Volume 23 Archive
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 1 • July 2, 2023 •
It’s been a busy two weeks. Let’s see what’s new…
News
The frenzy over space aliens is reaching fever-pitch. Avi Loeb announced that he found tiny spheres that are pieces of advanced alien technology (or, he quietly added, maybe just interstellar metal—but, hush up, we don’t talk about the un-fun probability; in reality, the alloy is similar to one used in treating steel for a century). Sen. Marco Rubio set off a firestorm when he seemed to claim on NewsNation to have spoken with firsthand witnesses to crashed saucers in the government’s possession, only for it to come out that they only saw paperwork about alleged special access programs not properly registered with Congress, prompting New York magazine to quietly edit a story, ratcheting it down from claiming proof of aliens to merely noting Rubio’s UFO obsession. In unaired portions of his NewsNation interview, Rubio admitted that his real interest isn’t space aliens but in using UFO claims to combat “the Deep State” that he feels insufficiently respects him. His colleague on the House side, Mike Gallagher, claimed UFOs are either time travelers or representatives of a parallel civilization from the Hollow Earth (seriously), while the House had to delay a planned hearing into crashed saucers because most of their witnesses failed a basic background check. The only “credible” witness, David Grusch, claimed America has a secret treaty with murderous space monsters and that the U.S. and the Russians have been in a race to “master” crashed UFO technology. This, of course, led the New York Times to do a podcast wondering if all the many ways Lue Elizondo and his friends have seeded UFO lore into government means that aliens are really here. I guess it beats contemplating the Supreme Court’s program of eliminating civil rights as we pave the way for fascism. Oh, wait, Grusch says fascists captured UFOs, too.
In other news, HBO’s documentary about Rock Hudson contained a deceptive edit that this week sparked a flurry of articles in major media like the New York Post wrongly claiming Hudson hit on James Dean while filming Giant (the incident, which was closer to sexual harassment, happened four years earlier). Some of the reviews, including one from Fox News and one in the San Jose Mercury News, cited my 2021 Esquire piece about James Dean to compare him to Hudson and contrast their queer identities.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the weeks of June 19–July 2:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 1 • July 2, 2023 •
It’s been a busy two weeks. Let’s see what’s new…
News
The frenzy over space aliens is reaching fever-pitch. Avi Loeb announced that he found tiny spheres that are pieces of advanced alien technology (or, he quietly added, maybe just interstellar metal—but, hush up, we don’t talk about the un-fun probability; in reality, the alloy is similar to one used in treating steel for a century). Sen. Marco Rubio set off a firestorm when he seemed to claim on NewsNation to have spoken with firsthand witnesses to crashed saucers in the government’s possession, only for it to come out that they only saw paperwork about alleged special access programs not properly registered with Congress, prompting New York magazine to quietly edit a story, ratcheting it down from claiming proof of aliens to merely noting Rubio’s UFO obsession. In unaired portions of his NewsNation interview, Rubio admitted that his real interest isn’t space aliens but in using UFO claims to combat “the Deep State” that he feels insufficiently respects him. His colleague on the House side, Mike Gallagher, claimed UFOs are either time travelers or representatives of a parallel civilization from the Hollow Earth (seriously), while the House had to delay a planned hearing into crashed saucers because most of their witnesses failed a basic background check. The only “credible” witness, David Grusch, claimed America has a secret treaty with murderous space monsters and that the U.S. and the Russians have been in a race to “master” crashed UFO technology. This, of course, led the New York Times to do a podcast wondering if all the many ways Lue Elizondo and his friends have seeded UFO lore into government means that aliens are really here. I guess it beats contemplating the Supreme Court’s program of eliminating civil rights as we pave the way for fascism. Oh, wait, Grusch says fascists captured UFOs, too.
In other news, HBO’s documentary about Rock Hudson contained a deceptive edit that this week sparked a flurry of articles in major media like the New York Post wrongly claiming Hudson hit on James Dean while filming Giant (the incident, which was closer to sexual harassment, happened four years earlier). Some of the reviews, including one from Fox News and one in the San Jose Mercury News, cited my 2021 Esquire piece about James Dean to compare him to Hudson and contrast their queer identities.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the weeks of June 19–July 2:
- Stephen Kijak’s Magnificent Obsession (Review of All That Heaven Allowed)
- Review of Ancient Aliens S19E11 “The Top Ten Pyramid Sites”
- Review of Ascension by Nicholas Binge
- Senate Committee Passes Legislation to Root Out Concealed Alien Artifacts
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 2 • July 9, 2023 •
It’s been a (not-so) busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
With the Independence Day holiday shortening this week, relatively little of note happened in the world of flying saucers, space monsters, and Congressional investigation of aliens. Lue Elizondo finally broke his silence in the wake of David Grusch’s claims, but mostly just to share vacation photos. Avi Loeb claimed some iron balls he found in the ocean are the melted remains of alien technology and implied some were miniature models of the Earth, but such microspherules are known to be naturally occurring results of meteor impacts. Meanwhile, a literary agent contacted me unsolicited with an offer to represent my book because he said publishers were looking for a James Dean book in advance of the 2025 70th anniversary of Dean’s death. However, he attached a condition—because he said publishers aren’t interested in queer themes, believing no audience will read about them, I would need to basically trash the book I wrote and write what they want, a celebratory review of Dean’s influence on pop culture, including fashion and movies. My feeling is that he described a completely separate book with no connection to what I wrote, substituting the posthumous cartoon character for the real person.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of July 3–9:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 2 • July 9, 2023 •
It’s been a (not-so) busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
With the Independence Day holiday shortening this week, relatively little of note happened in the world of flying saucers, space monsters, and Congressional investigation of aliens. Lue Elizondo finally broke his silence in the wake of David Grusch’s claims, but mostly just to share vacation photos. Avi Loeb claimed some iron balls he found in the ocean are the melted remains of alien technology and implied some were miniature models of the Earth, but such microspherules are known to be naturally occurring results of meteor impacts. Meanwhile, a literary agent contacted me unsolicited with an offer to represent my book because he said publishers were looking for a James Dean book in advance of the 2025 70th anniversary of Dean’s death. However, he attached a condition—because he said publishers aren’t interested in queer themes, believing no audience will read about them, I would need to basically trash the book I wrote and write what they want, a celebratory review of Dean’s influence on pop culture, including fashion and movies. My feeling is that he described a completely separate book with no connection to what I wrote, substituting the posthumous cartoon character for the real person.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of July 3–9:
- Review of Ancient Aliens S19E12: “The Top Ten Mysterious Devices”
- New York Times Praises Uri Geller for Profiting from “Benign” Post-Truth “Fraud”
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 3 • July 16, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
“All of this [is] a very bizarre story,” NBC’s Gadi Schwartz said on Nightly News Friday night after reporting on dead aliens and crashed saucers. The network’s most pro-UFO reporter finally found a line too strange even for him to cross in discussing the latest efforts in Congress to hold hearings on secret treaties with murderous space monsters and clandestine programs to reverse-engineer their many, many crashed ships. Senate Democrats put out a statement announcing that, based on “stories” and “ideas” from “a vast web of individuals and groups,” “some in Congress” came to believe in flying saucer conspiracies. Majority leader Chuck Schumer, saying that he had been led to believe by his “mentor,” Harry Reid, announced that Americans had a “right” to learn about “non-human intelligence.” After Congress incorporated Lue Elizondo’s “five observables” verbatim into legislation and moved to nationalize imaginary dead alien bodies held in private hands, Air Mail’s Rich Cohen, whose publication’s audience is the super-rich, announced that he now believes aliens are real because government officials are taking them seriously—just like they do the menace of transgender bathroom rapists and pizza parlor underground Reptilian sex rings, or, from an earlier day, psychic warfare and Satanic child rapists. Marco Rubio of all people probably said it best when he noted that the alternative to aliens being real is that “crazy” people hold positions of power. So now you notice?
