More “Truthiness,” PB-Style
June 7th, 2008
(The following interview was filed by Try-Works reader Romeo Zambaletti.)
Ever since June 25, the trolls over at PB have been busily yukking it up over Ward Churchill’s recent surgery. Just to set the record straight on a few of things said thereon, we dropped in on the Good Professor yesterday. The following interview results:
Try-Works: It was initially reported by Colorado AIM that you’d suffered an aneurysm in your leg and had been admitted to the hospital for corrective surgery. The story was then picked up by Drunkablog and, from there, found its way onto PirateBallerina. So let’s start there. How accurate was the information?
Churchill: Not very, although it’s easy to see how the AIM folks got it wrong. The aneurysm that caused alarm was abdominal. The surgeons got to it through my femoral arteries, however, so the incisions were in fact in my upper thighs. That said, it’s good to see John Martin openly admitting that information coming from Colorado AIM should be considered entirely accurate.
Try-Works: “Noj” has been gloating that your undergoing surgery indicates an admission on your part that you “think Western medical knowledge is superior to indigenous healing.” Do you have a response?
Churchill: Yeah, the argument is stupid enough to have come from Thomas Brown. The procedure I underwent involved the installation of a stint. Stints, as I recall, were invented by the Incas, who had already perfected the necessary surgical techniques long before Columbus washed up on the beach. So, it seems to me that I simply availed myself of traditional indigenous medical practice.
Try-Works: “Noj” also says s/he hopes you had “a nice Chinese immigrant doctor.” The implication, I guess, is that if your surgeon was white… You get the drift. Any comment?
Churchill: That’s even more stupid than the last one. But, the moron can rest easy, since his “hopes” were more or less fulfilled. I don’t know whether she’s an immigrant, but my lead surgeon was certainly Chinese. In fact, believe it or not, her last name is Mao.
Try-Works: Okay, here’s another one from “Noj.” He was positively jubilant about your suffering “terrible tobacco and alcohol withdrawal while hospitalized.” How about it?
Churchill: Ludicrous. I’ve no idea where this idiot got the idea that I’d be undergoing “alcohol withdrawal,” since I’m about one step removed from being a tee-totaler. As to my not being allowed to smoke, well, that’s simply delusional. First of all I was in the hospital for less than 30 hours. I refused to be admitted the night before surgery, showed up at 10 in the morning for the procedure, came out from under anesthesia around 5 in the afternoon, and left the hospital directly from the ICU a little after 2 the following afternoon. I was asleep most of that time, but whenever I was awake, I had a wheelchair available for the express—that is, pre-negotiated—purpose of getting me outside any time I wanted a cigarette. We made 3 trips total during the roughly 21 hours I was in ICU. It was very nice out, so we didn’t hurry. I smoked 3 cigarettes on each occasion, for a total of nine. That’s well below my normal rate of consumption, but it was really all I wanted under the circumstances. Suffice it to say that I suffered no “tobacco withdrawal.”
Try-Works: The basis for the claim about alcohol seems to be that piece in the Weekly Standard written by Matt Labash, wherein it’s recounted how you favor Jameson’s Irish whiskey, and how you and he sat around getting drunk during your interview.
Churchill: Did Labash really say I drink Jameson’s? Damn. He must’ve gotten drunker that I thought. If I’m going to drink Irish whiskey, which I do from time to time, like every 3 or 4 months I have a couple of shots, it’s going to be John Powers. The night I did the interview with Labash was rather exceptional, however. He offered to buy shots of anything I wanted to drink at a fairly upscale Berkeley bar, so I sampled three pretty exotic whiskeys at $20-30 a pop, compliments of William Kristol. Labash himself had rather more than three shots, as I recall, but I expect he’s had a bit more practice in that regard than I have. In any case, he spun a pretty good yarn out of not much.
Try-Works: “Noj” has also been crowing that you “absolutely must kick tobacco” if you “don’t want to die of this thing.” True?
Churchill: That’s just another instance of his having no idea what he’s talking about. The type of aneurysm I had, which is fairly rare, is hereditary in something like 95% of all cases. My biological father died of one at roughly the same age I am now, as did my grandfather. Neither of them ever smoked a cigarette. Get the picture?
Try-Works: “Noj” exults that you’ll have to take a medication called Coumadin for the rest of your life. Is there any truth to that?
Churchill: I’ve no idea what s/he’s talking about, and strongly suspect that, as usual, s/he doesn’t either. Not only has nobody mentioned such a drug to me, but the fact is that I’ve been prescribed no medication at all. Why? Because the consensus is that I need none.
