Margaret Atwood accused of thinking moon landing was a hoax

When Margaret Atwood entered the Sun TV debate (in vehement opposition, of course), she opened herself up to the wrath of right-wing bloggers across the country. After a Twitter-based feud with SunMedia columnist Ezra Levant, her detractors began searching for skeletons. Good luck, we thought. It’s hard to imagine Atwood has done or said anything that she wouldn’t own up to. But the investigators did find something: a 2009 radio interview with a Sudbury high school student, who accused Peggy of believing the moon landing was a hoax.

Atwood, deadpan comedian that she is, responds:

The question about the moon landing is why haven’t we been back? It was done in an age where computers were as big as a couple of rooms. If you even look at the [2001: A Space Odyssey], HAL the computer, and I think that movie came out in the late ’60s, HAL the computer is huge. We didn’t yet have microchips. So I just wonder, how did they do that? Why haven’t they done it again if it was so easy?

When contacted by the National Post recently to explain her wacky theory (which, presumably, Sun TVers think will discredit Atwood), she made it clear that it was a running joke in Sudbury that the moon landing was shot there. “If you’re asking whether I believe either of these, on the whole, no, because too many people were involved—surely you couldn’t keep all of them from leaking.”

Guess the Margaret Atwood dirt search is still on, then. Too bad. We were looking forwarding to coining the term Moonie Maggie.

• Margaret Atwood thinks moon landing was fake—or does she? [National Post]