Drinking with the enemy

Antonia Zerbisias' thrilling story of infiltrating a right-wing blogger bash can be found here. (Memo to Zerb and Charles Johnson: I was joking about 51 being "old".) Zerb concludes that we bloggers are "eager for recognition from the old media they sneer at" - and, well, I plead guilty. Gosh darn it, I love seeing my name in Canada's highest-circulation daily newspaper. I'm also honoured by her saying we deserve our own TV show. (Personally, I want a show where I drive around America in an 18-wheeler with my pet chimpanzee, solving mysteries, helping people in need and always staying one step ahead of Sheriff Lobo.)

Yes, Zerb and I did get into a little argument about 9/11 conspiracy theories, in which she expressed her disbelief that all the hijackers' passports were found in the wreckage. I did a google search for that this morning, and the only sources I found were a couple of widely republished conspirozoid articles which give no source for the story. I did find this CNN report from Sept. 16, 2001, which says one of the passports was found several blocks from the WTC site. (At the U.S.S. Intrepid museum in New York, you can see a display case showing documents spread several blocks around the site. A lot of papers much flimsier than a passport survived intact.) And the Village Voice's Geoffrey Gray, in an article largely sympathetic to 9/11 conspiracy theorists, notes that Mohammed Atta's passport was also miraculously found - in his rental car at Boston's Logan Airport.

Nice try, Zerb.

Posted by damian at March 12, 2005 09:14 AM