The Sanity Ranch--Musings of a Philosopher Queen

Why are people suddenly targeting judges? And what the heck did the poor court reporter do to deserve being shot to death?

It seems the bully is going to win. An enormous sum of money will be given today to Ward Churchill, to reward his bullying, his thievery, his lies. He will win. This man who has screamed that America (and Canada) must be destroyed because of the mighty capitalist engine of empire will walk away from a negotiating table sans tenure, and several millions of dollars wealthier. He will deposit the check into an interest-bearing account, perhaps even invest in the evil American stock market. This will happen because I honestly cannot see anyone cashing a check for $10,000,000 and keeping the cash in their mattress. I suppose he could technically find places for that much cash, but since this guy probably would claim he sleeps on a futon hand-stitched by his current wife with thread she made herself from the cotton growing in the backyard, using a needle she made herself out of wood, I doubt there'd be room for that much money.

And today's newspaper carries this article. Yet more plagiarism claims that will be utterly ignored by the C.U. Board of Regents. Makes you wonder what he has on them, doesn't it? Which one of them is a raving drug-user, which one beats his wife, which one slaps her kids around, which one hires illegal immigrants to clean her toilets, which one is actually a transvestite. Because there has to be something, there has to be some bloody reason they're going to cave to this creature's demands. At least, I hope there's a reason--God, what if there isn't? What if the C.U. Board of Regents are really just a bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing far-left radicals? What if they just don't care enough about the university they're slaughtering with their mindless, heedless decisions? Oh, hey, I know--maybe they're just all really big fans of "Million Dollar Baby" and they recognize that C.U. has been critically wounded in the past year. Maybe they just want to get the killing over with, put C.U. out of its misery. If that's your goal, guys...it's working.

This is a legitimate fund, begun today by Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman, local attorneys here in Denver. The fund will be used to pay the costs of taking Ward Churchill to court as an alternative to C.U. buying him out to the tune of $10,000,000. If you would like to pledge your support, please e-mail FireWardChurchill@clearchannel.com This is a serious fund, and you may also e-mail Mr. Caplis or Mr. Silverman directly through their website at www.khow.com

The Fund would provide C.U the money necessary to be able to fire Churchill and still face him in court if that becomes necessary. One of C.U.'s arguments against firing Churchill is that it would cost a fortune (and $10,000,000 is, what, pocket change?) to fight the lawsuit he would then file against them. Caplis and Silverman have provided C.U. a way to face Churchill in court without spending one dime of C.U.'s money.

This is precisely what I meant when I wrote about traffic stops nabbing killers.

Okay, on now to the issue of my shoddy journalism. When I was writing a biography of vanished mountaineer Andrew Irvine, I had full access to his family, to his belongings, to other experts in the rarified field known as Everestiana, on which mountain he died in 1924. When Irvine vanished he was in the company of another mountaineer, a man named George Mallory. Irvine was, at the time of his death, 22 years old. There had never been a biography written about Irvine, and his family had apparently all but forgotten his very existence in the 75 years that passed between his death and my return from England to finish my biography. There had been volumes written about George Mallory, a man who was, to be kind to his memory, flamboyant. Much of the material now available on Mallory falls into the category of the fantastic, but it is nonetheless available and makes for good reading. Not one piece ever written about George Mallory leaves out the name of Andrew Irvine, in whose company Mallory too died on June 8, 1924.

I do have a point here, leaving a vast undercurrent of personal betrayals by the wayside. The woman who wrote me about my editorial on Churchill said (I have as always withheld actual names, locations and e-mail addresses):

1994 is a long time ago, and people's personal circumstances and motives change, as no doubt his have concerning his tenure. If he'd have left it, after deciding to make a new life with his wife of the time, then it would have been of his own volition, not to be fired from it for speaking what was essentially the truth about American foreign policy. As for whatever plans they had in terms of who would be the breadwinner, that was between them, and not for outsiders to judge.

