Terrordome! Liveblogged Ward Churchill interview!

Hip music. Guess it's hip music. Or maybe it's hip-hop music. How would I know? Okay, here we go: Afrika-all world news service! The radiophonic truth-tonic, Minister Faust!

Minister Faust talks even better than me do.

Why do all these campus stations have 15-minute interludes between, well, everything?

Showtime! Minister is saying the "requiring sober reflection" crap word for word. Right wing stormtrooper Bill O'Reilly, etc. . . Minister only sounds like a toff. He can't write for shit.

Wart!

Minister: What kind of solutions can white folks participate in?

Wart: You see that's there a relationship between your wealth and their poverty. Values clarification.

And they may experience something of what it's like to be treated like an Indian. G. Bush, D. Cheney, Rumsfeld [sic] etc. might be the best organizers the left's ever had. . .

Minister: Won't they [white folks] turn to fascism?

Ward: They're already fascist. Putting others' resources to their own uses . . . Hitler's popularity also based on taking the property from others . . . It's not fundamentally diff from the whole settler crux here. . . As long as they maintain this false privilege, well, we'll see how it shakes out . . .

Naomi Klein (gee, he must read Try-Works) and her Shock Doctrine. Signifiers of wealth . . .
They're not cutting many blacks or minorities in on the deal. Imminent collapse of economy. Eighty or ninety percent of the population are getting poorer . . . Five percent get everything . . . Not the flunkies, the mouthpieces for neo-conservatism . . . Gunga Din Syndrome . . . (Minister Faulk: Uncle Toms!)

Wart: Indians were all supposed to be dead. Stated goal of settler society was eradication . . . Indians are only .5 percent of population, so they can be ignored . . . they don't fly planes into buildings either . . .

Thanks, Ward: "No, not all white people would have to leave North America . . . "

Musical interlude . . .

Minister: Nice to see Jewish-Canadians who realize that there were 3 million Roma killed by the Nazis . . .

Ward: I've never heard that number before . . . [he liked it though].

There've been many genocides . . . If you don't realize that, you practically guarantee there'll be more . . .

Preventing births within the target population is also genocide . . . (Ward's anti-abortion!). Bullshit that you have to prove intent to prove genocide . . . that's a form of denial . . .

Oh no, he's citing page numbers [I think from Lemkin's Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe. ]

Compensation for the Holocaust was provided to the Jews by the Palestinians . . . Latvians, Poles, etc., should have paid, but the Palestinians, who took no part, shouldn't . . . How did they become magically liable for the losses Jews suffered in Europe . . .

Minister: Imperialism kills people!

Ward: Killing wogs worldwide! The sun never sets! People were being ground into hamburger. Used as toilet paper! Kitchener!

U.S. did the same thing as Nazi Germany, but Germany lost. We're still proud of it, and the body count would at least have equalled Hitler's . . .

Minister: You know what it's like to be attacked by a large group of people of ill repute . . .

Wart: Well said . . .

Minister: What's gotten you through this time?

Wart: Now we're playing on my turf and my turn to attack . . . Bill O'Reilly again . . .

My job was only a superficial signifier of what I am . . .

Minister: Slurp, slurp . . .

Wart (on the 9/11 piece): 8,000 e-mails in 30 days, and I turned some of them around. They were surprised to hear from me. I'm invited to Sunday dinner at a Baptist minister's . . . But there's a rabid zeitgeist . . .

The big dogs, I feel validated by being attacked by them . . . Sean Hannity? O'Reilly was obsessed . . . I called them by their right names . . .

Essentially, I'm a freedom fighter in the company of other freedom fighters . . . a truth-teller. I get a lot of support . . .

And done. Musical interlude. BBC World.

Update: Ward's words of the day! Signifier, polarity.

Columnist pens tome

The Denver Post's existentially lonely libertarian columnist David Harsanyi has a book out. The title does a pretty good job of describing its subject: Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children.

Just ordered a copy, so I'll let you know if it's any good.

(via Marathon Pundit)

Fascists on cots

The Secret Service, FBI, and a thousand Colorado National Guard troops will stay in area college dorms while providing security for the Democratic National Convention next August, according to the Denver Post.

The few thousand men and women who come here to guard the conventioneers and, by extension, the related hordes of media, lobbyists and visitors likely will find space at university dorms, on cots, and doubled up in whatever peripheral hotel rooms are available. Agents say it's a regrettable but common practice.

"The laws of supply and demand often dictate that we're not in a competitive position when we're looking for rooms," said Robert J. Garrity, Denver's new FBI special agent in charge. . . .

So no biggie. Here's the good part:

The Colorado Army National Guard is considering housing 1,000 troops on campuses, some Denver-area university officials said.

Johnson & Wales University Denver campus president Bette Matkowski hopes they'll stay in the university's dorms near Stapleton for 10 days surrounding the convention, which is set for Aug. 25-28.

That's news: a thousand National Guardspersons (with their full complement, one assumes, of tear gas, pepper spray, stun grenades, rubber bullets, bean-bag guns, armored personnel carriers--the newly deployed "Corrie Crusher"--and big fucking sticks), ten minutes (well, 15) from the Pepsi Center.

Of course, Recreate68!'s Glenn Spagnuolo probably already knows all this, privy, as he's been made, to the Man's preparations.

Scary II

Noticed this in the sidebar of strange-but-interesting old guy Tom Roeser's blog:

**WARNING**Defamatory comments will not be tolerated and the individuals who post such comments will be turned over to authorities. Our "reader comments" system allows us to track IP addresses and we intend to collect as much information on posters as we possibly can. Thanks!

Scary

Minister Faust of Bro-Log will interview Ward Churchill tonight on the University of Alberta's CJSR FM (livestreamed here):

TONIGHT ON THE TERRORDOME: My conversation with Ward Churchill

Ward Churchill is often described as being controversial and confrontational. He’s also often described as accomplished and brilliant. Although his commentaries and speeches are nuanced, historically detailed and requiring sober reflection, audiences not ready for them often react with emotion and even invective.

Accomplished and brilliant. Nuanced, historically detailed and requiring sober reflection. The horror. Maybe I'll rig a speaker on the porch, see if Ward can't scare away all the extortionate little freaks who come around demanding candy tonight.

Update: Adam Sandler demands candy.

Update II: Minister Faust gets a lot wrong:

Churchill . . . was an associate professor of American Indian Studies and Communications at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Until he was recently forced to resign from the position, he had served as Associate Director of the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America at U.C. Boulder. Churchill resigned following a media firestorm led by right-wing stormtroopers such as Bill O’Reilly of the FOX network, after a post-911 essay Churchill had penned returned to light.

Tuesday Night at the Radio!

Halloween (almost) equals Suspense. Tonight, Lloyd Nolan (who blows his first line) in "Green-eyed Monster" (4 April 1947). Nice twist, especially for the time.

And Escape: "Evening Primrose" (12 September 1947).

Protester protests (lack of) protest coverage

A letter in the Post from one Loring Wirbel excoriates basically everybody in the media for not covering this weekend's antiwar rally:

The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, as well as Denver-area electronic media, simply do not have the right to ignore as significant a news event as the antiwar rally at the state Capitol on Saturday, one of the largest since the war
began [not true, or perhaps, true but pathetic]. . . .

No right? No right? What have there been, six or seven national/local anti-war protests since OIF began? Each one was dutifully covered, each one was a bigger embarrassment than the last, and all drew attention only to the utter corruption of the antiwar movement by communists, antisemites, bandanna-wearing narcissists, eco-airheads, just plain airheads, and lout-shouting (h/t JWP) fake indigenes. Denver's protests, including this latest, have followed the pattern.

