{"id":1135,"date":"2009-03-29T23:47:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-29T23:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1135"},"modified":"2009-03-29T23:47:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-29T23:47:00","slug":"cattle-mutilations-deja-vu-all-over-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1135","title":{"rendered":"Cattle Mutilations: D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu All Over Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

I almost hate to write this post. It’s d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu<\/a> all over again.<\/p>\n

Such was my reaction to a recent headline in the Pueblo Chieftain<\/em>: “Two More Cows Found Mutilated.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Eastern Colorado was central to the “cattle mutilation” meme of the 1970s. I was younger and wishing that one day I would be a newspaper reporter so that I could really<\/em> learn what was going on.<\/p>\n

Later, after the furor died down, I did write for the (now defunct) Colorado Springs Sun<\/em>. And at one point I assigned myself a retrospective article about “mutilation madness” that eventually spawned a feature in dear old Fate<\/em> magazine.*<\/p>\n

The Sun <\/span>version left out my youthful experience with a lodge of Thelemic ceremonial magicians who planned to use magick-with-a-k to find the so-called mutilators and collect the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association reward money (which never was collected.)<\/p>\n

I write “meme” for a reason, and the Chieftain<\/span> article illustrates it perfectly. The news media tend to follow these “rules” of reporting topics that are pre-judged to be non-serious.<\/p>\n

1. Assume that these events are paranormal, inexplicable, or silly.<\/p>\n

2. Treat anyone–such as a self-proclaimed UFO expert–as a legitimate source.<\/p>\n

It happened in the 1970s, and it’s happening now. The only part that is missing is the post-Vietnam War narrative in which crazed Huey<\/a> pilots conduct crazed nighttime mutilation missions to get the adrenaline rush that they got in ‘Nam. (Think Iraq and give it time.)<\/p>\n

When I did become a journalist, I decided that the reason that editors did not take the whole cattle mutilation narrative seriously was that<\/p>\n