The Try-Works

Yeah, just try to imagine that.

Anyway, Michael Roberts has an update in today’s Westword about the Passion of Heath Urie.

Class conflict: The October 18, 2007, Message revolved around Boulder Daily Camera reporter Heath Urie, who was prevented from entering a class taught on the CU-Boulder campus by firebrand instructor Ward Churchill. Back then, neither Urie, who pressed charges against Churchill supporter Josh Dillabaugh after the incident, nor the infamous prof commented on the matter. But a few weeks after charges against Dillabaugh were dropped, both are weighing in — and their viewpoints have absolutely zero in common.

Urie expresses regret that he became part of the story: “That’s something you never want to happen.” Yet he thinks he and his photographer, Joshua Lawton, acted in a professional manner throughout, and he defends his decision to call the police after his forcible ejection. In his view, “When somebody lays a hand on you, that’s when they cross the line.” He’s just as adamant that the accounts of the episode that emanated from Churchill’s camp bear no relation to reality. “They’re exaggerated, blown out of proportion and just inaccurate — and I stand for the opposite things as a reporter,” he says.

Churchill begs to differ. Via e-mail, he argues that charges against Dillabaugh should never have been filed in the first place, especially considering his contention that Urie initially identified his alleged attacker as someone else entirely: TryWorks blogger Benjamin Whitmer.

After the authorities declined to prosecute Dillabaugh, Whitmer suggested the Camera pony up an I’m-sorry, and Churchill concurs. “Apologies are owed by the Camera not only to Whitmer, and even more so to Dillabaugh, but to everybody in the room that night — including yours truly — and to its readers,” he writes as part of a Q&A at blogs.westword.com/latestword. “Any reputable newspaper would already have issued them. But, hey, we’re talking about the Daily Camera. So neither the word ‘reputable’ nor the word ‘newspaper’ really applies.” Churchill strikes the same chord when he’s asked how the Camera has treated him in general. “Truth is,” he responds, “I’ve received better treatment from the Klan.”

Guess that’s his burning cross to bear.

The rest.

Mr. Roberts also provides his full exchange with Ward Churchill and myself in his blog. As well as a quote from David Lane, who cuts right to the heart of the matter.

When contacted for his comments, David Lane, the attorney who represented Dillabaugh, was brief and to the point. “The charges against Josh were dismissed as they should have been because he never assaulted anyone,” Lane wrote. But Whitmer was much more expansive in the following e-mail exchange, conducted earlier in January.

Westword: What’s your understanding of the reason charges against Josh Dillabaugh were dropped?

Benjamin Whitmer: My understanding is the charges were dropped because the case couldn’t be proved — i.e., Mr. Dillabaugh’s lawyer talked to the DA, told them the Camera had a longstanding animosity towards Mr. Churchill and that if the case went to court, he’d run roughshod over Urie. Granted, that came to me secondhand, but that’s the way I heard it.

WW: Were you surprised by this decision? Or was it pretty much what you expected?

BW: It’s exactly what I expected. And what I’ve been predicting since charges were filed. I’ve been calling Heath Urie a liar from the outset, and that wasn’t hyperbole. He’s a lying little prick with a monstrous sense of entitlement. This was his attempt at retribution after going batshit when he was prohibited from entering the classroom. The only thing fucking dumber than Urie’s filing charges is the other lying asshole over at the Camera, [city editor] Matt Sebastian, implying [in a public statement] that Urie had been physically harmed. I’ve received rougher lap-dances than the treatment Urie got.

WW: When did you send your latest letter to the Daily Camera? [The letter demanded an apology from the Camera.]

BW: January 2nd.

WW: Was it posted on the blog right away? Or was there a delay? [A previous Whitmer letter didn’t appear online until after Westword contacted the Camera about it.] Did it also appear in the regular print edition today?

BW: It was posted on the blog right away. As to whether or not it appeared in the print edition, I have no idea. I’d rather gut myself with a rusty fishhook than read the Camera on a regular basis, so I don’t subscribe. [The letter was printed in the paper’s January 7 edition.]

WW: Have you heard from anyone at the Camera in regard to your demand for an apology? Do you expect to hear from anyone there in the future?

BW: No, I ain’t heard from anybody. And I won’t hear from anybody. To be honest, the only reason I sent the letter was in hopes they’d be dumb enough to “lose” it again. It was a stupid enough move on their part that it seemed worth seeing if they’d replicate it.

WW: What lessons should reporters at the Camera and/or other newspapers learn from what took place?

BW: Quit the mainstream media. The fourth estate’s populated by dribbling morons of which Heath Urie’s all too typical.

WW: Would you like to share any other comments about the resolution of the case?

BW: This is what the Camera does when it comes to Ward Churchill. This is typical. Like the Rocky, they hate Ward Churchill’s fucking guts, and they’ll pass up no opportunity to slime all over him. It’s this kind of sleazy horseshit that’s pissed me off throughout the so-called scandal, and it’s exactly what led to my attempt at giving them a taste of their own medicine on the Try-Works.

The only thing atypical about this incident is the stunning incompetence of Heath Urie. It’s one thing to attempt to smuggle in recording devices and rush a closed room to provoke a gotcha journalism incident. I expect no less when dealing with the Denver/Boulder media. But to file charges based on an insane, self-contradictory police report is something else entirely. I feel almost bad doing this, since Urie seems a beer or two shy of a six-pack, but I kind of owe him a hearty round of thanks. I can lecture about the hypocrisy of the local media until my eyes bleed, but it doesn’t have anything like the impact of Urie’s dipshit stunt.

A few days after this exchange, Churchill provided his own replies to a similar batch of e-mail questions:

Westword: What is your response to charges being dropped against Josh Dillabaugh?

Ward Churchill: There was never any basis for filing charges against Dillabaugh in the first place. Setting aside the fact that Urie was assaulted by no one – quite the opposite, actually (see below) — Urie described Ben Whitmer, not Josh Dillabaugh, as his “assailant.” Indeed, his identification of Ben was “confirmed” by a picture snapped in the hallway by the photographer who accompanied Urie that night.

WW: Are you pleasantly surprised that charges were dropped? Or did you expect them to be by virtue of witnessing the incident?

WC: Actually, I’d like to have seen it go to court. That way, the bald-faced nature of Urie’s lies would have ended up a matter of official record. And that, in turn, would have served to shed a bit of very useful light on the Camera’s editorial defense of the guy, as well as its broader editorial posture.

WW: Were you interviewed by representatives of the Boulder Police Department in relation to the charges?

WC: Nope. Nor by the campus cops, although I was standing within a few feet of the “investigating officers” at a couple of points while they were on the “scene.” That in itself would have made for some interesting testimony when I took the stand at trial, doncha think?

WW: Do you think charges should have been filed against Heath Urie, the reporter with the Boulder Daily Camera?

WC: Given the daintiness of the “standards” applied in bringing charges against Dillabaugh, Urie should definitely have been charged with assaulting Ben Whitmer. This is to say that when Urie came barging into the room, Ben put up his hand, palm toward Urie, and told Urie to stop. Urie then walked into Ben’s hand, and tried to keep moving forward (i.e., to push Ben backwards or out of his way).

My own view is that this is all chickenshit, pure and simple. But, since Urie, the cops, and the DA all opted to play by such rules, Urie should have been charged with assaulting Ben and possibly Dillabaugh.

He should also have been charged with menacing me (he was headed directly towards me when he ran into Ben’s hand), harrassment (he came charging right up into my face later, during the break, despite having been repeatedly told that I didn’t wish to speak with him), trespassing (he entered a closed session in a reserved room after being told he was barred from doing so), and something on the order of creating a disturbance (demanding his “right” to interview me right in the middle of my trying to deliver my lecture).

WW: Benjamin Whitmer has asked for an apology from Camera representatives in the wake of the charges being dropped. Do you think the newspaper should issue a formal apology? If not, how do you think the paper should respond?

WC: Apologies are owed by the Camera not only to Whitmer, and even more so to Dillabaugh, but to everybody in the room that night — including yours truly — and to its readers. Any reputable newspaper would already have issued them. But, hey, we’re talking about the Daily Camera. So neither the word “reputable” nor the word “newspaper” really applies.

WW: How would you characterize your treatment by the Camera?

WC: Truth is, I’ve received better treatment from the Klan.

WW: Are you teaching your class at CU this semester? Do you feel that the first class last semester was a success?

WC: It’s a year-long deal, so we’ll simply pick up during spring semster where we left off in the fall. And, yes, I’d consider the fall semester to have been a resounding success. It was, moreover, a genuine delight.

The rest.

Mr. Urie can wax philosophical all he wants, but charges have been dropped. His version of events has been found lacking by Boulder’s DA. And she’s known to buy just about fucking anything.

Update: Just noticed that Mr. Martin’s whining because he didn’t manage to worm his way into this story. Hey, maybe next time, you fucking parasite.

Update II: I like Michael Roberts a lot, but c’mon, don’t tell me that lapdance line shouldn’t have gone in the print edition. That motherfucker was solid gold.