So I agree, it should have been covered. In fact, it should have received a lot of coverage for the only newsworthy thing about it: its permeation by Truthers, who were everywhere, did brisk business at their merchandise stand, and were apparently welcomed with open arms by rally organizers.

Anyway, the euphoniously monickered Loring Wirbel continues:

Apparently, both Colorado and national media representatives need some lessons in remedial Journalism 101 [hey, I majored in remedial journalism 101!]. What celebrities do in their private lives is not news. Major sports events only are news to the extent they impact the local economy, like a World Series, but do not warrant occupying an entire front section of a print edition. Crime and chaos only are tangential news events [sic]. Real news is made by political leaders, business leaders, and particularly by common people exercising their civil rights and responsibilities as citizens.

Not even going to bother mocking that farrago (Okay: "Major sports events only are news to the extent they impact the local economy." One more? She doesn't know how to use "only.") More:

Sure, we all love to click on stories of Lindsay Lohan and Rockies human-interest angles first, as eye candy. But if journalists are going to retain any role as gatekeepers

And deep down, isn't that what we all want?

they need to mix in some nutrition with all the puff pieces. When major citizen events take place in Denver, it is unconscionable to snub them because they are less than fashionable.

Less than fashionable. A new synonym for "irrelevant."

This will not end well

Wanted to read a piece the other day at a website that requires registration, so I registered, putting in nonsense info. Everbody's done that, haven't they?

Anyway, one item they asked for was age, and, of course, not caring (I just wanted to read the stupid piece), I typed in "82." This isn't my true age, of course--I only look 82--but now I've got a problem. In the last three days I've received at least ten offers to be "friends" with various other members (all of which, God help me, I've accepted), as well as personal messages "blessing" me, lauding me for joining a web group at my advanced age, and practically offering to set me up for Meals On Wheels and (as I'm clearly a lonely widower) with their grandmothers.

Now what do I do? If I quit responding they'll think I've died. Maybe I'll keep up the pretense for a month or so and then quit. They'll hold a tearful wake at which they'll remember my wisdom and humor, put up a page of my pithier quotes ("Uh-oh, poopy-pants again!"), and quit bugging me.

To coin a phrase, Ward Churchill merely tip of plagiarism iceberg

Albeit a fat tip. A piece in the Grauniad today mentions America's favorite fake Indian:

This week at Durham University, professors are investigating whether a former dean of the business school is guilty of plagiarism.

Professor Tony Antoniou resigned this month over allegations he copied the work of his peers for his DPhil thesis and a later journal article. He remains a professor of finance at the university.

Meanwhile, at Wolverhampton University, lawyers are preparing for the tribunal of a senior lecturer who is appealing against being dismissed for plagiarism.

Further afield, allegations of plagiarism by academics are flying.

Six professors and the director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences were last month accused of fraudulently republishing their own material in different journals. One of the professors has claimed he was being framed.

At about the same time, a faculty panel discussed claims that sections of the doctoral dissertation of the president of Southern Illinois University, Glenn Poshard, were lifted from original works. They ruled it had been unintentional.

In July, Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado, was dismissed for committing academic misconduct by plagiarising and falsifying his research.

"The cases we hear about are probably just the tip of the iceberg," say Jude Carroll, a plagiarism expert at Oxford Brookes University, and Mike Reddy, a member of the Plagiarism Advisory Service for universities, students and academics.

Worth reading.

Update: PB links to a video puff piece on the two (count 'em!) radical ex-professors teaching free classes at CU this fall--and the wedgeheads who love them. I'll call it: "Guerilla Style":


So full of themselves you cringe watching it.

Actor falls apart

From Lisa Bornstein's review of a cowboy "Macbeth" (he's deputy sheriff in the Colorado town of "Bear Creek") in the RMN:

Hahn's Macbeth is commanding and moves from torn to engorged with power to a nearly disassembled state.

That's some acting.

Swept!

Oh well. Hell of a season for the Rockies, and Denver knows something about having to wait for championships (Broncos, 1977, 1986, 1987, 1989).

Update: Nice touch, the blue postgame-celebration safety goggles the Red Sox are sporting. Don't pop champagne corks in little Billy's face! You could put his eye out!

Ward withdrawal

So a google alert about a crate of books somebody's selling that includes Churchill's Kill the Indian, Save the Man got me all excited. Thirty bucks takes the crate, but unfortunately (unless you're a leftie new-age chick) the seller has the reading tastes of a leftie new-age chick. Crate might be useful. Kind of a lot to pay for a crate, though. The anatomy coloring book could be fun, if it's uncolored-in, and Why Unions Matter ("A wild roller-coaster ride! You'll be up all night!"--Cosmopolitan) would undoubtedly be entertaining, but I'll probably just hang on to my money.

Update: Yes, the World Series is on.

Sunday Night at the Radio!

Jack Benny night, of course. This one is known to Bennyists as the "Drear Pooson Fluff" show. Drew Pearson was a famous newspaper columnist. Right at the beginning Don Wilson calls him Drear Pooson. This leads to an ad lib much later in the show. This is a great one, with guests Frank Sinatra, Rosalind Russell, Michael Romanoff, owner of the then-famous Hollywood restaurant (checking notes) Romanoff's, and a stupid dog (8 January 1950) .

An Information Please with the usuals plus CBS correspondent and future popular historian Bill "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" Shirer and actor/writer/witty guy Christopher Morley (remember how he was force-fed his own little poodles in Theater of Blood? Now that's wit) (December 1942).

Weird Bird Friday!

Better late tha--aw, screw it.

But even the severest critics of Drunkablog™ brand Weird Bird Fridays (and you know who you are) will have to concede that the following birds are, indeed, weird:

Game!

Rockies are trying to come back! 6-5, bottom of the seventh, no outs. Helton on first.

Holliday strikes out on a changeup.

Hawpe, too (three, four).

El Presidente of Slapstick Politics was at the peace rally today as well, and got pics, which I have little doubt he will post. Right now, though, he's at the game.

Comebacker. Inning over. Sheet. Back to the rally post.

Top of the ninth, Rockies down again, 9-5.

10-5, and that's the way it ends. Game over, man.

Peace rally downtown Denver!

Regained consciousness early enough to make it to the anti-war rally in downtown Denver at noon today. I'll just post in no particular order and mess with captions and stuff while I watch the Rockies and Red Sox.








So proud: she waved Dick's hand for me. Hi, Dick!



Giant foam pot leaf (note rip in pants).



I don't get it.



I get it.



Death's-head Uncle Sam was available for pictures.



Thought this was kind of clever. Stolen from protest in a big city, probably.



About what?



Brought Billy Bob to wow the rubes. He didn't bite anybody!



No idea what this sign means. Never got a chance to see the other side.









A frequent comparison.



Not even a little one?



The past is unquestionably prelde.



Deaths-head Uncle Sam didn't have a whole lot of different poses.



And women's gentle laxative!



Crowd of 300-400 tops. They wanted it to be the biggest. gathering. ever. The band sucked, too.






Smilin' through.



Bandanna boy. It's not a real protest unless someone shows up wearing a bandanna.



Bandanna Boy rocks to (and with) the oldies.






Wing men.



Another Mercedes for peace.


Yacking away as usual.



Go Rockies! Go . . . Endless . . . War? (Talk about torture, the Rockies are down 6-0 in the first. Bru. tal.)



Lots o' Paulians.



And truthers (there's a diff?)



Truthers everywhere.



This crap will be worth a fortune someday, but I can't bring myself to give them money.



This is a peace sign ☮, goddamnit.



After you!






And what protest would be complete without . . .

