The Try-Works

As the regular dipshits seem to feel free again to perpetuate any bald-faced lie about Ward Churchill they like.

Take this post.  Anyone spot the big time whopper therein?

Western Shoshone elder and activist Carrie Dann’s one of my heroes. I was arrested at this event, and proud to be so.

I have been remiss in my blogging duties of late, breaking many hearts, I’m sure.  That probably ain’t likely to change anytime soon, as I’m in the middle of a longish project that, frankly, is a hell of a lot more interesting than pissing on the random right-wing dipshits that constitute the anti-Churchill bloc.

However, two things seem worth pointing out:

1. The Privilege and Tenure Committee has denied Hank Brown’s request to alter their recommendation of a one-year suspension for the Good Professor.  And Hank Brown, ignoring due process as predicted, has forwarded his recommendation of termination to the Regents.

2. The Good Professor and the mighty David Lane will be on NBC this weekend.  I’ll be out of town and off the grid over the weekend, but I’m all set to record.  I’ll provide some kind of commentary Wednesdayish.

So, I promised a media wrap of last week’s Ward Churchill’s coverage, but I’ve been preempted by a bout of pill-popping and gun-cleaning. C’est la vie, ’tis summertime. So, highlights.

How’s about the mighty Dean Saitta on NPR, here? Nothing beats that.

Unless, maybe, an editorial by Adrienne Anderson on academic freedom, here? After all, it’s a subject she oughtta know something about, having been an early victim of this right-wing purge.

Then, of course, there’s Tom Mayer and Dana Cloud, here.

And, even better, civil rights badass David lane, guest hosting the Caplis and Silverman show, here and here.

But my personal favorite, and you’ll excuse me while I swallow my Jim Beam bottle just having to say it aloud, came from Fox 31’s Ron Zappolo, here. Watching the interview, I kept expecting to see Zappolo get dropped through a trap door into a pit of cannibal Ballerinas. It was, hands down, the finest interview yet with the good professor. Like him or dislike him, and it’s pretty clear Zappolo ain’t so sure himself, it wasn’t the dipshit hit piece we’ve all become accustomed to.

Which might be why Ballerina and the Alcoholics haven’t bothered to mention it.

Lastly, and of least import, as Mr. Ballerina himself notes, I had a letter in the Denver Post and Boulder Daily Camera. That wouldn’t even warrant a mention but for the fun you’ll have watching the three usual shitbirds doing what they do best.  One feels a little like a Boulder teenager in a room full of Allen Ginsberg clones.

Talk about making a bad situation worse, Jim Paine is now thrashing about over at Pirate Ballerina trying to put a happy face on our having outed him yesterday as a scholarly buffoon. Check out his latest attempt to turn lead into gold.

“‘Charley’…directs our attention to pages 281-282 (all footnotes), and to the middle of page 305, of Robinson’s Rotting Faces. Unfortunately for ‘Charley’ (and his little dog, too!), none of those pages indicates that Robinson believed smallpox vaccine was intentionally withheld from the Mandans; in fact, page 305 discusses how the clerk of Fort Union, Larpenteur, made a vaccine from the scraped sores of a smallpox victim, and inoculated the Indians with it (a tragic mistake, as it turned out).”

Shit.

That wasn’t even a nice try, Jimbo, and your transparent attempt to change the subject doesn’t help.

The issue addressed in the misconduct complaint, as is clearly stated at p. 4, is whether the Churchill investigating committee “misrepresented and suppressed evidence” indicating the “withholding of vaccine” from “the Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara” Indians immediately prior to/during the 1837 smallpox outbreak at Forts Clark and Union.

So the questions are whether such evidence exists, and whether the committee had clear reason to know it existed—e.g., is it mentioned in the sources cited by the committee?—when they claimed to have “found NO evidence” to that effect and that Churchill had therefore “fabricated” the whole thing.

