Catching up with Ward

I've been lousy at staying abreast of Ward Churchill-related news lately. Luckily there's a tutu-ed, eyepatched, peglegged, parrot-abusing freak out there who does nothing but keep his one good eye on Churchill, and from whom most of the following is blatantly stolen (look ma, I'm WorldNetDaily!).

Last week, of course, was Shoreline Community College's egregious violation of Churchill's Second Amendment rights when it photoshopped his AK-47 right out of his hands. The pic was all over, but for completeness' sake Drunkablog reproduces it here:


Who took my bongos: Ward as peace-loving hippie in Shoreline CC's rendering. . .

. . . And as violence-loving revolutionary in the original.

Also last week, the American Thinker misquoted Churchill in critical circumstances, and while they corrected themselves in the same post, the damage had been done. Not the first time Churchill's been embarrassingly misquoted, either.

Anyway, today Pirate Ballerina posts on the committee of "five stooges" named to examine Churchill's scholarship, and quotes what several have said about Churchill's work in the past. Gee, wonder why the "400 footnotes per chapter" guy isn't on it.

Update: Hellsapoopin' over at Pirate Ballerina, where one of the five stooges, Bruce Johansen, threatened unspecified "legal action" against the site for saying that there might be "some quid pro quo, since Churchill has defended Johansen's scholarship and endorsed a book Johansen edited."

After Johansen made his threat, however, PB replaced "quid pro quo" with "unacknowledged, perhaps serendipitous, and possibly unintentional mutual back-scratching."

Now how would you say that last phrase? Doesn't it virtually demand a sarcastic tone? I like it! Good change, PB!

Of course, I don't think there was anything wrong with the original "quid pro quo," since PB put that "may be" in front of it. But if the Drunkablog were a lawyer he'd have been disbarred long ago.

Oddly, as PB also points out, CU is apparently violating its own regulations in the composition of the investigating committee.

Finally, a small point: just before the quid pro quo sentence PB wrote, "Johansen has himself been criticized for falsifying his sources, and his historical fabulism has been called 'an elaborate hoax.'

In his initial answer Johanson says that he "suppose[s] you are aware that the selective quotes cited in Pirateballerina are 1/a high-school paper and 2/my own annotated bibliography that cites all manner of points of view on my work. Now that is doubly cute!" In fact, the "high-school paper" is apparently a Master's thesis by a high-school history teacher.

Update II: PB clarifies: "We contacted Mr. Cook and asked him about the status of his essay. He replied that it was a paper he wrote for a class in Native American Anthropology. He also noted that his M.Ed. is in Social Science Education. Mr. Cook also points out that PB erred in implying that his essay claimed that Professor Johansen 'falsified his sources' when in fact, Mr. Cook's essay pointed out that 'others criticized [Johansen's] history and suggested it was fiction.'"

Still not sure from this whether the paper in question was Cook's Master's thesis (he calls it a thesis, anyway). But you get the idea.

Update III: That whole PB post cited just above is a must-read, by the way. I mean, there's Churchill fun going on practically as we speak, so where else would you go?