General impressions: Same old. They were angry, of course. One speaker said, "I am SICK of coming here" (which, ditto). Another bitched that not a single television crew besides Fox (heh) had turned out, and urged the crowd several times to get on their cells, call the stations (she had their numbers) and demand that they send crews. The crowd did, but I don't think it made any difference.

Story: Billy Bob, being a dog, took a dump on the Capitol grass. As I headed over to a trash can to get a plastic bag, Bandanna Boy materialized in front of me, holding something in his hand. It was a poop bag. "Would you like one of these?" he asked, politely.

Update: EP of Slapstick Politics was at the rally and got good pics. He went to the World Series game that night, too. So did the Paulians.

Cowtown? How dare you!

The Post:

Denver restaurateurs are stocking the bubbly for the bonanza that the 2008 Democratic National Convention is expected to
provide. . . .

LoDo's Tamayo, with its terrace view of the Pepsi Center, where the Democrats are holding the convention, was booked solid months ago when a single Denver law firm bought out the restaurant from the Saturday the delegates arrive to the following Saturday. The convention runs Aug. 25-28. . . .

The firm expects to spend $10,000 to $20,000 per day.

The much-celebrated Restaurant Kevin Taylor [home of the Restaurant Kevin Taylor dancers] already has booked one complete sellout and five smaller parties during the convention.

Here's that number we keep hearing:

City officials project the convention will provide a $160 million direct economic bounce. Figuring out how to make the most of that money is occupying a lot of back-kitchen office time these days. . . .

There are also the 1,500 private parties and events expected to occur convention week.

Not counting the Drunkablog barbecue.

Owners are saying they expect to make anywhere from 20 percent to 50 percent more in the month of August. Such claims are always followed with: "That's a conservative estimate."

At the intimate Fruition Restaurant [yuck], on East Sixth Avenue, maitre d' Paul Attardi says he expects to reserve dinners only[.] But recent conversations with state Democratic Party officials have led him to believe he might see two "very important senators, if you know what I mean."

Would that be Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama?

"I don't want to name names," Attardi said.

Giggle. Swoon.

Cowtown-no-more update: Hannah Montana wows critics; Bon Jovi coming to Pepsi Center.

Insert stupid "hair" pun here

Michael Medved just read this and everybody else in the universe probably had it up hours ago, but I cut it out of the Denver Post at Common Grounds this morn (we leftists aren't big on private property, maaaaaaan) and I'm gonna post it:

Bidder has lock on Che's hair

A hair lock snipped from Ernesto "Che" Guevara before his burial in 1967 sold for $100,000 at auction Thursday to a Houston-area bookstore owner who called the Marxist "one of the greatest revolutionaries of the 20th century." Bill Butler, 61, won the 3-inch tress clipped from Guevara's mane after placing the only bid, which matched the reserve price. Butler said he was a collector of 1960s icons.

I'd rather have Ty Cobb's teeth (scroll down).

Update: "Lobotomies Last Forever: The Tim McCarver Story." I'd read it. Slowly.

Not a liveblog

But I'll hack up some deathless prose while watching the Rockies get slaughtered again by the Red Sox (hey, I'm nothing if not a fair-weather fan). Ro Gockies!

The local news ginks are comparing Coors Field with Fenway, mentioning Coors' wonderful modern escalators but not that one of them has been dubbed by many observers the escalator of death!

The Maoist Internationalist Movement reviews Blades of Glory:

Under the joint dictatorship of the proletariat we won't need this movie. . . .

The sort of hard-driving characters we see in "Blades of Glory" give the world a sense of how it is that the bourgeoisie can have a peculiar interest in northern Korea. Northern Korea is interesting because it says something about how two skating stars can profit. It is reminiscent of Lenin's comments about capitalists selling the rope contract for their hanging. . . .

Fun stuff (just kidding). "Northern" Korea. They give away the ending, too. Fucking communists.

Now the local news ginks are doing a story on how Japanese-Americans and just plain old Japanese in Denver go mental over Kaz Matsui. Aren't they being racist?

Now some goof who plowed "Good Luck Go Rockies" in his field, big enough for an aerial helicopter shot. There's the aerial helicopter shot. We're so bush. But I'm glad we use our precious and dwindling resources to do stunts like this.

The fall City Journal is out. It's Dalrymplicious!

National anthem sung by James Taylor. Hearing aids in both ears.

Game time.

Colorado on top 1-0 in the first, two oots.

Video of David Horowitz being forced to stop his speech at Emory University (via LGF).

Bottom second, two outs. Drew hbp. Just wanted to use that phrase: hbp. No idea what it means.

Really, City Journal has some good stuff.

Goooooood stuff.

Yup.

Oh, yeah! Baseball! Rockies up in the third. This is already kind of grueling. Hope readers (if any) feel the same!

Dogs faithfully stay by dead hunter's body--for almost a month (D-blog edit):

The dogs were found near his body in good well-fed condition. “They must have loved him a lot to stay with him for that long,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Andrea Cooper said.

Yummers.

Top of the fourth, still 1-0.

Understatement:

A man was sentenced to 70 years in prison today in the the brutal beating of a woman he held as his sex slave in a downtown hotel.

Jimmie Wellmon, 39, was charged in the Feb. 11, 2006, attack on a 26-year-old woman who was beaten, bitten, kicked, strangled, and burned with cigarettes in a room at the Adam's Mark Hotel.

Denver District Judge Catherine Lemon called Wellmon's crime "egregious."

A Speakout column ends ominously:

As much as ex-felons hold an obligation to reintegrate into society successfully — society must afford them every opportunity to succeed.

Otherwise, don’t bitch, when you come home late at night from work, and find my buddy, rummaging through your refrigerator.

Bottom of fourth, Sox just tied it with two out.

Rockies preserve the tie, just barely.

One-two-three inning.

Sixties radical Bettina Aptheker says she was molested by her Marxist historian father. Of course, she knows it happened through recovered memories:

Online, however, critics rapidly expressed doubts about Bettina's revelation. Participants on the H-Net discussion list of the History of American Communism homed in on her admission that she had failed to remember the abuse for decades. "Without corroboration, Bettina's recovered memories are less than convincing evidence," wrote Melvyn Dubofsky. FrontPage Magazine's David Horowitz went further: "I happen to suspect that the incest story is probably made up--because of everything we know about the repressed memory genre." Though less disbelieving, Ronald Radosh suggested, "She should have done this when he was alive, so he could answer." Clare Spark suggested Bettina Aptheker might be inventing tales "to demonstrate that she has overcome yet another assault by authority" or as "a way of getting attention from reviewers for her book."

Communists will believe anything. Yes, I know she claims a witness (to her father's confession), but recovered memory is a crock, and not a partial crock, neither.

Bottom of the fifth, Reds up 2-1, bases loaded, two outs. Rockies don't get out of this they're in big trouble.

Varitek popped up. Whew.

Everybody in America gets a free taco from Taco Bell because somebody on the Red Sox stole a base. I palpitate. Now the chest pains . . .

I'm so elitist. Actually I love the Taco Supreme (extra tomatoes). I just know that if I eat them very often I'll die. I'm wise like that.

They just pulled Schilling with Rockies on first and second, one out. Rockies need to score.

Ads for erectile disfunction? (Update: that is, ads for solutions to &tc.) I guess the kiddies need to know.

Rockies come up empty. Sheeee-yoot. But Chris, I mean Christ, it's only the middle of the fifth.

I want my taco.

Bottom of the sixth. Reds still up 2-1, two out, man at third.

I like the announcers, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, even though I believe it was McCarver who first used the the term "li'l nubber" to describe a ball hit in the infield.

First and third. New pitcher.

Rocks get out of it.

I'm just going to keep taking stuff from Arts and Letters Daily.