If evidence exists, the committee’s finding of “fabrication” against Churchill is of course invalidated.

If the committee knew, or had reason to know, that the evidence existed when it claimed the opposite, it is also guilty of falsification, a “serious form of research misconduct” (to quote their Report).

Unfortunately for YOU, Jimbo, these are the ONLY questions at issue. Which is to say that what you, the committee—or Robertson, for that matter—might choose to “believe” about the evidence is utterly irrelevant. Or, to put it another way, go play shift goal posts on somebody else’s time.

Helluva thing, ain’t it, Jimbo?

Bein’ held to the same rules and standards that you so sanctimoniously endorsed when they were supposedly applied to Churchill? But, hey, it’s a one-size-fits-all rulebook, and you elected to enter the contest of your own free will. In fact, as we recall, you insisted on it.

With all that in mind, forgive us for mentioning that you neglected to quote from the relevant pages in Robertson before going off on your pathetic attempt at spinning them. So, as a service both to you and to PB readers, we’ll correct your journalistic—or would this one be “scholarly”?—”oversight.”

In note 37 of the 13th chapter in Rotting Face, which spans pages 281-82, Robertson observes that at p. 319, note 507, of [Fort Clark commandant François] Chardon’s Journal, it is recorded that smallpox—actually, cowpox—vaccine was delivered to Fort Union as early as 1832, and that at page 160 of his “Journals and Notes,” Charles Larpenteur recorded that, as Robertson puts it, “seven Assiniboine women and several mixed-bloods were vaccinated either or right after Jacob Halsey and the St.Peter’s arrived in 1837, but the vaccine was inert.”

At p. 305, Robertson goes on to observe that Larpenteur inoculated his wife and several other Indians at Fort Union with live smallpox virus because, not because there was NO vaccine at the fort, but instead because there was “no ACTIVE cowpox vaccine available [our emphasis].”

Okay, let’s review, Jimbo. Churchill’s supposed “fabrication” was that vaccine was available at the Upper Missouri posts, but deliberately withheld from the Indians (i.e., was instead “sitting in storerooms”). The committee claimed that there was no evidence supporting his contention.

Well, this sure as shit looks like evidence supporting Churchill’s description of the situation to US (and, we think, to any other objective observer). The committee was of course free to opine with respect to the conclusiveness of such evidence, but NOT to deny its existence.

Had they done so, all that would have been at issue were differences of opinion and interpretation—i.e., sholarly disagreement/debate—rather than research misconduct (on either side). But, the fact is that they didn’t. And that fact obviously had nothing to do with a desire to “preserve academic integrity.”

Perhaps we’re being a little unfair at this point, because we’ve not really addressed the issue of whether the committee “knew, or had reason to know” about this evidence when they claimed it didn’t exist.

Where to begin with that one? How ’bout the fact that they devoted 44 pages in their Report to scrutinizing the total of 2 paragraphs—repeated several times—Churchill ever devoted to 1837 smallpox pandemic? Such a lopsided emphasis certainly seems designed to foster the impression that they conducted EXHAUSTIVE research on the matter. So, taking at face value the image they themselves went to such great lengths in projecting, it’s entirely fair to conclude that they SHOULD have come up with it (i.e., “had reason to know” of its existence).

That said, there’s no need to entertain the least claims of ambiguity in the matter. ALL THREE of the texts mentioned above—Robertson, Chardon, and Larpenteur—are cited and discussed in the Report. Thus, while it may well be that the committee followed YOUR “research practice” of pretending conversance with material they’d never actually read, Jimbo, their own “scholarly” posturing serves to confirm the prospect that “knew or had reason to know” what was said in their cited sources.

The unavoidable conclusion is thus that the committee is guilty of falsification, while Churchill is fully exonerated of its finding that he engaged in “fabrication” regarding the availability/withholding of vaccine on the Upper Missouri in 1837.

As we said yesterday: Case closed.

