I had an interesting dinner conversation the other night with a co-worker. We were talking about the 40 anniversary of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in California, and we realized that this November 22nd will be the 45th anniversary of John Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas.

We discussed all of the JFK conspiracy theories, and my co-worker asked me if I thought there had been a conspiracy to kill JFK or if I thought Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. I said that I believe a conspiracy was definitely possible, but that I didn’t think it was the level of conspiracy that movies like Oliver Stone’s JFK depicted.

I mentioned a quote from Walter Cronkite about Stone’s depiction of the events, which he had called a “bill of goods” that unsuspecting young people had fully bought into. Cronkite said, in effect, that if there had been that level of conspiracy from all angles of our government, organized crime and foreign powers, there is almost no way that by now, someone wouldn’t have come forward and spilled the beans, making every detail public.

Imagine the big book deal. Imagine sitting on that couch with a teary-eyed Oprah.

The co-worker then said something interesting: “I think bits and pieces of the truth have gotten out…they’re just small enough that they don’t get a lot of notice by themselves.”

That got me thinking about conspiracy theories in general. How can a piece of the puzzle about what some regard as one of the greatest murder mysteries of the 20th century go largely unnoticed? By making the murder itself the subject of so many conspiracy theories.

A conspiracy theory, in essence, makes even true facts easier to dismiss as fiction because it is assumed that what is really the truth is only part of the conspiracy theory itself. We see it every day.

So when some former gangster comes forward and says he was friends with Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald, and that he hosted a meeting of the two in his apartment in Dallas three days before the murder, it’s easier to write him off as being one of the “nutjob” conspiracy theorists than to take the time to try to verify his story. There have been plenty of nutjobs who have come up with their own reasons of why that shooting happened (as well as who pulled the trigger). (I made this scenario up, but I’m sure it has probably happened at some point.)

But what if his story is true? We could be missing a major piece of the puzzle, because we’ve been conditioned by the conspiracy theorists to believe nothing. So we don’t believe him, either.

Here’s another example, on a subject that’s everyone’s favorite: global warming.

I’ll start with a clip from January 2, 2007, of the Today show in which Willard Scott appeared on the set in New York with Meredith Viera:

Here, in case you miss something, is a transcript of what is said:

SCOTT: Well, listen are you a globing — a global-warming fan? Do you believe in global warming?

VIEIRA: I’m not a fan. No. No, sir.

SCOTT: Well –

VIEIRA: But I — something’s going on, ’cause it’s warm here.

SCOTT: Well, now, wait a minute — that’s it; it’s warm here. From Savannah [Georgia] all the way up to Boston, we’re having unheard-of warm weather, but ask the folks out in Denver and Colorado –

VIEIRA: That’s so.

SCOTT: — the coldest winter they’ve had in years. So it all depends on which side of the Mississippi you’re hanging your hat.

When Media Matters, a watchdog organization that describes its goal as “comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” Yet when it posted the clip on YouTube, it gave it this headline:

“Willard Scott Denies Global Warming”

Trouble is, he didn’t deny that global warming exists. He merely pointed out that while it’s hot on one side of the country, it’s cold on the other; he suggested that it is easy to characterize hot weather as part of global warming, but that when you’re dealing with particularly cold weather, the concept of global warming isn’t necessarily rolling off your tongue.

Does Willard Scott personally believe in global warming? Maybe he does or maybe he doesn’t. The answer isn’t clear from that snippet. If anything, he believes that the hot weather Viera describes isn’t solely a result of global warming, particularly when it’s not being felt uniformly everywhere.

But one might hope that a “watchdog” group designed to weed out “misinformation” wouldn’t feel the need to resort to hyperbole to make its points. Even on its own website, the group posted a headline not quite on the mark:

“Willard Scott suggested weather ‘in Denver and Colorado’ casts doubt on global warming”

Again, it isn’t really what he said, but it’s possible to assume that he’s saying something along those lines. It’s also possible to assume that he’s saying that these two weather extremes aren’t necessarily clear examples, like, say, melting polar ice caps are. But we’re not in Willard’s head, and he doesn’t elaborate there, so the best we can do, one way or the other, is assume. And that shouldn’t be a valid base for criticism.

On the other hand, it’s easy for people like Scott to make a statement about global warming because there are so many global warming enthusiasts out there who tend to want to make everything about global warming. Here in Charleston, it’s 88 degrees outside as I type this post. The high today is 93. That’s hot. But we’re just days away from the start of summer, so it’s supposed to be hot.

But the environmental conspiracy theorists, those so quick to point to every little symptom as that pesky global warming again make easy for the rest of us to roll our eyes and dismiss what they’re saying.

In essence, conspiracy theorists who are a little “over the top” about making their case, tend to make the rest of us blind to the elements that may genuinely be true, just because we’re so tired of hearing about the constant “worst-case scenarios.”

Somehow, I don’t think that helps their argument.