A few years ago, some star National Basketball Association players made headlines stating they don’t believe the Earth is a globe and that they reject the idea of gravity. The moon landings, some said, was faked. During the pandemic, the great National Football League quarterback Aaron Rogers told the world he’d been “immunized” against COVID-19 after being asked if he’d gotten the vaccine. It turned out Rodgers had dabbled in some woo-woo alternative treatments; lo and behold, he was stricken with the coronavirus in 2021. And then, a few weeks ago, some college football player told reporters he didn’t believe in space or the other planets.
Sports. I’ve ranted about a few of these loons now and again on this global communications colossus. My point being, mainly, that we ought to stop paying attention to these rambling ejaculations by high-profile pro athletes or any other celebrities for that matter. We worship celebrity in this Holy Land and scads of us hang on their every word. Just stop it is generally my advice.
Before Thursday, I’d figured I’d plumbed the depths of the sportsworld nuttiness. Then, along came an article in a conservative website called The Bulwark alerting me to the existence of a very popular and hotly argued conspiracy theory that Wilt Chamberlain’s famous 100-point game never happened, that it was a false flag op concocted by the NBA to goose interest in the game.
Wilt the Stilt’s big game is one of the touchstones of league history. It’s the highest point total ever scored by an individual player. It ranks with Franco Harris’s “Immaculate Reception,” Carlton Fisk’s World Series game winning home run, and the USA hockey team’s upset of the USSR in the 1980 Winter Olympics as a cherished, spectacular moment in American sports history.
But, no, it didn’t happen. So say countless smart guys on X, YouTube, Reddit, Quora, and all the other usually suspect social media. It’s one thing for there to be a segment of the population that thinks 9/11 was an inside job, JFK was killed on orders of LBJ, or that the Queen of England put out a hit on Princess Diana. All of those were Earth-shaking happenings and social scientists and skull jockeys have long held that we humans have a tough time accepting simple explanation for enormous events, especially if those explanations come from those in governments.
Funny thing is, I’ve long held that the American public loves being lied to. Craves it. Demands it, for chrissakes. The very first sentence of our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, proclaims all men to be created equal. This even as the fledging United States’s economy was based in large part on the ownership of one set of “inferior” human beings while our westward settlers and our army went about the business of exterminating another set. The wish to be lied to is in our blood.
Naturally, those who eat up political hogwash are convinced only they are privy to the Real Story. Internet entrepreneurs have made billions catering to the credulity of the American public, tens of millions of whom know in their bones everybody else has been bamboozled.
This trend now has descended to trivial things, like an NBA basketball game played 62 years ago this month. I suppose all the other really important events and phenomena have been run through the conspiracy wringer. All that’s left now, probably, is McDonald’s has been bankrolled by cardiologists or thirst is a fraud the water industry wants us to believe in. I’d bet plenty of people are working on those theories as we speak.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be too hard on Americans. After all, the people of every country on Earth believe their homeland is the greatest, the happiest, the freest (yep, it’s a word) and the apotheosis of human civilization. This is demonstrably false, as pro athletes can attest: there can only be one champion. Then again, maybe they’re wrong. Maybe no country is the greatest, happiest, freest. Maybe we’re all tied for last place.
Sifting through the sports record books for evidence that The Man has once again tried to pull a fast one seems a laughable hobby. Yet it illuminates the sickness that has pervaded our culture, thanks to the internet. You know what? I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if social media tycoons invent half to three quarters of the bullshit oozing throughout their sites.
Now there’s a conspiracy theory I can get behind.
(That was only 741 words; so I lied.)