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of July 10–16:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 3 • July 16, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
“All of this [is] a very bizarre story,” NBC’s Gadi Schwartz said on Nightly News Friday night after reporting on dead aliens and crashed saucers. The network’s most pro-UFO reporter finally found a line too strange even for him to cross in discussing the latest efforts in Congress to hold hearings on secret treaties with murderous space monsters and clandestine programs to reverse-engineer their many, many crashed ships. Senate Democrats put out a statement announcing that, based on “stories” and “ideas” from “a vast web of individuals and groups,” “some in Congress” came to believe in flying saucer conspiracies. Majority leader Chuck Schumer, saying that he had been led to believe by his “mentor,” Harry Reid, announced that Americans had a “right” to learn about “non-human intelligence.” After Congress incorporated Lue Elizondo’s “five observables” verbatim into legislation and moved to nationalize imaginary dead alien bodies held in private hands, Air Mail’s Rich Cohen, whose publication’s audience is the super-rich, announced that he now believes aliens are real because government officials are taking them seriously—just like they do the menace of transgender bathroom rapists and pizza parlor underground Reptilian sex rings, or, from an earlier day, psychic warfare and Satanic child rapists. Marco Rubio of all people probably said it best when he noted that the alternative to aliens being real is that “crazy” people hold positions of power. So now you notice?
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of July 10–16:
- In Brief: House GOP Plans Late July Hearing on Space Aliens and Crashed Saucers
- Review of Ancient Aliens S19E13: “The Top Ten Mysterious Islands”
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 4 • July 23, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
In the runup to this week’s GOP-led UFO hearing in the House of Representatives, the Republicans in charge of running it held a news conference offering a range of conspiracies, including the claim that the Pentagon denied them information during a tour of an Air Force base. Then it turned out that their conspiracy theories were lies. The GOP representatives had toured the base under false pretenses, pretending to be interested in intelligence issues before surprising the military with a request for UFO information, and had never sought nor received the necessary clearances for a UFO briefing, which the military nevertheless provided to the only member of their tour group who had the appropriate clearance. The head of the Pentagon’s UFO office, Sean Kirkpatrick went on ABC News to tamp down House UFO fever by explaining that there was no evidence of aliens and that no whistleblower, including the one set to testify to Congress this week, offered any verifiable evidence of a secret crashed saucer exploitation program.
In more personal news, I am now working with a new literary agent to represent my book. Thanks to his dogged efforts, as of this writing, twenty-one publishers in the U.S. have requested the manuscript for consideration. Four others outside the United States are considering it as well. I’d like to believe that at least one of the twenty-five will say yes!
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of July 17–23:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 4 • July 23, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
In the runup to this week’s GOP-led UFO hearing in the House of Representatives, the Republicans in charge of running it held a news conference offering a range of conspiracies, including the claim that the Pentagon denied them information during a tour of an Air Force base. Then it turned out that their conspiracy theories were lies. The GOP representatives had toured the base under false pretenses, pretending to be interested in intelligence issues before surprising the military with a request for UFO information, and had never sought nor received the necessary clearances for a UFO briefing, which the military nevertheless provided to the only member of their tour group who had the appropriate clearance. The head of the Pentagon’s UFO office, Sean Kirkpatrick went on ABC News to tamp down House UFO fever by explaining that there was no evidence of aliens and that no whistleblower, including the one set to testify to Congress this week, offered any verifiable evidence of a secret crashed saucer exploitation program.
In more personal news, I am now working with a new literary agent to represent my book. Thanks to his dogged efforts, as of this writing, twenty-one publishers in the U.S. have requested the manuscript for consideration. Four others outside the United States are considering it as well. I’d like to believe that at least one of the twenty-five will say yes!
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of July 17–23:
- Review of Ancient Aliens S19E14 “The Top Ten Alien Craft”
- Review of The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill by Matthew Bowman
- Pentagon Says Whistleblowers Provided No Verifiable Crashed Saucer Information
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 5 • July 30, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
The History Channel certainly blew a major opportunity this week. A subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee held a hearing with two regulars on the UFO circuit and David Grusch, the newly minted UFO celebrity who claimed to have heard stories about crashed saucers, dead aliens, and conspiracies involving the U.S. government, Mussolini, and the Vatican. With all the wild claims flying through Washington, it would have been the perfect time for Ancient Aliens to do a live roundtable panel discussion of the canonization of their paranoid worldview. The congressman who made it all happen, Bigfoot advocate and election denier Tim Burchett, has even been a guest on Ancient Aliens in the past. And yet History chose to air a four-hour compilation of Ancient Aliens rerun segments instead. In fact, none of the channels that produced primetime specials in 2021 when Congress held a much less interesting hearing on UFOs bothered to cover the one that actually claimed dead aliens and recovered ships. It’s almost like they didn’t believe it themselves. It’s one thing to speculate about ambiguous sightings, which most media treat as harmless fun since no specific claim is being made, and quite another to give credence to specific claims that an alien spaceship is locked in a particular hangar.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of July 24–30:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 5 • July 30, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
The History Channel certainly blew a major opportunity this week. A subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee held a hearing with two regulars on the UFO circuit and David Grusch, the newly minted UFO celebrity who claimed to have heard stories about crashed saucers, dead aliens, and conspiracies involving the U.S. government, Mussolini, and the Vatican. With all the wild claims flying through Washington, it would have been the perfect time for Ancient Aliens to do a live roundtable panel discussion of the canonization of their paranoid worldview. The congressman who made it all happen, Bigfoot advocate and election denier Tim Burchett, has even been a guest on Ancient Aliens in the past. And yet History chose to air a four-hour compilation of Ancient Aliens rerun segments instead. In fact, none of the channels that produced primetime specials in 2021 when Congress held a much less interesting hearing on UFOs bothered to cover the one that actually claimed dead aliens and recovered ships. It’s almost like they didn’t believe it themselves. It’s one thing to speculate about ambiguous sightings, which most media treat as harmless fun since no specific claim is being made, and quite another to give credence to specific claims that an alien spaceship is locked in a particular hangar.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of July 24–30:
- Read My CNN Piece about the UFO Hearing
- What’s Behind the Use of “Ontological Shock” Claims to Attack UFO Skeptics?
