Buzz Aldrin with Mickey Rooney
In 2002, Buzz Aldrin made the news again when he punched moon landing skeptic Bart Sibrel in front of Café Rodeo at the Luxe Hotel in Beverly Hills. Sibrel, making a nuisance of himself, had planted himself in Aldrin’s path and demanded that the astronaut swear on a Bible that he had landed on the moon in 1969. Aldrin’s reaction was that of a self-important and temperamental actor rather than that of a disciplined man of science. Aldrin discusses the episode in his 2009 autobiography, Magnificent Desolation.
Like most Americans, I’m quite skeptical about conspiracy theories. I’m someone who has dealt with the exact science of space rendezvous and orbital mechanics, so to have someone approach me and seriously suggest that Neil, Mike, and I never actually went to the moon – that the entire trip had been staged in a sound studio someplace – has to rank among the most ludicrous ideas I’ve ever heard. Yet somehow the media has given credence to some of the kooky people espousing such theories, and my fellow astronauts and I have had to put up with the consequences.1
Hollywood, indeed, alluded to the possibility of a faked lunar landing as early as the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, and the 1977 thriller Capricorn One concerns the cover-up of a faked Mars mission.
The media treated Aldrin like a hero again, however, after assaulting conspiracy theorist Sibrel – and it is interesting to note that the story received news coverage coinciding with the first anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Here is Aldrin’s account of the “Blow Heard ‘Round the World” in his book Magnificent Desolation:
Because of the publicity the hoax theorists have garnered, occasionally even in a serious interview a reporter will broach the subject. One September morning in 2002, I was in Beverly Hills at the Luxe Hotel, filming a television interview for a Far Eastern TV network, when the interview began going in a direction that I knew was out of bounds. At first I tried to be cordial, adroitly answering the question, assuming the interviewer would recognize my reluctance to talk about inanity, and bring the focus back to a bona fide space subject. Instead the interviewer began playing a television segment that had aired in the United States on the subject of hoaxes, including a section suggesting that the Apollo 11 moon landing never happened. I was aware of the piece and had been livid when it originally aired. I did not appreciate the interviewer’s attempts to lure me into commenting on it. Lisa [Cannon, Aldrin’s stepdaughter] had accompanied me to the interview following her early morning triathlon training in the Santa Monica Bay, and she immediately recognized that this was a flagrant violation of our willingness to conduct the interview in good faith, so she called a halt to the production. We weren’t belligerent, but we did not linger long over our good-byes, either.
Lisa Cannon
We left the hotel room and walked down the hall to catch the elevator, only a matter of seconds away. I pressed the button for the ground level, and Lisa and I looked at each other and smiled. It had been a strange morning already. When the elevator doors opened on the ground level, it got worse.
As we stepped out into the hotel foyer, a large man who looked to be in his mid-thirties approached me, attempting to engage me in conversation. “Hey, Buzz, how are you?” He had his own film crew along, with the camera already rolling to document the encounter.
I greeted him briefly, acknowledging his presence, and kept moving – standard procedure for life in Hollywood. As Lisa and I walked through the foyer toward the front door of the hotel, however, the man kept getting in my way, peppering me with questions, none of which I answered. Lisa took my arm and glared at the man. “That’s enough,” she said, as I could feel her pressure on my arm guiding me toward the door. “Please let us alone; we’re leaving now.”
We stepped outside under the hotel awning, and the film crew continued right along with us. Lisa’s car was parked across the street on Rodeo Drive, but there was no crosswalk nearby, and the traffic was brisk.
Meanwhile, the “interviewer” had taken out a very large Bible and was shaking it in my face, his voice becoming more animated. “Will you swear on this Bible that you really walked on the moon?”
I looked back at the man and gave him a look as if to say, Will you swear on that Bible that you are an idiot? The man was becoming more virulent, inflammatory, and personally accusatory in his outbursts. I tried not to pay any attention, but he was saying things like, “Your life is a complete lie! And here you are making money by giving interviews about things you never did!”
Mardi Gras will never be the same after this.
Lisa approached the cameraman and insisted, “Please turn off that camera! We’re just trying to get across the street to our car.”
