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FAQ ATTAQ!! Our esteemed magazine has been getting a lot of hatred hurled at it lately, and I have to tell you that it really hurts to read it. It’s daunting, sickening, and upsetting. For me, the more horrible part is when the ones hurling the insults are out-and-out lying or just too stupid to pick up an issue and check what we’re doing here. Therefore, I think it’s time to defend the turf and do what we do best: present the facts. The facts -- in any topic -- have to rule the day, or we are all doomed. People who lie almost always do it in a very loud voice and repeat the lies over and over. Loud stupid bullies. Mostly fat, lazy white men with too much time on their hands, a radio microphone as a phallic enhancement near their lips, and hate hate hate dribbling out in sad, impotent spurts. Turn on your TV, and you will see what I mean. Here on the internets, folks are hating on the magazine, the TV show I created, and especially my husband. I believe it is time to counter these attacks with some facts, and so I have invented the FAQ ATTAQ!! Read it and save it and refer to it and link to it. It is the whole truth, the kind of truth I can prove in a court of law if I have to, and it’s the truth as I have lived it. I am not going to name a few of the people in the FAQ for one really great reason: the folks spewing the hatred are doing it so that you will give them your attention, and by not typing in their names, I will deny them their search-engine recognition. At least for a little while. They are publicity hounds of the very first order, demanding to be the center of attention in any conversation. It becomes harder and harder to stay in the spotlight if you can’t invent anything except insults, and I would feel sorry for them if I weren’t the one getting insulted. It’s got to be awful to be so angry so much of the time. The world has displeased them! This FAQ ATTAQ!! is a work in progress, constantly changing and growing, and it has been shaken into existence because the subject at hand is the UFO. We know so little about this topic, and it is so important. Is there such a thing, at all? Is our beloved government lying to us? Can you trust what we’re trying to uncover and report? I work for you, the reader and the viewer, and you need the truth so that you can figure out what’s going on. Let’s get started! 1. Where did UFO Magazine come from? 1. Where did UFO Magazine come from? To the best of my knowledge, the information in those issues is accurate. However, there is a fellow named William Cooper -- now deceased and no relation to Vicki as far as I know -- who claims all sorts of things about the magazine’s beginnings, which are unproven -- again, as far as I know -- and heartily denied by Vicki herself. Therefore, I won’t repeat any of them here. But. A few years ago a very very respected man, whose security clearances and position in the world are far loftier than any of us will ever achieve, told Bill that the magazine was actually started by himself, Vicki Cooper, and Victoria Alexander, nee Lacas. If true, this is indeed troubling. I post the Alexander name so that others can Google and research and perhaps get to the bottom of this, and I will add the name of the guy who told this to Bill if I can. I don’t want to put him in any danger, and people seem to be afraid of Victoria’s husband John, who is a person involved with weapons and the U.S. government. [see FAQ 9] If this is a false story, I will say so here. If it’s the truth, I certainly would have appreciated being told before I signed on and contributed a large hunk of my net worth to this endeavor. It's just always nice to know the truth. 2. Where did UFO Hunters come from? Well, if you’ve seen the TV show, you already know that Pat Uskert is a nice young man with the kind of demeanor that inspires trust. He’s exactly the same way in real life, and although he was pretty excited about his UFO, we tossed out the idea that it was probably a mylar balloon up there in the sky. The rest is History. Pat, who is actually a very talented guy behind the camera, shot some footage of balloons and sent it to us for comparison, and that’s how the cover story came about for Vol. 19, No. 5; October/November 2004 (Issue #112). It gave me the idea to send Pat out on the road and film people and their stories of sightings because Pat has a very kind approach to people and a very sure touch when filming a scene. I think he's a natural. Here’s how I convinced him that my idea would work. I invited him over and pitched the idea to him. I came up with a sure-fire name for the endeavor: UFO Road Trip. I even went to GoDaddy and got the website right then and there while Pat and Bill discussed details. I have a second sense when it comes to stuff like this because I created my own book producing company -- Shadow Lawn Press -- in 1983, which is still going strong. I