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 6 • August 6, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, David Grusch gave an interview to BBC Radio 4 where he repeated his NewsNation claims, including those he declined to state under oath before a House subcommittee last week. He discussed, for example, the alien bodies. But more interesting was his use of “ontological shock” in the interview, the newly popular term that burst onto the scene right at the time Grusch started making claims. As I pointed out last week, the term originates in philosophy in a somewhat different context and alien abduction researcher John Mack applied it to space alien encounters in the 1990s. It was quite rare in UFO circles until this summer, around the time Diana Pasulka began to use it in public, and Grusch using it now is still more evidence of how deeply embedded he is in the UFO community and how much he has absorbed its beliefs and values. Meanwhile, the New Yorker had a great piece on the complete lack of even a single unambiguous photograph of an alien spaceship that managed to get Leslie Kean to admit that the photographic evidence she provided in her 2010 UFO book widely cited by officials is not conclusive, and indeed may be misinterpreted. “I just don’t know who to believe sometimes, you know?” she said. All she has is stories, and the stories are 1940s sci-fi mythology imposed on ambiguous or bad data—which, ironically, is actually a real U.S. government conclusion, from the FBI in 1948.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of July 31–August 6:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 6 • August 6, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, David Grusch gave an interview to BBC Radio 4 where he repeated his NewsNation claims, including those he declined to state under oath before a House subcommittee last week. He discussed, for example, the alien bodies. But more interesting was his use of “ontological shock” in the interview, the newly popular term that burst onto the scene right at the time Grusch started making claims. As I pointed out last week, the term originates in philosophy in a somewhat different context and alien abduction researcher John Mack applied it to space alien encounters in the 1990s. It was quite rare in UFO circles until this summer, around the time Diana Pasulka began to use it in public, and Grusch using it now is still more evidence of how deeply embedded he is in the UFO community and how much he has absorbed its beliefs and values. Meanwhile, the New Yorker had a great piece on the complete lack of even a single unambiguous photograph of an alien spaceship that managed to get Leslie Kean to admit that the photographic evidence she provided in her 2010 UFO book widely cited by officials is not conclusive, and indeed may be misinterpreted. “I just don’t know who to believe sometimes, you know?” she said. All she has is stories, and the stories are 1940s sci-fi mythology imposed on ambiguous or bad data—which, ironically, is actually a real U.S. government conclusion, from the FBI in 1948.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of July 31–August 6:
- David Grusch Works for Garry Nolan and Chris Mellon, New Document Shows
- Review of Ancient Aliens S19E15: “Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet”
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 7 • August 13, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
The most important news in UFO land this week was The Intercept’s article reporting on UFO whistleblower David Grusch’s encounters with police in 2014 and 2018 due to ongoing issues with alcoholism and violence caused by PTSD that led to a psychiatric detention. Before the story ran, Grusch told Ross Coulthart that the intelligence community had “leaked” his “medical records” in an effort to discredit him, a claim Coulthart made on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation show. However, it turned out that people in the Defense Department and the intelligence community had merely suggested in response to an open call for information that The Intercept check Grusch’s police records, which the publication obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. No medical records were involved, but Rep. Tim Burchett jumped on the false story, promising to punish the (non-existent) leaker for attacking Grusch. NewsNation issued a correction, only to falsely report that The Intercept had fired the reporter who “smeared” Grusch with facts. The Nexstar-owned cable news channel had fallen for an online prank. NewsNation and its sister Nexstar publication, The Hill, have gone all in on UFO coverage, running countless stories about alien visitation in a transparent effort to use an appeal to a fanatical minority to boost the second-tier operations’ ratings, much the way competitor NewsMax retooled to serve Donald Trump superfans.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of August 7–13:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 7 • August 13, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
The most important news in UFO land this week was The Intercept’s article reporting on UFO whistleblower David Grusch’s encounters with police in 2014 and 2018 due to ongoing issues with alcoholism and violence caused by PTSD that led to a psychiatric detention. Before the story ran, Grusch told Ross Coulthart that the intelligence community had “leaked” his “medical records” in an effort to discredit him, a claim Coulthart made on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation show. However, it turned out that people in the Defense Department and the intelligence community had merely suggested in response to an open call for information that The Intercept check Grusch’s police records, which the publication obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. No medical records were involved, but Rep. Tim Burchett jumped on the false story, promising to punish the (non-existent) leaker for attacking Grusch. NewsNation issued a correction, only to falsely report that The Intercept had fired the reporter who “smeared” Grusch with facts. The Nexstar-owned cable news channel had fallen for an online prank. NewsNation and its sister Nexstar publication, The Hill, have gone all in on UFO coverage, running countless stories about alien visitation in a transparent effort to use an appeal to a fanatical minority to boost the second-tier operations’ ratings, much the way competitor NewsMax retooled to serve Donald Trump superfans.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of August 7–13:
- Review of Ancient Aliens S19E16: “The Gods of Greece”
- UFO Roundup: Gillibrand Hasn’t Seen Aliens, but on Fox News UFOs Are Demons
- New Paper Rebukes Claim That an Exploding Comet Destroyed Hopewell Culture
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 8 • August 20, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
A not-so-shocking report in the Washington Post found that NewsNation has massively improved its ratings after going all-in on UFO coverage, making flying saucers a cornerstone of its strategy to become a major news channel. Its UFO specials have increased audiences for some timeslots by double digits, with at least one broadcast quadrupling the network’s average audience, even as NewsNation has been forced to retract false UFO conspiracy claims made on its air. NewsNation is owned by Nexstar, the local TV station behemoth whose other properties include the D.C. news service The Hill, which has also turned over significant real estate to UFO coverage, and George Knapp’s Mystery Wire, the UFO and paranormal news service. Knapp, of course, is a UFO power player, an Ancient Aliens guest, and claimed to have been scheduled to testify before Congress at one point. But even with its heavy UFO focus, NewsNation isn’t the top dog in the cable news UFO frenzy. Fox News Channel still mentions UFOs more often, the Post reports.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of August 14–20:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 8 • August 20, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
A not-so-shocking report in the Washington Post found that NewsNation has massively improved its ratings after going all-in on UFO coverage, making flying saucers a cornerstone of its strategy to become a major news channel. Its UFO specials have increased audiences for some timeslots by double digits, with at least one broadcast quadrupling the network’s average audience, even as NewsNation has been forced to retract false UFO conspiracy claims made on its air. NewsNation is owned by Nexstar, the local TV station behemoth whose other properties include the D.C. news service The Hill, which has also turned over significant real estate to UFO coverage, and George Knapp’s Mystery Wire, the UFO and paranormal news service. Knapp, of course, is a UFO power player, an Ancient Aliens guest, and claimed to have been scheduled to testify before Congress at one point. But even with its heavy UFO focus, NewsNation isn’t the top dog in the cable news UFO frenzy. Fox News Channel still mentions UFOs more often, the Post reports.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of August 14–20:
