Post by auntym on Aug 10, 2014 11:24:16 GMT -6
nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/end-of-ufos.html?mid=google
August 9, 2014
The End of UFOs
By Mark Jacobson
As the news of the day pulsed along the once seemingly unthinkable pathways of the information industry — boots on the ground in Gaza, slide show updates on Mila Kunis’s pregnancy — adherents of an earlier future gathered at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The occasion was the annual conference of the Mutual Unidentified Flying Objects Network, which, in accordance with this year’s theme, “UFOs and the Media,” was focused not on the ephemera of the news cycle but rather on the eternalities of what several in attendance called “the biggest single story in history,” i.e., the existence of extraterrestrial life on Earth and the cover-up of that presence by the United States government, the corporate structure, and their oblivious and/or sold-out lackeys in the mainstream press.
While this year’s symposium attracted a reported 400 people, this was a far cry from the thousands who attended the MUFON conference in the late 1970s, after Close Encounters of the Third Kind introduced extraterrestrials to the mainstream moviegoer. That was at a time when a lot of people actually believed that these mysterious things from the sky represented the biggest single thing in history. Since then, despite the recent astronomical findings of the so-called “Goldilocks zone” that postulates sentient life is possible throughout the galaxy, ufology has apparently lost its grip on the public imagination, and has been demoted to a neo-cult status. For the populace at large space is no longer the place. Not that this mattered to those gathered at Cherry Hill. Used to marginalization, they were resolved to keep watching the skies.
The tone was set by keynote speaker George Knapp, an Emmy-winning reporter for KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, perhaps the best known above-ground correspondent on the ET beat, if you don’t count people like C.J. Jung, who late in life developed a deep interest in what is called “the phenomena.” A debonair raconteur, Knapp spoke of the ridicule he’d received from his MSM colleagues. “I’ll always be the UFO guy,” Knapp related with wry j’accuse, recalling how after doing a story about alleged alien medical procedures, he found himself labeled “the Grand Mullah in the Church of Cosmic Proctology.” The point wasn’t whether UFOs were “real” or a mass hallucination. The news was that people kept seeing them. Yet, according to the gatekeepers of supposed reality, Knapp said, “you, me, and everyone in this room are just a bunch of nuts.”
This was fun, especially when Knapp began talking about Area 51, “the world’s best known top secret base.” In 1989, Knapp broke the story of Robert Lazar, a then 30-year-old scientist who claimed to have worked the remote military facility in the Nevada desert. Lazar’s epic account of how the US armed forces were “reverse engineering” alien technology from crashed and captured flying saucers has become a cornerstone of the late stage UFO narrative. As soon as Lazar opened his mouth, “the meme was on the loose,” Knapp said, resulting in many books, movies, and Area 51-inspired product campaigns accompanied by theme music from the X-Files.
CONTINUE READING: nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/end-of-ufos.html?mid=google
August 9, 2014
The End of UFOs
By Mark Jacobson
As the news of the day pulsed along the once seemingly unthinkable pathways of the information industry — boots on the ground in Gaza, slide show updates on Mila Kunis’s pregnancy — adherents of an earlier future gathered at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The occasion was the annual conference of the Mutual Unidentified Flying Objects Network, which, in accordance with this year’s theme, “UFOs and the Media,” was focused not on the ephemera of the news cycle but rather on the eternalities of what several in attendance called “the biggest single story in history,” i.e., the existence of extraterrestrial life on Earth and the cover-up of that presence by the United States government, the corporate structure, and their oblivious and/or sold-out lackeys in the mainstream press.
While this year’s symposium attracted a reported 400 people, this was a far cry from the thousands who attended the MUFON conference in the late 1970s, after Close Encounters of the Third Kind introduced extraterrestrials to the mainstream moviegoer. That was at a time when a lot of people actually believed that these mysterious things from the sky represented the biggest single thing in history. Since then, despite the recent astronomical findings of the so-called “Goldilocks zone” that postulates sentient life is possible throughout the galaxy, ufology has apparently lost its grip on the public imagination, and has been demoted to a neo-cult status. For the populace at large space is no longer the place. Not that this mattered to those gathered at Cherry Hill. Used to marginalization, they were resolved to keep watching the skies.
The tone was set by keynote speaker George Knapp, an Emmy-winning reporter for KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, perhaps the best known above-ground correspondent on the ET beat, if you don’t count people like C.J. Jung, who late in life developed a deep interest in what is called “the phenomena.” A debonair raconteur, Knapp spoke of the ridicule he’d received from his MSM colleagues. “I’ll always be the UFO guy,” Knapp related with wry j’accuse, recalling how after doing a story about alleged alien medical procedures, he found himself labeled “the Grand Mullah in the Church of Cosmic Proctology.” The point wasn’t whether UFOs were “real” or a mass hallucination. The news was that people kept seeing them. Yet, according to the gatekeepers of supposed reality, Knapp said, “you, me, and everyone in this room are just a bunch of nuts.”
This was fun, especially when Knapp began talking about Area 51, “the world’s best known top secret base.” In 1989, Knapp broke the story of Robert Lazar, a then 30-year-old scientist who claimed to have worked the remote military facility in the Nevada desert. Lazar’s epic account of how the US armed forces were “reverse engineering” alien technology from crashed and captured flying saucers has become a cornerstone of the late stage UFO narrative. As soon as Lazar opened his mouth, “the meme was on the loose,” Knapp said, resulting in many books, movies, and Area 51-inspired product campaigns accompanied by theme music from the X-Files.
CONTINUE READING: nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/end-of-ufos.html?mid=google