Cuban's Missile Crisis

I have struggled for a long time with this question: Is Mark Cuban a genius businessman, in the vein of so many self-made billionaires, or is he the luckiest damned geek who ever lived? Is he just the computer nerd his hairstyle and twisted logic suggest? Is he crazy? Is he crazy like a fox?

One thing is sure: He can be annoying.

I have defended Cuban in these pages several times. I have lauded his success as an NBA owner. I have called out the Galloways and Bondys of the world for their incessant criticisms of the man.

But now comes word that Cuban's Internet movie company, Magnolia, is set to distribute a re-tooled verions of the controversial piece of trash called "Loose Change." This is the movie the Bushwhackers and conspiracy theorists love to tout. This is the movie that strings together a dubious chain of "evidence" to suggest that 9/11 was an inside job, that Bush and his cronies in a vast (and vast would be an understatement) conspiracy actually pulled off the attacks of 9/11 to give little George a reason to go finish the job on Saddam that big George started.

The suggestion is not just aberrant; it is abhorrant. It is dispicable. It is disgusting. It is a slap in the face to the American government, the thousands who died and/or lost loved ones on 9/11, and the subsequent thousands of American soldiers who have put themselves in harm's way.
Cuban may have some level of genius in him. But his decision to align himself in any way with this film proves unequivocally that he has no concept of the reality of public perception or the damage he may do his own cause as owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

It seems, with his failed reality show, his constant outcries, his frequent odd statements (remember, he said the Kobe rape thing would be "good" for the NBA), and his sundry ways of keeping himself in the news, that the man is an attention whore.

Well, he is bound to get some attention from this.

(Sigh.) Go, Mavs.

(See Mark Davis' opinion piece on the subject here.)