Oh, but we’ve still left a couple of points dangling haven’t we?

Like Paine’s desperate attempt, having been whipped by the objective facts into admitting that vaccine was withheld in 1837—just like Churchill said—to recast the “real” question in purely subjective terms, i.e., whether the evidence mustered by Churchill “proves” the withholding was “deliberate.”

Okay, Jimbo, we’ll demolish that one, too. First of all, as we’ve already explained, that’s NOT the “real” question. The research misconduct complaint you supposedly “refuted” with such ease, hinges on the actual questions, answered above (AND by your attempt to change the question).

Second, even if it WERE the “real question,” the only standard of “proof” Churchill has to meet, according to the AHA, is whether “the evidence is sufficient to allow a reasonable scholar to draw the conclusion” he drew from it. The venue is historical analysis, after all, not a judicial forum.

Which takes us to the third point, which is what, exactly, YOU’D pose as an alternative explanation. That vaccine was delivered to Fort Union, placed in storage, and then innocently “forgotten” for a few years? Yeah, right…

There are a lot of words that might accurately describe an approach like that—”pure idiocy” and “outright denial” spring readily to mind—but “reasonable scholarship” is nowhere among them.

Churchill plainly wins this round, too, Jimbo, while you not only lose but, in the process, have once again exposed yourself before all the world as being something less than the sharpest blade in the drawer.

In all sincerity, Jimbo, we’d advise you to cut your fucking losses.

But we know you won’t. Actually, you can’t, because, like most ACTA-funded creeps, you really ARE genetically hard-wired to be a little more than a hopelessly compulsive gas-bag.

Readers inclined to slumming Pirate Ballerina may have noticed Jim Paine having himself one of those Aha! moments a few days back, the result of which was that in his “Sloppy Seconds Department” on June 1, he purported to obliterate the most recent set of research misconduct charges filed against the committee that “invesigated” Ward Churchill’s scholarship back in 2006—i.e., Mimi Wesson and her pals—by what he’d earlier descibed as “several Ethnic Studies professors and two attorneys” (i.e., Jim Craven, Jennifer Harbury, Ruth Hsu, David Stannard, Hanauni-Kay Trask, Sharon Venne, and Michael Yellow Bird).

First, ol’ Jimmie quotes from the misconduct complaint: “The Committee states that it ‘found no evidence’ supporting Professor Churchill’s claims that vaccine intended for Indians was withheld at Forts Union and Clark and, therefore, concluded that he had “fabricated those statements” (p.78, emphasis added)… This statement is directly contradicted by the Committee’s own acknowledgment of two sources referenced by Professor Churchill, Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn (pp.74-75) and R.G. Robertson’s Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian (pp.76-77).”

Then he delivers what he seems to have believed was a crushing rebuttal: “Unfortunately, there is no mention of vaccine (withheld or otherwise) or smallpox on pp. 74-75 of the Connell book, and there is no mention of vaccine (withheld or otherwise) or smallpox on pp. 76-77 of Robertson’s book. Perhaps the Ethnic Studies “scholars” involved with this latest complaint are referencing the Reader’s Digest Condensed versions of the books.”

Wow!

It’s not difficult to envision Mr. Self-Anointed Super-Scholar dancing a little jig and crowing about how “the scholarship of this latest group of complainers…marshals its ‘facts’ so poorly that even two bloggers and a New Jersey cop can refute them.”

There’s a little problem with Paine’s supposedly devastating “critique,” however.

Much as we hate to disrupt the moron’s gloating—heh, heh—we feel it only appropriate to point out that the page references at issue aren’t to the books.

Nope. They’re not.

As is clearly stated in the complaint, the page references are to the INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE’S REPORT, Jimbo. So what’s said or not said at pages 74-75 of Connell and pages 76-77 of Robertson has exactly nothing to do with nothing.

Feeling a tad bit like a clown at this point, Jimbo?