Boyz 2 Men doing God Bless America for the seventh. They started out flat, big-time. (Update: how old are B2M now, anyway? Early 50s?)

Okay, Rockies' 8th.

The BBC covers the fires in California as only the BBC can.

Tavares strikes out. Matsui strikes out. Pitching change. Holliday gets to first on a hot shot. Picked off! Nasty. Rockies' eighth over. Down to three outs.

Really, how did those dogs last a month with their dead owner? Fishing? Taco Bell?

Gross: "Kevin Rudd's earwax snack hits Youtube." A companion piece, of sorts, to the video of Gordon Brown enjoying a different kind of snack in Parliament (via Bros. Judd).

Okay, Rockies down to three outs. Helton falls behind.

Strikes out.

Fly out. Rockies down to one out.

0-2. Fans yumping up and down. Struck him out. Game over. Series comes to Denver with the Rockies in a beeeeeg hole.

Vine Deloria: Ward Churchill's mom told him he wasn't Indian

Over at PB, commenter Heidi has some choice quotes about Ward from Native American sage Vine Deloria, Jr.:

IMHO Vine Deloria would most likely not have supported Churchill. When I posed the question to him he didn't want to answer then went on to talk about the RMN article and how pretty convincing their research was. . . . At a follow-up interview he shared some damning information in regards to Churchill's ancestry, "His mother said to me [']I don't know why he insists on believing he has Indian ancestry. I've told him time and again that he has no Indian ancestry.[']" This is from Mr. Deloria himself. He chuckled after he disclosed that and went on again about the RMN article and [that he] didn't "understand why that guy didn't cite more reputable sources instead of his own." When I asked him about the Ethnic Studies program at CU (which Deloria had a hand in developing) he let a big sigh. I pushed him and asked him what kind of sigh that was. He said "the guy will never learn. He fails to follow a path laid out" and left it at that.

Update: Ward "Didn't Listen To His Mommy" Churchill will be speaking in Vancouver Sunday, according to a brief in Straight magazine (in their "City events for the socially conscience" section):

Sure to test the limits of free speech, controversial academic Ward Churchill, along with others, will be speaking at the Ukrainian Hall (154 East 10th Avenue) at 6 p.m. on Sunday (October 28). The event, No Olympics on Stolen Land, will focus on what the organizers call the Olympics’ “corporate invasion of indigenous territories”. Churchill, a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, was fired from the University of Colorado. He maintains that his dismissal was politically motivated (he made controversial comments about 9/11), whereas the university has claimed that it was the result of academic misconduct. Proceeds from the event will help pay Churchill’s legal bills.

Never seen that sentence before.

Update: Yes, the title changed--from dumb, to fabulous! Or at least descriptive.

More meaningless verbiage

Wartie spouts the usual porcine detergent to Edmonton's Vue Weekly. Difficult to find a quote to pull, he's said it all so many times. How about:

He likens the recent announcements of reparations for survivors of Canadian residential schools as relying on a car thief to decide what the punishment for auto theft ought to be.

“The perpetrators do not define what the appropriate remedy is to be,” Churchill argues, adding that, “the use of reparations is not only absurd but nauseating. How do you repair people who’ve been damaged in this fashion? How do you repair the societies that have been damaged as a result of the individuated trauma that was imposed? ... Witness the damage incurred by native societies. So, what’s the price of that? A little more than $30 000 a head and be done with it, hey?"

Hey.

Yuck

Westword laves Ward Churchill pals Glenn Spagnuolo of Recreate68! and Glenn Morris of Colorado AIM in a two-barfbucket piece that makes them out to be twin Mother Teresas--only, you know, hip 'n' edgy:

With his shaved head, goatee, solemn brow and a wardrobe of dark garments with many pockets, 37-year-old Glenn Spagnuolo looks the part of a revolutionary. He is articulate, quick-witted and can make great, impassioned speeches about injustice, racism and corporate greed without sounding like some mumbling hippie or foam-spitting radical.

Hoo, boy.

A quote from Spags: "[S]ometimes we don't choose history, history chooses us." Two-bucket piece, definitely.

Update: Spagnuolo was kicked out of the Woodbine project, but somehow Westword never says why. Very strange.

Update II:

The ANSWER Coalition will carry out a full-scale mobilization for the DNC protests, says national coordinator Brian Becker, with bus transportation and car caravans from the West Coast, East Coast and Midwest chapters. The group has been in contact with R-68, he adds, but ANSWER is holding off on deciding whether it will join up.

The Troops Out Now Coalition and the Rainforest Action Network have signed on, says Hales. But other large national groups have been reluctant, partly because the R-68 leadership has declined to issue a statement of non-violence, leaving peace and pacifist groups in a tough spot.

A tough spot. Should we go against every principle we profess to believe in? Don't rush us. . .

Update III: "A modified nonviolence statement."

Update IV: So sad:

Woodbine was not a commune, or a compound. If you called it either, you were quickly corrected. Woodbine Ranch was a summer camp and conference center based on a "non-colonialist model" — or it would be one day.

Update V:

[Mayor's convention coordinator] Archuleta and representatives of the DNC host committee have been meeting with R-68 and the ACLU for the past five months, and will step up their discussions as the convention nears. "The mayor is committed
to First Amendment rights, but also the safety of citizens and protesters," Archuleta says. "I think the dialogue is the most important thing that can happen, so that we're all aware of what to expect."

One hopes that means they're just yackety-yacking while the city emplaces the necessary pillboxes and machine-gun nests.

Update: The story has been reprinted in full at Portland Indymedia and the Friends of Leonard Peltier blog, but, strangely, not at National Review.

Wednesday Night at the Radio!

Naturally it has to be Dragnet. This one's called "Big Grandma" (19 October 1950; recycled for the TV show in 1953).

And while the Rockies get their heads beat in (nine--hang on, 11--hang on--13-1, bottom of the fifth), how about a Vic and Sade: "Uncle Fletcher Shows Rush His Souvenirs" (13 May 1941).

Dum duh dum-dum

Got the case report of the infamous ejection of Boulder Daily Camera reporter Heath Urie from Ward Churchill's free class at CU October 2.

It's a confused account. CU ethnic studies instructor Ben Whitmer has said that Urie "ran into his hand" as he entered the room (in the report Urie says Benjie "shoved" his right shoulder), and Urie seems at first to be identifying Whitmer also as the one who grabbed him and pulled him toward the door, saying "I'll fucking make you leave":


What, can't read it? Get stronger glasses, four-eyes! (Or click on pic.)

Then Urie decided it was actually Dillabaugh who done the deed:



The blacked-out name, of course, is Whitmer's. The fuzz continues:

Urie expressed fear of retribution from Dillenbaugh [sic] and [Whitmer], and I stated that I would explain the professional behavior I expect from all parties involved from this point forward. . . .

Professional behavior. Turns out Urie had reason to worry:

Urie called me again at about 2000 hours. Urie stated that he had left the presentation, but that during a break in the presentation he met with Churchill on the south patio of Humanities. He stated that he observed Dillenbaugh and that he was now sure that it was Dillenbaugh who had assaulted him. He stated that while he was interviewing Churchill, that Dillenbaugh kept stepping in between them and blowing cigarette smoke in Urie's face. Urie stated he was called away to cover another news story, but that he and Lawton felt that the crowd was too hostile toward them and were leaving anyway.

Chutchites, hostile? Urie has to be making it up. But think of Wart, sitting there smirking over his Pall Mall as his thug blows smoke in Urie's face. Scum.

Update: Oh yeah, you'll notice that Dillabaugh was arrested on the 22nd on a charge of third-degree battery.