Based on some of the comments made on KHOW’s Caplis and Silverman show, Try-Works commenter N would like to know. And you can decide for yourself. KHOW’s .mp3 of the show is right here. In it, the pair interviews Glenn Morris and David Lane about the Columbus Day protest trials I pointed to yesterday.

Generally Caplis and Silverman seem a little confused as to what civil disobedience actually fucking means, arguing somehow that Martin Luther King was a hero, but that any violation of any law, no matter how fucking stupid, arbitrary or vicious, should be prosecuted to the fullest. They manage to reconcile that logical split in the way they usually do: by being too fucking dumb to notice it.

But anyway, highlights as follows:

At 5:45, when David Lane corrects one of our historically illiterate local media’s favorite canards: that those engaged in civil disobedience during the civil rights movement just took their lumps, and never fought prosecution.

At 8:45, when Dan Caplis begins a tear about the fundamental characteristic of America being the rule of law. This’d be the same motherfucker who never saw a treaty or international obligation he didn’t piss on. The same Dan Caplis who has openly called for anyone expressing an opinion to the left of Hillary Clinton to be tried for fucking treason. Not to belabor the point, but Dan Caplis has about as much right to lecturing on the rule of law as Monica Lewinsky does lecturing on tobacco abstinence.

At 16:00, when David Lane points out the city of Denver doesn’t celebrate Columbus Day. City employees go to work, offices are open. Not much to that, but it’s interesting, and I didn’t know it.

At 20:45, when Silverman waxes eloquent about the poor racists who might’ve missed their tee time. Incurring open derision from David Lane.

At 21:35, when Glenn Morris points out that Silverman’s idiotic argument about protestors not having the right to inconvenience working people is the self-same argument used by white segregationists when whining about the civil rights movement’s tactics.

And the kicker, at 22:15 when, as N said, “referring to civil rights demonstrators who sat-in at and otherwise disrupted segregated businesses, Silverman [or Caplis… whichever one sounds like a child molestor] said, ‘That was their own bad decision.’”

Leading me to the answer to N’s question: “are you required to be a covert racist to host a show on AM radio?”

The answer: absolutely not.

But if Mr. Silverman’s any example, being an open racist is fucking mandatory.

However, my absolutely favorite moment, comes at 28:20 when Craig Silverman is asked by David Lane if he’s really unaware that treaties made with other nations are the supreme law of the land; that they trump the US Constitution.

To which, Craig Silverman answers, “Correct, I’m unaware of that.”

Which left me literally fucking agape.

See, as regular readers ought fucking know, even I knew that one.

You know why?

Because it’s IN THE FUCKING CONSTITUTION.

In those exact fucking words: “[A]ll Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”

Even better, when Glenn Morris points Mr. Silverman to the appropriate passage, Mr. Silverman honks something to the effect that he’ll take a look at that.

Meaning that Mr. Silverman, a man who has made it a quarter-century into the legal profession, who has built a career as a legal pundit, isn’t even generally conversant with the fucking US Constitution.

He’s never even fucking read it.

That’s the kind of stupidity that borders on legendary. It would be something akin to a medical doctor not being able to point out the general location of the human heart. If there were a God in heaven, the dumb fucker would be divinely disbarred upon uttering the words.

And they call Ward Churchill a fraud.

This one titled Mimi Wesson’s Dirty Little Secrets.  (Titling these things is all the fun.)  Full text as follows.

As you know, dear reader, Ward Churchill’s appeal to the Privilege and Tenure Committee, the final result of due process at the University of Colorado, resulted in a recommendation that Churchill not be fired — the committee proposing a one year suspension instead.

And, as you also know, CU President Hank Brown simply ignored due process, firing Ward Churchill anyway based on the overturned recommendation of the initial Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. Not that you should be surprised. After all, firing Ward Churchill was part of why Hank Brown was hired in the first place.

Just as the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct was convened to recommend that firing.

Just as the chair Standing Committee on Research Misconduct was hand-picked to ensure that firing happened.See, I’ve long suspected said committee’s chair, Mimi Wesson, of being, shall we say, less than impartial vis-a-vis Professor Churchill. And now I can call that suspicion a flat-out fact.

Following are excerpts from the first of two emails penned by Mimi Wesson which have been passed along to me by an anonymous tipster. This one was sent by Ms. Wesson on February 28th of 2005. Before there was a Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. Before there was even an investigation into Churchill’s work.

The first excerpt has to do with Ms. Wesson’s general impression of Ward Churchill’s personality.

I confess to being somewhat mystified by the variety of people this unpleasant (to say the least) individual has been able to enlist to defend him. I know people say it’s the principle, but we aren’t all out there defending Bob Guccione’s first amendment rights, though God knows he has them. I thought that us middle-aged feminists, at least, had learned not to all fall into that trap.

On a side note, Ms. Wesson had never met Ward Churchill at this point. So one has to wonder how she knew he was “unpleasant (to say the least)”.

But, of course, that ain’t the real question. The real question is how the hell did someone openly expressing these kinds of sentiments about Churchill get made chair of a supposedly objective committee tasked with investigating Churchill.

Anyone?

And, another good question is, given her opinion of his personality, what do you think she thinks of his guilt or innocence?

Luckily, she doesn’t leave us in suspense long.

. . . the rallying around Churchill reminds me unhappily of the rallying around OJ Simpson and Bill Clinton and now Michael Jackson and other charismatic male celebrity wrongdoers (well, okay, I don’t really know that Jackson is a wrongdoer) — the tortured defenses (the cops planted the blood, “it depends on what you mean by sex”), the claim that we have to defend the principle, the idea that if “they” get him, then “they” will come to get you next.

My favorite’s her caveat about Michael Jackson, that she’s “doesn’t really know” if he’s a wrongdoer. Y’know, because, she’s not conflicted at all about Ward Churchill’s guilt. He’s right there with OJ Simpson.

Do you think it’s too much to suggest that comparing Ward Churchill to the most notorious alleged murderer of the last fifty years and a suspected pedophile might preclude one from sitting as chair of a committee charged with objectively investigating him?

Just maybe?

And do bear in mind, this is before she’s heard a single shred of evidence against Ward Churchill. As I said above, this is before there was even an investigation.

Given the level of ethics exhibited here, I’m wondering if all those she convicted as a prosecutor might be within their rights to start filing appeals.

But the real kicker comes elsewhere in the email. Remember, this was written in February of 2005, over a year before the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct released its report on Churchill.

As you know, an unlawful arrest doesn’t immunize the person arrested from responsibility for his crimes. Churchill’s writing are all out there in the public sphere for consumption, as all scholarship has to be; it’s not as though someone violated his right to privacy by taking a look to see what was there. I can’t see a workable moral principle in the idea that any discovery of academic misconduct is immune from punishment if we can discern something discriminatory or punitive in the motives of the ones who went looking. If a cop takes offense at my bumper sticker and decides to follow me around until he sees me engage in a drug transaction in a public place, I can still be convicted, can’t I?

Sound familiar?

It should.

It’s an argument she repeats, almost verbatim, in the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct’s final report.

To use an analogy, a motorist who is stopped and ticketed for speeding because the police officer was offended by the contents of her bumper sticker, and who otherwise would have been sent away with a warning, is still guilty of speeding, even if the officer’s motive for punishing the speeder was the offense taken to the speeder’s exercise of her right to free speech. No court would consider the improper motive of the police officer to constitute a defense to speeding, however protected by legal free speech guarantees the contents of the bumper sticker might be.

Keep reading.

It’s a beaut, ain’t it? Mimi Wesson has not only decided Ward Churchill’s existential unpleasantness (“to say the least”) and affirmed his guilt, she’s already started to formulate the arguments to be used against him.

Objective? Impartial?

You decide.

One last gem for you, dear reader: I have it from my anonymous tipster that Ms. Wesson demanded to be chair of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct when it was convened.

I don’t think you have to spend too much energy wondering why.

She’d already drafted their conclusion.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that CU’s own rules make it pretty clear that Mimi Wesson should never have even been on the committee, let alone acting as chair. At least if the university had any interest in objectivity.

The Standing Committee shall appoint an investigating committee charged with conducting a thorough, informed and unbiased investigation of the allegations of misconduct.

1. In consultation with the appropriate dean or vice chancellor, the Standing Committee shall appoint an ad hoc committee of three to five members, including a chair, herein referred to as the investigating committee.

2. Investigating committee members may be selected from inside or outside the University, excluding members of the Standing Committee. Attention in selection should be paid to (1) avoiding conflicts of interest and (2) including appropriate research expertise within the committee to evaluate the allegation(s) under consideration.

3. The Standing Committee shall consult with the respondent and complainant to ensure that investigating committee members do not have a bias or conflict of interest in considering the case. If a member’s impartiality is questioned, the Standing Committee may replace that member.

4. The chair of the Standing Committee shall meet with the Investigative Committee, prior to the initiation of the investigation, to discuss the procedures for the investigation phase, described in section VI. of this document.

Those rules ought to look familiar to anyone following the case, of course. They were citing the same rules all over the fucking place when the anti-Churchill bloc was in the business of running scholars off the committee whom they deemed as pro-Churchill.