After all, any half-conscious 8th grader might be expected to have taken a clue from the perfect page sequence involvent—running consecutively as it does from 74 through 77—that it was extremely unlikely two different sources would be at issue. Enough so that s/he’d probably exhibit all the “scholarly rigor” necessary to actually go back to check and make sure s/he knew what s/he was talking about before publicly farting through her mouth about it.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. What a fucking dunce.

The moral of the story, boys and girls, is that, as we’ve been saying all along, two bloggers and a New Jersey cop couldn’t actually find their collective ass with both hands, even if their lives depended on it.

If you want something you can rely upon for factual accuracy, stick with those “several Ethnic Studies professors and two attorneys.”

Which is to say that if you want to find the stuff in Robertson about vaccine being stored rather than administered at Fort Union, try pages 281-82. Then have a look toward the middle of page 305. There are other relevant passages/pages, but let’s let Paine find those on his own. Shall we?

Case closed.

Today on PB: Ward Churchill was interviewed on the Denver Fox affiliate yesterday…and for those who live in Colorado (and just can’t get enough of The Perfesser’s unique brand of blah-blah), the interview will be rebroadcast in its entirety at 5:30pm Mountain Time today. (ht CU Ph.D. Anthro).

Thanks, Mr. Paine, for running what amounts to an advertisement for Churchill (we’re sure Ron Zappolo and the rest of the crew at Fox 31 is also quite appreciative). For once, the information you’ve posted is accurate. Which is to say that accidents can happen to anybody. Right?

Just to prove our point, we’ll finally bother ourselves to provide a long overdue correction to an exemplary piece of horseshit you were slinging for the umpteenth time today: “Speaking of Ward Churchill doppelganger (and tryworks security guard) “Charley Arthur,” it’s been 62 days since he promised to post an hour-long video “proving” Churchill’s Indian ancestry on wardchurchill.net.”

The FACT is that there was nothing in the expanation we posted along with the video-clips we excerpted from that tape of the 1994 Keetoowah Band Council meeting “promising” that the full tape would “prove” ANYTHING other than that that clips were not lifted out of context.

So, to put it bluntly, you’ve been lying out your puckered little ass every time you’ve claimed anything to the contrary Mr. Paine. As in, well, umpteen fucking times.

Okay, kids, let’s review: What we actually said the video clips establish, and what the fill video confirms, is the nature of Churchill’s enrollment with the United Band of Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians (which has been consistently misrepresented on Pirate Ballerina, in the Rocky Mountain News, and, after massive pressure was brought to bear on it, the Keetoowah Council itself). In other words, the following is proven by the video:

1. Associate Membership and Honory Membership in the Keetoowah Band are not the same thing (or at least they weren’t at the time Churchill was enrolled and issued a roll number by the Band).

2. That to be enrolled as an Associate Member of the Keetoowah Band in 1994, applicants were required to demonstrate that they were of Cherokee descent.

3. That the Keetoowah Band Council’s Enrollment Committee itself verified each applicant’s lineage, to ensure the Cherokee descent requirement was met.

4. That Churchill’s lineage was challenged by non-Keetoowahs on grounds identical to those argued by Jim Paine and his New Jersey state cop, not to mention Kevin Flynn at the Rocky Mountain News.

5. That Churchill’s enrollment was therefore delayed by the Council so that the Band’s geneologist could re-examine his lineage for a second time (it seems reasonable to assume that the srutiny was more intense the second time ’round).

6. That this second examination resulted in (re)verification of Churchill’s Cherokee descent because he was then assigned Keetoowah Roll Number R7627 and issued a Band Card duly signed by Band Chief John Ross.

THAT much is conclusively documented by the video. Which means that Churchill has all along been quite accurate in describing his enrollment status, while a lot of other folks—most especially Jim Paine—have been, well… lying about it.

