DEBRA GOLDMAN'S POSTSCRIPT: Alien Invasion In the weeks following the departure of Heaven's Gate members to the next level, I heard a radio interview with a concerned young rationalist. He went on the Internet, where the alien spaceship said to be hitchin

Whoa! The “average person” has to be convinced that spaceships aren’t tagging along on a comet’s tail? More than three centuries after Galileo, the average person doesn’t know that a comet is a ball of cosmic debris? The average person is, in other words, a gullible dope?
Maybe that is why viewers devote hours, evenings, even whole weeks to watching television shows and movies on aliens. In fact, it is tempting to blame the whole alien phenomenon on mass media.