- Review of Ancient Aliens S19E17: “The New UFO Hunters”
- “Beatings, Boots, Belts and Bondage”: Kenneth Anger, James Dean, and BDSM
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 9 • August 27, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
On Coast to Coast AM this week, erstwhile television personality Scott F. Wolter brought out some new claims to add to his growing repertoire of outré ideas. Wolter asserted that “hidden” books of the Bible are being covered up, that Native Americans recall interacting with ancient Egyptians when they emerged from an underground world beneath the Grand Canyon, and that the Founding Fathers weren’t just inspired by the Knights Templar but were secretly their biological descendants. Much of this is merely variations on old misunderstandings and hoaxes, though the notion of biological transmission of Wolter’s secret knowledge from Jesus to the Templars to the Freemasons along genetic lines of quasi-royal descent is rapidly growing into a bizarre obsession with pure holy bloodlines. This is all the weirder when Wolter alleges that he has “no choice” but to conclude that the government and the Vatican are hiding proof of ancient aliens. Then, two days later, Graham Phillips appeared on the show to continue his promotional tour for his new book about Doggerland, the sunken North Sea territory. He and host George Noory discussed claims that Doggerland was Atlantis, that Atlantis sank in Noah’s Flood, and that Stonehenge was the work of the survivors of Atlantis. Compared to Wolter, Phillips’s incorrect ideas seemed almost rational, since the final lines of Plato’s unfinished Critias connect Atlantis to the Near Eastern Flood myth. That’s more evidence than Wolter has.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of August 21–27:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 9 • August 27, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
On Coast to Coast AM this week, erstwhile television personality Scott F. Wolter brought out some new claims to add to his growing repertoire of outré ideas. Wolter asserted that “hidden” books of the Bible are being covered up, that Native Americans recall interacting with ancient Egyptians when they emerged from an underground world beneath the Grand Canyon, and that the Founding Fathers weren’t just inspired by the Knights Templar but were secretly their biological descendants. Much of this is merely variations on old misunderstandings and hoaxes, though the notion of biological transmission of Wolter’s secret knowledge from Jesus to the Templars to the Freemasons along genetic lines of quasi-royal descent is rapidly growing into a bizarre obsession with pure holy bloodlines. This is all the weirder when Wolter alleges that he has “no choice” but to conclude that the government and the Vatican are hiding proof of ancient aliens. Then, two days later, Graham Phillips appeared on the show to continue his promotional tour for his new book about Doggerland, the sunken North Sea territory. He and host George Noory discussed claims that Doggerland was Atlantis, that Atlantis sank in Noah’s Flood, and that Stonehenge was the work of the survivors of Atlantis. Compared to Wolter, Phillips’s incorrect ideas seemed almost rational, since the final lines of Plato’s unfinished Critias connect Atlantis to the Near Eastern Flood myth. That’s more evidence than Wolter has.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of August 21–27:
- “Permission to Wonder”: A Review of UFO by Garrett M. Graff
- Review of Ancient Aliens S19E18 “The Power of the Talisman”
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 10 • September 3, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, I was busy finalizing a project, and I expect that I will be making a formal announcement next week after the holiday once everything is in place. Meanwhile, we can marvel that Avi Loeb’s claim to have found extrasolar microspherules in the Pacific Ocean at a press conference this week suspiciously timed to coincide with the release of his new book Interstellar has already started to collapse as his colleagues point out major flaws in his science and one compared his pronouncements to those of a “religious zealot.” Meanwhile, I was taken aback when I saw an allegation I had missed earlier this year from the British biographer of Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (King Charles’s great-uncle) that the United States government recently destroyed World War II-era files reporting allegations that Mountbatten was a “homosexual” with a preference for young boys at the request of the British government. Andrew Lownie reported the contents of the files in 2019, and he now writes that a U.S. official told him that additional documents were destroyed “after you had asked for them” to whitewash history. (Multiple men have claimed Mountbatten, who was assassinated in 1979, abused them, and at least one is suing for compensation.)
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of August 28–September 3:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 10 • September 3, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, I was busy finalizing a project, and I expect that I will be making a formal announcement next week after the holiday once everything is in place. Meanwhile, we can marvel that Avi Loeb’s claim to have found extrasolar microspherules in the Pacific Ocean at a press conference this week suspiciously timed to coincide with the release of his new book Interstellar has already started to collapse as his colleagues point out major flaws in his science and one compared his pronouncements to those of a “religious zealot.” Meanwhile, I was taken aback when I saw an allegation I had missed earlier this year from the British biographer of Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (King Charles’s great-uncle) that the United States government recently destroyed World War II-era files reporting allegations that Mountbatten was a “homosexual” with a preference for young boys at the request of the British government. Andrew Lownie reported the contents of the files in 2019, and he now writes that a U.S. official told him that additional documents were destroyed “after you had asked for them” to whitewash history. (Multiple men have claimed Mountbatten, who was assassinated in 1979, abused them, and at least one is suing for compensation.)
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of August 28–September 3:
- When James Dean Was Too Queer for Disney
- George Knapp Speculates That “God” Might Be an Evil Space Alien
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 11 • September 10, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
I am delighted to announce that I have partnered with Applause Books to publish my biography of James Dean next year. I am deeply appreciative of the tireless work of my agent, Lee Sobel, in helping to find my book the best possible home, and for the support and enthusiasm of my editor at Applause, Chris Chappell. Publication of the book is the culmination of a years-long journey that began when I happened upon Rebel without a Cause on Turner Classic Movies one day during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and involved the largest and most comprehensive literature and archival research into James Dean’s life and legacy ever conducted. I am so thankful to have found a team that believes in my book and my work and wants to help me share with the world a story that needs to be told. You can read more of my announcement at the link below.
Now comes the hard part: I have to illustrate the book, secure permissions, and go through the editing process!
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of September 4–10:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 11 • September 10, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
I am delighted to announce that I have partnered with Applause Books to publish my biography of James Dean next year. I am deeply appreciative of the tireless work of my agent, Lee Sobel, in helping to find my book the best possible home, and for the support and enthusiasm of my editor at Applause, Chris Chappell. Publication of the book is the culmination of a years-long journey that began when I happened upon Rebel without a Cause on Turner Classic Movies one day during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and involved the largest and most comprehensive literature and archival research into James Dean’s life and legacy ever conducted. I am so thankful to have found a team that believes in my book and my work and wants to help me share with the world a story that needs to be told. You can read more of my announcement at the link below.
Now comes the hard part: I have to illustrate the book, secure permissions, and go through the editing process!
