The Mainstream Media Refuses to Take Up Sheen's Challenge

The Mainstream Media Refuses to Take Up Sheen's Challenge

COMMENT:
When Charlie Sheen sent his email statement to the London Guardian in response to their shoddy hit-piece on his recent questions about the official 9/11 story, we expected the prestigious newspaper to follow-up by taking his challenge to cover the facts.

We should have known better than to think the mainstream media (MSM) would take up such a challenge. The Guardian's response was to mock his serious comments and take more jabs at Sheen's character and oeuvre.

Although Sheen has helped to bring questions about 9/11 to a larger audience than ever, the mainstream media seems to be willfully pushing the news about a growing 9/11 Truth Movement to the back of the arts & entertainment sections. As ever, recent reports about the 9/11 Truth Movement in the Guardian's sister publication, the London Observer are little more than skewed comedy routines on those wacky conspiracy-types.

So while the MSM continues the strategy of deny and conquer, the blogosphere has championed the story of the Sheen's questions (as well as the growing number of other high profile skeptics), the MSM backlash, and the growing 9/11 Truth Movement.

Sites like Bravocharlie911.com and others have sprung up to spread the word and remind people that despite the MSM's attempt to convince us that we are alone in our "speculations" the numbers of people that are unconvinced by the government's official story of what happened on 9/11 is growing exponentially every day. For a site in existence for only a few weeks to have received thousands of votes on their polls questioning if 9/11 was an inside job is no small thing.

Charlie Sheen and his brave step into the spotlight for 9/11 Truth has opened the floodgates for people everywhere who have questions about 9/11 but up until this point have been too affraid to voice them. He has done what no one has until now, he has begun to make it acceptable to offer dissent about the official line and as more like him begin to publicly ask questions we will overwhelm the whitewash and the people who perpetrated it.

READ A SOLDIER'S LETTER OF SUPPORT TO CHARLIE SHEEN

Charlie Sheen's Statement to the London Guardian

No Longer The Minority: 82% Plus Support Charlie Sheen

Charlie Sheen 9/11 Story Goes Viral

Transcript of Alex Jones Appearance on CNN's Showbiz Tonight

CNN Showbiz Tonight Covers Charlie Sheen and 9/11 Skepticism

MSM Attacks Charlie Sheen Over 9/11 Comments

Charlie Sheen Questions 9/11 Official Story

Charlie Sheen Thinks Reasons Behind 9/11 Were Covered Up

Charlie Sheen doesn’t buy 9/11 spin

Mainstream Media Blackout On Sheen 9/11 Piece

Alternative Media Picks up Charlie Sheen Story as Mainstream Media Rejects it

Huge Reaction To Sheen 9/11 Story

Actor Charlie Sheen Questions Official 9/11 Story

Listen to the Entire Interview Now: Alex Jones Interviews Charlie Sheen

London Guardian | April 1, 2006
By Marina Hyde

These are dark times for Lost in Showbiz. I am distressed to the point of requiring constant medication by a week that began last Saturday on these pages, in a column addressing the actor Charlie Sheen's espousal of a 9/11 conspiracy theory, and has ended mired in hundreds of furious emails - including a trenchant exchange with David Shayler - and, perhaps most upsettingly, a verified document headed "Charlie Sheen Statement to the London Guardian".

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It is difficult to imagine a situation I could take more seriously.

Frankly, I had no idea Charlie was such an assiduous reader of the column (and might even find his interest slightly hot if he still looked like the drug addict he played in the 1986 classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Indeed, had I known what a gifted ironist he was - and, in retrospect, after Hot Shots! Part Deux, who could have doubted it? - it goes without saying I would have thought twice before daring to crack out the usual lame jokes about forming a kitchen cabinet of celebrity conspiracy theorists, which would also include Michael Jackson (It's the Jews!) and Tom Cruise.

Too late now. Charlie has issued a formal rebuttal, and though I haven't quite the strength to print it here, I am deeply chastened. Come to think of it, the entire episode has the flavour of the aforementioned scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where his character poses a variety of searching questions to Ferris's repressed and disgruntled sister Jeanie, leading her to open her mind and get over herself and her cynicism. It's like he's doing that to me! Only over the internet, and we don't end up kissing afterwards and getting told off by Jeanie's mother.

Rebuke instead comes from a new army of web readers.

"You stupid whore," reasons one. "Do you believe everything the president tells you?"

But of course I do. He is Charlie's dad, after all. And while Charlie may exhibit the filial ingratitude common among second-generation Hollywood progeny, I happen to think Jed Bartlet's multiple sclerosis diagnosis has not affected his ability to make sage decisions on behalf of the American people one iota.

But to compound matters, and in a development that on Tuesday forced the switch from Xanax to Klonopin, it appears the former MI5 officer David Shayler does not share my view. Having established that David's email account had not been hijacked by a particularly earnest 15-year-old, it seemed appropriate to remind him that the comments appeared in a column that might be kindly described as a few jokes about celebrities on a Saturday, and taking them this seriously seemed faintly unworthy of him.

"Respectfully," David replied, "we might be laughing at the column if it were actually funny." Hardly an original point, baby, but continue. "Your defence that it is all a bit of fun was one practised in the 80s in defence of racist, homophobic, sexist and anti-Irish jokes by a variety of bigots and psychopaths masquerading as legitimate columnists."

Mmm. But tell me, did you like the Britney Spears piece any better? Seriously, though, I am disappointed to find David stopping shy of comparing a facetious showbiz column to the Holocaust, and have told him so (it didn't seem the occasion to wonder about MI5 recruitment standards).

"If you're going to take the piss out of anyone," his advice concludes, "surely it should be Tony Blair."

Well. I haven't exactly given the PM the widest of berths in writings elsewhere in the paper, but David's line of argument does provide an opportunity to make one thing clear.

This column has not been especially opaque on the matter up to this point, but for the benefit of any new and confused readers, it does have a vague constitution underpinning it. And as far as truths that Lost in Showbiz holds to be self-evident, there is none more vital than its belief in the separation of powers between political activism and celebrity.

To its view, they are discrete career choices - a fork in the road, if you like - that are best left on both sides to the experts, of which there are many. This does not, of course, apply to our beloved Clooney and his thoughtful artistic engagements with such matters, but to occurrences such as the star of Two and a Half Men looking up at the World Trade Centre on the morning of 9/11, reckoning it looks as if the towers were brought down in a controlled explosion, and getting his views heard all over the shop simply because he was once in the Brat Pack. In fact, Charlie's views on politics add as much to the debate as would Aung San Suu Kyi saying: "Apologies, I'll not be banging on about democracy for a bit, on account of I've got a 22-episode sitcom to film for NBC."

It is with enormous regret that anyone who cannot handle this is hereby banned from reading the column, and reminded that emails cannot be answered personally, even when they contain such enticing subject headers as "you naive bitch".

Remember, truthseekers: you have a choice.

Or ... DO YOU?

For more background information on September 11th,
see Martial Law: 9/11: The Rise of the Police State