But, we should pause. Granted, we have now have irrefutable evidence that Mimi Wesson was biased at the outset. However, that doesn’t mean she didn’t tap into some inner reservoir of decency and fair play, right? Surely there’s a chance she might’ve simply put her biases aside and commenced with the work at hand.

Would be possible. But no, not in this case. See, the second email I have from Ms. Wesson was written after she’d become chair of the committee. And I’d like to dedicate it to all you who’ve scoffed at the idea that those pillars of academic integrity — Mimi Wesson at their head, of course — would deign to allow public and financial influences to taint their judgment.

This one was sent by Mimi Wesson to Robert Clinton, who was serving under her on the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. She’s expressing her sense of panic that they won’t be able to tidy the whole Ward Churchill problem up expediently.

Just so you know why I have a growing sense of panic, however, I’m forwarding you the message below — nothing special about it, it’s just today’s, but it’s one of many that I get, all suggesting that the delay represents an effort by CU to “sweep this thing under the rug” . . . When you explained that you would become unavailable, in early May, for the remainder of the month, I really felt my spirits sink. We just have to finish this thing before then. I hope we might be able to anyway, without meeting on the 21st, but frankly I am not sure. I do not expect Prof. Churchill to be all that cooperative about securing his witnesses in a timely way (although we have told him he has to) — dragging this out is somewhat to his advantage. Meanwhile the University and all who care about it have their eyes on us.

“A growing sense of panic”, you say? That’s interesting. Why would one panic about about allowing due process to run its course?

Perhaps we should take a look at the email which Mimi Wesson was kind enough to forward Mr. Clinton.

To all:

As parents of 2 children @ CU Boulder it is disgusting to see the University continue to drag out the Churchill process and to incredibly damage it’s reputation. WHY IS THERE NO SENSE OF URGENCY WHEN THIS IS KILLING CU’s REPUTATION AND PROBABLY DONATIONS, ETC….It hurts all connected with CU. There’s many clear violations that newspapers, etc have clearly documented.

I had hoped that Hank Brown would have helped to keep this process moving along.

I doubt our last child will be allowed to attend CU Boulder.

Anyone want to argue that this ain’t an attempt to influence Robert Williams’ opinion on the case? The influence behind the statement that “the University and all who care about it have their eyes on us” seems pretty clear.

After all, the email’s author — who presumably constitutes Ms. Wesson’s “all who care about it” demographic — ain’t just demanding the process come to a conclusion.

He’s demanding Ward Churchill be fired.

Likewise, anyone want to argue that the outcome of termination was ever in doubt? As she put it so eloquently: “We just have to finish this thing.”

Or does anyone have a better reason why she’d be forwarding emails demanding Ward Churchill’s head to other members of the committee as an indication of the matter’s urgency?

Given the “panic” she’s enduring at just having to read an email or two, I can only imagine the kind of cold sweats she might undergo were she to actually envision anything besides a recommendation of termination.

Luckily for her, I guess, that was never an option.

This one should’ve been added long ago, but here ’tis, my favorite lie yet: Ward Churchill Never Published in Peer-Reviewed Journals. Full text below.

Ward Churchill never published in peer-reviewed journals. That’s one of those truisms that’s so permeated the media, not to mention the blogosphere, that it just kinda gets reflexively regurgitated by the anti-Churchill bloc as unmitigated truth. It’s been one of Caplis and Silverman’s favorite refrains for more than two years. And like most of what gets regurgitated by our local media, it’s an uncategorical lie. Ward Churchill has been published in two dozen peer-reviewed/refereed journal.

How do I know? Well, I took a look at his vita, posted here. Something anyone pretending to be a journalist might do before leveling that kind of idiotic accusation.

So, where’d it start? Well, the first time I ever heard it was in June of ’05, on Jim Paine’s Pirateballerina, the blog that wags the media’s tail here in Denver, when, in the pre-Try-Works days, I was giving him a little hell in his comments.

As far as refuting everything Churchill has ever written in order to convince his apologists that he may indeed have fudged on some facts here and there, that is a life’s work, and a sacrifice I’m not interested in pursuing. I do find it interesting, though, that Churchill has yet to publish in a peer-reviewed journal.

The rest.

You’ll note that even at this early stage, Mr. Paine was already engaging in his own, shall we say, unique brand of logic: i.e., no lie told about Churchill need be substantiated because, well, he’s already been declared a liar by the same dipshits who refuse to substantiate the current allegations.

Yeah, I know, try and wrap your mind around that for a while. See if you can keep from putting your head through your windshield.

But, anyway, bloggers and the local media weren’t the only ones to pick it up. Its single dumbest and most humorous incarnation came in the final report from CU’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct.

Professor Churchill’s academic background and choice of publication venues are untraditional. Although many of his writings, including nearly all those discussed in this report, address historical and/or legal issues, he does not have formal training at the graduate level in those fields. Professors writing on the topics he addresses would typically have a Ph.D. in history or a law degree; Professor Churchill’s graduate degree is an M.A. in Communications Theory. Further, he has decided to publish largely in alternative presses or journals, not in the university presses or mainstream peer-reviewed journals often favored by more conventional academics.

The rest.

Why’s that humorous? Well, because said committee was headed up by one Mimi Wesson, of CU’s law school. And according to her own vita, Ward Churchill’s production in scholarly journals far exceeds her own.

And it’s worth noting that she doesn’t even bother to separate her peer-reviewed scholarly articles from those that aren’t. Nor, for that matter, to even separate her book reviews from her scholarly output. So, if you include Churchill’s reviews and unrefereed work, he outperforms Ms. Wesson by a factor of three.

Update: Jim Paine’s latest idiot little trick has been to post the list of 25 peer-reviewed journals which Mr. Churchill has been published in — including, for some unfathomable reason, another eleven journals and/or magazines which reprinted the original article, and which Mr. Churchill has never claimed were refereed. Mr. Paine has then performed some sort of investigation, and tagged each journal with either “refereed,” “unknown,” “currently,” “peer-reviewed,” “possible” or “unlikely.”

So I kinda wondered what the hell his methodology could be? I mean, I know he didn’t wander down to a university library and ask, so I figured he musta performed some kind of Google search.

And, hell, I thought, I can do that. So, I took the first five journals Mr. Paine has listed as some variation of unknown, and, like, Googled them.
So, to begin in no particular order, let’s take Cultural Survival Quarterly, which Mr. Paine lists as “not likely”. Is it refereed? Well, others certainly think so. All you have to do is Google the name of the journal with the term “refereed,” and you get flooded with vitas claiming it in their own list of refereed articles. Take, for instance, this overview of Dr Larissa Behrendt, Harvard graduate and novelist, in Australia’s Vibe magazine. She claims it as such.

So, why “not likely,” Mr. Paine?

How’s about Africa Today, another one Mr. Paine has listed as “not likely.” Again, I Googled the name of the journal and the word “refereed,” and the second hit down was a vita for Paul Keiser over at the University of Pennsylvania, claiming it as refereed. That’s just the first vita that popped up; there are over 1,000 hits on the search string.

So, how’s about The Black Scholar. Well, I did the same minimal amount of research — the only kind I can imagine Mr. Paine doing — and guess what? Yep, it’s fucking refereed. That one was even fucking easier, as this library is kind enough to list all its “refereed/juried education journals.” And, if you don’t buy that, you can pay $32 to read John H. Stanfield tell you it’s refereed in this volume of American Sociologist.

What’s next? Ah, yes, Current Perspectives in Social Theory. Same Google string, and guess what? The first fucking hit’s for a vita that lists the journal in their Refereed Articles section.

So, how’s about the Fourth World Journal? Well that one was real easy, because they list what they’re looking for on their fucking web page.

Submissions may be articles, essays, book reviews, commentaries, or reports that address current developments or events, and refereed articles that are final papers or essays that the author submits for peer review.

The rest.

In other words, they publish both peer-reviewed and general publication work.

So, it took me all of about ten fucking minutes to track down the first five journals on Mr. Paine’s list and clear up his immense confusion. Leading me to wonder, what the hell’s taking the Ballerina leader so long to figure these motherfuckers out?

It’s possible, I suppose, that he could be just a little slower than I give him credit for — which seems unlikely, given my general estimation of his intelligence — but I consider it more likely that he’s just, yet again, been busted with his pants around his swollen ankles, and is now waffling like a garage sale card table in a hard wind.

What say you, Mr. Paine? Whyn’t you try just a little bit harder over there to work this one out. After all, your none-too-sharp cronies are already doing an embarrassing bit of crowing. William T Sherman had this to say, for instance:

Do you have any clue about why this would raise hackles among people who have actually had to respond to challenges from “peer reviewers” in real, actual, rather than sham, “peer review?”

I think when the smoke clears we’re going to be left with maybe five or six Churchill articles that were seriously “peer reviewed.” I will not necessarily object to them. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

The rest.

To that, one can only say, ouch.

Oh, and, the collective Pirateballerina readership is as dumb as a hatful of assholes.

But you knew that.

Your favorite outlaw scholar.