Ward Churchill's key demographic

In Counterpunch, student Meg Dwyer recounts what she "learned" from 9/11, in a piece subtitled, "Who wouldn't want us dead?":

On September 11, 2001, I was at the kitchen table eating breakfast and my dad turned on his God damn Fox morning news only to see replay footage of a plane crashing into a building over and over again while men in suits expressed their ratings-bumping, botoxed-up sympathy for the survivors of the so-called
"accident." I didn't really care at first-the world was in need of a subtle purge of New Yorkers, anyway-but when the second plane hit, I quit reading the paper and paid attention to the TV.

A subtle purge. It gets worse.

Update: Nobel Prize winners agree! (via Tim Blair)

Rocky reader: Real Indians hate Means, Morris, Churchill

Letter to the editor (unedited) in the News from Denver resident and apparent Lakota Indian Rhonda Williams:

I am so happy that the press finally displayed (in their photographs) Glen Morris’s true following [at the Columbus Day protest]... “Young priviledged white college students!”

All of you lethal ignorant people who posted your racist comments about Indian people should know that Glenn Morris’ following comes from your communities not ours! [Not sure what "racist" comments she's referring to here.] Glenn Morris and Russel Means do NOT speak for the Indian people! One of the things that the majority of the Indian community in Denver is sick and tired of is ... that every time this Columbus farce of standing up for Indian rights goes on ... it is blamed on the Indian community, when it is really Glen Morris and his white priviledged wanna be following! There is a a custom in the Lakota culture ... the custom being that we turn our backs to people and situations that we don’t support and the majority of Indian people turned their backs on Glenn Morris and Russel Means a long time ago.

But every year the press reports that the Cop-lumbus Day protest was about the Indians vs. the American Italians and the Indian people have to deal with the racist repercussions for the rest of the year! (As demonstrated in some of the responses.)

Our children pay for Glen, Russell and their priviledged followers narcissist exploitation of Indian people! How many of you lethally ignorant racist people have truly paid attention to who participates in the Columbus Day protest? [I have! I have!] And those of you non-Indians who support the Indian community? For those who are just looking for an excuse to blame and put down the Indian people ... sooo sorry — you’ll have to search elsewhere to justify your hatred. We are not out in the streets making fools of our selves ... your next generation is!

Something that is not advertised is that for the past three years there has been a conference in Denver on the same day as the Columbus Day protest “Ending Colonial Legacies” (the press is aware.) This conference was created by Indian people for Indian people in order to give the Indian people who are sick of Glenn Morris, Russel Means and Ward Churchhill’s exploitation of Indian people (just to get a good photo shot) in Denver an alternative to the protest. . . .

Done deal

Rox versus Sox. I wanted Cleveland, but this will get better ratings.

Still haven't quite gotten used to the idea of the Rockies being in the Series. May have to liveblog a game or two as penance for my doubts. (Doubts? How can you doubt something that was never in the realm of possibility?)

Professor get hypothetical! Hypothetical!

Robert M. O'Neil waxes irrelevant in Change Magazine: "Limits of Freedom: The Ward Churchill Case." O'Neil explores the question of what sort of speech would warrant firing a professor at a public university and concludes boringly that:

the administration would bear the heavy burden of persuading a committee of faculty peers that such statements did indeed constitute cause for dismissal from the faculty, if not from an administrative position, because they related "directly and substantially" to the accused scholar's "fitness in his professional capacity as a teacher or researcher."

I don't care. O'Neil points out a couple of times that this has nothing to do with the Churchill case as it, you know, actually happened, since everybody except maybe Bill Owens said Wart shouldn't be fired for his asshole statements--and, of course, he wasn't.

Update: Aw, shit. The kindly yet odd-smelling JWP of Pirate Ballerina points out in an e-mail that this is an old article:

Posted this to your "scholar" post, but I think the two links caused it to disappear into moderation hell:
While reading O'Neil's essay, I had a strange sense of déjà vu, so I glanced at the pub date: September/October 2006. Then I checked PB, and sure enough, I'd commented on the essay back in September '06 (http://www.pirateballerina.com/blog/entry.php?id=466). And the next day, PB posted Diana Deeley's commentary on same (http://www.pirateballerina.com/blog/entry.php?id=467).

Maybe I should allege a beatdown to distract attention! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Sunday Night at the Radio!

Jack Benny time. I know! (Sung to the "tune" "Physical" by Olivia Fig-Newton-John):

I want to get topical! Topical!

So let's have "Jack Listens to the World Series" (10 October 1946--shorter season back then).

And since we're getting close to Halloween, a Lights Out. Don't think I've ever played this show before; always thought it (and lefty writer Arch Oboler) was overrated. But this is a good one: "Revolt of the Worms" (13 October 1942).

What I'm reading II

Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak.

From the intro by the book's editor, Marc Falkoff:

My colleagues and I--all volunteer lawyers--first visited Guantanamo in November, 2004. What we learned from our clients on that trip was shocking . . .

You've heard it all, ad nauseum and infinitum: stress positions, blaring music, threats of rendition, "sexual humiliation," "mishandling" of the "Holy" Qu'ran, etc., etc., etc. So enough of that.

The short essay, "Forms of Suffering in Muslim Prison Poetry" asks:

To what extent do their verses confirm their designations as global Islamic jihadists and "unlawful enemy combatants" as the U.S. administration and military tribunals have maintained?

Part of the challenge of answering such questions lies in the role of poetry as a figurative enterprise. If our aim is to study verbal artistry [sic, as you'll see] in a way that is maximally useful, we need to be prepared to consider answers not about the poets' intentions but about our own intentions as analysts responsible for distinguishing fact from fiction . . .

So we should ignore their intentions (killing people, blowing things up) in order to appreciate their "artistry."

From the short bios of the poets:

Moazzam Begg is a British citizen who was arrested in Pakistan and detained for hree years in Guantanamo. While there, Begg received a heavily-censored letter from his seven-year-old daughter; the only legible line was, "I love you, Dad." Upon his release, his daughter told him the censored lines were a poem she had copied for him: "One, two, three, four, five,/Once I caught a fish alive./Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,/then I let it go again."

We're so goddamn evil. Reminds me, though, of the letter Yossarian censored in Catch-22 so that everything except the closing was blacked out: "I yearn for you tragically. A.T. Tappman, Chaplain." Begg's bio continues:

Released in 2005, he was never charged with a crime.

True, true, but not, perhaps, the whole story.

Here's a good one:

Abdullah Thani Faris al Anazi is a double amputee, having lost both of his legs in a U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan while he was employed as a humanitarian aid worker. . . . At times, he has been forced to walk on prosthetic limbs held together by duct tape.

Amazing stuff, duct tape. Just a couple more:

Ibrahim al-Rubaish was teaching in Pakistan when he was arrested by mercenaries and sold to allied forces. A religious scholar who dislikes hostility [sic] and was once a candidate for a
judgeship . . .

What do you want to bet it was a judgeship on a sha'ria court?

Martin Mubanga is a citizen of both the United Kingdom and Zambia. He was arrested in Zambia . . . and then transferred to Guantanamo without any legal process. While imprisoned there, Mubanga managed to inform his family . . . by sending them letters . . . in the form of rap poetry.

I'll start the poetry quotin' with the opening stanza of one of Mubanga's raps:

America sucks, America chills,
While d'blood of d'Muslims is forever getting spilled,
In d'streets of Nablus, in d'streets of Jenin,
Yeahhhhhhh! You know what I mean . . .

The number of "h"s is correct. I counted. Another? This is by some gink going under the name Ustad Badruzzaman Badr:

The Chief of the White Palace,
Like other sinful chiefs,
Cannot see our patience.

The whirlpool of our tears
Is moving fast towards him.
No one can endure the power of this flood.

