Occam's Razor exits, Stage Right

Yesterday, my colleague Simon Maloy pointed out that one of the hallmarks of conspiracy theorists is their overwhelming desire to believe in their theory in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary. An hour later, a blogger at Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com website demonstrated another such feature: a complete inability to accept a simpler, more prosaic explanation instead of an extraordinarily complicated one that ties in all of their personal hobgoblins.

You see, the simple explanation is just too normal, too prosaic, to be accepted by these people. John F. Kennedy was too important a figure to have been struck down by a lone nut; it is far more satisfying to blame his death on a conspiracy involving some combination of the Mafia, LBJ, the CIA, and the Soviet and Cuban governments. Barack Obama simply MUST be an illegitimate president, so he couldn't have been born in Hawaii, as his birth certificate and local newspaper notices indicate: instead, he and his family must have woven a web of lies for decades to disguise his actual Kenyan birthplace.

In his post, "Stage Right," a "veteran of the Broadway theatre industry," adopts this conspiratorial line in discussing the August altercation between Kenneth Gladney and several SEIU union reps. Breitbart and his cronies have taken up Gladney's "cause" over the past months, claiming that he was savagely beaten and is the victim of a hate crime; last week, the union reps were charged with "misdemeanor ordinance violations."

I won't pretend to know what happened that night in St. Louis; I don't know who started the fight or why. But the simplest possible explanation seems to be this: sometimes, people get into fights. They get into an argument, tempers flare, and blows are thrown. Fights are common, not a massive aberration that requires an extraordinary explanation.

But portraying what happened as a common fight is boring. Doing what Stage Right did, and blaming a conspiracy involving the White House, the House Democratic Leadership, the DNC, and HCAN, is not:

Here are the facts (circumstantial though they may be) that show a clear level of coordination from the House Democratic Leadership ("in close coordination with the White House") all the way down to the SEIU staff members now facing charges for beating Kenneth Gladney:

• July 31^st: House Democratic Leaders state they are coordinating with the White House and HCAN to ensure they are implementing grass roots efforts in August.
• August 4^th: HCAN releases an instruction sheet with a plan to "Fight Back Against the Right" with details on security, confiscating posters and leaflets, loading the room with supporters, providing pre-written and rehearsed questions and suggestions on how to keep protestors out of the town halls
• August 5^th: Speaker Pelosi derisively callsprotesters"Astro-turf" and says they are coming to these meetings carrying swastikas. DNC releases a video calling theprotestersan "Angry Mob".
• August 6^th: White House political strategists David Axelrod and Jim Messina meet with Congressional Democratics with rules and suggestions for August town hall meetings. Messina is quoted saying: "If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard."

[...]

Can one conclude that it is common knowledge that one of the ways unions in America have exercised their power in the past is by using intimidation tactics and physical violence?  Is that a stretch?  And when the Democratic Leadership ("in close coordination with the White House") charge the unions who support them with the responsibility of coordinating grass roots efforts at Town hall meetings, wouldn't a reasonable person conclude that they were asking the unions to "punch back twice as hard" on their behalf?

THIS is why Kenneth Gladney was beaten.  And McCowans, Molens, SEIU, HCAN, the House Democratic Leadership and yes, the White House is who did it.

Occam wept.

It's an explanation that will certainly look interesting once it's been slapped up on Beck's chalkboard. In its attempt to blame everyone Stage Right hates for this incident, it neglects to consider questions such as why, exactly, the White House and Democratic leadership would have wanted Kenneth Gladney beaten.

We should consider, of course, the possibility that he was in possession of Barack Obama's real birth certificate.