This is the September 2001 piece that got Ward Churchill , Chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies, into trouble more than three years later, particularly this claim made about the victims in the twin towers (and keep it mind, when this was written they were still removing bodies):
The shit has hit the rotary over this (three years later) and he has had to resign as chair of his department and become a lowly professor instead. He swears that his reference to the Twin Tower victims as “Eichmanns” was taken out of context (he’s referring after all not to Adolf Eichmann but instead to his cousin, Millie Eichmann, the well known humanitarian who ran a home for blind kittens and healed orphan children with her kiss).
And what pisses me off- he’s being hailed by leftists as an intellectual martyr for “daring to exercise free speech” and as a victim of censorship. PEOPLE: being made to take accountability for your actions is NOT censorship! Censorship is when you are denied permission to express controversial views at all- this is just a stupid arrogant fucktard who wants to shoot his mouth off (causing pain to the families of the victims of terrorist murderers) without having to defend his statements. He was totally allowed to express his opinions, and the media was totally within their rights to spread it, and other people were totally within their ritghts to say “That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve read about 9-11 and btw get a haircut you hippie freak the 60s are as dead as those hijackers you love so much” and being made to take a demotion (where he’ll make more money than other professors in his department) is not the same as being arrested and moved to a reeducation camp in Alaska.
(I’m in a rush or I’d have some links, but GOOGLE NEWS for Ward Churchill will take you there.)
Man, Churchill’s a piece of work. I became interested in radical Amerindian politics when I was in high school, and even I had trouble defending the man.
Wow. Does anything scream “exaggerated sense of self-importance” than posing for your faculty picture wearing sunglasses?
Unless the man is blind or something, of course.
I can totally get behind the struggle for Amerindian liberation. I can totally understand the anger. But shit man, you are sucking at the public tit! Those “little Eichmanns” braying into their phones are the reason you get to hang out in your ivory tower! The majority of them are just trying to get over. It is unfortunate, I agree, that they choose to work so closely with the machinations of profit, but how else will they keep up with the Joneses and afford their brownstones or Jersey homes and all that other shit? They want that stuff, they believe in that stuff, and it’s their right to do so. So don’t bite the hand that feeds you quite so hyperbolically, you, you, douche-tard. What a great insult. Douche-tard.
Come on people. This is all just a misunderstanding.
Posted by the guy who looks like a long haired mummified Bruce Campbell and who is clearly to smart and cool for all of us.
Yup, just a plain ole misunderstanding. In fact, the whole essay is nothing but praise for America. It’s all so obvious. :dubious:
Meh, another moron mistaking freedom of speech with being a loud mouthed idiot. Shame he wasn’t fired outright, or fired right out…of a cannon. Then we’d be shooting his mouth off.
Wow, reason #3,217 why I’m glad I moved far away from the People’s Republic of Boulder. It’s a great town to live in, if you’re rich and batshit insane.
As someone in the left of American politics, I say the dude’s no martyr or prophet. He’s just fucking full of himself. Even his damn explanation is fucking full of himself.
“Do whatever it wants” like … work, or talk on cell phones? From his “article” as quoted in the NY Times article linked earlier in the thread:
Yeah, his point was totally that US foreign policy stinks. Never mind that the sanctions he was railing against were UN sanctions, and not US sanctions. All rich Americans deserve to die for those sanctions.
“**raying, incessantly and self-importantly … conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance [of the dead]” indeed.
Then you accept that the terrorist attacks were directly related to Iraq?
As to his money quote: “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.” How’d that work out for the attackers?
Yeah, he’s got a point alright. I suspect we’d differ as to what it is.