Eh. Mild case of BDS. One more. Yes, I insist. This one's by "fourteen-year-old Chadian" Mohammed El Charadi, "detained at Guantanamo in violation of international law":

We saw such insults from them [at Guantanamo]:
Not even the book of God was protected.

Along with their malice, they were foolish.
Tribulations, then hitting and imbecility.

For they are a people without reasonable minds,
Due to their supply of alcoholic drinks.

I'm no big fan of alcohol myself (any more), but this kid is a trifle censorious.

Poems from Guantanamo is only 72 pages long, Allah be praised (including the afterword by Ariel Dorfman, who makes his usual comparison between the U.S. and Chile under Pinochet), but reading the front-cover blurb is enough to warn away sensible people: "'At last Guantanamo has found its voice'--Gore Vidal."

Yesterday it was close to 80 degrees . . .

This morning:


Slop the hogs fer me, ma! I'm a'goin' to Steamboat!*

*Steamboat Springs Visitors Bureau! This slogan can be yours for lots of money!

What I'm reading

aka, scraping bottom.

Police Pictures: The Photograph as Evidence. Chock full of fascinating photos, marred by a predictable po-mo-ness. The book begins: "We need criminals because they are not us. Crimes are transgressive acts, committed by those we define as outside the norm . . ."

What are you going to do? But amazing stuff:


Creepy. From The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression (1876).


Are we moving from big to little or little to big?



J. Edgareen Hoover and Clayton Moore, the Blown Ranger. J. Edgar looks like a bobble-head, doesn't he?

Sorry, I keep using that vulgarity (blown, blow me) today. Sometimes it's simply the right thing to say, but I'll try to taper off.

Update: Some spavined gink in comments claims to see a resemblance between the poor guy in the Human Facial Expression pictures (particularly number 57) and your darling but admittedly strange-looking Drunkablog. What I noticed was his resemblance (far left, second row from bottom) to Jack Nicholson toward the end of The Shining. Herrrre's Johnny!

Update II: And what is with that hand in some of the pics? Could it be the hand of the researcher, bonking the poor rummy (one assumes) on the noggin in order to induce the pictured expressions? Ah, the Majesty of Science. And don't look too close, but in number 57 he's clearly shoving an 8-penny nail into the guy's brain. Bet there wasn't a consent form for that.

Weird Bird Friday!

Is there usually an exclamation point in the title? Who cares. This week's bird is the Parlor Roller. Shut up and look at it:


Yes, a stinkin' pigeon.

It's a pigeon, all right, but (cue Psycho music) it doesn't fly, it rolls along the ground.

In fact, the birds are bred to roll, and not just in parlors (who has a parlor anymore?); there are competitions and everything. The thousand-foot roll apparently is the Holy Grail (full of birdseed) of parlor roller breeders, akin to Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier (should that be capitalized? It doesn't even exist). Here's the only vid I could find immediately and with no effort of a Parlor Roller rolling:


I could watch that all day. In fact, I plan to. As the kid says at the end, "Awkeoo. Ugoo?"

PSA

The D-a-W is oot of toon again this week, and I'm supposed to do the Weird Bird Friday. I'll get to it, but it's going to be late. And unfunny.

Update: So, so unfunny.

Oh, joy

The Drunkablog is part of the Ward Churchill story again. In doing his "The Message" column (linked here yesterday), ace Westword reporter Michael Roberts somehow unearthed my account of Churchill fanatic and AIM leadership council member Josh Dillabaugh's threat to kill me before the regents' meeting to fire Ward last July:

Cyptically [sic], the Campus Press effort doesn't specifically name Dillabaugh, even though his moniker appears in a CU police report -- and Detective Brian Jordan, a representative of the department, is also quoted in the article. But John Martin, the man behind The Drunkablog [Update: oops, here's the right pic] is not so reticent. In an entry dated October 17, Martin provides commentary about the October 18 Message, complete with a confession that "Michael Roberts gives me the hives." (My affect on people is usually a lot more severe than that, so he should count himself lucky.) Along the way, Martin makes a reference to "Josh 'I'll Kill You" Dillabaugh," with the middle phrase serving as a link to a July 24 account of a CU Regents meeting. The section pertaining to the death-threat charge reads as follows:

In front of about 30 people, many of them with cameras and tape recorders, former AIM leadership council member Dillabaugh (who said he'd been in jail and didn't care if he had to go back) threatened to kill me. PB and Drunkablog friend Laurie was a witness, as was [CU staffer] Ken Bonetti, who said something like "now, none of that."

Dillabaugh also followed me around while I was taking pictures, saying I'd been harassing his wife and threatening to "kick my ass." He said it roughly half a dozen times, so somebody had to get it on tape. (The first time he threatened me, by the way, some guy came over and stationed himself on my other side, ready to help Dillabaugh out. I was wearing a video camera, a still camera, and a backpack, with two guys just itching to punch me in the head.)

Oh yeah, there was at least one other witness to Dillabaugh's threats: [there's a picture of Natsu Saito here--ed.].

That's right, law professor and officer of the court Natsu Elaine Taylor "Truthforce" Saito, Churchill's frau. I pointed at her and yelled "an officer of the court, a law professor [see?], and you're just standing there!" She just laughed, then later made sure I saw her giving Dillabaugh a big hug. Scum.

Dillabaugh still hasn't replied to e-mailed interview requests from Westword. But on October 16, Commander Brad Wiesley of CU's police force noted that he had been contacted a second time regarding a misdemeanor harassment warrant in his name, which carries a $100 bond. As of that date, Dillabaugh still hadn't stopped by department HQ to deal with it -- but if he's stopped for a traffic violation or something along those lines, Wiesley said it will pop up.

Why doesn't Roberts mention again here that Desperado Dillabaugh was taunting the cops to find him?

One more thing: Whitmer e-mailed following the Message's publication to say Dillabaugh had only taken Urie by an arm, as opposed to "arms," as appeared in the original text. He makes this same distinction on a Try-Works effort that features a far different take on the column than the one on The Drunkablog. Its headline? "Hell, Everybody at the Daily Camera's a Flat-Out Liar."

There's no middle ground on this story. -- Michael Roberts

But there is, Michael, a difference between truth and lies, and in this case, as in every incident involving Ward Churchill and his acolytes, the difference is very stark.

Speaking of liars, Try-Works harpy MK weighs in on Roberts' blog piece and doesn't even bother to deny that Dillabaugh made the threats, contenting herself with calling me a "drama queen" and claiming again that I was "harrassing" Dillabaugh's wife Anne-erika White Bird. I reply, with manly honesty and forthrightness. Well, close, anyway.

STD receives apology

Blogger "Pilgrim" at Say Anything links to LGF's post on Ward Churchill's upcoming appearance at UC-Davis. I wouldn't mention it except that he (I assume; else it would be "Pilgrimess") compares Ward to the Herpes virus and then apologizes to the virus.

No charges for Whitmer; manhunt for Dillabaugh

Westword's Michael Roberts on the dust-up between CU lecturer and psychotic Ward Churchill supporter Ben Whitmer and Boulder Daily Camera reporter Heath Urie during Churchill's inaugural free class at CU October 2:

Where Professor [oh, for Christ's sake--ed.] Ward Churchill goes, controversy follows — and so, usually, do charges, counter-charges, confusion and contradictions. If the truth is out there regarding an October 2 class taught by the former University of Colorado-Boulder staffer, during which a Churchill devotee allegedly manhandled a reporter, it's currently being obscured by a miasma of conflicting stories.