I’m a patient man, but this situation was silly. “You conspiracy people don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
Lisa spied a break in the traffic, so she grabbed me by the arm again, and said, “Buzz, let’s go.” We started walking across the street, but the large man kept getting right out in front of us, standing in the middle of Rodeo Drive, blocking our path as his cameraman kept rolling film. Lisa seemed nervous about trying to go around him, while searching for her keys to unlock the car with the man in such close proximity, so we turned around and walked back to the bellman’s station outside the hotel.
“Okay, this is ridiculous,” I said to Lisa and to the bellman. “Call the police. This guy is not letting us get to our car.”
I was under the awning, and Lisa turned away from me to approach the cameraman again. “Please turn that camera off,” she said. Meanwhile the large man was nearly screaming at me, “You’re a coward, Buzz Aldrin! You’re a liar; you’re a thief!”
Maybe it was the West Point cadet in me, or perhaps it was the Air Force fighter pilot, or maybe I’d just had enough of his belligerent character assassination, but whatever it was, as the man continued to excoriate me, I suddenly let loose with a right hook that would have made George Foreman proud. WHAAP! I belted the guy squarely in the jaw.
While I prided myself on staying in relatively good shape, it was doubtful that my septuagenarian punch did much damage to the follow, except perhaps to his ego. But he was not at all concerned about the punch, anyhow. It was obvious that he had been goading me in that direction, and he seemed ecstatically happy that I had finally grown exasperated and hit him.
“Hey, did you catch that on tape?” he called out to his cameraman. That was all he cared about.
Lisa turned around and walked back to me. She cocked her head slightly, looked up at me, and asked quietly, “Buzz, what happened?”
I looked back at my stepdaughter rather sheepishly, and said, “I punched the guy.”
“You what?” Lisa’s hand instinctively flew to her mouth in disbelief, as though already postulating in her mind any potential legal ramifications.
The film crew and “interviewer” hastily packed up and headed for their vehicle. They had gotten what they were hoping for – and more. Before the night was over, the film of me punching the guy was on the news and all over the Internet. The interviewer went to the police, threatening to file assault charges against me.
In the meantime, Lisa contacted our legal representative, Robert O’Brien, and told him everything that had happened. Robert suggested that we hire a criminal lawyer, just in case the encounter actually led to charges.
On the following Tonight Show, Jay Leno included the incident in his standup routine, cheering, “Way to go, Buzz!” They doctored up the video of my punch, and edited it to make it appear as though I had given the guy about twenty rapid-fire punches instead of the one.
David Letterman also came to my defense in his opening remarks for The Late Show, and threw in a double feature on the story the next night, since they had “dug up” some old archival footage of a reporter accosting Christopher Columbus, accusing him, “You didn’t really cross the ocean and land in the New World. You’re a liar!” And of course, Columbus decked the guy.
By then, television networks and evening entertainment news programs were calling, suddenly wanting me to appear on their shows. Ordinarily I would have been delighted, but our legal advisers said, “No interviews.” Eventually the matter died down. The city of Beverly Hills did not bring charges against me, and there were witnesses to the harassing behavior that provoked my response. It still cost me money to hire a lawyer to defend myself, and the hoax advocate received the publicity he sought, so I suppose, in the end, he won. But the punch provided me with some satisfaction, at least, and I was gratified by the calls and notes of support. CNN Crossfire commentator Paul Begala gave me a thumbs-up, and many others sent encouraging messages. Ironically, some of the most supportive words came from my fellow astronauts, to the effect of, “Hey, Buzz, I wish I’d punched the guy! Finally, somebody has responded to these hoax theory perpetrators.” More than my knowledge of rendezvous techniques, more than my actions under pressure during the initial lunar landing, more than anything in my career as an astronaut – it seemed as if nothing elevated me more in their estimation than “the punch.” From that day on, I was a hero to them.2
Some have alleged that the scene was staged and cite, for instance, the fact that Aldrin and Sibrel went on to collaborate on the 2004 documentary Astronauts Gone Wild. It is strange, too, to note that Sibrel, in publicizing a theory that ought to hinge on forensic examination and logic, instead decides to interject religion into the showdown, obnoxiously brandishing his Bible and thereby setting himself up for ridicule by progressives. The cameraman is also careful to get a clear shot of the restaurant’s sign and street address, which – if, indeed, this confrontation was a hoax – might have been a condition set by the Luxe Hotel for permission to use the Café Rodeo as a location. Begala’s response, not the typical one for commentary on an assault, was to give the “thumbs-up”, the gesture made synonymous with film criticism by Siskel and Ebert. Lisa Cannon, the woman seen with Aldrin in the video, has been credited with a “significant role” in “developing Buzz Aldrin’s brand”.