Another apology for the entirely gratuitous Joyce reference. But, for fun, I sent the following to the Daily Camera.

Dear Editor,

A few months ago one of your reporters, Heath Urie, barged into a Ward Churchill teach-in which he had been informed several times he would not be allowed to enter. When he barreled into the room, I put my hand on his chest to stop his advance towards Ward Churchill, and another gentleman, Josh Dillabaugh, took Mr. Urie’s arm to escort him from the classroom.

Mr. Urie had been told repeatedly he would not be allowed in the classroom. Ward Churchill’s lecture was a student-organized private event, allowing attendance to be restricted by the students. This was confirmed by CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard in an October 6, 2007 article penned by Jessica Peck Corry in the Rocky Mountain News, and in an October 18, 2007 article penned by Michael Roberts in Westword.

Mr. Urie’s actions were a delightful example of the gotcha journalism tactics perfected by the Denver/Boulder media as regards Ward Churchill. This in itself is hardly noteworthy. The Daily Camera’s longstanding animosity for Ward Churchill — especially as evidenced by the content of the editorial pages controlled by Clint Talbott — is a matter of record.

However, Mr. Urie was not content to end his harassment there. Instead, he filed a police report claiming I assaulted him. When that allegation became untenable, he changed his story, claiming that he had been assaulted by Josh Dillabaugh, and filed charges. Then, in a press statement, Daily Camera City Editor Matt Sebastian implied that Mr. Dillabaugh and I had “physically harmed” Mr. Urie. For his part, Mr. Urie has refused to comment, stating in an October 3, 2007 Campus Press article by Rob Ryan that, “we’re gonna let the police report speak for itself.”

Well, it has. And, as of last week, all charges have been dropped against Mr. Dillabaugh by the Boulder DA, and none were ever filed against me.

As such, I demand a public apology from Mr. Urie and Mr. Sebastian on the part of myself and Josh Dillabaugh. Mr. Dillabaugh and I were asked to provide security for Ward Churchill during the student-organized event. We neither assaulted Mr. Urie, nor, as implied by Mr. Sebastian, caused him any physical harm. Mr. Urie’s attempt at gotcha journalism was spectacularly stupid. His following attempt at retaliation upon being thwarted bordered on the inane. That the editorial staff at the Daily Camera publicly implied violence on our part makes one wonder if the editors are competent to keep saliva contained in their collective mouth. Mr. Dillabaugh and I demand an apology.

Thank you,
Benjamin Whitmer

As you’ll recall — I keep saying that, don’t I? — I busted another one of the Ballerinas’ favorite lies last week, by pointing out that Ward Churchill has indeed been published in peer reviewed journals.  More than two dozen of them, in fact.  Mr. Paine, to his credit, conceded the point.

And then, as usual, began waffling.

His latest idiot little trick has been to post the list of 25 peer-reviewed journals which Mr. Churchill has been published in — including, for some unfathomable reason, another eleven journals and/or magazines which reprinted the original article, and which Mr. Churchill has never claimed were refereed.  Mr. Paine has then performed some sort of investigation, and tagged each journal with either “refereed,” “unknown,” “currently,” “peer-reviewed,” “possible” or “unlikely.”

So I kinda wondered what the hell his methodology could be?  I mean, I know he didn’t wander down to a university library and inquire, so I figured he musta performed some kind of Google search.

And, hell, I thought, I can do that.  So, I took the first five journals Mr. Paine has listed as some variation of unknown, and, like, Googled them with the word “refereed.”

So, to begin in no particular order, let’s take Cultural Survival Quarterly, which Mr. Paine lists as “not likely”.  Is it refereed?  Well, other certainly think so.  All you have to do is Google the name of the journal with the term “refereed,” and you get flooded with vitas claiming it in their own list of refereed articles.  Take, for instance, this overview of Dr Larissa Behrendt, Harvard graduate and novelist, in Australia’s Vibe magazine.  She claims it as such.

So, why “not likely,” Mr. Paine?

How’s about Africa Today, another one Mr. Paine has listed as “not likely.”  Again, I Googled the name of the journal and the word “refereed,” and the second hit down was a vita for Paul Keiser over at the University of Pennsylvania, claiming it as refereed.  That’s just the first vita that popped up; there are over 1,000 hits on the search string.

So, how’s about The Black Scholar.  Well, I did the same minimal amount of research — the only kind I can imagine Mr. Paine doing — and guess what?  Yep, it’s fucking refereed.  That one was even fucking easier, as this library is kind enough to list all its “refereed/juried education journals.”  And, if you don’t buy that, you can pay $32 to read John H. Stanfield tell you it’s refereed in this volume of American Sociologist.

What’s next?  Ah, yes, Current Perspectives in Social Theory.  Same Google string, and guess what?  The first fucking hit’s for a vita that lists the journal in their Refereed Articles section.

So, how’s about the Fourth World Journal?  Well that one was real easy, because they list what they’re looking for on their fucking web page.

Submissions may be articles, essays, book reviews, commentaries, or reports that address current developments or events, and refereed articles that are final papers or essays that the author submits for peer review.

The rest.

In other words, they publish both peer-reviewed and general publication work.

So, it took me all of about ten fucking minutes to track down the first five journals on Mr. Paine’s list and clear up his immense confusion.  Leading me to wonder what the hell’s taking the Ballerina leader so long to figure these motherfuckers out?

It’s possible, I suppose, that he could be just a little slower than I give him credit for — which seems unlikely, given my general estimation of his intelligence — but I consider it more likely that he’s just, yet again, been busted with his pants around his swollen ankles, and is now waffling like a garage sale card table in a hard wind.

What say you, Mr. Paine?  Whyn’t you try just a little bit harder over there to work this one out.  After all, your none-too-sharp cronies are already doing an embarrassing bit of crowing.  William T Sherman had this to say, for instance:

Do you have any clue about why this would raise hackles among people who have actually had to respond to challenges from “peer reviewers” in real, actual, rather than sham, “peer review?”

I think when the smoke clears we’re going to be left with maybe five or six Churchill articles that were seriously “peer reviewed.” I will not necessarily object to them. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

The rest.

To that, one can only say, ouch.

Oh, and, Mr. Sherman is as dumb as a hatful of assholes.

But you knew that.

So, as you’ll recall — hopefully, though your short term memory may be as faulty as mine – I pointed out yesterday that long-time ballerina Noj was lying when he claimed that all of Ward Churchill’s books save one were published by vanity presses. Now, as usual, Noj’s lie has been picked up by Laurie and John Martin. (Bringing the grand total of Mr. Martin’s flat-out lies to something like six in the last two weeks.)

As I’ve been trying to make clear, the term vanity publishing actually means something in the publishing world. As does self-publishing, and they are most decidedly not interchangeable. Vanity presses are overwhelmingly seen as shady affairs and scams. In fact, the primary reason self-publishing and vanity publishing have been conflated is because of the concerted marketing efforts of vanity publishers.

Anyway, vanity press publishing from Writing-World.com, a publishing basics site for aspiring authors:

You’ve just written the perfect novel, the ultimate poetry collection, or the thrilling tale of your life. You’d like to get it published. But you’ve heard the horror stories: The odds against a new author, the endless wait as you shop your manuscript, the futility of seeking publication without an agent. Then you see an ad. “Authors wanted!” it coos seductively. You know it’s a subsidy or “vanity” press (a press that is paid by the author to “publish” a book), but publication is virtually guaranteed. What harm could there be?

The answer is “plenty.” Here are ten reasons to be wary of subsidy publishing:
1) No money. If you want to earn a profit, subsidy publishing isn’t the answer. Costs may run to thousands of pounds, while royalties range from 10% to (in rare cases) 40%.

Let’s do the math. You spend $10,000 for publication, and receive 15% royalties on “net” sales (the amount received after discounts). Your book is priced at $10.95, but often sold at a 50% bookstore discount. This means you’ll receive 15% of 50% of $10.95 — or 82 cents per book. Thus, you must sell more than 12,000 copies (a staggering number even by commercial terms) just to regain your investment — before you see a penny of profit!

2) No bookstore distribution. When was the last time you saw a subsidy imprint in a bookstore? Bookstores rarely carry subsidy titles. But if your book isn’t in stores, it isn’t reaching the vast majority of book-buying customers — for this is the one place people who have never heard of you can “discover” your title.

Your book may be listed in online bookstores such as Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble, because any book with an ISBN can be included in an electronic catalog. Unless customers know about your title in advance, however, they’ll have no reason to look for it.

3) No library distribution. Like bookstores, libraries rarely invest in subsidy-published books. This cuts off another opportunity for readers to “discover” your work.

4) No reviews. Most book reviewers ignore subsidy titles. In addition, subsidy publishers often send out only a limited number of review copies, and expect you to pay for any additional copies. This greatly limits the opportunities for people to “find out” about your book.

5) No publicity. Most subsidy publishers promise a certain amount of advertising. This is rarely in the place you need it most, however. For example, if your book covers women’s health issues, don’t expect it to be advertised in health magazines, women’s magazines, or other publications that target prospective readers. The general rule about publicity for subsidy-published books is that if you want it, you must do it yourself — at your cost.