just know when things are right and the time is right for them. To help things along, we hired Pat to be our subscription manager while Bill pitched the show. Some of you might have first met Pat via email when you subscribed back in those days, and I was very happy to have some help, believe me. Eventually, Pat made several different kinds of demos and I helped a little with shaping them, most memorably one time when Pat's ailing computer was going south and he lugged the whole huge thing to our boat, set up shop, and we worked on the demo there in the little cabin. The show was sent to Hearst Entertainment Productions, an independent producer who made a TV movie from one of our books, and we had a few conference calls with them ... and waited. And waited. Bill, meanwhile, had done some on-screen interviews for a show called UFO Files. This is unpaid work -- at least it was for us -- but it’s fun and he does it because his father was in show business and maybe sometimes they might mention the magazine or one of the books we’ve written. One of the times Bill appeared on one of the shows he wore a UFO Magazine hat, and we are very lucky that he did. Well, as these things happen, the show died at Hearst and Bill took it to the folks who created UFO Files, Motion Picture Productions, and this time the rest really is History, as in History Channel, third season filming right now, and even some new controversy as this show gathers momentum. Along the way, when it came time to take meetings and shape the thing, Bill and Pat went out to lunch with the guys, and I stayed behind to make the magazine. MPP decided they were going to cast the show and they wanted Bill to be on screen, along with Pat. At first the magazine was mentioned every once in a while and of course Bill was wearing his hat, so that was good. I expected to be included somehow, since I thought it up, but that didn’t happen. Women who work in media already know that you have to be bold and even a little pushy to be able to hold your own with the guys, and I just didn’t have the time or energy at that point to do this. Bill, especially, wasn’t willing to rock the boat because it’s very hard to get a TV show sold, let alone steer it to success. The last thing anybody needed was a female demanding equal time. Plus, I was working pretty much single-handedly on the magazine [see FAQ 6], so Bill got the brunt of my unhappiness at not being included each time he came home that first season. Eventually, the company did put up a chyron at the end that says: Created by Nancy Birnes and Pat Uskert. Yay! No money was ever paid for the sale because ... I guess that’s how these things are done in TV. It’s all about the opportunity and the exposure. And now, it's on the record. Again, an easy one to answer. It's oh, so simple. He is told to wear them. Period. When filming first started and Bill was asked to be on the show, he was taken by surprise [see FAQ 2]. He was nearing the end of four years of law school, and reading the small print all day every day and into the night was really hurting his eyes. He finally went to see an eye doctor and had some laser surgery for macular degeneration, probably caused by diabetes, but he's not been diagnosed because we don't have health insurance. Still, eyeballs are strained and he was given several different kinds of noxious eyedrops to use. When filming started, those drops were magnifying the stage lights and causing starburts of pain, so he started to wear sunglasses when he could. Excess eyedrops were also causing redness and itchiness, which can be seen in some scenes. Plus, of course, the infamous blinking, which has inspired some of the more vile haters to call him names based on this. The most ironic part of this is that Bill has beautiful eyes. They are really lovely, if I may say so, and it's a shame they are hidden now. I'm hoping the TV folk will allow him to wear regular or tinted glasses some of the time so that the mean comments might stop. And, even though I'm not a doctor, I've googled and decided that the eyedrops were doing more harm than good, and I've forced him to wean off of them. About a year or so ago, a good friend recommended pata de vaca as a help with diabetes, and Bill now sprinkles it on his food three times a day. It's a good thing, I think. As soon as he turns 65 in another year, or if health care becomes affordable sooner, he will go and see about the diabetes. Meanwhile, lots of exercise, fresh air, no sugar is a sound routine to follow, and he does. Plus, the reading paid off -- he graduated from law school in 2006. Details to follow, if the haters decide I've not told enough. 