Ed Asner, Truther

Mediaite asks, “Did you know that Ed Asner, of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Hollywood in general, is a 9/11 Truther?” Umm, yeah; click here for Ed’s 2006 trip down the rabbit hole. And this latest reminder doesn’t exactly come as a big surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. The left itself has admitted that over a third of their ranks are likely to be Truthers. Presumably those odds increase astronomically in Hollywood, the land of deep thinking intellectuals such as Oliver Stone, Charlie Sheen, and well, Ed Asner:

Did you know that Ed Asner, of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Hollywood in general, is a 9/11 Truther? Adam Carolla didn’t seem to when, on his podcast, Asner started to offer his views as to why the government was behind that Twin Towers attack. Here we go.“No high-rise has ever gone down by fire,” Asner explains. “Those buildings fell at the rate of gravity in ten seconds, flat.” He served up some more supposed “facts” as to why the buildings had to have been brought down by domestically planted explosives, rather than internationally hateful terrorists. Carolla tried to debunk the conspiracy theory by asking why the surreptitious government of Asner’s mind, if it was so keen on instigating a war, didn’t go ahead and plant WMDs in Iraq. “Because it wasn’t the same department of government,” Asner replied, chuckling at Carolla’s naiveté.

Asner continued:

My bottom line on all of this is that this country—which is the greatest, strongest country that ever existed in the world, in terms of power—supposedly had a defense that could not be penetrated all these years. But all of that was eradicated by nineteen Saudi Arabians, supposedly. Some of whom didn’t even know how to fly.

It’ll be interesting how viewers of CMT, the network on which Asner’s new sitcom Regular Joe will air, starting January, will respond to his beliefs.

They might very well get over it, as most viewers are able to separate Charlie Sheen’s aging misanthropic, misogynistic, substance-abusing Two and Half Men character with the actor who plays him.

Err, wait a second.

In any case, it’s a reminder that nearly a decade on, Bill Whittle’s Lou Grant Effect remains inviolable — and that Bill chose exactly the right man as its namesake.

Update: Kathy Shaidle emails in a reminder of how would-be liberal do-gooderism may have helped enable the towers’ rapid collapse; and of course, Kathy’s response to Trutherism in general, as paraphrased by Mark Steyn a few years ago is directly applicable to Asner’s freakouts, both in 2006 and this week:

When I was on the Rush Limbaugh show a couple of months back, a listener called up to insist that 9/11 was an inside job. I asked him whether that meant Bali and Madrid and London and Istanbul were also inside jobs. Because that’s one expensive operation to hide even in the great sucking maw of the federal budget. But the Toronto blogger Kathy Shaidle made a much sharper point:

“I wonder if the nuts even believe what they are saying. Because if something like 9/11 happened in Canada, and I believed with all my heart that, say, Stephen Harper was involved, I don’t think I could still live here. I’m not sure I could stop myself from running screaming to another country. How can you believe that your President killed 2,000 people, and in between bitching about this, just carry on buying your vente latte and so forth?”

Over to you, Col. de Grand Pre, and Charlie Sheen, and Alan Colmes.

But Asner’s latest meltdown occurs over a year after Van Jones, the ultimate Truther, was tossed under the president’s proverbial bus. But not before, presumably, he had time to peruse the files on 9/11. Or as Steyn quipped to Hugh Hewitt last year:

HH: In Obama’s America, Van Jones has come to great prominence. Today, the latest, he’s President Obama’s green jobs advisor, last night he had to apologize for calling Republicans a**holes.

MS: Right.

HH: And the remark said they do not reflect the view of this administration. Actually, I think they do reflect the views of this administration. But today, it was revealed, he’s a truther. He joined, in 2004, he signed a statement calling for then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others to launch an investigation into evidence that suggest high level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11^th attacks to occur. How long would a Bush administration official who called Democrats a**holes and was a truther lasted, Mark Steyn?

MS: Exactly. I mean, this is the thing. We’re supposed to be the crazy guys. We’re supposed to be the ones who don’t distance ourselves from the loons. You know, we’re the…Glenn Beck is supposed to be bananas. The birther movement are supposed to be the nuts. And yet, and yet, it is somehow the reality-based community, or whatever these guys call themselves, that has managed to put a 9/11 truther two doors away from President Obama in the Oval Office. And if he really thinks that the federal government pulled off 9/11, then he’s inside the system. Why doesn’t he uncover the truth of it? He’s the green jobs czar. Presumably, in the previous administration, George W. Bush was the steel melting czar. So why doesn’t he just take a look in the filing cabinets, and expose the truth on it?

I wonder if any talk show host would have the prescience to remember Van’s former gig to push back the next time a celebrity wanders into Ed Asner and Charlie Sheen territory. Or heck, to ask Van if he’s still a Truther himself.