6) No editorial screening. Most subsidy publishers do not accept books on the basis of quality or marketability, but simply on the author’s willingness to pay. This is the primary reason that such books have such a poor reputation with reviewers, genre organizations, bookstores, distributors, and consumers. In addition, many subsidy publishers offer little or no editorial assistance, publishing books “as delivered.” While some authors relish the idea of “no editorial interference” with their vision, rare is the book that couldn’t benefit from the suggestions of a good editor — not to mention copyediting and proofreading.

7) No industry acceptance. Most writing guilds and associations won’t accept a subsidy-published book as a qualification for membership, or for consideration for an industry or genre award. To qualify, a book must be “commercially published” (as defined by sales figures or an advance).

8) No ownership. Do you simply want a book to distribute to family and friends? If so, subsidy publishing isn’t the answer. You’ll usually receive no more than ten free “author copies;” if you want more, you’ll have to buy them. This means you pay for your book twice: Once to publish it, and again to obtain extra copies. Authors usually receive a 40% discount, but some subsidy publishers don’t pay royalties on sales to the author.

9) No subsidiary rights sales. This varies from publisher to publisher. Some subsidy presses openly acknowledge that they are in no position to exploit subsidiary rights (such as movie, audio, electronic, or translation rights). Others, however, issue a “standard industry contract” claiming those rights — or demand that the author pay them a percentage of any such rights that the author happens to sell. Review your contract carefully, and never sign away rights that your publisher won’t actually use; don’t accept the argument that such a transfer is “standard” in the industry.

10) No respect. While many authors have been successful with self-published books, subsidy publishing is rarely a stepping-stone to fame. The reading, writing, bookbuying, and publishing communities regard subsidy publishing as thet last resort of the truly desperate — i.e., of authors who can’t get their work published any other way. This means that no matter how good your book is, most consumers will assume that it is of poor quality and won’t give it a chance to “prove itself.” If you’re a serious author, therefore, keep in mind that subsidy publishing is more likely to damage your reputation than to enhance it.

That’s pretty much the standard take from the publishing universe. You can find variants of it anywhere.

By the way, for fun, Google the term vanity press and take note of the sponsored links. Anything look familiar?

You can disagree with the editorial standards of any small, or for that matter, large or mainstream, press. But you can’t cling to a shred of intellectual honesty while trying to re-define the term to mean what you want it to mean simply so it encompasses Ward Churchill’s books.

Now, as Mr. Paine, leader of the Ballerinas, has pointed out, a mistake ain’t a lie. Even a mistake so dumb that it might be attributed to a crack-addled ferret caught in mid-hump while fucking a woodpile. But once you stick by it when it’s exposed as dead wrong, it becomes a lie.

Ward Churchill never published with a vanity press that I know of. Joseph Trimbach’s American Indian Mafia was published by a vanity press. Those are facts.

And Noj, Laurie and John Martin are liars.

Okay, the only reason I’m bother with this is to illustrate that one can spend one’s entire fucking life catching the Ballerinas in monumentally stupid lies. This one comes from serial liar, Noj, whom I just nailed last week.

See, the Ballerinas have been going apeshit about the release of Joseph Trimbach’s self-published screed American Indian Mafia (which was penned on Mr. Trimbach’s basement walls in his own feces, I hear). I’m a little amused at the fervor generated by a barely literate vanity press offering, but hell, I’ll get around to it somewhere between Sherman and Goebbel’s memoirs. Assuming, of course, that our local library system starts stocking vanity press leavings, which seems unlikely.

Anyway, Noj offered up the following in Ballerina #1’s comments, and it was too good to pass up.

And which of Churchill’s own books were not published with a vanity press? I can only think of one.

The rest.

Really? Because, though I can’t speak for every book Mr. Churchill has put out, I can’t think of a single one that’s published by a vanity press. Help me out, Noj.

And might I suggest that if you’re so singularly fucking ignorant of the history of twentieth-century American literature as to refer to City Lights as a vanity press, you might be better served restricting your book discussion to those texts which include boy wizards?

Just a thought?

Mr. Martin has been banned. Not for the reason he gives — lie #5 as I’m counting — but because he has refused to provide a single shred of evidence for the first four lies (here and here). He doesn’t have to prove his case to regain his right to comment; he only has to provide some argument evidence, any argument evidence (as has been pointed out in the comments, Mr. Martin has already provided some argument: i.e., Churchill is lying because Mr. Martin says so; as such, I’d like to see some shred of evidence to that effect), as to why what he has claimed is not a lie. Something which he has evaded with a finesse worthy of Larry Craig.

Interestingly, one of the lies he’s been banned for was originally proposed here by another commenter, who was also banned for refusing to identify his source for said lie. A lie that’s so stupendously stupid it could only come from Jim Paine: i.e., that Ward Churchill has never published in peer-reviewed journals.

But more on that soonly.

Update: Jim Paine’s now claiming he never said that Ward Churchill had never published in peer-reviewed journals. That’s another lie of course. He said exactly that in June ‘05, in his comments section.

As far as refuting everything Churchill has ever written in order to convince his apologists that he may indeed have fudged on some facts here and there, that is a life’s work, and a sacrifice I’m not interested in pursuing. I do find it interesting, though, that Churchill has yet to publish in a peer-reviewed journal.

The rest.

Fucking idiot. Fucking liar. Etc.

Update II: As Pablo notes in the comments to this post, Jim Paine has admitted he did indeed write the above. He offers in his defense that he didn’t know better at the time. So I’ve struck the “fucking liar” in my first update.

However, that’s always been exactly my point: the Ballerinas consistently make unqualified statements about Ward Churchill with no fucking evidence, and then leave it to the rest of the world — usually meaning journalists as unqualified as they are — to disprove them. Which, of course, they don’t, instead regurgitating the original, well, lie.

Is it fair to call it a lie? I think so. I could, for instance, make the unqualified statement that John Martin’s a child molester. After all, I’ve found no evidence on Google that he’s not. Would that make it a fair allegation, if all the research I’d done was a bit of internet trolling?

I’ll let you decide. And note that that’s kind of been the point of this blog from the get-go.

That said, Mr. Paine is, as always, a model of integrity compared to his readership. Unlike John Martin who’s still waffling like Larry Craig in a stiff . . . well, you get the idea . . . Mr. Paine has, at least, corrected his statement. Two years after the fact. And long after Ward Churchill’s vita has been readily available to anyone willing to skim through it. But, hell, at least he’s come clean.

On the other hand it is eminently fair, I believe, to call John Martin a liar for the five lies I’ve recounted in the last week. Certainly by Jim Paine’s argument that a lie is only a lie if the liar sticks by it even when the fact that it’s a lie is rubbed in their face.

Which brings us to another lie, this time from Ballerina, Noj, who left the following in Mr. Paine’s comments.

Ben is making hay from Churchill’s single publication (count ‘em — one) in AICRJ, one of the top Indian Studies journals. Which also routinely publishes other Indian impersonators and fabulists such as Jay Vest.

The rest.

Sometimes this is almost absurdly easy. Wherein one usually has to spend a little time hunting down evidence refuting Mr. Paine’s more inane allegations, all one has to do in this case is, well, be able to read and count.

Here’s Mr. Churchill’s vita, Noj. Care to retry your hand? Or are we still sticking by the statement that Churchill has only had a “single publication (count ‘em — one)” in AICRJ?

To quote you: “count ‘em.”

And a question for Mr. Paine, who can comment all he wants in this thread if he so desires. At what point does this kind of outright sloppiness and stupidity — if that’s what it was — become a lie?

Which is sort of like saying that the sun yet rises again. But in the comments here, Mr. Martin had the following to offer:

Benjie, what’s this about banning me? Jeez, I didn’t point out that Ward has no peer-reviewed articles (from anywhere worth mentioning), I don’t go on and on about Ward’s Pine Ridge lies like snapple, and I haven’t done–whatever it is you think Jim Paine has done. So why ban me?

Ward Churchill does indeed have peer-reviewed articles, which would be another lie. Many of them, in fact. I’ll list a portion of those shortly. But, I’d also like to ask Mr. Martin, what exactly was the lie Ward Churchill told about Pine Ridge?

Serial liar doesn’t even seem to do Mr. Martin justice. Indeed, it’s a wonder Mr. Martin hasn’t started oozing feces from his eyeballs given the astonishing quotient of shit he’s managed to fill himself with.

I’m still waiting for an answer.

Where’re the lies you were pointing to?

Are we to assume the only actual lie to be found is that one, long, continuously rank dribble of feces that you keep forgetting to wipe off your chin?

Hello?

In Pablo’s words:

He buggered off.
Brave Sir JGM ran away,
When truth reared its head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.
And gallantly, he chickened out. Bravely taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir JGM

Since we dispensed with Jwpainian logic yesterday, how’s about we take a crack at Jwpainian ethics today?