4. Who are you, and what qualifies you to edit the magazine? I will get through this one quickly because I really think it's impolite to talk about one's accomplishments, let alone elaborate. But I've been accused of taking the magazine to hell in a handbasket -- their cliche, not mine -- so I want you to know that I have been some qualifications. My full name is Nancy Hayfield Birnes. I graduated from Princeton in 1979, summa cum laude; majored in English and won the Samuel Shellabarger Creative Writing award that year. My 30th reunion is coming up, although I am ten years older than those dates suggest. I would have graduated from college in 1969 had I gone right from high school. I did not. Blue-collar family, had to get a job, Viet Nam war, love, marriage, kiddies. Journalism background: editor in chief of my high school paper, the Turret, Notre Dame High School, Moylan, Pennsylvania. The school is gone, but the memories are not. The day after graduation I went to work for the Delaware County Daily Times in June 1965. That means that I've been in journalism since 1964, for a total of 45 years, so far. Egad. 5. Are you and Bill trying to ruin the whole ufological field? First of all, it's lame to think that there's a field here. There are a bunch of folks trying to figure out what's going on. There are many voices, many witnesses to much unknown phenomena. The last thing any of us need is a police force or bully clubs of idiot thugs doing the work of the devil when they say they are exposing frauds. Frauds almost always expose themselves; it's the nature of the game. Meanwhile, if I want to learn more about a person or an incident or an era, the last thing I want to hear is that it's already been decided for me that I shouldn't bother. Isn't that the essence of censorship? We decide. You abide. Or else. Not for me. If I find something or someone interesting, I will share it. It's what you're paying me to do, after all. 6. Yeah, but what about Bill, falling for that Morristown hoax? More on this to come, as soon as Bill gets some time to write. Meanwhile, there is a thread here on Paratopia that might help to clarify this mess a little bit.
I don't, usually. I try not to. I have been tricked a few times since I've gotten involved with the magazine {FAQ To Come}. Since nobody really knows what the UFO is, it's hard to say who is a hoaxer and what is a hoax. Let's say, for sanity's sake, that we have a sliding scale here. Let's say, in the interest of full disclosure, that we're human beings looking at a sliding scale. Heisenberg, at this point, is stirring. But we try. Using our scale and realizing that on a good day we might be more tolerant than usual, there are some people and stories that just raise alarms. But before I start to list them, I have to say that my alarms are going to be different from yours. You might be a member of a religion that accepts unusual phenenoma as gospel. You, therefore, might believe in the power of prayer or positive thinking or auras or angels or even holy water. I sort of do, too. Some of that. Worse, in the course of wandering in this theoretical field, you might make a friend or two along the way. This will be your downfall, my friend. You will give your friend the benefit of the doubt, and even if your friend sometimes seems a little unhinged and/or embellishes his story a little, you will still remain a friend and compensate for the picadillo or two or three. If McCarthy were still in charge, you might be in trouble for your friendships, but so far, we've run him out of office. So, when it comes to publishing articles in the magazine, I try to use judgement based on 45 years of experience, friendship, religious leaning, and of course, deadlines. I make mistakes, to your way of thinking, all the time. That's how it should be. You should be thinking and I should be providing you with new things to think about. We should all be looking for the evolving story and the truth. I am. Your mileage will vary, based on your vehicle.
This makes me really angry to hear. It's beyond mean and it's truly a cheap shot. It's because of the hard work of our dedicated columnists, each and every one of them, that we are such a great magazine. They range in age, range in taste, range in outlook -- they just range all over the place. And that's how it should be. They are wonderful. According to those who don't actually work on the magazine, our product is crappy and our columnists are one of the reasons why. I say, in the words of columnist Stan Friedman: hogwash. Here is where the most lazy, the most egregiously stupid, the most jealous wreak the most damage on us. They fault us for the most foul of reasons: They hate our freedoms. They hate the concept of freedom of speech and worse, they don't even understand what the point of a column is. It's a viewpoint, dummy. Not necessarily the view of the magazine, but a view from an individual. Individuals, not communal group-speak. No party lines. No consensus. Not at this magazine. This is a magazine for independent thinkers, thank you very much. I know a lot and I will tell you everything I know. Stay tuned. |
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