Colorado Professor Sticks To His Rhetorical Guns
Joe Gandelman
Don't expect the controversy swirling around the University of Colorado's Professor Ward Churchill to simply fade away: a new development suggests it could grow.
The reasons: he's sticking by his guns...and a NEW QUOTE has surfaced in which suggested (and some will invariably argue this is being misintrerpted by the media) that more 911s might be helpful.
First let's give you the new quote, reported by the AP:
Early editions of the Sunday Denver Post reported Churchill gave another magazine interview in which he was asked about the effectiveness of protests of U.S. policies and the Iraq war, and responded: "One of the things I've suggested is that it may be that more 9/11s are necessary."
It's truly hard for anyone who is not anywhere but on the EXTREME left (way to the left of Dennis Kucinichland) to see that as anything but statement that 911 type attacks are useful political tactics. More:
The interview prompted Gov. Bill Owens to renew his call for Churchill's firing.
"It's amazing that the more we look at Ward Churchill, the more outrageous, treasonous statements we hear from Churchill," Owens said.
And now let's look at his most recent media response to the controversy over what many believe is crossing the line:
DENVER - A professor who likened World Trade Center victims to a notorious Nazi refused to apologize but said his treatise was a "gut response" to the terrorist attacks.
The problem is: words matter. And if something was stated wrong, usually a clarification helps only if it comes out fairly soon after the fact...not where tiny bits of contrition are slowly pried out. However, it seems as if Churchill's comments are costing him: two more colleges cancelled appearances by him, the AP reports. More:
"I don't believe I owe an apology," Ward Churchill said Friday on CNN's "Paula Zahn Now" program — his first public comments since the University of Colorado began a review that could lead to his dismissal.
Churchill defended the essay in which he compared those killed in the Sept. 11 attack to "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who organized Nazi plans to exterminate European Jews. He said the victims were akin to U.S. military operations' collateral damage — or innocent civilians mistakenly killed by soldiers.
"I don't know if the people of 9-11 specifically wanted to kill everybody that was killed," he told Zahn. "It was just worth it to them in order to do whatever it was they decided it was necessary to do that bystanders be killed. And that essentially is the same mentality, the same rubric."
Apparently, this guy has read absolutely nothing about Al Qaeda. Professor Churchill: do an Amazon search on Al Qaeda and buy any number of books written by not just journalists but academics who've studied the terrorist group.
All kinds of books came out post-911 that clearly laid out the fact that terrorists seek high body counts. It doesn't matter if the bodies are you, your wife, your newborn kid, your grandmother, Jews, Christians, atheists or Muslims who are unlucky enough to be in the target area. Churchill seemingly ignores or downplays the fact that terrorists seek to create an atmosphere of utter horror; they are the ultimate bullies and WANT as much carnage as possible. Their ideology is death.
Then there's this:
The furor over Churchill's essay erupted last month after he was invited to speak at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. The speech was later canceled.
Churchill, who recently resigned as chairman of the ethnic studies department but remains a tenured professor, said he would sue if he were dismissed.
The problem is, his comments are such — particularly the new one that was unearthed — that the negatives in keeping him are going to outweigh the costs of any lawsuit. If he is dismissed and the University and policos feel its worth anything to pay him off, he'll find his marketability as a public speaker sliced way down because by rationalizing and seemingly condoning the actions of terrorists he'll be shunned by most universities.
The surfacing of this new quote assures the controversy over Churchill will continue to rage — until there is some sign of resolution.
Hint to Professor Churchill: Don't expect to be named Dean of Students anytime soon.
He's made this idiotic assertion that the janitors and children killed on 9/11 were collateral damage--unintended victims.
--from his official statement on the essay
He knows nothing about the subject about which he portends to lecture me and my kids.
This isn't a first amendment issue, but a competency issue. Ward Churchill is both a liar (he's not a member of Cherokee nation as he claims) and in intellectual lightweight whose writings contain countless errors of fact.
Fire him.
And if Churchill were kept on in his office to rot (a situation that has happened to at least two tenured professors in recent years), the university is doubly wasting taxpayers' money, and Churchill gets all kinds of free time to think up new ludicrous ideas.
Churchill, like David Duke, spews nothing but hate, but it helps everyone to know where these extremists stand.
He should rot in an office, far away from any classroom, but he should still be heard. The ultra-left supports him, but even some from the moderate left agree with some of his points. Another thing we need to know.
If the "brain trust" at Air America--which now already has Janeane Garafolo snapping off Nazi salutes on MSNBC to deal with--chooses to give this ivory-tower traitor airtime, who are we to stop them from shooting themselves in the groin thereby? It's kind of hard for the left to whine "but he doesn't represent US!" when their own radio network is trotting him out front and center.
And then watch them continue to lose election after election until the Democratic party either disintegrates completely or else gets back to what it used to be before 1968.
Ward Hitler. Despicable. I have had it. Today's Leftover Left are too unworthy to be my enemies. Give me Santorum.
Will the same be true for the Air America crowd? My gut says no, but I could be wrong.
Haven't any of you figured out yet that the more you talk about these freaks, the more credibility you give them?
That's why I try not to respond to these people, regardless how crazy their line of shit sounds to the rest of us.
It seems to me that they say and do these things in order to get public attention, which in modern life is difficult unless you are a sports hero, just got indicted for using some deathray virus to destroy every Windows-platformed computer in the northern hemisphere, or have the largest boobs in the world.
Just think of what a turn history would have taken if ex-corporal Adolf Hitler had been compelled by circumstance to spend the rest of his active life meeting in a dingy private room of a Munich beerhall with the same six nonentities that he began with back in 1919.
In some perverse way, our responses to such folks is what enables smallscale Ward Churchills to graduate into largescale Adolf Hitlers.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
If you stand silent while idiots spout their drivel, you may allow a propagandist to poison minds, particularly young minds. Just look at how many people STILL unthinkingly buy into the notion that Ho Chi Minh was merely a revolutionary nationalist who tried to get help from the Americans but was rebuffed, all to our shame and miscalculation. It's a communist lie of course, it has been all along, but it's to this day accepted as fact by, I would imagine, nearly a majority.
So where do you stop? If we don't bother condemning some people, some will take the silence as assent.
But on the other hand, pay them too much mind, and you give them what they want.
I don't know where you draw the line, I honestly don't.