Conspiracy theories

This truly boggles the mind: a few days ago the German state-owned TV channel ARD aired a 90-minute fictional episode which clearly implied that Bush & Co. organized the 9/11 attacks to gain oil and power. See Davids Medienkritik for all the details.
The Washington Times reports:

Many Germans think, for example, that the 1969 moon landing was faked, and a poll published in the weekly Die Zeit showed that 31 percent of Germans younger than 30 "think that there is a certain possibility that the U.S. government ordered the attacks of 9/11."

At the same time:

The U.S. Embassy in Berlin was not impressed with the latest episode, which seemed to use haunting Arabic music to portray Arabs and Muslims as innocent victims of American aggression.
"Any claim or suggestion that the United States government was behind the 9/11 disaster is absolutely absurd and not worthy of further comment," said Robert A. Wood, spokesman for the embassy.
A German diplomat in Washington said no one in Germany took the plot seriously because it was "pure fiction."
"It was so out of line with what people really think," the diplomat said, adding that the episode does not deserve further comment.

Are these guys out of their minds? "Not worthy of further comment"?! There should be an all-out diplomatic and media offensive rejecting and disproving these spurious, dangerous and insulting lies and the people charged with representing the US abroad are not even going to comment?! This is outrageous!
Anyway, why would over 7 million people watch such a thing if they thought (correctly) that it was totally ridiculous even to contemplate such a possibility? What would the reaction be if ARD produced a fictional TV drama in which Jews are depicted as fabricating the evidence proving the Holocaust happened? Would that be brushed off as "pure fiction"?