Two of the main players will be familiar to Westword readers. Benjamin Whitmer dominated a column about TryWorks.org, a gleefully profane [oh, for Christ's sake--ed.] Churchill-boosting blog at which he toiled anonymously before being outed as a CU instructor ("Try Again," January 18). And Heath Urie appeared in relation to a pair of open-meetings-related cases — one in 2004, when he was a University of Northern Colorado journalism student, the other just prior to his move from the Canyon Courier to the Boulder Daily Camera last summer ("Open Case," August 2).

Lots of krep follows. Here's the newt of the bisque:

The course soon got under way with about thirty attendees, by the Camera's estimate, or between fifty and seventy, according to Whitmer [he's a numbers-inflating automaton!]. Minutes later, Whitmer says, Urie "barged in the door yelling at the top of his lungs, and he had a recording device running in his hand. It was pretty obvious to everybody that he was trying to provoke an incident. I stood up and put my hand out. My hand was on him, but I didn't shove him, which is what he told the police; that's ridiculous. And then another gentleman I was with took him by his arms and tried to escort him out. He went kind of apeshit, and then he left the room."

Unexplained, of course, is why a newbie reporter on the Churchill beat would try to provoke an incident in the first place, let alone go "kind of apeshit," in Benjie's elegant phrase. Anyway, guess who the mystery accoster was whom Urie pressed charges against. It wasn't Churchill's doggie:

After another fifteen minutes or so, CU campus police arrived and asked to speak with Whitmer and the other man, identified as Josh Dillabaugh, a CU sophomore who's active in Colorado's American Indian Movement. Neither were cited at the time, but Commander Brad Wiesley of the CU police department says Urie pressed charges against Dillabaugh. A CU detective arranged to meet Dillabaugh at his Boulder residence to deliver a summons, Wiesley continues, but the suspect wasn't there at the appointed time and later told the officer he'd "have to come find him." As a result, a warrant has been issued in Dillabaugh's name for misdemeanor harassment, an offense that carries a sentence ranging from a $50 fine to six months in jail.

I love it. Josh "I'll Kill You" Dillabaugh. You'll never take me alive, coppers . . .

Michael Roberts gives me the hives, but read the whole thing.

Update: a reader notes that Killer Dillabaugh's Indian name, "Cante Akichita" means "Soldier Heart," and adds: "Some soldier, huh? More like a coward and no better than a thug."

Update II: Get Benjie: "another gentleman I was with . . ."

Wednesday Night at the Radio!

Have to be sparing of these: Jack Webb as San Francisco's simile-slinging freelance detective Pat Novak: For Hire. This one's called "Fleet Lady" (6 March 1949). Hilarious show, excellent sound.

Update: Red asbestos seatcovers?

And maybe the most famous Suspense show of all (as if any of them are still famous): Agnes Moorehead in "Sorry, Wrong Number" (25 May 1943). Barbara Stanwyck is okay in the movie version, but Moorehead created the role here (she was to do it many more times) and the script was written for radio.

Commie humor

In a New York Times story about "crusading peasant" Wu Lihong's fight against the polluters of China's third-largest freshwater lake:

One summer afternoon in 2002, Mr. Wu went out on an errand and saw a banner stretched across the main road downtown. It read: “Warmly welcome the police to arrest Wu Lihong for committing blackmail in the name of environmentalism.”

Mr. Wu told friends he initially suspected that the banner was hung by local factory bosses to intimidate him. But when he went to the police to complain, he found a stack of placards with the same exhortation in the police station. The police had erected the banner themselves, and they detained him on the spot.

As Jonah Goldberg (I think) says: High-larious.

Update: Yarney-varney! I forgot to say, via Tim Blair.

Tiny triumph

LGF notices Ward Churchill's upcoming visit to UC-Davis. We noted it here last week, though the chief lizard puts it a little more colorfully than we (that's the royal we) did:

Coming to the University of California, Davis, on November 1, sponsored by the Leftist-Islamist Axis of Students for Peace and Justice and Totalitarianism, Students for Justice in a Nonexistent Country Called Palestine, and the ubiquitous Radical Muslim Student Association: fraudulent, plagiarizing, disgraced former professor Ward Churchill. The theme of the speech, in keeping with its antisemitic, Islamofascist sponsors, is “Zionists Are Nazis.”

Ask and ye shall receive

Oh how one does love the interwebs. PB reader Leah sends along Professor Thomas Brown's upcoming paper in Plagiary on "Ward Churchill's Twelve Excuses for Plagiarism" (and thanks to Professor Brown for making it available). It's devastating--and surprisingly funny. Long piece, so I'll just give a taste of Brown's points, and trust that the whole paper will be posted soon at Plagiary.

First, Brown sets the stage:

Churchill's various acts of research misconduct include his plagiarism of two essays, one by Professor Fay Cohen, and another by a defunct activist group that called itself "Dam the Dams." Now that these plagiarisms have been discovered, Churchill has changed his mind about plagiary, and thinks it should not be a firing offense after all. Churchill and his supporters have deployed at least twelve different excuses for his habit of plagiarism.

(In the interest of full disclosure: In June 2005, Churchill filed a spurious research misconduct complaint against me, because my faculty web page contained evidence of Churchill's fabrication of smallpox blanket genocide against the Mandan Indians in 1837. I published this research in Plagiary in June 2006. My superiors read Churchill's complaint and immediately decided that it did not warrant any response.)

Excuse Number One: I'm the real author.

When Churchill was charged with plagiarizing Rebecca Robbins and Annette Jaimes, he offered a novel defense: He had ghostwritten for both authors, and thus is entitled to reprint that material under his own name without crediting those authors. Jaimes (one of Churchill’s ex-wives) denies that Churchill authored her work, but the passages in question do bear Churchill’s stylistic tics and topical obsessions. . . .

The federal rules are currently silent on whether ghostwriting should best be classified as falsification or plagiarism. However, due to another ongoing academic ghostwriting scandal, Congress is investigating the question (Vance, 2007, p. A35). Editors of science journals already agree that ghostwriting is unethical (WAME, 2007).

Churchill's employer, the University of Colorado, addresses ghostwriting more directly, by specifying "Other Violations" that constitute research misconduct, besides fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (1998):

Failure to comply with established standards regarding author names on publications. Other serious deviation from accepted practices in proposing, carrying out, or reporting results from research[.]

Furthermore, when Churchill defended himself against plagiarism charges by claiming to have ghostwritten the works in question, he made himself vulnerable to new misconduct charges. Churchill had fabricated and falsified while ghostwriting for others (Brown, 2006, pp. 4-5; Wesson et al, 2006, pp. 23-24, 90-91). Churchill then cited his ghostwritten essays as evidence for arguments in essays that he published under his own name (Wesson et al, 2006).

The CU research misconduct committee observes that this behavior: “permits the author to create the false appearance that his claims are supported by other scholars when, in fact, he is the only source for such claims” (Wesson et al, 2006, p. 90). If you accept Churchill's claim that he had the right to reuse material he ghostwrote for Rebecca Robbins and Annette Jaimes without crediting them, then the plagiarism charge transmutes into a fabrication charge. Each of CU's faculty committees has unanimously found Churchill guilty of fabricating data by ghostwriting and self-citation (Wesson et al, 2006, p. 90). However, there remain the two additional charges of plagiarizing essays by Fay Cohen and "Dam the Dams", for Churchill never claimed to have ghostwritten these works. . . .

Excuse Number Four: But I cited the real authors.

In Excuse Number Four, Churchill argues that his appropriation of various essays does not constitute plagiarism because he did, after all, give a citation to the original authors (Wesson et al, 2006, p. 83).

(“But Professor, when I plagiarized Janie’s term paper, I did mention her in the footnotes!”)

