Malignant Stupidity still alive as Apollo 11 Landing Approaches

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the launching of the first manned mission to our moon. On Monday, it will be the 40th anniversary of the landing itself. Progress.

Granted that we basically owe our space program to German know-how, but damn it, at least we got to the moon before the Russkies. Or did we?

Of freaking course we did. And, of course, like any conspiracy theory, the idea that the Apollo 11 moon landings were faked could easily fade away if only people stopped talking about it. Stop giving it airtime and it will inevitably go the way of the dodo.

CNN hasn't figured this out, and even though some of the article addressing this dumbass theory is as dismissive as possible for a journalist (a dismissiveness usually reserved by CNN for Tea Parties and the Senate and House minorities), there is still a big problem: they're giving credence to inherently stupid ideas.

Allow me to address one of the supposed pieces of "proof" that the conspiracy theorists cite for the hoax.

Apparently, this moon rock has a letter "C" on it. And apparently, in Hollywood, letters are clearly printed on props so stagehands know where to place them. Granted, the "C" is indeed there in this picture.

But then you look at another print of the same rock, of probably the same negative:

I don't know about you, but the prop "C" in picture one looks a hell of a lot more like a piece of dust in the negative when the print was made. Back in ye olden days (1969), photographs were were processed in a photo lab by hand. That's why old film-stock movies have pops, spots and lines in them when you see them blown up on a movie screen. Some of them even look like "C"s! So, where a reasonable person sees a speck of dust, an asshole sees a nefarious, clever (though paradoxically half-assed) plot to deceive the Soviets. Not that I'm necessarily against making fools of the Russians.

Another whopper they serve us is that...well, take a look at this picture

THE SKY IS COMPLETELY BLACK! WHY CAN'T WE SEE THE STARS, UNLESS IT IS ON A SOUNDSTAGE WHERE THEY FORGOT TO PAINT ON STARS?! AHA! GOT YOU!

Settle down, straw man! Here comes another photography concept, that of exposure. Thanks to being very much awash in sunlight, the cameras (yes, real live cameras with film which....they don't make anymore *R.I.P.*) had to be set to expose the film enough to clearly take photographs of the surrounding terrain of the moon. That's another thing, they weren't there to take pictures of the stars, they were there to take pictures of (wait for it) The Moon!

There are other things I could get into, but I don't want to waste any more of my time. Even if Apollo 11 was faked, explain the five subsequent manned moon landings (Apollos 12, 14-17). If one was faked, were they all? Even if Apollo 11 were a hoax, we eventually did get to the freaking moon. But, seriously, to the conspiracy theorists: Get A Life. And to CNN: Cover News, Not Lunatics.