Everyone remember Bruce Johansen? He was slated to be on the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct charged with investigating Ward Churchill. As you’ll recall, he was run off of said committee by the local media who were, as was often the case in those days, poaching their stories from Mr. Paine’s Pirateballerina. Mr. Paine Googled Mr. Johansen after hearing he was appointed to the SCRM and unearthed a rather tepid defense of Ward Churchill embedded in a larger defense of academic freedom, and then painted him as engaging in some sort of quid pro quo with the good Professor. (For which he had no evidence. But, hell, as I noted yesterday, having no evidence has never stopped Mr. Paine from advancing any idiotic theory which he can dream up.)

Well, Mr. Paine has gleefully found himself to be the subject of a couple paragraphs of Mr. Johansen’s latest book, Silenced! Academic Freedom, Scientific Inquiry, and the First Amendment under Siege in America. The Ballerinas are objecting to Mr. Johansen’s characterization of Mr. Paine, reminding us that they were only upholding the principles of fair conduct by pointing out Mr. Johansen’s conflict of interest. In the words of frequent Ballerina commenter, Rex:

One question asked of potential jurors of a legal case which has received media coverage is whether the juror has been exposed to the pre-trial coverage and whether the juror has formed an opinion regarding the case (the phrasing this two-part question will vary but the intent of the question remains the same). Given Prof. Johansen’s pre-inquiry commentary regarding Ward Churchill’s “scholarship” it would seem evident that Prof. Johansen had formed an opinion regarding Chuchill and in a court case would very likely have been excused. The panel judging a case is neither supportive for nor prejudiced against the defendant. This is a cornerstone of our legal system.

Well, that sounds lofty, doesn’t it? Hell, it might even hold water, but for the fact that I don’t remember any such statements from the Ballerinas when I posted emails from SCRM chair Mimi Wesson which proved that she not only detested Ward Churchill personally, but that she’d arrived at a conclusion of his guilt long prior to the investigation, and, indeed, was already formulating the arguments which would turn up in SCRM’s final report.

As Vincent Carroll, Mike Rosen and Dan Caplis have been pointing out of late, CU President Hank Brown is under no obligation to follow the recommendation of the Privilege and Tenure Committee, which advised Ward Churchill receive a one-year suspension. Although to do so would be to notify the public that due process at CU is a sham, Hank Brown is perfectly within his rights to follow the recommendation of the initial Standing Committee on Research Misconduct, and fire the good professor.

But see, I’ve got a little problem with the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. Particularly as regards their objectivity. Those of you who’ve been reading for some time know that I’ve suspected said committee’s chair, Mimi Wesson, of being, shall we say, less than impartial vis-a-vis Professor Churchill.

And now I can call that suspicion a flat-out fact.

Following are excerpts from the first of two emails sent by Mimi Wesson which have been passed along to me by an anonymous tipster. This one was sent by Ms. Wesson on February 28th of 2005. Before there was a Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. Before there was even an investigation into Churchill’s work.

The first excerpt has to do with Ms. Wesson’s general impression of Ward Churchill’s personality.

I confess to being somewhat mystified by the variety of people this unpleasant (to say the least) individual has been able to enlist to defend him. I know people say it’s the principle, but we aren’t all out there defending Bob Guccione’s first amendment rights, though God knows he has them. I thought that us middle-aged feminists, at least, had learned not to all fall into that trap.

On a side note, Ms. Wesson had never met Ward Churchill at this point. So one has to wonder how she knew he was “unpleasant (to say the least)”.

But, of course, that ain’t the real question. The real question is how the hell did someone openly expressing these kinds of sentiments about Churchill get made chair of a supposedly objective committee tasked with investigating Churchill.

Anyone?

And, another good question is, given her opinion of his personality, what do you think she thinks of his guilt or innocence?

Luckily, she doesn’t leave us in suspense long.

. . . the rallying around Churchill reminds me unhappily of the rallying around OJ Simpson and Bill Clinton and now Michael Jackson and other charismatic male celebrity wrongdoers (well, okay, I don’t really know that Jackson is a wrongdoer) — the tortured defenses (the cops planted the blood, “it depends on what you mean by sex”), the claim that we have to defend the principle, the idea that if “they” get him, then “they” will come to get you next.

My favorite’s her caveat about Michael Jackson, that she’s “doesn’t really know” if he’s a wrongdoer.

Y’know, because, she’s not conflicted at all about Ward Churchill’s guilt. He’s right there with OJ Simpson.

Do you think it’s too much to suggest that comparing Ward Churchill to the most notorious alleged murderer of the last fifty years and a suspected pedophile might preclude one from sitting as chair of a committee charged with objectively investigating him?

Just maybe?

And do bear in mind, this is before she’s heard a single shred of evidence against Ward Churchill. As I said above, this is before there was even an investigation.

Given the level of ethics exhibited here, I’m wondering if all those she convicted as a prosecutor might be within their rights to start filing appeals.

But the real kicker comes elsewhere in the email. Remember, this was written in February of 2005, over a year before the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct released its report on Churchill.

As you know, an unlawful arrest doesn’t immunize the person arrested from responsibility for his crimes. Churchill’s writing are all out there in the public sphere for consumption, as all scholarship has to be; it’s not as though someone violated his right to privacy by taking a look to see what was there. I can’t see a workable moral principle in the idea that any discovery of academic misconduct is immune from punishment if we can discern something discriminatory or punitive in the motives of the ones who went looking. If a cop takes offense at my bumper sticker and decides to follow me around until he sees me engage in a drug transaction in a public place, I can still be convicted, can’t I?

Sound familiar?

It should.

It’s an argument she repeats, almost verbatim, in the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct’s final report.

To use an analogy, a motorist who is stopped and ticketed for speeding because the police officer was offended by the contents of her bumper sticker, and who otherwise would have been sent away with a warning, is still guilty of speeding, even if the officer’s motive for punishing the speeder was the offense taken to the speeder’s exercise of her right to free speech. No court would consider the improper motive of the police officer to constitute a defense to speeding, however protected by legal free speech guarantees the contents of the bumper sticker might be.

Keep reading.

It’s a beaut, ain’t it? Mimi Wesson has not only decided Ward Churchill’s existential unpleasantness (“to say the least”) and affirmed his guilt, she’s already started to formulate the arguments to be used against him.

Objective? Impartial?

You decide.

One last gem for you, dear reader: I have it from my anonymous tipster that Ms. Wesson demanded to be chair of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct when it was convened.

I don’t think you have to spend too much energy wondering why.

She’d already drafted their conclusion.

The rest.

So, it seems that everything Mr. Churchill says these days sets the usual suspects humping over each other to howl with outrage that his every word is a lie. The only problem being that they more often than not shoot themselves in their own ass because they’re about as qualified to offer judgment on the merits of, say, Ward Churchill’s take on Mein Kampf as John Martin’s dog would be to offer discourse on French linguistic theory. So they end up looking about as clever as a hatful of assholes.

Heretofore, I’d assumed they were just too fucking stupid to know when to keep their mouths shut and I had nothing to do but sit back and enjoy what amounted to a perpetual-amusement machine.

Well, it turns out I’ve been off the mark entirely. As Pablo B recently pointed out in the comments, it ain’t that they’re either stupid or fucking liars: they’ve just somehow managed to escape the bounds of logical fucking thought altogether.

[W]hat you have to understand is that JGM, Noj, jwpaine, Lawyer, and the rest of the usual suspects, have carved themselves out an exemption from the need for EVIDENCE when making any claims about Ward Churchill. They don’t feel any need to prove anything is a lie using actual evidence. They believe that their claims alone are sufficient in light of the SRCM report.

They are actually ACTIVELY promoting the theory that they can say whatever they want, even when no evidence has come to light to support their claims. Their excuse is that the burden of proof has shifted to Ward Churchill to prove wrong everything they say. So until Ward Churchill personally debunks their bullcrap, they themselves are exempt from providing any actual evidence to back any of their claims.

But they’ve got THAT angle covered too. Because they say that Ward Churchill’s statements can’t be trusted, so HE has to provide evidence to debunk THEIR claims.

That’s right. They can make any claim they want, even when no evidence has come to light to support their claims. It is only Ward Churchill that is required to provide evidence.

Unbelievable.

So they’ve wrapped themselves up in a nice logical fallacy where they claim immunity from providing evidence for their own claims.

And you are surprised that JGM would list whatever he wants as a supposed lie without any evidence at all to back up his claim?

I’m not.

Welcome to the new irreality of Jwpainian Logic.

No better example exists than in the comments to my last post on the subject, where I objected to John Martin’s pointing to four paragraphs of coverage of a recent Ward Churchill talk, and claiming that what Churchill said therein was lies. All I wanted to know was what the hell the lies were.

Well, in the rather spastic manner to which we’ve become accustomed from Mr. Martin, I received four contradictory responses between 11:30 last night and 1:00 in the morning. (Note to Mr. Martin: quitting alcohol to take up cocaine doesn’t really count as achieving sobriety. Just saying.)

So, in order:

Response #1

Jeez, you got way too much free time on your hands, Benjie. I don’t even have to look for citations to find a really big lie Wart/Charley Arthur told, as reported in that article:

“As a proven academic fraud and imposter, what basis can you claim in coming to a public university, which is funded by the government, which from your speeches and writing you so clearly despise?” asked Pete Markevich, a junior political science major. . . .

