constructed by federal and state law enforcement authorities and major media around the theory that 20-year-old Adam Lanza was the sole agent in the massac

re.” The professor further asserts that “This scenario became an established reality through the news media’s pronounced repetition of the lone gunman narrative and meme.” He then constructs a timeline of events, beginning with a September 2012 announcement by Sandy Hook Principal Dawn Hochsprung of a new security system, and cherrypicks his way through a series of blog and news accounts up to and beyond the Dec. 14, 2012, incident.

The post makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in conspiracy theories. And I have to admit, they fascinate me. Maybe it’s my background in journalism, and my inclination to be skeptical of the good intentions of those in positions of corporate or government authority. From the Apollo moon landing (did it really happen?) to the New World Order to the death of Elvis (is he still alive?), I love reading about conspiracy theories. The crazier, the better. And Professor Tracy’s tale is right up there with the best of them.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Professor Tracy’s explanations are plausible. Because I don’t believe Professor Tracy is real. He’s as fake as he claims the Sandy Hook news storyline to be.

One need only examine the public persona of James Tracy to discern that his is a totally fabricated construct that is part of a vast government conspiracy that reaches even into the hallowed halls of higher education.

First, let’s see how FAU presents the man. Yes, the university does list an employee by that name in its publicly accessible database. Tracy is listed as an “Associate Professor, Comm. & Multimedia Studies.” There’s even a very convincing, cleverly constructed faculty profile page, complete with bio, a list of selected publications and a photo that looks uncannily like the one used in mainstream corporate media coverage of his recent blog post. But, let’s get real. FAU is a public university, receiving public funds from the state government. And we know that public universities are controlled by their state governments. Can we really trust directory information from a public institution?

Moreover, have you noticed how Tracy’s “official” photo looks eerily similar to one of actor James Brolin? (See the comparison above.) Could it be that the government has put actor James Brolin on the payroll to act as a communications and media studies professor who also blogs about conspiracy theories, all as part of an intricate cover up to perpetuate a false conspiracy that the government is trying to take our guns away from us? Brolin is quite a convincing actor. Just watch old episodes of Marcus Welby, M.D. and you’ll see what I’m talking about. (That is, if you can find any. The government-industrial media complex has done a pretty good job of making those programs inaccessible. Probably as part of the conspiracy to influence public perception of general practitioners as uncaring technocrats, thereby ensuring stronger support for totalitarian health care.)

And maybe it’s just a coincidence. But, have you noticed that, according to the trivia section on Brolin’s IMDB page, he’s listed as “a lifelong Democrat” who would therefore be highly likely to go along with such a federal conspiracy? Especially when one considers the fact that Brolin hasn’t had any meaningful acting work since Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 2008? The very year Obama was elected to his first term as president!?

Moreover, let’s consider Tracy’s whole notion that the government-police-military-media establishment concocted a “lone gunman” theory to explain the Sandy Hook incident, all as a cover up for the government’s plan. Tracy writes that ” in the days following the tragedy, the untenable lone gunman narrative … [became] firmly established in the public psyche via an overwhelming chorus of corporate media reports and interpretations.”

Lone gunman theory, eh? Where have we heard that one before? Asserted and debunked by the esteemed Warren Commission. BOOM, Professor Tracy! Paging Oliver Stone…

So, based on the evidence I present here, it would appear that James Tracy does not actually exist. In reality, he is part of an elaborate scheme concocted by the government and big corporate media intended to fabricate false resistance to protection of the nation’s public spaces from semiautomatic-weapons toting psychopaths.

Or maybe he’s for real?

And maybe Elvis is still alive.

From phone to phenomenon: the hash mark made its mark in 2012.

Who would ever have thought that the pound symbol, once most recognizable as the least useful telephone button, would ascend to greatness?

But with the rise of Twitter, that innocuous little # has taken on great power. Stick it in front of a word or group of words connected without spaces (#likethis), and suddenly that pound symbol (a.k.a. hash mark) harnesses the chaotic flood of tweets into searchable, contextual and even sometimes meaningful bits of information.

On Friday, the American Dialect Society proclaimed “hashtag” as its word of the year. Finally, the humble symbol has received its due recognition.

“Hashtag” beat out contenders like YOLO, fiscal cliff and Gangnam style for the distinction. While those words all have merit, they also have something in common. They are 2012 words that aren’t likely to carry over much beyond the first few months of 2013. Like YOLO itself (perhaps), these words only live once.

Hashtag, on the other hand, has been a persistent little bugger. It’s been with us for more than five years now, almost as long as Twitter itself. (According to GigaOM,the first tweet to ever carry a hashtag was hatched on Aug. 27, 2007.) And it’s likely to continue to live long after our long international Gangnam style nightmare is over.

But why did it take so long for hashtag to gain traction? Ben Zimmer, who chairs the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society, explains that 2012 was the year the hashtag transcended Twitter and became a truly multimedia phenomenon.

“This was the year when the hashtag became a ubiquitous phenomenon in online talk,” Zimmer said. “In the Twittersphere and elsewhere, hashtags have created instant social trends, spreading bite-sized viral messages on topics ranging from politics to pop culture.”

Think about all the TV shows (and more recently, bowl games) that include hashtags in their promos, or those annoying Facebook connections who affix hashtag to their posts as though they’re on Twitter (even if, or especially if, they’ve never tweeted).

Yes, the hashtag is hear to stay. On Twitter, where there’s a hashtag for everything, there’s even a #hashtag for hashtag. So it’s fitting that it has gained this recognition after struggling in relative obscurity for five long years.

Well played, hashtag. #wellplayed.

Month: January 2013

The James Tracy conspiracy