Try-Works: There are more medical questions I could pose, but let’s shift gears a bit. “Mia” claims that you’ll soon be afflicted with “salary withdrawal,” and both “Noj” and “Retired Bill” are concerned about when you’ll be eligible to receive retirement benefits. Care to comment?
Churchill: Sure. My retirement benefits began on July 25, 2007. Since then I’ve been receiving a monthly bank deposit from PERA in pretty much the same amount I was taking home before I retired. As to “salary withdrawal,” there’ll be none, since the university paid me the equivalent of year’s salary in a lump sum during the second week of August 2007. I do have to decide whether to start receiving an additional few hundred bucks a month from Social Security in about 2 years, or wait for the larger monthly amount for which I’ll be eligible in 4. I’ve no worries, either way.
Try-Works: Last question. Jim Paine seems to be trying to break out as a poet. I’d like to read you his latest verse and get assessment of its aesthetic merit. Okay? Here goes, “Well said, Fred.” Whatcha think?
Churchill: Wow! I didn’t know he was capable. Just a bit more minimalization and he may actually achieve an eloquence worthy of his intellect.
June 7th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
martin and paine are excited because they claim the word “stint” should be “stent” but my dictionary has “stint” listed as a variant of “stent.”
they don’t get out much do they?
June 8th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Right, y’are, Parker. On the spelling, I mean. But, of course, it’s always nice to have Paine drop in for a copy edit, since, according to the rules he’s publicly endorsed, it means that he’s ultimately responsible for any “misconduct” in the piece.
Meanwhile, did you see the part where “Noj” as much as claims to have slept with Churchill?
Such active fantasy lives these folks display, eh?
June 8th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Ah, yes, “stint.” As in, to “restrict within certain limits,” as Webster’s would have it. But, hey, who’d dare argue with medical giants like Drunkablog, the head Moonbat in Charge, and, of course, that fabulous reincarnation of Marcus Welby, “Noj”?
To the latter expert, I pose a question: Where do you figure the groin ends and the thigh begins, Einstein?
Reason I ask is because each of Churchill’s incisions is 4-5″ long, running vertically—i.e., in the “head to toe” direction—a does not extend into the abdominal region.
So, while the upper inch or so of each incision might be accruately described as situated in the groin, the remaining 3-4″ on each side extends down the areas of the body known as “thighs.”
Goggle your favorite anatomy book, and get back to us if you can figure out how it could possibly work any other way.
And do provide a diagram.
June 8th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
(formite)
June 8th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I wondered about their excitement, too. I’ve got a medical dictionary on hand and checked: yep, stint’s in there.
One of the morons Googled it, got excited, and never bothered checking an actual, gasp, dictionary. It won’t be the last time.
June 9th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I was struck by “Noj’s” assertion that Churchill lied when he stated that his monthly retirement check is very near equal to his monthly take-home pay before he retired. So I did a little calculating, using the following general assumptions based in a combination of university records and the standard Public Employee Retirement Association (PERA) rules (under which Churchill is covered).
To begin with, for purposes of estimating his actual monthly take-home, I rounded off Churchill’s annual salary when he retired at $94K.
However, PERA rules stipulate that his annual salary be computed by averaging the highest-paid 3 years of his state employment. Since that would include the 2 years in which he served as department chair, earning something like $112K, I estimate the PERA average would have been roughly $105K.
Now, using the standard PERA formula combining Churchill’s 30 years in the system—some analysts seem to forget that he’d already worked a year in the Boulder Valley School District before being hired by CU—with his age (59 at the time he retired) to arrive at a percentage of the $105K to be assigned as his annual retirement income, I arrived at a figure of approximetely $80K.
Yes, I know. It seems at first glance that his monthly income from an $80K annual sum should be considerably less than it was from the $95K salary he was receiving from the university at the time he retired.
But wait. There are several offsets involved. For one thing, a number of monthly fees—parking, for example—are no longer being deducted from his check. I figure that’s worth about $100 per month. And, of course, his tax liability, both state and federal, has been appreciably reduced, a matter I low-balled at $200 per month.
Most important of all, he’s no longer paying into PERA, a deduction which was running at least $500 per month before he retired. If we may assume that he’s now covered under his wife’s health care plan—and I think that’s a pretty safe bet—another $200-300 monthly deduction would be eliminated.