Regardless of whether the “Blow Heard ‘Round the World” was a planned event, it served as an object lesson for the public during the politically crucial period following 9/11. As Aldrin’s account makes clear, the media treated him like a hero for punching Sibrel. Aldrin also makes a very deliberate reference to his military service in describing his thought process leading to the moment of violence. The takeaway for the audience is that hitting “conspiracy people” is the laudable thing to do in these turbulent times following the destruction of the World Trade Center. Laugh at them if possible, but punch them if they become too insistent. This was before the advent of YouTube, when critical analysis of the 9/11 matrix was in its comparative infancy. Connecting “conspiracy people” with superstition, socially awkward behavior, and lack of patriotic reverence would pay off in preconditioned public responses as inconvenient scrutiny of these events would become much more common over the years.
Destination Moon
Notwithstanding his touchiness about the reality of the Apollo mission, Aldrin is eager to emphasize his connection with the entertainment industry, and one of the chapters in Magnificent Desolation is titled “Pop Goes Space Culture”. He boasts of his friendship with science-fiction illusionists like James Cameron, the director of The Terminator, Aliens, and The Abyss. “For several years, Lois and I had been spending a lot of time driving up to L.A. on business and to attend a variety of Hollywood events in the evenings,” he writes, adding that they eventually moved into “a luxury high-rise condo along the Wilshire Corridor of Los Angeles, just west of Beverly Hills, because so much of our business was now connected to the entertainment industry.”3
“A little-known Hollywood fact is that my name had already been firmly ensconced in Hollywood lore long before Lois and I moved there,” he continues. “On the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame, at the corners of Hollywood and Vine, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and I have not one star but four, one on each corner of the intersection. Actually, our ‘stars’ are in the shape of moons.”4 Recognition on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame is a rather unexpected tribute for a veteran of NASA’s Apollo 11 program – either that or a tellingly fitting one.
Endnotes
- Aldrin, Buzz; and Ken Abraham. Magnificent Desolation. New York, NY: Harmony Books, 2009, p. 281.
- Ibid., pp. 282-285.
- Ibid., p. 256.
- Ibid.
I agree with the late, great David McGowan on this.
All the moon landings happened before I was born. No humans have ever been past low earth orbit during my entire lifetime. All I know of this “moon landing” is a TV show that, quite frankly, looks like the B-rated science fiction of the era.
It’s been nearly 50 years. No one is seriously proposing manned space flight for the next ten, 20 years, some publicity stunts by SpaceX notwithstanding.
So, will people still believe it in 100 years? 200 years? 300 years? If, 300 years from the original “Moon Landing” Nixon’s stunt has still not been repeated, will people still believe it?
At this late date, it’s like listening to an old, befuddled Ronald Reagan getting confused about whether he was actually in WWII or just a movie about one.
Eh, I’m not holding my breath.
I just watched a NASA video about their Orion project and how they had to develop new technology to shield a human crew in order to pass through the Van Allen radiation belt. But apparently the Apollo guys were able to do that just fine in their gold foil-wrapped contraption back in ’69.
Neal Armstrong’s infamous press conference after the first Moon Landing showed and awkward and embarrassed man that quipped “we didn’t really go that far.” On the 20th anniversary with Bill Clinton, Armstrong famous compared astronauts to parrots, the bird that “can’t fly” very well, but can talk. Bill Clinton, in his autobiography My Life, only mentioned the Great Moment in The Entire History of the Human Race in a single paragraph, where he mentions seeing it on TV, having an old man say “them television fellers can make things seem real that ain’t” and then Clinton suggesting that what he has seen in Washington made the old man seem ahead of his time.
