Fair and Balanced (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more...)
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I spent some time this evening watching my favorite comedy network (FOX News). Don't get me wrong, my political biases tend to be more in line with FOX than with the rest of the major media outlets. It's just that I am completely unable to suppress a chuckle everytime they say the "Fair and Balanced" thing.

Anyway, I caught the story tonight about Ward Churchill being invited to speak at Hamilton College in upstate New York. The on-air treatment of the story was, I thought, probably a bit overdone. If you haven't caught this, Ward Churchill is a tenured professor and was the Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department of the University of Colorado (he has just resigned the Chair position). He has been described on a web page as: "Ward Churchill (Keetoowah Band Cherokee) is one of the most outspoken of Native American activists. In his lectures and numerous published works, he explores the themes of genocide in the Americas, historical and legal (re)interpretation of conquest and colonization, literary and cinematic criticism, and indigenist alternatives to the status quo. Churchill is a Professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies. He is also a past national spokesperson for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. His books include Agents of Repression, Fantasies of the Master Race, From a Native Son and A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas."

The flap is about an essay he posted right after 9/11 called "Some people push back, on the justice of roosting chickens". FOX alleged that he said that the people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the country at large got what we deserved in those attacks and that by inviting him to speak, the powers that be at Hamilton (whose campus in in New York and who have at least on child of WTC victims currently enrolled) were being insensitive and hinted at something bigger. (Something like being un-American, I guess.)

I figured that this was just another good sound bite, so I went googleing. What I discovered is that FOX was being nice. Churchill is a mean-spirited, hateful man, angry at the white world. Whether or not he is justified in his opinion is a matter of opinion. All I can say is that it has obviously worked for him. Here is a sample:

There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World Trade Center . . .

Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

It becomes blatantly apparent that while Churchill may have a firm grasp on some of the more unsavory aspects of American history, he has no clue as to what Islamicist Terrorism is about. At least at the time of the essay chose to blame the US for continuing 1000 years of genocide against Islam. He also appears to feel some sense of solidarity with the perpetrators of the attack simply because they were brown (or at least not white) since everyone knows that America is about repressing and oppressing brown people. He also chooses to ignore inconvenient facts of history (Israel/Palestinians) by making the assertion that "By this, it should be understood that Middle-Easterners, unlike Americans, have no history of exterminating others purely for profit, or on the basis of racial animus. Thus, we can appreciate the fact that they value life – all lives, not just their own – far more highly than do their U.S. counterparts."

Actually I encourage you to go read the whole thing. A quote here and there does not do justice to how vile and hateful the whole thing is. (By the way, of the first four sources for this article I found, the only one that had an un-cut version was a website that describes itself as "...a two-year old project specializing in the creation and distribution of radical t-shirts and buttons." Ironically, or not so ironically, if you tend toward that sort of thing, the web site is available in English and French.) But more importantly, read the whole thing to get a feel for the kind of hate-mongering against America that is alive and well in academia and then try to convince me that there isn't an America-hating, leftist, intellectual elite here.

That said, I would die to protect Churchill's right to publish this vile drivel. He has already resigned the Chair of the Ethnic studies department at CU, and I think that is a good thing. But the Board of Regents at CU damned well better protect his status as a tenured professor. There is no point in having tenure if it doesn't mean anything. (Of course, how you get tenure now without having appropriate liberal beliefs is another problem altogether.)

Knowing a bit about CU and the City of Boulder where it is located, it was probably something of a coup for them to be able to give tenure to such an obvious radical rabble-rouser. I will enjoy watching them take the heat on this one and will lose what little respect I have for CU if they don't do the right thing and defend him.

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, January 31 2005 11:03:38 PM