Sunday, May 27, 2007

Churchill briefs (warning: not very brief)

  • Churchill predicts own demise:
  • The firebrand professor who likened some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi says it's a foregone conclusion that the University of Colorado will fire him over allegations of research
    misconduct. . . .

    Firebrand, or monotonous chucklehead in need of new material?
    "As far as I'm concerned, that's what he was hired to do," Churchill said. "I'm sure he had some other (responsibilities) to do, but I would expect this to be very nearly at the top. . . . He's basically the hatchet man."

  • Haven't we heard this this one before (first comment)? The Try-Works jerks have posted private e-mails written by Churchill investigating committee chairperson Mimi Wesson in February, 2005 (long before the committee was chosen), in which she expresses distaste for Churchill and puzzlement at his popularity. They think this is some sort of smoking gun. Here's part of one e-mail:

    I confess to being somewhat mystified by the variety of people this unpleasant (to say the least) individual has been able to enlist to defend him. I know people say it’s the principle, but we aren’t all out there defending Bob Guccione’s first amendment rights, though God knows he has them. I thought that us middle-aged feminists, at least, had learned not to all fall into that trap.

    She also compares the support for the "charismatic" Churchill to that for Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson, somehow skipping over Charlie Manson. Try-Works' Ben Whitmer claims "Jim Paine, Rocky Mountain News editorial page editor Vincent Carroll and KHOW shock-jock [sic] Dan Caplis had two American Indian Studies professors run off the committee for far lesser expressions in support of Churchill." Here's part of one of those lesser expressions in support:

    [A]nyone who's followed the field of American Indian Studies for the past three decades would immediately recognize Ward Churchill as an important scholar, writer and advocate, whose published works are widely cited and relied upon. His body of written work and teaching has inspired a generation of younger Native students and activists to unashamedly assert indigenous sovereignty and Indian rights over a broad domain of intellectual and cultural life in American society. . . . He is, in fact, the unquestioned intellectual leader of a vanguard movement of AIS scholars who brandish a no-holds-barred, no compromise form of Indian political rhetoric that upsets and even incites many non-Indians."

  • Yes, even incites ("ya got a tregger fanger, don't you?"). Benjie thinks Williams' very public knobbery is the same as Wesson's private expression of what almost everybody, but especially those who know Churchill personally, think of him: an unpleasant (to say the least) individual. Even teeny tiny apparatchik Tom Mayer never fails to mention that Chutch is an asshole (his "combative manner and long monologues," don't you know).

    Try-Works security guard Charley Arthur also claims that Churchill tried to get Wesson taken off the committee, but has yet to provide any evidence of this (and you know what that means). It's moot anyway, because we have the report itself to judge Wesson's supposed "conflict of interest" by. I don't see it. Neither will a jury. Next.

  • Not only does the Maoist Internationalist Movement (yes, I know, why don't I marry them) link breathlessly--or as breathlessly as communist robots who think sex requires a consent form ever get--to Try-Works' Wesson "bombshell," they add their own "blockbuster" charge:

  • An investigation of her web page shows that [Wesson's] literary agent is the Marsh Agency, which has several CIA ties. Ward Churchill is a published critic who has done original work on the FBI. Ward Churchill's critics also say he has done original work on the CIA. . . .

    The Marsh Agency boasts several CIA links including perhaps the greatest CIA intellectual project of the Cold War, "Encounter" magazine. . . .

    But it's way worse than that. They're also manipulating our children:

    The Marsh Agency owns long-established pro-CIA business, glorifying various operations that are CIA/FBI or military. An example is Marsh's children's writer Derek Landy:

    "Who is Skullduggery Pleasant? He's a wise-cracking detective, powerful magician, master of dirty tricks and burglary (in the name of the greater good, of course). As well as ally, protector, and mentor of Stephanie Edgely, a very unusual and darkly talented 12-year-old."(1)

    That is from the web page promoting Landy's most recent book. The book ended up selling to HarperCollins, which people know now as publishing ex-CIA Director George Tenet's book. . . .

    Skullduggery Pleasant. Sure sounds like kind of one of those effete Yalie CIA-type names, doesn't it? Like Blackford Oakes.

    So why haven't the no-name nincompoops over at the Ward Churchill Solidarity Network linked to MIM's scoop yet? Or Ben Whitmer, for that matter? He knows how much his master trusts and admires MIM. ("[T]he Maoist International Movement have used their weekly papers [showing his age there] to advance some of the best analysis of my case and its implications yet published.")

    (via Pirate Ballerina (who also notes Ward's use of a child as a sock puppet) and MIM.

    Update: MIM and summer fun! Two great American traditions that go great together!

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