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of September 4–10:
- Applause Books to Publish My James Dean Biography Next Year
- Review of Ancient Aliens S19E19 “The Top Ten Mysteries of the Deep”
- The Return of the Stasis Tomb of the Red-Haired Giants
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 12 • September 17, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
When David Grusch made his public accusations about a secret program to reverse engineer alien spaceships, supporters pointed to the complaint he filed with the Intelligence Community Inspector General as proof that Grusch’s stories were more than folklore. Leading ufologists alleged that the ICIG had spoken to dozens of witnesses and investigated saucer warehouses and other elements of the secret program, which was deemed an “urgent” and “credible” concern. This week we learned that this talking point was more propaganda, a willful distortion of reality to lend spurious credibility to Grusch’s familiar UFO fantasies. In response to a demand from several members of the House of Representatives for copies of the evidence, the ICIG informed Congress that the office “has not conducted any audit, inspection, evaluation, or review of alleged UAP programs.” In short, their only involvement was to evaluate Grusch’s claims of retaliation—just as the law firm representing Grusch tried to tell us when they distanced themselves from his crashed saucers stories earlier this summer.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of September 11–17:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 12 • September 17, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
When David Grusch made his public accusations about a secret program to reverse engineer alien spaceships, supporters pointed to the complaint he filed with the Intelligence Community Inspector General as proof that Grusch’s stories were more than folklore. Leading ufologists alleged that the ICIG had spoken to dozens of witnesses and investigated saucer warehouses and other elements of the secret program, which was deemed an “urgent” and “credible” concern. This week we learned that this talking point was more propaganda, a willful distortion of reality to lend spurious credibility to Grusch’s familiar UFO fantasies. In response to a demand from several members of the House of Representatives for copies of the evidence, the ICIG informed Congress that the office “has not conducted any audit, inspection, evaluation, or review of alleged UAP programs.” In short, their only involvement was to evaluate Grusch’s claims of retaliation—just as the law firm representing Grusch tried to tell us when they distanced themselves from his crashed saucers stories earlier this summer.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of September 11–17:
- Review of Ancient Aliens S19E20: “The Top Ten Alien Petroglyphs”
- Jaime Maussan Displays Fossilized “Aliens” at Mexican Congressional UFO Hearing
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 13 • September 24, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, the country—or, more specifically, American women—were captivated by a TikTok trend in which women asked the men in their lives how often they thought about the Roman Empire. The women making these videos professed shock that many men thought frequently about ancient history, or, really, that men had thoughts at all that didn’t revolve around money, sports, and sex. (As should be obvious, there is no statistical data backing up a self-selecting group of TikTok users.) The media coverage of the TikTok trend was worse than the original videos themselves, with innumerable writers, journalists, historians, and psychologists—mostly female—offering an odd mixture of claims that they themselves rarely have any thoughts beyond pop culture and condemnation of men for thinking about the past since (a) thinking is bad because it distracts from reacting to the present and (b) thinking about history in particular means you are racist and misogynistic. Certainly, there are right-wing abusers of ancient history who use antiquity as a cover for hate (similar to the right’s connect to UFOs and ancient astronauts), but the undercurrent of the discussion is less about the politics of the past than seeming upset at discovering that other people have thoughts that are not immediately known to us, and a defensiveness from those who seem proud about not thinking about much at all.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of September 18–24:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 13 • September 24, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, the country—or, more specifically, American women—were captivated by a TikTok trend in which women asked the men in their lives how often they thought about the Roman Empire. The women making these videos professed shock that many men thought frequently about ancient history, or, really, that men had thoughts at all that didn’t revolve around money, sports, and sex. (As should be obvious, there is no statistical data backing up a self-selecting group of TikTok users.) The media coverage of the TikTok trend was worse than the original videos themselves, with innumerable writers, journalists, historians, and psychologists—mostly female—offering an odd mixture of claims that they themselves rarely have any thoughts beyond pop culture and condemnation of men for thinking about the past since (a) thinking is bad because it distracts from reacting to the present and (b) thinking about history in particular means you are racist and misogynistic. Certainly, there are right-wing abusers of ancient history who use antiquity as a cover for hate (similar to the right’s connect to UFOs and ancient astronauts), but the undercurrent of the discussion is less about the politics of the past than seeming upset at discovering that other people have thoughts that are not immediately known to us, and a defensiveness from those who seem proud about not thinking about much at all.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of September 18–24:
- Gillibrand on UFOs: “Some Look Like Drones, Some Look Like Balloons”
- Was Werner Muensterburger Really “James Dean's Analyst”?
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 14 • October 1, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
It's been a bit of a difficult week for me. Unfortunately, I have been swamped with work, family issues, prior commitments, and book publishing obligations, and this has left me no time for writing blog posts this week. Truthfully, it will likely be a couple of weeks before things calm down enough for me to do any substantive writing that I’m not getting paid for. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends to keep up with the volume of obligations, but something has to give. There are only so many hours in the day.
In the meantime, enjoy Douglas Johnson’s continuing coverage of Jacques Vallée’s and Paola Harris’s Trinity UFO hoax. In the latest development, Vallée and Harris are looking to seal a Disney movie deal for their fake UFO story, while an upcoming UFO documentary helps to legitimize the story by giving the goofy “avocado-shaped” craft a sleek, cylindrical CGI makeover.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of September 25–October 1:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 14 • October 1, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
It's been a bit of a difficult week for me. Unfortunately, I have been swamped with work, family issues, prior commitments, and book publishing obligations, and this has left me no time for writing blog posts this week. Truthfully, it will likely be a couple of weeks before things calm down enough for me to do any substantive writing that I’m not getting paid for. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends to keep up with the volume of obligations, but something has to give. There are only so many hours in the day.
In the meantime, enjoy Douglas Johnson’s continuing coverage of Jacques Vallée’s and Paola Harris’s Trinity UFO hoax. In the latest development, Vallée and Harris are looking to seal a Disney movie deal for their fake UFO story, while an upcoming UFO documentary helps to legitimize the story by giving the goofy “avocado-shaped” craft a sleek, cylindrical CGI makeover.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of September 25–October 1:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 15 • October 8, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
In a recent statement, Jacques Vallée grudgingly admitted that some of Doug Johnson’s criticisms of his 1945 Trinity UFO crash claims are in fact valid and that he and co-author Paola Harris “missed” key information. They did so, he claimed, only because they were working in the field with real people, while Johnson used “libraries”—implying this was a less valid source of research, an odd claim from a man whose claim to fame rests on UFO books packed with cherry-picked “mysterious” ancient texts from libraries. Vallée conceded that the police officer allegedly involved in the incident could not have been there since his military service record shows him in Europe at the time. He also conceded that a nine-year-old did not have a valid driver’s license. However, while Vallée said that he would be revising his Trinity: The Biggest Secret book in light of Johnson’s research, but he claimed that the admittedly faulty memories of the old men he trusts should not be proof that their memories are, indeed, faulty about the most important issue—whether tiny space monsters chased them around an avocado-shaped spaceship as tiny tots.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of October 2–October 8:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 15 • October 8, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
In a recent statement, Jacques Vallée grudgingly admitted that some of Doug Johnson’s criticisms of his 1945 Trinity UFO crash claims are in fact valid and that he and co-author Paola Harris “missed” key information. They did so, he claimed, only because they were working in the field with real people, while Johnson used “libraries”—implying this was a less valid source of research, an odd claim from a man whose claim to fame rests on UFO books packed with cherry-picked “mysterious” ancient texts from libraries. Vallée conceded that the police officer allegedly involved in the incident could not have been there since his military service record shows him in Europe at the time. He also conceded that a nine-year-old did not have a valid driver’s license. However, while Vallée said that he would be revising his Trinity: The Biggest Secret book in light of Johnson’s research, but he claimed that the admittedly faulty memories of the old men he trusts should not be proof that their memories are, indeed, faulty about the most important issue—whether tiny space monsters chased them around an avocado-shaped spaceship as tiny tots.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of October 2–October 8:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 16 • October 15, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
Lue Elizondo promised on X (formerly Twitter) that something or another is definitely going to happen next year: “please know that ongoing efforts are underway that will reveal themselves by early to mid 2024. At the risk of haters trying to sabotage our efforts, I can’t be precise at this time.” It can’t be anything too exciting if “haters” can stop it simply with the power of scorn. The announcement seemed timed to steal some of the thunder from James Lataski, Colm Kelleher, and George Knapp, who recently self-published a second book about the Pentagon’s long-ago UFO program, in which they called Lue Elizondo a liar and asserted that not a penny of the money that Harry Reid appropriated for hunting werewolves on Skinwalker Ranch ever went to Elizondo’s “informal” UFO investigation.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of October 9–15:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 16 • October 15, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
Lue Elizondo promised on X (formerly Twitter) that something or another is definitely going to happen next year: “please know that ongoing efforts are underway that will reveal themselves by early to mid 2024. At the risk of haters trying to sabotage our efforts, I can’t be precise at this time.” It can’t be anything too exciting if “haters” can stop it simply with the power of scorn. The announcement seemed timed to steal some of the thunder from James Lataski, Colm Kelleher, and George Knapp, who recently self-published a second book about the Pentagon’s long-ago UFO program, in which they called Lue Elizondo a liar and asserted that not a penny of the money that Harry Reid appropriated for hunting werewolves on Skinwalker Ranch ever went to Elizondo’s “informal” UFO investigation.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of October 9–15:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 17 • October 22, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, I did a guest spot on the Oct. 19 edition of the Heidi Glaus Show with Josh Gilbert on KTRS 550 AM in St. Louis to discuss the ethics of displaying human remains in museums.
