Mike Judge Used Alex Jones to Inform Dale’s ‘King of the Hill’ Conspiracy Theories

Alex Jones, the internet conspiracy theorist seemingly birthed by the thought experiment “What if an infected hemorrhoid became a dietary supplement pitchman?” has been in the news a lot this week. Why? Well, first for pretending to cry during an Infowars broadcast, and then for being the subject of an emergency motion filed by the families of the Sandy Hook school shooting, asking a bankruptcy judge to liquidate his media empire in order to pay the $1.5 billion he owes for publicly defaming them. 

You’d think that most respected creatives would stay the hell away from this flaming trash bag of a human being, but that wasn’t always the case. In addition to regrettably popping up in a couple of early 2000s Richard Linklater movies, Jones had some degree of influence on Arlen, Texas’ resident conspiracy theorist: Dale Gribble.

While King of the Hill creator Mike Judge denies that he based Dale on Jones, he did admit to taping Jones’ show back when the future pariah was just a local Texas cook with a public access cable show. After the first season of King of the Hill had been completed, Judge brought the tape of Jones into work, telling his writers, “Here’s a guy with all of these crazy conspiracy theories.” It wasn’t just Jones, there were two equally unhinged guests on the show, hence the reason why Judge labeled the tape “Three Dales.”

Less defensibly, Judge once sat down for an interview with Jones, and told the Infowars host that Dale was the type of conspiracy theorist who “gives you guys a bad name.” What?!?!

Judge later claimed that he only met with Jones because they had a “bunch of mutual friends in Austin” and this was “before he went completely cuckoo and completely off the deep end.” But during the interview, Judge discussed Jones’ notorious appearance on Piers Morgan’s CNN show, in which he freaked out and accused Morgan of personally trying to steal his guns.

One could argue that this itself qualifies as “completely cuckoo,” although Judge seemed to agree with the spittle-filled rant. “I was thinking right on Alex, go for it,” Judge stated, adding, “I thought everything you were saying was true, too, (in) the clip that I saw.”

Also, the Morgan interview occurred in 2013, meaning that Judge’s chat with Jones had to have happened after Jones began his “campaign of abuse” against the Sandy Hook families, which, according to court documents, began on December 19, 2012, less than a week after the tragedy.

Hopefully, Judge isn’t still on the same page as Jones. Nobody wants to see a King of the Hill reboot where Dale tries to weasel his way out of paying over a billion dollars to grieving families he emotionally tortured. 

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