All this is independent of the fact that the PERA rules afforded Churchill a couple of options on how he wanted his monthly retirement income to be computed: 1) He could have elected that the payout would occur over the duration of his own lifetime, in which case the amount would be higher than if 2) he elected that the payout would continue for both his and his wife’s lifetimes (in other words, even if he were to die tomorrow, she will continue to receive the full monthly amount for as long as she lives).
I estimate Churchill’s monthy take-home pay before he retired to have been about $6K (plus or minus a couple hundred). If he opted to have his PERA payout extend only over his own lifetime, it looks to me like his monthly retirement check would be for a virtually identical amount.
If, on the other hand—as would seem to be the case, given what he said in the interview—Churchill opted to have his wife continue to receive monthly checks after his death, his monthly retirement income from PERA would be in the neighborhood of $5.5K, i.e., “a little less” than he was bringing home every month when he was still on salary.
To sum up, Churchill’s statement appears to have been quite accurate. This means that “Noj’s” assertion that it was a “lie” is itself a lie.
I’d also like to note that Churchill’s mention of his upcoming eligibility to receive Social Security is intriguing. While I’ve no way of knowing what the monthly payout amount would be if he were to start collecting on the early schedule, rather than waiting until he’s 65, I do know that it wouldn’t take much—just a few hundred dollars per month—for him to be bringing in as much or more than he was before he retired.
For my money, as a Colorado taxpayer, this is exactly as it should be.
June 9th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Direct hit, B-School.
Noj’s latest, after a bit of less detailed and intensive correction from “Retired Bill”: “I should withdraw #4 then. If Ward is collecting 75% of his chair’s salary, that is probably pretty close to his regular faculty paycheck, especially with the lower withholding… So he probably is raking in near what he was.”
Actually, Noj, if you’d bothered to obtain a clue what you were talking before posting your sweeping presentation of “the facts,” there’d have been nothing for to “withdraw.”
But, alas, even though you claim that “even a psychopathic clock stops lying once a day,” there’s no evidence that that’s true either (or at least not in your case).
Witness your attempt to shift attention from your own glaring falsehood with yet another baseless assertion, to wit: “I would guess that Ward is collecting at the higher payout rate, and leaving [his wife] to fend for herself.”
To paraphrase Michael Herr, your bullshit piles up so fast we need wings to stay above it.
June 9th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Still waiting for your explanation and accompanying diagram, “Noj.” Or have you decided to “withdraw” that “fact” as well?
Meanwhile, “Retired Bill” claims that the start-up date for Churchill’s retirement was August 1 rather than July 25, 2007. Care to offer something resembling evidence in that regard, Bill?
June 9th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention that you’ll want to cite something supporting your unequivocal assertion that Churchill will have to take Coumadin for the rest of his life.
Otherwise, that one will have to be added to your growing mountain of “lies and fabrications.”
Then there’s that little matter of your persistence in asserting—despite rather compelling evidence that it’s hereditary—an absolute cause/effect relationship between Churchill’s smoking and his aneurysm.
I’ve yet to find a medical authority who concurs in you no doubt learned “opinion” (which, in any case, you keep presenting as an incontrovertible fact).
Care to withdraw that one, too (along with your completely unsupported “Churchill as alcoholic” characterization)?
June 9th, 2008 at 11:29 am
I’d like to hear a little more about Noj’s claiming to have slept with—or desire to sleep with?—Churchill.
Whether of the jilted or unrequited varieties, the sexual frustration angle would go far towards explaining the type and number of outright lies this person keeps posting about the man.
Of course, there are several other mental disorders which might also account for Noj’s behavior, but there’s no question about him or her being one sick puppy.
Along that line, has anybody considered the possibility that Noj might be Churchill’s former sister in law, Ronda Kelly? A lot of what she’s had to say fits pretty well.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Has anyone else noted that the Prof. Churchill detractors consistently resort to argument ad hominen in lieu of presenting an actual factual based argument against his scholarship and acedemic integrity?
I swear, I recently had one guy, a well educated professional, actually do the crazy hand whirling next to his head as a descriptor for Prof. Churchill. I know that it was an informal conversation, but still!
I responded with an incredulous look complete with a tilt to my head and then pointedly asked him what exactly he read or saw that he would characterize Prof. Churchill in this way.
The response I got was that this is why they had to get rid of him. In other words he had read and saw nothing that would support his characterization and was merely parroting the opinions of others.
Did I let it go? Who me? I don’t think so!
The next question I asked was more an accusation of merely parroting right wing bull spit, which he too often is guilty of doing. “Did you even read anything written by Ward Churchill? Did you even read his essay?”
