The Try-Works

Westword’s 2005 Best of Denver coverage included a new classification: The Best Four-Legged Radio Talk-Show Team. As they wrote of the winners, Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman:

Communities that have banned pit bulls may want to rewrite their laws to cover Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman, KHOW’s new team. Like the controversial breed of canines, they won’t let go once they’ve sunk their teeth into someone — especially when that someone is embattled University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill. For months, the legal twosome has devoted most of its broadcast to cataloguing Churchill’s alleged sins, and rather than report on other reporting, the two have uncovered new recordings and documents that have advanced the story.

What Westword failed to mention was the nature of what Mssrs. Caplis and Silverman were broadcasting. Their ongoing harangue has been one of the shoddiest and ugliest smear campaigns in recent memory, consisting primarily of outright lies and weirdly racialist innuendo. However, with the Rocky Mountain News and the rest of the Clear Channel gang to back Caplis and Silverman up, there was little chance of Professor Churchill mounting much of a resistance in the mainstream media.

But there were moments. Such as at a Boulder pro-Churchill rally, when Longmont activist Glenn Spagnoulo gave Dan Caplis a taste of his own medicine, informing hundreds that he’d heard Mr. Caplis had a skeleton in his own closet: a college assault on a pregnant woman of color. But even that barely managed to slip into the local media’s coverage; the story was only covered briefly before Mr. Caplis squashed any further mention of it, slapping Mr. Spagnoulo with a defamation lawsuit.

A defamation lawsuit that never seemed to materialize.

And here at the Try-Works, we’re pretty sure we know why.

You see, one of the Try-Works members, the mighty TRM49, dug up an original account of Dan Caplis’ attack from the Colorado Daily, and we’ve posted the pertinent pages as follows. They include a letter to the Colorado Daily signed by five witnesses who claim Mr. Caplis attacked them with a flagpole. (Metaphorically perfect, ain’t it?)

Obviously, I have no idea whether the allegation is true. But reading these pages, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion but that Mr. Carroll knew his lawsuit against Spagnoulo was frivolous, and that he filed it solely to shut Spagnoulo up, hoping the story might dissipate by the time his lawsuit quietly disappeared.

After all, you can’t sue someone for repeating what’s already been reported in a newspaper.

Dan Caplis Attacks

A description of the attack by students who were there. Make sure not to miss the Caplis gang’s casual use of racial epithets, and Mr. Caplis’ attempt to claim victimhood after assaulting the group of students.

Dan Caplis Resigns

Dan Caplis at his self-righteous best, resigning from University of Colorado student politics after getting flack for circumventing the democratic process in order to cut funding to student groups.

Tom Tancredo Loves Dan Caplis

Budding demagogue Tom Tancredo’s letter in support of Mr. Caplis.