Armstrong spent the rest of his life hiding out on his family farm, refusing to do interviews or otherwise get rich and famous – odd for the literal First Man on the Moon – a man that should go down in history next to Socrates, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ, Isaac Newton, Christopher Columbus, etc.
On the other hand, Buzz Aldrin DID do what was expected of him – public appearances, appearing as himself in Hollywood movies, lots of visits to school kids, and basically acting as the Ambassador for NASA that Neal Armstrong just refused to do.
Also note that the very first images that MTV broadcast, in 1980, were those of the Moon Landing digitally altered to show their own corporate logo on the moon. MTV was started to showcase the latest in video special effects, especially digital effects that were just becoming mainstream in Hollywood. In fact, MTV’s video awards were a parody of the Oscars, where instead of a Greek statue it was a figuring of an astronaut landing on the Moon.
Really, it’s like it’s just big one inside joke since forever.
On a personal note, as a kid we went to the Smithsonian Air and Space museum every summer growing up. They used to have what they told us was the actual Lunar Lander that had been on the moon. Later, they told us it was a “backup” that had never been used. Even later, it was in fact a “replica.” Then, one summer, they just took it away and stopped even trying to answer all the embarrassing questions.
Even as a eight year old, I remember being quite unimpressed by what looked like a movie prop I likely could have put together mysql with tinfoil and model paint in my basement.
Ah well, I’m not going to say they “faked the moon landing” or anything like that. All I’m saying is I doubt anyone is going to be going to the moon “again” in my life time, and I’ll admit i cringe when I hear WN types talking about the Moon Landings being the Greatest Achievement of European Man.
MTV also called the videos it was promoting most heavily “Buzz Clips”, after Buzz Aldrin, the man in the original station identification.
Another interesting connection:
MTV was basically started by Mike Nesmith, previously most famous as the guitar player for the made-for-TV rock band “The Monkees.”
Despite the fact that the Monkees had a sort-of squeaky clean image for “hippie types” at the time, the actual band members were heavily involved in what Dave McGowan calls the “Laurel Canyon scene.”
That entire “hippie” trend was started by a relatively tiny handful of sons of various military intelligence agents, all within the shadow of the Lookout Mountain Air Force base, which was a top secret movie studio that was as, if not more, sophisticated and well funded than any commercial film studio of the time. It was so top secret it was only revealed to the public when it was shut down in the early 1990s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Nesmith#PopClips_and_MTV.2C_Elephant_Parts_and_Television_Parts
Considering that film and television are essentially the greatest propaganda devices ever invented, it shouldn’t be a surprise that governments (thus, the military) have been heavily involved in media since the beginning – it would only be a surprise if they were not.
And Americans just cannot break the spell of the media, which we’ve been told is a “free market” run by “private enterprise” and our media stars some how get famous in some sort of “meritocracy” where the public chooses which celebrities they like, and the media then “responds to public demand.”
Even as far back as the JFK assassination (or even WWII for that matter) we’re led to believe that the “News” is somehow “nonfiction” while the dramas and comedies are “fiction.”
When “reality TV” showed up, it blurred the line, but ask any Gen Xer at the time and they really believed that MTV’s “The Real World” was “unscripted.”
Hell – do people even realize that the Reese’s Pieces in the film E.T. were a product placement – it was written into the plot in order to fund the movie and sell candy? That the entire movie was basically a candy commercial?
No – to believe that the TV doesn’t reflect real history and that it’s all completely staged is a “conspiracy theory.” To suggest that the news is just as fictional as the soap operas is a “conspiracy theory” and people will likely think you are “crazy.”
Similarly, we’re supposed to believe that “White nationalists” that talk about Hitler a lot, or promote the idea that the earth is really flat, are “real” as opposed to “internet characters.”
I still haven’t read Weird Scenes inside the Canyon, although it’s definitely on my must-read list for next year. I’ve heard interviews with McGowan, however, and have been looking into similar information from other investigators. I’m going to post something relating to the music industry at Skynet tomorrow if I find the time to write. A lot of the info I’m putting into my book covers similar ground.
I first read about this in “Acid Dreams” the history of LSD and the CIA, which if I remember was put out in the 1980s. I don’t think people really put two and two together back in those days.
