Helen Keller vs. the Moon Landing: Battle of the Historical Hoaxes!
At first glance, Helen Keller facing off against the United States space program might seem unfair. While Helen Keller had Anne Sullivan as support, the space program has had the backing of the United States government and military. That’s not exactly an even match up, but it’s not my fault that these two topics are paired up in the first place. From what I understand, youngsters today are skeptical about a lot of history that’s being taught, and I can understand why. With access to technology, it’s obvious how easy it is to fake events to make people believe stuff that isn’t true.
Two of the most popular alleged historical hoaxes seem to be those of Helen Keller and the moon landing, two potential frauds that I have believed in for most of my life. In fact, for most of my life I never put any thought into either of them. I even watched a couple of the Apollo missions while they happened. Since I was maybe 5 years old at the time, I don’t remember any of the details, except the Apollo broadcasts preempted my afternoon cartoons and I was a little bored. When compared to afternoon cartoons, everything was boring, even a moon landing.
Since I was born in the 1960s, I wasn’t raised on internet videos claiming that everything is fake. I mean, a lot of stuff might be fake, but I’m not going to assume something is fake just because internet videos (that are probably AI generated) claim that it’s fake. I will, however, allow for the possibility that some stuff that I grew up believing in was fake.
Since Helen Keller happened first, I’ll deal with her first, and, to be honest, I think it would be easy to pull off a hoax in Helen Keller’s situation. I mean, it wouldn’t be easy for Helen Keller to mastermind the hoax; it would be easy for Anne Sullivan (or one her handlers) to mastermind it. All the handler had to do would be to edit Helen’s writing, maybe feed her political ideas while she was being taught, use Keller’s reputation to get invited to high publicity events, and give her some high profile causes at the time, like communism and women’s suffrage.
And if people criticized Helen Keller, then Anne Sullivan (or the handler) could accuse the critics of hating people with disabilities. Or call them jealous. Or crazy. Or misogynist. Or conspiracy theorists (I don’t think that term existed in the early 1900s).
Believers of the Helen Keller story might ask: why would Helen Keller’s handlers fake/embellish her accomplishments? My question is: Why wouldn’t they do this? I mean, I know lying is wrong, but a lot of people think money and status are more important than honesty, and the people surrounding Helen Keller could have been like that. If you’ve been raised on social media like today’s youngsters and have seen the ways that people sell themselves for money and status, propping up Helen Keller as a genius is an almost benign fraud compared to a lot of modern antics. And if part of the Helen Keller story was a hoax, who in the media would have wanted to ruin a great story like that of Helen Keller? To some journalists, the story is everything!
Faking the moon landings would be more difficult than editing essays and embellishing translations. More people are involved with the space program than there were with Helen Keller. All it takes is one Houston control egghead with a big mouth (and the ‘real’ telemetry data) to expose the fraud. Then again, nobody says that the entire space program is fake; it’s just the moon landings. They think it’s suspicious that nobody has gone to the moon since the Apollo program ended in the 1970s. We can’t seem to do it now. The telemetry data is missing. Moon rocks might not really be moon rocks. Who do you believe, the conspiracy theory crackpots or the government? It’s a tough choice.
I can see why skeptics think the moon landing is fake. A lot of stuff went wrong with most of the Mercury and Gemini missions. The missions themselves were successful, but the engineers/scientists had been off on a lot of calculations, and sometimes the astronauts were a little lucky to make it back alive. Apollo 11 had a lot of stuff with the lunar landing that had never been done before. I could see a situation where whoever was in charge (I mean “really” in charge) decided that the stakes were too high to take that kind of risk in a high profile situation.
If there’s a moon landing hoax (and I’m not saying there is), I could see the Apollo missions flying around the moon and using Stanley Kubrick’s (or whoever’s) footage to fool the general public that the lunar landing was successful. This could probably be done without everybody in the space program being involved. Once the astronauts were out in space, it might have been possible to hide what was going on from the public, including a lot of the people in ground control. And if anybody talked, well… there were always car accidents and plane crashes and suicides, and some people just plain get crazy sometimes, you know what I mean?
Believers of the moon landing might ask: Why would the United States government lie? My question is: why wouldn’t it? Failure to land on the moon would have been a disaster after all the money spent on the space program, just adding on to other U.S. problems. Vietnam. Race riots. Assassinations. Bell bottom jeans. I mean, the U.S. was taking a lot of losses. The moon landing was a great temporary victory. It brought the country (and even the world) together. It was a shared victory. Plus, the president at the time was Richard Nixon. Tricky Dick? Do you think Tricky Dick wouldn’t be on board with lying about a moon landing for the good of the United States (and his own poll numbers)?
Keeping a moon landing hoax a secret would probably require too many suicides and car accidents to be practical, though. Yeah, fear and money are both great motivators, especially when they’re combined, but the combination of both that the government would need would be enough to break NASA’s budget. Then again, that would explain why NASA stopped its space exploration program: it couldn’t afford the shut up money.
Who wins the battle of the hoaxes? Helen Keller or the United States moon landing? If you’re going to choose a hoax… I mean, if you’re bound and determined to pick a hoax, I think you have better standing with Helen Keller. You have a scapegoat (Anne Sullivan), plausibility, and motivation (money, fame, opportunities). If you want to argue about the moon landing, you have a government that you have to deal with. And if Helen Keller thought the Czar was bloodthirsty, wait until you see how old people react to the moon landing deniers.
Haha! Then again, seeing that reaction might just be why the youngsters question it in the first place.
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For more Dysfunctional Literacy, see…
G.O.A.T. vs. Goat: The Battle of Generational Slang
Old Things That Are Tough To Explain: Playing A Game Called “Smear The Queer.”
Dysfunctional Literacy 