But, hey, what’s new? Once again, we refer readers to a pair of examples of what Paine passes off as “journalism”—or is it supposed to be “scholarship”?— still proudly posted on the PB sidebar under the headings “Chronology” and “Mo-Nah-Se-Tah’s Teeth.”

Hell, add the one headed “Churchill Genealogy” as well.

Now, at this point, we’ve just gotta ask: “Can’t Jim Paine Get Anything Right? Does He Even Try?” And ain’t it high time for another installment of your famous “Retraction Blues,” Jimbo?

And who ain’t?

New charges have been filed against the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct for their inane report on the Good Professor.

Read the press release.

Read the new allegations.

My favorite bit comes from the allegations.

1. The Committee misrepresented and suppressed evidence concerning smallpox among the Wampanoags in New England, 1614-1618.

Professor Churchill was charged with research misconduct stating, “There’s some pretty strong circumstantial evidence that [Captain John] Smith introduced smallpox among the Wampanoags as a means of clearing the way for the invaders” (p.33).

The Committee concludes that Professor Churchill “fabricated his account, because no evidence – not even circumstantial evidence – supports his claim” (p.38). It claims to have done “further research to see if other sources buttress Professor Churchill’s claims” (p.35) and asserts that there is “nothing that points specifically to smallpox. Professor Churchill does not provide even ‘circumstantial evidence’ to support his claim that the disease was smallpox or tell his readers by what logic he reached this conclusion.” (p.37, emphasis added).

There are, in fact, numerous readily accessible sources which describe the disease as smallpox, thus refuting the conclusions of the Committee. To quote only a few examples:

“For example, the first smallpox epidemic, in 1616, sharply reduced populations of Indians along the northeast Atlantic Coast.” John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) p.503.

“Importation of smallpox also decimated the native peoples of North America, facilitating the European colonization of the continent. In 1616-1619, a smallpox epidemic cut down almost nine-tenths of the Indian population in the Massachusetts Bay area. . . .” Jonathan B. Tucker, Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2001) p.11.

“New England Indians, from Massachusetts to Maine, suffered a smallpox from 1616-1619.” Sana Loue, Gender, Ethnicity, and Health Research (New York: Kluwer Academic, 1999) p.136.

In addition, numerous timelines of early American history list a 1616 smallpox epidemic in the northeast as a seminal event. See, e.g., John W. Wright, ed., The New York Times Almanac 2007: The Almanac of Record, (New York: Penguin, 2006) p.78; Larissa Juliet Taylor, ed., Great Events from History: The 17 th Century (Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2005) (Table of Contents, “1617ff., Smallpox Kills Native American Populations”); David Lea, et al., A Political Chronology of the Americas (London: Europa, 2001), p.225.

Dozens of other examples can be found by a simple Google or Amazon.com engine search.

Our findings:

If the Committee was “unable,” as it claims, to locate such references, it is because they did not look, not because such references do not exist. Its claim to have engaged in “further research” which yielded “no evidence” is therefore a deliberate misrepresentation and a falsification and/or suppression of readily available evidence.

2. The Committee misrepresented and suppressed evidence concerning Smith and the deliberate infection of the Wampanoags.

The Committee dismisses the possibility of intentional dissemination of smallpox by asserting that since John Smith “wanted to use Indians as a labor force” (p.37), he would not have wanted them eliminated.

On this basis, it finds that Professor Churchill “fabricated” the possibility of deliberate infection.

In fact, however, it is widely recognized that Squanto, a Wampanoag who dealt extensively with English settlers, not only believed that the infection was deliberate, but told others that the colonists had the means to do so “buried in the ground” and “could send it amongs whom they would.” (This was reported by William Bradford on p.175 of his Of Plymouth Plantation, 1908 edition available at http://tinyurl.com/yral9u.) Smith, of course, was a primary figure among these English colonists.

