Well, it’s official: My prediction back in June has proven true: The latest fantasy “Search for Amelia Earhart” is on its way back to reality, skunked again!
After twenty years of escorting gullible thrill seekers to Gardner Island in the Pacific, the “IGHAR” organization has yet again come away from their fantasy island empty handed.
After making monumental fools of themselves back in May and June with their usual brand of self-serving hyperbole and claims of “evidence” of finding Amelia Earhart, “TIGHAR” as it pompously calls itself, has begun their voyage of shame back to the U.S., and, also in their now predictable pattern, they are saying little about their colossal failure, as they begin the months of preparations for what one could be forgiven for predicting will be yet another issuance of claims of “evidence” followed by the announcement of, yes, another fantasy expedition to “Nikkumororo” after bulking up on financial contributions.
In late spring, as they began breathlessly hyping their latest exploit to the news media, the IGHAR posted a plea on their website for more money, promising, this time, to really, really, really, really bring home the definitive evidence that Amelia Earhart landed and died on “Nikkumororo,” leaving her Lockheed Electra lying upside down with its landing gear sticking up out of the Gardner Island lagoon in plain sight of any of the scores of people who have lived on or visited Gardner in the last seventy-five years to see. (There were, of course, no reports).
In the highly unlikely event that any of my readers have been on a truly deserted island or for some other reason not read a newspaper or watched a television news program in the last twenty years, I will spell it out for you in plain, if rather exaggerated bold-faced type for emphasis:
AMELIA EARHART DID NOT LAND ON OR ANYWHERE NEAR, BY A FACTOR OF HUNDREDS OF MILES, GARDNER ISLAND. THERE IS NOT AND NEVER HAS BEEN ANY EVIDENCE THAT WOULD CAUSE A REASONABLE PERSON TO BELIEVE THAT AMELIA EARHART AND HER NAVIGATOR FREDERICK NOONAN ALIGHTED ON GARDNER ISLAND, OR ANYWHERE WITHIN HUNDREDS OF MILES OF THAT LOCATION.
More on what actually happened to Amelia Earhart may or not be posted here later, but one thing is certain, she didn’t land on Gardner Island or anywhere else in the Phoenix Islands. Period. That should be the end of it.
