Benighted Orange County: conspiracism central

     The Voice of OC notes an interesting Orange Coast article about the curious popularity of conspiracism in our benighted county. I’ve long been aware of the phenomenon and, of course, researched it in connection with former SOCCCD trustee Steve Frogue.
     Don't know why author Kiger doesn't mention James B. Utt's curious pronouncements about African-Americans, OC's infamous "Institute for Historical Review," or Howard Gensler's actual conspiracy to build a Hilton Hotel and underwater basket-weaving center here at Irvine Valley College. (And, um, BTW: a certain IVC historian reputedly routinely teaches some wacky 9-11theories!)
     Here’s an excerpt:

Suspicious Minds - Welcome to Orange County, the world capital of dark disbelief (Orange Coast magazine)

By Patrick J. Kiger / Illustration by John Ueland

John Schmitz

     …Americans have long been a suspicious lot, dating back to the days when rebellious colonists hinted that King George III was the Antichrist, based in part on the numerical conversion of Greek and Hebrew translations of the phrase “royal supremacy in Great Britain,” which ominously totaled 666. Fear of conspiracies, from the Freemasons to fluoridation, is woven deeply into the American identity.
     Nowhere is that particular American trait more apparent than in Orange County. How many other places have had a community college board trustee offer to teach a seminar with a guest speaker espousing the theory that Israeli intelligence agents helped assassinate JFK, as Steven J. Frogue did in the 1990s? More recently, how many have elected an official such as former Orange Unified School District trustee Steve Rocco, who alleged that the county was secretly controlled by “The Partnership,” a dark alliance that included a supermarket chain and a sausage manufacturer, and who operated a website devoted to the theory that comedian Andy Kaufman had faked his 1984 death from lung cancer?
     We certainly have the history. In the 1950s and ’60s, the county was the epicenter of Red Scare paranoia, a place where Walter Knott printed tracts at the Berry Farm, the John Birch Society found eager recruits, and the Anticommunist School of Orange County conducted classes on how to spot the Fifth Columnists seemingly lurking behind every palm tree. It’s no coincidence that just across the county line in Long Beach, Gary Allen penned the 1971 polemic “None Dare Call It Conspiracy”—with a preface by the late Orange County Rep. John Schmitz—which argued that American society was secretly controlled by a clique of “insiders” whose socialist agenda actually was a smokescreen for further enriching the Kennedys and Rockefellers. Conservative conspiracism still flourishes here today, as evidenced by the meteoric rise of Taitz, who has received national media attention with her unsuccessful legal battle to prove that Obama is ineligible for office because his birth certificate is a forgery. (According to a recent court filing, she also alleges that Obama has used a stolen Social Security number issued in Connecticut to a person born in 1890.) Fountain Valley’s Shoreline Baptist Church recently hosted a talk on prophecy by Paul McGuire, a Los Angeles-based apocalyptic radio evangelist who warns that Obamacare secretly may include a plan to implant microchips in America’s children by 2013….