In a review for the Times of London for the U.K. release of the documentary Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed, journalist Kevin Maher wrote that the “allegations” that Hudson had a promiscuous and voracious appetite for gay sex “never fully made sense” to him until Maher heard a recorded phone call in which Hudson contracted with a studio fixer to have a young man delivered to his home for sex after asking about the man’s penis size. What Maher meant is that he wasn't able to comprehend that the heterosexual screen characters Hudson played weren't actually the real man until confronted with indisputable proof in Hudson’s own words. It's an astonishing admission of the will to believe fantasy over fact, and it’s also one I’ve encountered time and again in writing about James Dean.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of October 16–22:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 17 • October 22, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, I did a guest spot on the Oct. 19 edition of the Heidi Glaus Show with Josh Gilbert on KTRS 550 AM in St. Louis to discuss the ethics of displaying human remains in museums.
In a review for the Times of London for the U.K. release of the documentary Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed, journalist Kevin Maher wrote that the “allegations” that Hudson had a promiscuous and voracious appetite for gay sex “never fully made sense” to him until Maher heard a recorded phone call in which Hudson contracted with a studio fixer to have a young man delivered to his home for sex after asking about the man’s penis size. What Maher meant is that he wasn't able to comprehend that the heterosexual screen characters Hudson played weren't actually the real man until confronted with indisputable proof in Hudson’s own words. It's an astonishing admission of the will to believe fantasy over fact, and it’s also one I’ve encountered time and again in writing about James Dean.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of October 16–22:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 18 • October 29, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, members of the House of Representatives met with the Intelligence Community Inspector General in a secure facility to discuss the classified information behind so-called “UFO whistleblower” David Grusch’s claims. Lawmakers left disappointed, variously saying that the ICIG offered nothing of substance and that there was no evidence of space aliens. One called it a waste of time.
Meanwhile, Showtime debuted Fellow Travelers, its lavish miniseries about a secret gay romance during the McCarthy-era Lavender Scare and the subsequent gay rights movement. Although the series is intended as an all-caps GAY HISTORY lesson, I found the first episode to be underwhelming as history or as drama. Like too many book adaptations, the script assumes the viewer has read the novel on which it is based, barely sketching what is going on. Given the unfamiliarity of the Lavender Scare to many viewers, choosing not to explain it, or McCarthyism (which is fast fading from popular memory, even as Republicans revive it) makes for some confusing scenes. The series also perpetuates stereotypes about the 1950s, never mentioning the word “gay” or “homosexual” and having various officials only hint darkly a sin whose name cannot be spoken. But even a casual glance at newspapers of the era gives the lie to that. While it’s true that they didn’t say the word on the radio or TV, in print and in spoken conversations, references to “fags,” “homos,” “swishes,” and “fairies” were common. Newspaper columnists openly fantasized about beating and murdering gay men, and letters to the editor columns teemed with angry missives about “queers.” It wasn’t a secret, nor was the hate hidden.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of October 23–29:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 18 • October 29, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, members of the House of Representatives met with the Intelligence Community Inspector General in a secure facility to discuss the classified information behind so-called “UFO whistleblower” David Grusch’s claims. Lawmakers left disappointed, variously saying that the ICIG offered nothing of substance and that there was no evidence of space aliens. One called it a waste of time.
Meanwhile, Showtime debuted Fellow Travelers, its lavish miniseries about a secret gay romance during the McCarthy-era Lavender Scare and the subsequent gay rights movement. Although the series is intended as an all-caps GAY HISTORY lesson, I found the first episode to be underwhelming as history or as drama. Like too many book adaptations, the script assumes the viewer has read the novel on which it is based, barely sketching what is going on. Given the unfamiliarity of the Lavender Scare to many viewers, choosing not to explain it, or McCarthyism (which is fast fading from popular memory, even as Republicans revive it) makes for some confusing scenes. The series also perpetuates stereotypes about the 1950s, never mentioning the word “gay” or “homosexual” and having various officials only hint darkly a sin whose name cannot be spoken. But even a casual glance at newspapers of the era gives the lie to that. While it’s true that they didn’t say the word on the radio or TV, in print and in spoken conversations, references to “fags,” “homos,” “swishes,” and “fairies” were common. Newspaper columnists openly fantasized about beating and murdering gay men, and letters to the editor columns teemed with angry missives about “queers.” It wasn’t a secret, nor was the hate hidden.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of October 23–29:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 19 • November 5, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, the new Speaker of the House, Christian conservative Mike Johnson, came under fire for his past comments on homosexuality, notably his claim that gay marriage is a cancer that would lead to the collapse of Western civilization. But more humorously, CNN unearthed a 2008 clip this week that revealed that Johnson believes that “rampant homosexuality” was responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire: “Many historians, those who are objective, would look back and recognize and give some credit to the fall of Rome to, not only the deprivation of the society and the loss of morals, but also to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society.” The Roman Empire fell, of course, when it was officially Christian and had Christian laws.
Meanwhile, Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, the Indonesian government-affiliated geologist who claims Gunung Padang in Indonesia is a prehistoric pyramid complex that coincidentally makes Indonesia the oldest civilization on Earth, published a new paper repeating the claim, to the delight of Graham Hancock, who claims it is “vindication” of his speculations. However, Natawidjaja only provided radiocarbon dates for organic material buried within the hill of Gunung Padang without providing evidence of human occupation at the time or of human deposition of the organic material.
Finally, the Daily Mail reported that Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the Pentagon’s UFO office, will resign in the coming weeks following months of attacks from ufologists in the mainstream media and on social media that he is too closed to witnesses’ extraterrestrial claims, is hiding the “truth,” and is too willing to work with alleged conspirators hiding UFO evidence. He is rumored to be replaced with a candidate more open to space aliens.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of October 30–November 5:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 19 • November 5, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, the new Speaker of the House, Christian conservative Mike Johnson, came under fire for his past comments on homosexuality, notably his claim that gay marriage is a cancer that would lead to the collapse of Western civilization. But more humorously, CNN unearthed a 2008 clip this week that revealed that Johnson believes that “rampant homosexuality” was responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire: “Many historians, those who are objective, would look back and recognize and give some credit to the fall of Rome to, not only the deprivation of the society and the loss of morals, but also to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society.” The Roman Empire fell, of course, when it was officially Christian and had Christian laws.
Meanwhile, Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, the Indonesian government-affiliated geologist who claims Gunung Padang in Indonesia is a prehistoric pyramid complex that coincidentally makes Indonesia the oldest civilization on Earth, published a new paper repeating the claim, to the delight of Graham Hancock, who claims it is “vindication” of his speculations. However, Natawidjaja only provided radiocarbon dates for organic material buried within the hill of Gunung Padang without providing evidence of human occupation at the time or of human deposition of the organic material.