Our findings:

There is clearly “circumstantial evidence” to support Professor Churchill’s statement. It is not possible to fabricate the possibility of deliberate infection in this case where there exists an historical record. The fact that subsequent U.S. historians have discounted this deliberate infection possibility does not erase or invalidate the reality that the main Wampanoag understanding we have available to us (a) supports Professor Churchill’s analysis and (b) is completely ignored by the Committee. Thus, the Committee’s claim not only suppresses and misrepresents available evidence but also reflects deliberate disparaging of Indigenous sources.

I believe this is where one inserts: ouch. Looks to me like a pattern of deliberate distortion of the historical record by the Standing Committee. Shitcan all of ‘em, I say.

Or not. Because scholars shouldn’t be shitcanned for expressing diverse historical models. That’s kinda the point.

But it should go without saying that to call these “scholars” laughably ignorant of the subject matter at hand is to be a wee bit too kind.

How the fuck do you miss a New York Times timeline?

How the fuck do you not use the text search feature on Amazon.com at the very least?

Next thing you know they’ll be applying for jobs at the Rocky Mountain News.

So, I’ll do a media wrap tomorrow with links to some of the week’s greatest hits, including the mighty Dean Saitta on NPR and David Lane co-hosting Caplis and Silverman.

But my favorite of the week’s Ward Churchill coverage comes from the Denver Post, in the form of our latest dribbling idiot of a governor, Demublican Bill Ritter, explaining why Ward Churchill should be fired.

Gov. Bill Ritter on Tuesday added his voice to the Ward Churchill case, joining his predecessor in calling for the firing of the University of Colorado ethnic studies professor.Ritter made his comments after news broke over the Memorial Day weekend that Hank Brown, the university’s president, had drafted a letter recommending the firing of Churchill for “repeated and deliberate academic deception.”

The previous governor, Republican Bill Owens, called on CU to get rid of Churchill in 2005, soon after a controversial essay came to light. Ritter, a Democrat, weighed in Tuesday, saying that Churchill had damaged the university’s reputation and should be dismissed.

“The character of his conduct is different than those things that are protected by the First Amendment, and I really do think in an academic institution, we need to pay attention to what we’re telling our kids and what our professors are writing about,” Ritter said after a bill-signing ceremony in Glenwood Springs.

Ritter stressed that the authority to fire Churchill rests entirely with the Board of Regents, but he agrees with Brown’s recommendation for that action.

“I’ve thought that for a long, long time, based on all his comments and … problems surrounding his writing,” Ritter said. “I thought it was black and white for the university.”

Keep reading.

Now that’s the kind of clarity I’m all about. His writings aren’t, like, the kind of free speech that’s protected. That presumably consists of chocolate chip cookie recipes — God, I love David Lane — and Samuel Eliot Morrison histories. Obviously anything that might be contentious should earn one a shitcanning.

A first amendment scholar, Governor Ritter sure as shit ain’t. A Stalinist? Maybe.

What kind of program do you think Ritter is gonna initiate to “pay attention to . . . what our professors are writing about?” And who do you think’s gonna set the standards for what’s acceptable? Dan Caplis? Mike Rosen? Vincent Carroll? And what do you think the purge process’ll be like?

Here’s a hint: it’ll be a little faster than what we saw with Ward Churchill, but other than that, it won’t differ in the fucking slightest.

And, please, don’t insult my intelligence by claiming that Ritter was talking about Ward Churchill’s alleged academic misconduct. After all, he gets to that at the end of his statement. Let me repeat: “I’ve thought that [he should be fired] for a long, long time, based on all his comments and … problems surrounding his writing.”

That’s the Ritter view: Ward Churchill should be fired for his comments. And, as an afterthought, y’know, for those “problems surrounding his writing.”

Ah, that’s what I love about the cringingly backwater pricks who represent the Colorado citizenry to our great nation: even when everyone in the world is telling them to shut the fuck up and pretend it’s about the academic misconduct, they can’t help but squat down and shit their contempt for civil liberties all over our collective face.