“My answer is, far more than you,” Churchill said. “By the way, you want to look at the famous university report? The university has completely withdrawn that from scholarly scrutiny. There is no case other than the ‘little Eichmanns’ thing.”

That’ll sure make for a short trial (when and if it ever happens).

Well, okay, except this is nowhere in the four paragraphs which Mr. Martin initially claimed as a lie. Moreover, it’s not a lie. The university did remove the report from scholarly scrutiny. Numerous scholars subjected the university report to scrutiny and found it lacking. Instead of replying, the university responded that the report did not represent scholarly research, and was thusly exempt from scrutiny. That ain’t a lie.

In the kind of bizarre contortion of reality which usually attends one eating their own feces in a padded cell somewhere, the inveterate idiots at Pirateballerina have since concluded that Ward Churchill meant something entirely different — that the report had been removed from the public domain — and are now calling him a liar for their own radical misinterpretation of his statement. By that logic, of course, I could interpret the first sentence of John Martin’s above statement to mean “I like to rape ten-year-olds,” and assign him a pedophile. It’s nonsense on its fucking face.

But, of course, as I mentioned above, the point’s moot. Because the above statement ain’t anywhere in the four paragraphs which Mr. Martin deemed lies.

Response #2

By the way, your blog is really dying over here, Benjie. I keep telling you, nobody wants to read your pretentious crap — they want to read your evil crap.

This isn’t really a response, of course, just a variation on the old “and your blog sucks!” theme. I have to admit Mr. Martin’s getting a little quicker with the old wit, however; that little bon mot only took him seven minutes to compose.

Response #3

And when are you going to post those pictures of the Columbus Day “bloodbath,” like you said you would months ago, Benjie? Can’t trust you guys for nothin’.

Also not a response. But it looks like my grudging concession for Mr. Martin’s new-found quickness of wit is sadly mistaken; it too him nigh twenty more minutes to compose that motherfucker.

Response #4

Oh, you weren’t talking about lies in general, but lies Charley told specifically about the Middle East. How ’bout this:

In the last 15 minutes of his hour-long lecture, Churchill shifted his emphasis to Israel, arguing that Zionists use the same justifications as did Hitler to perpetrate what he believes is a Palestinian genocide. . . .

Not a direct quote, but Wart of course does claim an ongoing “Palestinian genocide” (as do you and Glenn Morris and Ratsu and all the other moral midgets). But it’s a lie.

This, of course, is the real howler. One could get into the legal definition of genocide, but why bother. As Mr. Martin admits, the three words he’s chosen to highlight as a lie don’t come from Ward Churchill at all.

Meaning, out of the four paragraphs he highlighted as lies, the only portion he’s willing to stand by as a lie are three fucking words that Ward Churchill didn’t even say.

So, I’ll ask again. And, I’ll clarify, since holding Mr. Martin to the meaning of his own words seems only a little less tricky than wrestling a greased pig (an apt analogy, I’m sure you’ll agree):

In the four paragraphs you headed “Lies told”, Mr. Martin, how is what Ward Churchill actually said a lie?

Not what Ward Churchill didn’t say.

Not what you never declared a lie in the first place.

Not what you recast as a lie which obviously ain’t.

How is what Ward Churchill actually said a lie?

I’ll recap for your convenience. Ward Churchill said:

“You find in the later pages of Mein Kampf an articulation of Hitler that comes from an analysis of empires,” Churchill said. “He’s examining the other European powers for models that would be an applicable model of the German destiny. He points directly to what he calls the Nordics of North America. The United States is the model.”. . .

And:

“You have active negotiations going on between more radical Zionist organizations, the fascist Italians and Nazis themselves,” he said. “Zionists would collaborate with the Nazis in what would be arranged as guerrilla operations against the British war effort … in exchange for a certain guarantee that there would be a territory set aside in that area for Jews and Jews alone.”

How are these statements lies?

It’s a fair question. Quit waffling and answer it.

As a couple of our readers — Hilda and Pablo, to be specific — have been pointing out, Messrs. Paine and Martin call Ward Churchill liar a lot, a whole lot, but when pressed to provide evidence, they, as often as not, either fall completely silent, or begin a whining campaign about some entirely unrelated point.

Which recently lead me to this post from Mr. John Martin, wherein he typed the heading “Lies told” above the following snippet from an article about a recent Ward Churchill lecture.

While Churchill’s question-and-answer session fostered a hostile and tense environment, his lecture progressed without interruption, save an occasional smattering of applause or murmur of unease.

“You find in the later pages of Mein Kampf an articulation of Hitler that comes from an analysis of empires,” Churchill said. “He’s examining the other European powers for models that would be an applicable model of the German destiny. He points directly to what he calls the Nordics of North America. The United States is the model.”. . .

In the last 15 minutes of his hour-long lecture, Churchill shifted his emphasis to Israel, arguing that Zionists use the same justifications as did Hitler to perpetrate what he believes is a Palestinian genocide. . . .

“You have active negotiations going on between more radical Zionist organizations, the fascist Italians and Nazis themselves,” he said. “Zionists would collaborate with the Nazis in what would be arranged as guerrilla operations against the British war effort … in exchange for a certain guarantee that there would be a territory set aside in that area for Jews and Jews alone.”

The rest.

See, the problem I’m having is that I can’t find the lie. It obviously ain’t that Mein Kampf points to North America as “an applicable model” for “the German destiny.” As I pointed out in my last post, a cursory glance through Mein Kampf provides that.

But I was recently given the lowdown on some more of Hitler — or, at least, his ghostwriter, Rudolf Hess — using North American history as inspiration for their shenanigans.

For one thing, it turns out that Hitler/Hess did indeed crib a portion of Mein Kampf from Teddy Roosevelt’s homage to racial expansion and extermination, The Winning of the West. In fact, there seems to be something of consensus as such among Hitler scholars. Not that such cribbing from an American author is anomalous. It’s widely accepted that Hitler/Hess also stole portions from American eugenicist Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race.

And the folks I already cited are hardly alone in pointing to Hitler’s love affair with American genocide. Besides the material already noted, take this excerpt from page 802 of Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography. (Described by Newsweek Magazine as “the first book that anyone who wants to learn about Hitler or the war in Europe must read… a marvel of fact.” Funny how Mr. Martin managed to miss that one during the lengthy investigative period — er, Wikipedia browsing — which led him to dismiss Ward Churchill’s claim as a lie.)

Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination — by starvation and uneven combat — of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.

Now where’s that lie again, Mr. Martin?

However, when making the comments Mr. Martin has deemed a lie, Mr. Churchill probably had something more in mind akin to that proposed by Norman Rich, on page 8 of his Hitler’s War Aims: Ideology, The Nazi State, And The Course Of Expansion.

Neither Spain nor Britain should be the models of German expansion, but the Nordics of North America, who had ruthlessly pushed aside an inferior race to win for themselves soil and territory for the future. To undertake this essential task, sometimes difficult, always cruel — this was Hitler’s version of the White Man’s Burden.

One citation from Mr. Rich’s paragraph goes to pages 403 and 591 of a two-volume English-language translation of Mein Kampf published in New York in 1939, which no one I’ve talked to has ever laid eyes on. However, the 1962 Sentry Edition of Mein Kampf certainly bears out both Mr. Rich and Mr. Churchill’s analysis — especially as witnessed by virtually the entire span of pages from 612-64, most particularly pages 614, 638, 642-46, 649, 652-54, 664.

Now where was that lie again, Mr. Martin? Again, I’m just curious.

The other citation from the aforementioned paragraph in Mr. Rich’s books goes to pages 44-8 of Hitler’s Secret Book, translated by Salvator Attanasio and introduced by no less than Nuremberg prosecutor Telford Taylor. (Not only was Rich correct in his reference to pages 44-8, but he should also have referenced pages 99-108.)

Curiously, you’ll find exactly the same material in a volume published by Enigma in 2006 under the title Hitler’s Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel To Mein Kampf By Adolf Hitler. The relevant material will be found at pages 46-50 and pages 108-18. The difference in pagination between the Secret Book and the Second Book is accounted for partly by the use of a different typeface in the latter, and partly because it the original German has been retranslated by Krista Smith (while the phrasing is a bit different, there are no substantive changes in meaning).

And, you know, since we’re speaking of plagiarism, it’s worth pointing out that there’s no acknowledgment whatsoever of the 1961 Grove Press book on the Second Book’s copyright page. Call me a stickler, but it seems to me that billing the Second Book as consisting of previously “unpublished” material — rather than a new translation of previously-published material — constitutes not only a gross misrepresentation, but is (possibly) saved from charges of outright plagiarism only by virtue of a footnote on page xv quoting a 1962 review in the Journal Of Central European Affairs bashing the quality of Attanasio’s translation and the “improvised” nature of Gen. Taylor’s intro.

