Well this one just got weird.
FAU Professor James Tracy, who's theorized both the Boston Bombing and the Sandy Hook shootings were staged by the government, has now challenged the Sun Sentinel to a debate because he's butt-hurt over the backlash.
Tracy didn't specify how, exactly, an individual could conceivably debate a multi-pronged institution of drivers, factory workers, reporters, editors, security guards, advertisers, marketers, and that guy who walks around the parking lot and makes sure everything's chill.
But that wasn't Tracy's prerogative in a very weepy 2,000-word manifesto dispatched to Sun Sentinel Editor Howard Saltz last month. Tracy hasn't apparently been happy with everyone calling him a conspiracy theorist and discrediting his rigorous inquisition into national tragedies.
So dastardly was the Sun Sentinel, James Tracy charges, it may even be guilty of libel:
The paper "explicitly [called] attention to my alleged moral or even mental incapacity to hold such a position," Tracy wrote. "Taken as a whole, the uniformly negative nature of such articles and commentaries can be considered as nothing less than a concerted campaign against me and is arguably libelous."
Hahahahahahaha. Really?
Here's how it went. Tracy penned several incredibly incendiary -- not to mention callous and insensitive -- blogs theorizing that dozens of children who died in the most tragic of manners hadn't actually died and then references as evidence his "considerable degree of research."
You want to see actual research? Read Eli Saslow's Washington Post feature revealing the unremitting heartache Newtown parents have endured after a child's passing.
Does Tracy really think Saslow and other journalists are making all of this up? And then, to make matters substantially worse, Tracy has the gall and temerity to harangue local journalists for calling him on it.
James Tracy represents the worst kind of double standards. He's allowed to inflict pain on innocent families struggling to comprehend something beyond reason, but views himself beyond reproach.
Saltz's answer was succinct: "I am quite comfortable in my belief that the Sun Sentinel has not libeled you... We would not engage in debate. That's not what newspapers do. Your suggestion confuses our reporting of positions contrary to yours with taking positions contrary to yours. They are not the same thing."
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