Forteana collides with the MSM. Hilarity ensues.

From The New Republic Online: Alien Nation

They're right. The world really is coming to an end.

Now we have this: a major network, producing a two-hour special--airing this Thursday--which argues that, as Peter Jennings, the show's host, gravely repeats over and over again, "we are not alone," that we get "visited" by aliens on a regular basis.

I had to read this several times for it to really sink in. Peter Jennings is telling us (well, not me; I don't watch network TV, and rarely even watch cable) not only that there are UFOs, but that they are extraterrestrial in origin.

Hasn't Jennings read John Keel, or Jacques Vallee, or Patrick Harpur?

Oh, wait. "Read." Yeah ... ok. Nevermind. Onwards...

To me, what has always been interesting about UFOs, and other Fortean phenomena, is that they are modern folklore. Like folklore, they are reflective of a cultures beliefs, worldviews, dreams, hopes, and fears. And, like folklore, there are some remarkable similarities of theme and content, which, depending on how you look at it, could mean that there really is something out there (or in here) or it could mean that human brains process unfamiliar experiences in certain common ways. While the latter is certainly true, the former is more intriguing.

But the extraterrestrial theory is really the purview of the bottom feeders of UFOlogy. So why are Jennings & ABC going on about it? Well, there's ratings, sure. But here's another thought:

Jennings is very respectful to the "witnesses" who claim to have seen aliens flying over their barnyards etc, or who insist that they've been abducted (they should be so lucky). There is something in Jenning's open attitude to all of this of the new deference to so-called religious people that suddenly seized the commentating classes after the election last November. These true UFO-believers, after all, are animated by some kind of religious-ish impulse, some thirst for ultimates; or maybe some wish to be jolted out of their dulled senses--in that sense, they are also like generations of vanguard artists, yearning to shock and be shocked.

An intriguing idea; if the 'reality based community' has to accept one sort of faith, it has to accept them all. And, given that extreme secularism flattens the distinctions between any sort of so-called non-rational belief, UFOs are on the same plane as Jesus, all of which can be similarly treated in a patronizing fashion. Except it's safer to piss on nutty UFO cultists than it is to piss on Christians.

But there is something else in Jennings' preening solemn tones (his megalomania is extra-terrestrial; so is his tendency to pronounce words like "project" two different ways). There is in Jennings' voice this surging American love for the absurd, and therefore contemptible person. From politics to reality shows, we seem to like to be surrounded by people ruled by greed, hampered by stupidity, blinkered by obsession. These sad bored UFOers, their faces blank, their land-locked figures full-sail with heartland-obesity, their eyes shining with their earth-centric, mundane, child's fantasy of a populated universe--the spatial, secular version of the religious, temporal dream of a populated eternity--these people are easy to laugh at, and therefore easy to accommodate. In America, attention must be paid! Attention, that is, to everything freakish, inadequate, unthreatening and thus usefully supportive of a shaky sense of worth, of identity.

How interesting that absurd goes along with contemptible. I think the author is correct in making that equation; absurdity is non-conformist, non-conformism is contemptible, therefore absurdity is comtemptible. But it's a contempt that can be couched in humor, because those who are held in contempt have no power. Those "sad bored UFOers, their faces blank, their land-locked figures full-sail with heartland-obesity," can be safely laughed at -- unlike the angry, enervated radical Christian Reconstructionists, their faces alight, their bodies full-sail with faith and fury.

Sadly, this misses the most fascinating parts of the UFO phenomena, the wonder that the world is not so neat and comprehensible, the search for the impossible, and the wrestling with mysteries. At best, it's looking at blind faith, and missing engaged, questioning, people of faith. At worst, it sets up a straw man which allows the comfortable, assured citizen to denigrate anything that requires thought or merits inquisitiveness.