Credit for “editing” the Second Book is given to University of North Carolina professor emeritus Gerhard L. Weinberg, a right-winger who took his doctorate at the University of Chicago in the late 50s. That, too, seems a bit of a stretch, since the translated manuscript appears to have been (re)published pretty much in its entirety. What Gerhard did do, was annotate the text. Useful, but…

Anyway, I digress.

And I just can’t find that lie.

Perhaps you could help, Mr. Martin?

Mr. Martin?

Mr. Churchill’s been having fun again, lecturing to a packed-in audience. The usual suspects are howling that every word’s a lie. They’re providing no specific examples, of course, instead using the occasion to do their usual round of frothing at the mouth, hopping up and down, and smacking each other in the genitals with copies of An Inconvenient Book.

While Churchill’s question-and-answer session fostered a hostile and tense environment, his lecture progressed without interruption, save an occasional smattering of applause or murmur of unease.

Though Churchill made national headlines for his commentary about Sept. 11, he spent most of his lecture arguing that the United States’ westward expansion in the 19th century and “extermination” of American Indians was akin to the ideology behind the Holocaust.

“You find in the later pages of Mein Kampf an articulation of Hitler that comes from an analysis of empires,” Churchill said. “He’s examining the other European powers for models that would be an applicable model of the German destiny. He points directly to what he calls the Nordics of North America. The United States is the model.”

Churchill decried the treatment of American Indians, stating the Puritans were “boat people” who deprived them of their land.

“No one was deceived that there was no habitation, no human population in North America,” he said. “[American Indians] were humans who were at best peripheral, at best a utility to those who were anointed superior … who were coming in to acquire that which was theirs.”

In the last 15 minutes of his hour-long lecture, Churchill shifted his emphasis to Israel, arguing that Zionists use the same justifications as did Hitler to perpetrate what he believes is a Palestinian genocide.

“How did it become the Palestinians who bore the onus of responsibility to compensate [the Jews] for what had been done to them by Northwest Europeans?” Churchill asked.

Churchill said radical Zionists conspired with the Nazi regime in order to broker a deal for a Jewish homeland.

“You have active negotiations going on between more radical Zionist organizations, the fascist Italians and Nazis themselves,” he said. “Zionists would collaborate with the Nazis in what would be arranged as guerrilla operations against the British war effort … in exchange for a certain guarantee that there would be a territory set aside in that area for Jews and Jews alone.”

As Churchill concluded his lecture, approximately 10 audience members stood in a line to ask a question. Though Churchill said questions “should be limited to 3.5 seconds,” most audience members ignored his request.

“As a proven academic fraud and imposter, what basis can you claim in coming to a public university, which is funded by the government, which from your speeches and writing you so clearly despise?” asked Pete Markevich, a junior political science major.

Markevich was referring to Churchill’s dismissal by the CU Regents, who had conducted an investigation into claims that Churchill had falsified and fabricated research, lied about his American Indian heritage and plagiarized other authors. Churchill is currently suing CU, claiming he was fired in retaliation for an essay in which he wrote that the “little Eichmanns” in the World Trade Center - an allusion to convicted Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann - deserved to die.

Markevich attempted to explain his question further, but Churchill told him to “shut up.”

“My answer is, far more than you,” Churchill said. “By the way, you want to look at the famous university report? The university has completely withdrawn that from scholarly scrutiny. There is no case other than the ‘little Eichmanns’ thing.”

Markevich responded by asking Churchill to clarify his Sept. 11 remarks.

“Three young high school students were traveling on a plane to an award ceremony. Of course, they never made it,” Markevich said. “They were murdered.”

“By Bush and Cheney,” someone shouted, to wild applause by some of the audience. Churchill smiled and shrugged, but did not comment.

“My question is, were those three students part of a cog in a capitalist machine and were they also ‘little Eichmanns’ who deserved to die as you claimed?” Markevich said.

“That was an amazingly stupid question,” Churchill said. “If you have a reading comprehension above the eighth grade, which you should have, since you appear to be impersonating a student up there, then you’d understand that those three … could not be construed as the technocratic core of the empire, and that’s who I described as little Eichmanns. That’s disingenuous bullshit you just spit out.”

Another unidentified audience member began to ask Churchill why he focused solely on perceived malfeasances by the United States and Israel, rather than Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia. When Churchill attempted to interrupt, the audience member said, to a smattering of applause and cheers, that “was probably why you got fired - you wouldn’t let people disagree with you.”

Tension heightened further when an audience member who identified himself as a University of California professor chastised Churchill.

“You came here propelling the thesis that Zionism, which most Jews consider to be the national movement of the Jewish people, is comparable to Nazis’,” the professor said, citing Palestinian population figures.

“Yes, it is,” Churchill responded.

“I think you failed in your thesis, and I’m in a position to give you a grade,” the audience member responded. “What I want to know is where are the God-damned Jews of Poland and Romania and Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. And they were God-damned! Where are they? We know where the Palestinians are,” the professor said.

“Do you? Do you, professor?” Churchill said.

The debate between Churchill and the unidentified UC professor subsequently disintegrated into a shouting match, though less than half of the original crowd was still present to bear witness to it.

As the professor left the room, Churchill had one final comment for him.

“I’ll be at Berkeley next week,” Churchill said. “See you there.”

The rest.

Update: Hilda and Pablo are roasting the dribbling goons over at PB for the aforementioned disingenuous bullshit. Alway worth a gander.

Update II: Meanwhile Mr. Martin posted the heading “Lies told” on the following portion of the article.   Really?  Name the lie, Mr. Martin.  Otherwise one might have to assume, gasp, you’re the one lying your shriveled little ass off.

While Churchill’s question-and-answer session fostered a hostile and tense environment, his lecture progressed without interruption, save an occasional smattering of applause or murmur of unease.

“You find in the later pages of Mein Kampf an articulation of Hitler that comes from an analysis of empires,” Churchill said. “He’s examining the other European powers for models that would be an applicable model of the German destiny. He points directly to what he calls the Nordics of North America. The United States is the model.”. . .

In the last 15 minutes of his hour-long lecture, Churchill shifted his emphasis to Israel, arguing that Zionists use the same justifications as did Hitler to perpetrate what he believes is a Palestinian genocide. . . .

“You have active negotiations going on between more radical Zionist organizations, the fascist Italians and Nazis themselves,” he said. “Zionists would collaborate with the Nazis in what would be arranged as guerrilla operations against the British war effort … in exchange for a certain guarantee that there would be a territory set aside in that area for Jews and Jews alone.”

Invaluable Try-Works commenter Sybil checks in with the low-down from Ward Churchill’s recent talk in Oakland, here and here.

My favorite line:

Finally, he told a kid that if Cheney had controlled the Sept 11 flights, it would be irrelevant.

The University of Colorado’s administration may be neo-Stalinist bookburners, and the faculty may be gutless to the core — if you can call whatever quaking and quivering lump of shit that resides at their collective center a core — but the students sure as hell seem to get it.

I like Ward Churchill.

When he walked into my journalism class on Wednesday I could smell fire from a mile away.

Churchill’s crisp white shirt matched the white stripes in his hair, just as everything I knew about him up until meeting him was perfectly matched by his swagger.

Ward came to talk about his rather abusive relationship with the media throughout the past three years. Needless to say, he had a lot to articulate.

Enhanced by his mischievous smile and the witty banter to back it up, listening to Churchill talk was like taking part in a duel, except you forgot your arsenal. Every word from his clearly well equipped artillery is sharpened like a knife.

My mother would call him a smartass–a tall, highly publicized and irrefutable smartass. But isn’t that why we love him? That’s certainly part of it.

Ward Churchill is a man who, if nothing else, has seized our attention and caused us to think.

“When the Pope died I made (the) front page of the Rocky Mountain News,” Churchill said.

Churchill is decidedly skeptical of the media, and with good reason. The media depicts him as “the embattled professor,” a term which not only makes him a target, but also a modified noun.

What is the root of Churchill’s grapple with the media? It’s the apparent loss of integrity within the industry.

“When asked about (the concept of) American journalism, I say it would be a really good idea,” Churchill said, paraphrasing Ghandi.

The rest.

As long as the jackass with the opinion is doing a goosestep.

And speaking of goosestepping jackasses, David Horowitz responds to Ward Churchill’s guerrilla lectures at the University of Colorado.

Looks like Fox News has caught onto the Ward Churchill guerrilla classes, explaining Glenn Beck’s recent mention.

Former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill no longer is a member of the faculty but he is holding classes on campus after his dismissal following a controversial Sept. 11 essay comparing victims to a Nazi leader.

The classes, covering topics including colonialism, genocide and racism, are organized by the students who then invite Churchill to speak.

“We feel Ward has a right to say what he wants to say,” Aaron Smith, a political science and ethnic studies senior, told FOXNews.com.

Smith, one of the discussions’ organizers, said about 75 students usually show up but it is hard to get them to commit to assignments since they can’t receive grades for them.

The discussions on campus aim to make a statement about academic freedom and free speech, Smith said.

The rest.

Should be fun to see who shows up next Tuesday. Needless to say the motherfuckers shall be greeted with all the pomp and circumstance they so richly deserve.