Finally, the Daily Mail reported that Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the Pentagon’s UFO office, will resign in the coming weeks following months of attacks from ufologists in the mainstream media and on social media that he is too closed to witnesses’ extraterrestrial claims, is hiding the “truth,” and is too willing to work with alleged conspirators hiding UFO evidence. He is rumored to be replaced with a candidate more open to space aliens.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of October 30–November 5:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 20 • November 12, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, Australian UFO journalist Ross Coulthart completed his transformation from flying saucer caterpillar to full Ancient Aliens-style butterfly when he emerged as an ancient astronaut theorist in postings on X, formerly Twitter. Coulthart reposted claims that Egyptian stone-working techniques were impossible without modern technology and heavily implied that he believed space aliens were behind ancient Egyptian wonders. In a podcast, he further displayed his kinship to his fellow UFO carnival barkers by accidentally admitting that the “sources” he relies on for claims such as his assertion that a spaceship the size of a football field lies buried beneath an unnamed federal building don’t actually have firsthand knowledge. He repeatedly claimed that his sources “think” UFOs are real and “We suspect there’s a coverup going on inside our own government. We think there are people in private aerospace that know a lot more than they’re letting on. We think there are people in our military and our intelligence services that are lying to cover it all up, and we think it was all part of a misguided attempt to conceal this during the Cold war…” People with firsthand knowledge of aliens wouldn’t “think” or “suspect” facts that they actually know. His sources would appear to be the same group of “insiders” who have mistaken paperback UFO books of the 1950s and 1960s for secret revelations since the 1950s and 1960s.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of November 6–12:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 20 • November 12, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, Australian UFO journalist Ross Coulthart completed his transformation from flying saucer caterpillar to full Ancient Aliens-style butterfly when he emerged as an ancient astronaut theorist in postings on X, formerly Twitter. Coulthart reposted claims that Egyptian stone-working techniques were impossible without modern technology and heavily implied that he believed space aliens were behind ancient Egyptian wonders. In a podcast, he further displayed his kinship to his fellow UFO carnival barkers by accidentally admitting that the “sources” he relies on for claims such as his assertion that a spaceship the size of a football field lies buried beneath an unnamed federal building don’t actually have firsthand knowledge. He repeatedly claimed that his sources “think” UFOs are real and “We suspect there’s a coverup going on inside our own government. We think there are people in private aerospace that know a lot more than they’re letting on. We think there are people in our military and our intelligence services that are lying to cover it all up, and we think it was all part of a misguided attempt to conceal this during the Cold war…” People with firsthand knowledge of aliens wouldn’t “think” or “suspect” facts that they actually know. His sources would appear to be the same group of “insiders” who have mistaken paperback UFO books of the 1950s and 1960s for secret revelations since the 1950s and 1960s.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of November 6–12:
- Defender of Graham Hancock Claims I Am a “Collaborator” with Depraved Elites
- On the Fantasy of a Primeval Gunung Padang Pyramid
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 21 • November 19, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, Avi Loeb threw a fit after some new research claimed that the microspherules he proclaimed to be likely evidence of an interstellar object or even an alien space probe were instead coal ash, industrial pollutants, debris from common solar system meteorites, or a combination of these. Loeb compared his critics, including (again) “bloggers,” to the totalitarian regime from Orwell’s 1984 and then jetted off to Garry Nolan’s SOL Foundation UFO conference to join other UFO “transparency” advocates in secret presentations that attendees were forbidden from photographing or describing, at least until SOL could package video recordings themselves and control the narrative—you know, transparency.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of November 13–19:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 21 • November 19, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, Avi Loeb threw a fit after some new research claimed that the microspherules he proclaimed to be likely evidence of an interstellar object or even an alien space probe were instead coal ash, industrial pollutants, debris from common solar system meteorites, or a combination of these. Loeb compared his critics, including (again) “bloggers,” to the totalitarian regime from Orwell’s 1984 and then jetted off to Garry Nolan’s SOL Foundation UFO conference to join other UFO “transparency” advocates in secret presentations that attendees were forbidden from photographing or describing, at least until SOL could package video recordings themselves and control the narrative—you know, transparency.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of November 13–19:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 22 • November 26, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
I am happy to say that after a long negotiation, my publish and I have agreed enthusiastically on a tile for my forthcoming James Dean book. Once we agree on a subtitle, I’ll be able to share with everyone what we’ve chosen.
Meanwhile, the so-called “Schumer amendment” on UFO disclosure seems poised to disappear from the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act because of opposition from key Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson. The sticking point seems to be an overbroad eminent domain provision that would let the government seize any private property they suspect may be from outer space. However, ufologists are flipping their lid over the fizzling UFO disclosure movement, leading British writer Chris Sharp’s pro-UFO Liberation Times to quote one “source” (and since Sharp has only a few, we can guess who it likely is) as threatening that UFO believers will stage an insurrection if lawmakers don’t pass new UFO laws. Australian UFO gadfly Ross Coulthart seconded the motion in a podcast, calling for lawmakers who stand in the way of UFO laws to be dragged through the streets and tarred and feathered. Did I mention he got hired by NewsNation? Yes, NewsNation is where you can threaten violence against government officials and still get hired for new TV projects.
And in a bizarre repudiation of his own new book, UFO author Garrett M. Graff wrote a promotional piece for Rolling Stone in which he argued that we haven’t detected any alien life and aliens aren’t likely to have ever been here. This is quite the reversal from his book, in which he plays with the idea that the U.S. is covering up evidence of crashed alien saucers. He leaves a little wiggle room at the end of his Rolling Stone piece, but I wonder if the negative reviews for UFO, which have cast him as a gullible dilettante, have led him to seek some reputational damage control.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of November 20–26:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 22 • November 26, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
I am happy to say that after a long negotiation, my publish and I have agreed enthusiastically on a tile for my forthcoming James Dean book. Once we agree on a subtitle, I’ll be able to share with everyone what we’ve chosen.
Meanwhile, the so-called “Schumer amendment” on UFO disclosure seems poised to disappear from the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act because of opposition from key Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson. The sticking point seems to be an overbroad eminent domain provision that would let the government seize any private property they suspect may be from outer space. However, ufologists are flipping their lid over the fizzling UFO disclosure movement, leading British writer Chris Sharp’s pro-UFO Liberation Times to quote one “source” (and since Sharp has only a few, we can guess who it likely is) as threatening that UFO believers will stage an insurrection if lawmakers don’t pass new UFO laws. Australian UFO gadfly Ross Coulthart seconded the motion in a podcast, calling for lawmakers who stand in the way of UFO laws to be dragged through the streets and tarred and feathered. Did I mention he got hired by NewsNation? Yes, NewsNation is where you can threaten violence against government officials and still get hired for new TV projects.