The look on his face said it all, so I didn’t press further and simply told him that he didn’t and I then went on to explain that the SCRM didn’t question Prof. Churchill’s Native American ancestry, nor did they accuse him of plagiarism, and that he is appealing their decision.
Sigh.
Now that I shamed him, maybe he’ll correct this gross error and promptly conduct an Internet search for the writings of Prof. Churchill so that he will have actually read the man who he was speaking so despairingly to me, the wrong person for sure!
I’m not holding out much hope on this, though. If he does any “research” on Prof. Churchill, it most likely will be in the form of reading conservative blogs instead of going to primary sources.
On the other hand, he may not wish to have his ass pinned against the wall again–not literally, but I was very much in his face, in a non-threatening way of course–so he may throw in an essay or two written by Prof. Churchill just to be able to affirm to me that he has indeed read him.
I hold out even less hope that he will be able to actually read and comprehend Prof. Churchill’s writing for what it actually says, as his mind is so firmly insulated by a steady and heavy diet of conservative pundits who specialize in argument ad hominem.
One can hope that a glimmer of enlightenment from Ward Churchill’s writing will get through his heavily fortressed mind. The guy respects me, and knows that I am not one to take such a strong stance without knowing my stuff.
Who knows. Maybe Prof. Churchill will be the one to finally free this man from the confines of his current state of right wing certainty. If anyone can help break this guy from his mental chains, it is Ward Churchill.
Why else do you think that they went after Churchill. He is effective.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Don’t be too hopeful, Daisy. The guy you were talking to is probably Fred’s younger brother.
In any case, his sounds like the sort of bright, inquisitive intellectuality upon which PB was founded.
June 9th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Retired Bill’s “proof” is now posted on PB. Allow me to quote in full.
“After spending 2 minutes on the PERA site, I found the following Q & A in an online document: Q. How is my retirement date determined?
A. Your earliest possible retirement effective date is the first day of the month following your last day physically at work. Benefit payments are issued on the last working day of each month for the month just completed.”
Uuuuuh, Bill? Do you really need to be reminded that Churchill had been on administrative leave for more than a YEAR at the point he retired? The last time he was “physically at work” was May 2006.
How about you try thinking once in awhile, rather than simply clicking and posting? You might actually end up having some idea what you’re talking about from time to time.
Meanwhile, if it’s alright by you, we’ll just say that you’ve once again “misspoken.”
June 9th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Wow! This “Noj” creature seems to have been stunned into perfect silence. Or did I miss its explanation of where the groin ends and the thigh begins? I was so looking forward to seeing the pictures it provided.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Daisy - I ran across this which is in the same vein. Maybe this is a democrat/liberal site? The dialog is a bit frustrating. Also, how can these people deal with the lack of scrolling comments in the website design- do they all have repetitive stress from clicking? http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3204223&mesg_id=3204496
By the way, at the one convention I attended, the only delegate who would talk to protesters was all like “you naive ineffectual young people. You need to apply to be a delegate. For instance, my pet issue is support of the IRA in Ireland, and here I know how to call up people and get lines inserted into bills”
I came across tryworks sometime after there was some indication that Noj was Churchill’s ex-researcher or grad student, but she/he does make insider comments.
June 9th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
I have to have hope, Beelzebub. As it stands now he’s been mistaken for being Fred’s brother. Ouch!
The reason I shared the incident here in Try Works was to demonstrate how even educated people buy into smear campaigns without even realizing that they have done so.
Why are smear campaigns employed? Simple, because they work.
The question I have is why do they work so well? What is it that causes people to be so susceptible to them?
I thought a study of Not-Fred’s brother would help me to better understand what the heck has gone so wrong.
It isn’t genetics, that is for sure!
I don’t know what Fred’s problem is, and I really don’t care.
Not-Fred’s brother is a different story. I do care.
June 9th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
I’m glad that you brought up Liberals, Sybil.
It isn’t just conservatives who bought into the smear campaign against Prof. Churchill, but liberals, too.
What is going wrong that folks so readily surrender their own intellectual powers in favor of letting others do their thinking for them?
I believe that being told what to think throughout elementary school has a lot to do with this manifestation of academic laziness.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:34 am
I want to add being told what to do, what to study, what to wear, what to eat………
You get the picture.
It is no wonder that adults watch the news and read the newspaper and take both sources as authoritative, without so much as questioning of their veracity, unless the source is that of an opposing political leaning.
June 10th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
“being told what to do, what to study, what to wear, what to eat…”
That’s why they hate our “freedom,” Daisy.