Of course, if the amount of work that Churchill had appropriated was miniscule [sic]and duly cited, such action could be defined as "scholarship" rather than "plagiarism." Churchill's Excuse Number Four appeals to the fuzziness of the boundary between plagiary and scholarship, inviting the cursory observer to give Churchill the benefit of the doubt.

Excuse Number Four raises an important question: How much can you take from another author, duly cited, without committing plagiarism? Churchill's challenge here is he is charged with plagiarizing extensive swaths of two essays, amounting to the majority of pages in the original. This degree of appropriation is unquestionably a transgression of an admittedly fuzzy boundary, and so all of the CU committees who heard Churchill's case have sanctioned him for plagiarizing both essays.

Excuse Number Five: It’s all the editors’ fault. For some reason they gave me authorship credit I didn't deserve.

The major weakness of Churchill's Excuse Number Four is that not only did he plagiarize the bulk of two essays, he also neglected to even cite the original authors in each of his multiple republications of the essay he plagiarized from "Dam the Dams." And so Churchill went to the well yet again for Excuse Number Five: His editors had given him full credit for an essay that someone else had authored, before he came along and "rewrote" it (Wesson et al, 2006, pp. 83, 86). The editors in question have not yet publicly either confirmed or denied Churchill's accusation. . . .

Excuse Number Six: But Churchill didn't plagiarize everything he's ever published. Only some of it! . . .

The federal regulations on plagiarism do not allow for a free pass for just a touch of plagiary. . . .

Excuse Number Nine: I, like, did it on behalf of "The Movement," man. . . .

Churchill appears to have borrowed this line of argument from one of his defenders, CU Professor Tom Mayer (2005):

“The Dam the Dams group, from which Churchill supposedly plagiarized, was part of a broad new left movement for social change, a movement in which I also participated. Movement people did not conceive the world in terms of property rights, nor were they obsessed with using publications to chalk up status points. Thus the ethics of citation within the new left movement differed substantially from standard academic protocol.”

Mayer's point is that there are certain circumstances, such as in "The Movement," where you can freely appropriate other people's work without meeting the definition of plagiarism. Are there such circumstances available to faculty at a research university? The federal regulations on research misconduct do not specify a circumstance in which it is permissible to appropriate another person's work without giving credit. . . .

(“But Professor, I'm sure Che Guevara wouldn't care that I plagiarized his writing and turned it in to you under my name. Because I was so doing it out of solidarity with oppressed workers and people of color. Viva la revolucion!”)

Excuse Number Ten: Holding me responsible for my research misconduct constitutes academic double jeopardy.

Churchill brought in Eric Cheyfitz as a defense witness in Churchill’s appeal hearing at CU to offer Excuse Number Ten. Cheyfitz, from his vantage point as an English professor, has managed to discern a hitherto unknown legal doctrine (Pascucci, 2007):

“Once a university has reviewed your work and then [to] suddenly charge you with research misconduct … is the academic version of double jeopardy."

Cheyfitz has yet to disclose the hidden authority that forbids a university from charging a professor with research misconduct if said professor is tenured. The federal regulations governing research misconduct fail to mention that tenure constitutes a free pass against plagiarism charges.

(“But Professor, you didn’t realize that I plagiarized Janie's term paper until the second time I turned it in to you. That’s academic double jeopardy!”)

Excuse Number Twelve: Holding me responsible for my plagiarism violates my right to free speech! . . .

While Churchill's defense is unconvincing, it nonetheless invokes the most important principle at stake in the Churchill controversy, and the one that garners the most concern from other academics. Churchill and his supporters argue that the academy should protect the free speech rights of people from all different perspectives–even from people who indict terror victims as equivalent to Nazis. While such support for politically unpopular free speech is admirable in principle, the logical outcome of protecting outrageous professors from political persecution by immunizing them from research misconduct investigations is problematic. Outrageous speech would become a shield that permits a professor to commit research misconduct without fear of sanction.

(“But Professor, certainly any student as deliberately offensive as I am must be automatically inoculated against all charges of plagiarism!”)

In order to make certain that he really is abhorrent enough to get the free pass on his research misconduct, Churchill added a few more choice words about the 9/11 victims in a speech last year (Crowell, 2006):

You do remember the incident which the terrorists overpowered the stewardess on the aircraft and tweezed her eyebrows with his tweezers, until she screamingly submitted to fly the plane into a building. Remember that one? Tweezers. Tweezed into submission.

The challenge for the University of Colorado has been to isolate Churchill's political speech from his research misconduct, and treat the two domains separately. CU holds that the principle of academic freedom preserves Churchill’s right to mock the murder of the 9/11 flight attendants. CU draws the line, meanwhile, at research misconduct. . . .

I'll just let the professor perorate from here on:

While Churchill’s copious manifestations of personal corruption have been known in Indian Studies and Indian activist circles for years, it seems that no one ever filed a formal complaint of plagiarism with CU. In early 2005, during the brouhaha over Churchill’s 9/11 commentary, the Colorado media rounded up various obscure exposes by Churchill’s academic critics and threw them in the university’s face. The university was then compelled to investigate.

Churchill and his defenders argue that it was too late. Turning the principle of probable cause backwards, Churchill holds that now that the university has evidence of his misconduct in hand, it cannot investigate. If the university wanted to investigate, it should have done so before the evidence of his misconduct came to its attention. According to this line of argument, Churchill's insults to the 9/11 victims have effectively inoculated him from ever being held responsible for his research misconduct, whether committed in the past, present, or future.

Churchill’s own principled support for free speech appears to end at the tip of his nose. He has been prosecuted in federal court for obstructing Italian-American pensioners from marching in Columbus Day parades. Churchill holds that his Ninth Amendment right to be offended by a Columbus Day parade somehow supersedes the elderly paraders’ First Amendment right to gather and celebrate.

Churchill and his supporters have filed spurious research misconduct complaints as retaliation against at least six professors who have criticized Churchill's research misconduct (myself included). Churchill even demanded that my university remove evidence of his research misconduct from my personal web page.

Nonetheless, I still support Churchill’s First Amendment rights—even if he doesn’t return the favor—because the principle of academic freedom is crucial for a well-functioning academy. Thus Excuse Number Twelve appears to be the sole source of what support Churchill still has remaining within the academy. Of Churchill's faculty colleagues at CU, 199 signed a newspaper ad on his behalf in February 2005 when the scandal broke. By July 2007, Churchill could find only four CU colleagues willing to sign a university grievance protesting his imminent firing. The cause of this dwindling support is the CU community's increasing awareness of the full extent of Churchill's plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification. There may also be distaste for making a free speech martyr out of a man who himself appears to be attempting to intimidate other professors in the CU community into silence, by filing spurious misconduct charges.

Churchill did manage to draw a handful of signatories for an advertisement published in the New York Times on April 12, 2007. The ad copy was composed by retired professor Richard Falk, and Reggie Dylan, "a contributing writer for Revolution newspaper" (the Communist Party's official organ). Falk and Dylan shamelessly misrepresent the facts and circumstances surrounding the CU faculty committees' investigation into Churchill's research misconduct. Much of their ad criticizes the Iraq War, and argues that Churchill's firing somehow derives from global politics. But the NYT ad does not even attempt to defend Churchill on the issue of plagiarism.

[Actually the ad appeared in the New York Review of Books--ed.]

Because surely a man with Twelve Different Excuses must be twelve times as innocent as a man with only one excuse, right? Unfortunately, Churchill’s academic supporters are either unaware of his first eleven Excuses for plagiary, or don't care. The pro-Churchill petition signers jump past them, and go right to Excuse Number Twelve. Even if you don’t buy the first eleven Excuses, that last one just might stick to the wall if Churchill is lucky.

(“But Professor, you wanted to let Ward Churchill get away with plagiarism! Why not me?”)