But the CIA was pretty much THE source of LSD for the “hippie” crowd and some of the most famous people in the “hippie movement” (Ginsberg, Leary, Alpert, etc.) are now pretty much acknowledged to be working with CIA.
So – look at the people they were associated with – all of those musicians and movie stars/directors – and that entire “Laurel Canyon” scene just appeared out of nowhere to take over the entire mainstream media in one year.
So long before McGowan the connections were known, but everyone still thinks that the CIA is “right wing” so they just can’t seem to figure it out.
People flip their shit when they find out that the Door’s Jim Morrison’s father was a top Admiral in the US Navy and staged the Gulf of Tonkin incident right about the time that his son was becoming an “anti-war” icon.
Morrison – despite never doing any drugs harder than some gin and a few joints – still wound up dying of a “heroin overdose” in Paris – a rather “spooky” death really. The book “No One Here Gets Out Alive” about him was, according to everyone who knew him personally, a complete fabrication. Morrison didn’t do drugs and was quite straight-laced for that crowd.
Some of the most famous “rock stars” of the 1960s never played a note on their own albums, which were recorded in the studio by professionals. But these “rock stars” were celebrities – actors, in other words. But people just can’t seem to figure out the ramifications of that, considering how “political” the 1960s music scene was.
Rock ‘n Roll killed the Commie Folk Music act, and turned the left from labor to “lifestyle” issues – like sex, drugs, and rock and roll (and feminism, gays, anti-racism, etc.)
The actual left – the labor unions and the like – hated those people. Looking back 50 something years later, isn’t it obvious? And remember – this was the first generation of the TV.
Damn, Buzz is a small guy so Micky must be tiny as hell.
Most Hollywood stars are short.
Jews are not tall people.
Oh, and by the way, we did go to the moon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings#Retroreflectors
I guess that’s fine if you’re willing to take at face value the assertions of scientists dealing with principles none of us regular folks understand. I don’t pretend to understand that stuff, but one thing we know for certain is that science is highly politicized and that climatologists, for instance, have been caught falsifying data. Have you read David McGowan’s essay “Wagging the Moondoggie”?
http://whale.to/b/mcgowan3.html
No and I can’t say I plan to. Up till now the only people that I’ve seen declare the moon landing a fake is negroes and flat earthers. Lunar missions have been tracked by people not associated with NASA, and I understand evidence of moon landing can be seen with high powered telescopes and orbiting satellites. I’m not a science guy but it seems convincing to me.
Next thing you’ll probably try to tell me is there was no such thing as nuclear weapons or that the government knows how to make cars run on water.
This sort of talk from a no-planes believer? All I’m saying is that I’m open to the theory that the moon landings were faked. Short of the expertise to be able to verify these things scientifically, I can only rely on the skill set and investigative mental equipment I possess. For the record, I don’t think the earth is flat and I do believe in the existence of nuclear weapons.
I can’t say I’m “no planes”, but there’s no way an aluminum plane can penetrate steel girders.
Have you seen this?: http://qz.com/798305/alt-right-trolls-are-using-googles-yahoos-skittles-and-skypes-as-code-words-for-racial-slurs-on-twitter/
No, but I had seen the hashtag #PoisonSkittle, so now I know where it comes from. I like how the misleading picture they chose for that article clearly doesn’t depict any “Alt-Right” types. Thanks, Jews. Thanks again.
Hey. you know that the only people who believe the races are different, well, the only White people who do, are inbred hillbillies.
Intelligent people can all plainly see all races are exactly alike, except the jews because we owe them for that holocaust that there is no hard evidence to prove happened.
An even better way to discredit crazy non-believers in the moon landing is to get some of the original players and do a mockumentary. Brilliant and funny. Anyone who’s been present in an X-ray or CAT-scan room knows how heavy those lead aprons are. Imagining those guys in rubberized-canvas space suits in outer space is just too silly for words.
“Truth in the movies, lies in the news.”
To add to smartwhiteguy’s point. Mechanical collisions can’t produce nanoparticles. See James Cahill’s study of 9/11 dust, or talk to the first responders suffering strange respiratory and other diseases.