And in a bizarre repudiation of his own new book, UFO author Garrett M. Graff wrote a promotional piece for Rolling Stone in which he argued that we haven’t detected any alien life and aliens aren’t likely to have ever been here. This is quite the reversal from his book, in which he plays with the idea that the U.S. is covering up evidence of crashed alien saucers. He leaves a little wiggle room at the end of his Rolling Stone piece, but I wonder if the negative reviews for UFO, which have cast him as a gullible dilettante, have led him to seek some reputational damage control.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of November 20–26:
- News Roundup: Coulthart’s JFK Conspiracies and SOL’s UFO Campaign Plans
- Avi Loeb Embraces Lost Prehistoric Civilization as Possible UFO Explanation
- Chris Mellon’s Incoherent UFO Analysis Reveals a Millennialist Salvation Fantasy
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 23 • December 3, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, the company that provides the newsletter distribution platform for this newsletter announced that it will be shutting the service down next month in order to focus on supporting more lucrative e-commerce email campaigns. I have been with this service for twelve years, but I don’t sell things through my newsletter, so paying a hefty monthly fee to continue sending out this newsletter isn’t an option. I’m trying to decide whether it is worth the effort to try to migrate my subscriber list to a new newsletter service or whether it is finally time to hang up the newsletter. Over the past three or four years, subscriptions to this newsletter have declined about 20%, and it might be more effective to simply combine my various content streams (blogs, essays, news summaries, etc.) into a single Substack email newsletter once per week.
I traditionally take time off writing a newsletter at the end of the year, so I will likely use that time to make some decisions about how to best present my content going forward. If you have preferences, please let me know.
Meanwhile, this week several Republican members of the House of Representatives held a news conference demanding UFO transparency in the wake of efforts by House leadership to kill Sen. Chuck Schumer’s UFO amendment, which would have given the government eminent domain over alleged space alien material. During the news conference, Rep. Andy Olges tied UFO secrecy to “wokeness,” the “Deep State,” and “border control,” reminding the media that flying saucers are increasingly a proxy for the usual power politics. The news conference didn’t stand a chance of breaking through the cloud of crazy surrounding the expulsion of George Santos the next morning.
NBC produced a documentary for Meet the Press Reports, “UFOs: Is the Truth Out There?”, asking if the government is hiding secrets about UFOs. They then hid the documentary in a late Friday night time slot on their relatively obscure streaming news channel NBC News Now. Clearly, they didn’t find “the truth” since the Today show the next morning didn’t lead with proof of extraterrestrial visitation.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of November 27–December 3:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 23 • December 3, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, the company that provides the newsletter distribution platform for this newsletter announced that it will be shutting the service down next month in order to focus on supporting more lucrative e-commerce email campaigns. I have been with this service for twelve years, but I don’t sell things through my newsletter, so paying a hefty monthly fee to continue sending out this newsletter isn’t an option. I’m trying to decide whether it is worth the effort to try to migrate my subscriber list to a new newsletter service or whether it is finally time to hang up the newsletter. Over the past three or four years, subscriptions to this newsletter have declined about 20%, and it might be more effective to simply combine my various content streams (blogs, essays, news summaries, etc.) into a single Substack email newsletter once per week.
I traditionally take time off writing a newsletter at the end of the year, so I will likely use that time to make some decisions about how to best present my content going forward. If you have preferences, please let me know.
Meanwhile, this week several Republican members of the House of Representatives held a news conference demanding UFO transparency in the wake of efforts by House leadership to kill Sen. Chuck Schumer’s UFO amendment, which would have given the government eminent domain over alleged space alien material. During the news conference, Rep. Andy Olges tied UFO secrecy to “wokeness,” the “Deep State,” and “border control,” reminding the media that flying saucers are increasingly a proxy for the usual power politics. The news conference didn’t stand a chance of breaking through the cloud of crazy surrounding the expulsion of George Santos the next morning.
NBC produced a documentary for Meet the Press Reports, “UFOs: Is the Truth Out There?”, asking if the government is hiding secrets about UFOs. They then hid the documentary in a late Friday night time slot on their relatively obscure streaming news channel NBC News Now. Clearly, they didn’t find “the truth” since the Today show the next morning didn’t lead with proof of extraterrestrial visitation.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of November 27–December 3:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 24 • December 10, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, Congressional efforts to enshrine Chuck Schumer’s proposed national UFO disclosure commission into law failed when House Republican leadership, apparently upset about the National Defense Authorization Act amendment’s eminent domain provision granting ownership of all extraterrestrial materials to the government and its potential threat to national security, signaled that it would not be included in the final version of the NDAA agreed to by negotiators from both houses of Congress. News of the impending death of the Schumer Amendment led ufologists into a tizzy, with some organizing a protest at the office of Rep. Mike Roberts, who led opposition to the amendment. Several of the military pilots who have become famous as UFO witnesses encouraged enraged UFO fans to protest Congress.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of December 4–10:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 24 • December 10, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
This week, Congressional efforts to enshrine Chuck Schumer’s proposed national UFO disclosure commission into law failed when House Republican leadership, apparently upset about the National Defense Authorization Act amendment’s eminent domain provision granting ownership of all extraterrestrial materials to the government and its potential threat to national security, signaled that it would not be included in the final version of the NDAA agreed to by negotiators from both houses of Congress. News of the impending death of the Schumer Amendment led ufologists into a tizzy, with some organizing a protest at the office of Rep. Mike Roberts, who led opposition to the amendment. Several of the military pilots who have become famous as UFO witnesses encouraged enraged UFO fans to protest Congress.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of December 4–10:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
THE JASON COLAVITO NEWSLETTER
• Vol. 23 • Issue 25 • December 17, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
I wish I could say that I was shocked that the Daily Mail reported that the so-called Schumer Amendment that would have declassified UFO documents and seized alleged “alien” artifacts from private hands was the work of the usual group of UFO advocates—including Travis Taylor, Lue Elizondo, and David Grusch—but I’m not surprised at all. Someday, schools will teach about this as a case study of the ease with which a group of looney tunes from cable TV with bizarre beliefs infiltrated Congress, bent them to their will, and secretly authored legislation to benefit their media projects and organizations.
This will be my last newsletter for 2023. My traditional holiday break is coming up. I won’t be writing a newsletter next weekend, and when the newsletter returns it will be via a new newsletter service (since my current one is shutting down), so be sure to check your spam filter in two weeks. I plan to post my annual year in review column sometime prior to New Year’s.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of December 11–17:
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
• Vol. 23 • Issue 25 • December 17, 2023 •
It’s been a busy week. Let’s see what’s new…
News
I wish I could say that I was shocked that the Daily Mail reported that the so-called Schumer Amendment that would have declassified UFO documents and seized alleged “alien” artifacts from private hands was the work of the usual group of UFO advocates—including Travis Taylor, Lue Elizondo, and David Grusch—but I’m not surprised at all. Someday, schools will teach about this as a case study of the ease with which a group of looney tunes from cable TV with bizarre beliefs infiltrated Congress, bent them to their will, and secretly authored legislation to benefit their media projects and organizations.
This will be my last newsletter for 2023. My traditional holiday break is coming up. I won’t be writing a newsletter next weekend, and when the newsletter returns it will be via a new newsletter service (since my current one is shutting down), so be sure to check your spam filter in two weeks. I plan to post my annual year in review column sometime prior to New Year’s.
On the Blog
In case you missed them, here are my best blog posts and Substack articles for the week of December 11–17:
- Daily Mail Reports the Usual UFO Suspects Secretly Wrote Schumer’s UFO Law
- Tucker Carlson Endorses Ancient Alien Ideas, Says “Dark” UFO Lore Frightens Him
Until next week, keep watching the skies!
Jason Colavito
• [email protected] • JasonColavito.com • @JasonColavito •