By these conditions, no biography of anyone in history would ever get written. Period. After all, it's "not for outsiders to judge" anything that happened "a long time ago." Who am I to call Churchill to task for things he himself not only wrote but published, and not only published but profited by would seem to be the question here. How dare I use a man's own words against him? Who was I to wish to write a book about Andrew Irvine? After all, I needed to use other peoples' names extensively in my book, didn't I? People who were not there to tell me verbatim their side of the story. I had to rely on things George Mallory had written, on things Irvine's sister had written, on hearsay and family stories. All of which is apparently "poor journalism." I wonder how biographers do it who choose someone like Cleopatra for a subject? By my correspondent's view, I should have laid out in black and white only those things known to have been written by Irvine himself, and then not commented upon those items in any way whatsoever. After all, the people he himself wrote about in his own diaries (which I have held, and read, at Oxford) are not here to give their side of things.

"With great freedom comes great responsibility," I would argue, and those who do not wish their lives, their published words, their motives, held up to the glaring light of day would be best advised to remain out of the public arena. My point about Churchill's precious tenure was a simple one--in 1994 he did not give a flying damn about that beloved, sacred tenure, and was actively engaged in the pursuit of any Native credentials he could beg, borrow or steal. If he entered into tenure with that kind of attitude, I wonder what, precisely, made him change his mind to the point of now valuing that very tenure more highly than anything else. He has now been denied his Native credentials. I think that perhaps that alone has a great deal to do with how Ward Churchill views things that matter to him now.

My correspondent continues:

I understand Leah's family's motives for wanting their daughter remembered as they remember her, but even family aren't privvy to what goes on between a husband and wife, and that is my only objection to people using her has a platform to engage in attacking Ward Churchill. I have no problem with anyone taking the guy to task for his political speech, scholarship, or ethnicity, but as she isn't around to speak for herself, I think she should be left out of public commentary, regardless of whatever he writes about her himself. It seems as though claiming that he wrote about her publicly first is somehow a way of justifying using her, her relationship with him, and her tragic death, to oust him.

You cannot look at Churchill's "scholarship" without taking into account the things he himself has written about his personal life. It seems to me that there have been scores of books written against George W. Bush, every one of them using various platforms "to engage in attacking" Bush himself. Is this "poor journalism?" Granted, those on the Right believe so, but those such as Michael Moore believe that what they are doing is not only decent journalism, but necessary criticism. I can only repeat--if Churchill had not wished to make his private life available for public consumption, especially that part of it dealing with his third wife, then perhaps he should have kept pen in pocket and not written an online article about her as well as a lengthy book. He made claims in both that are now open to public debate by virtue of being published and available to anyone in that public sphere. Interestingly, DarkNightPress.org loads with entirely dark-background web pages--one wonders why those in Churchill's circle are so afraid of daylight. Why his supporters would be "dismayed" when those engaging in "poor journalism" dare to use his own words against him.

For the record, my reply to my correspondent included the following sentence, and I stand by it: "That your dismay was directed at me for defending her, and not at him for planning on so callously using her, speaks volumes."

An editorial I wrote for HawaiiReporter.com generated an e-mail wherein a lady said she was "dismayed" that I was bringing up the name of Leah Kelly, Ward Churchill's deceased third wife (that editorial is exactly the same as my post The Sanity Ranch--Musings of a Philosopher Queen: Hmmm )

Having read your editorial regarding Ward Churchill and his writings about his wife, Leah Kelly, I had to write to you to express dismay at reading it.

To use a man's dead wife as a means to attack him in the press is a cheap shot, as she isn't here to put across her side of their relationship, one that only she would know about.

There's been lots of opinion, fantasy and spin doctoring written in the last few weeks, which is fine if it is directed solely at the guy in question, but bringing Leah Kelly into the argument is poor journalism. [Name and e-mail address and location withheld by Diana Trent]

"Poor journalism" to mention the wife he himself wrote an entire book about, In My Own Voice? No, actually, since Ward himself used Leah's life--and death--to make money after she was already gone and could no longer defend herself against anything he might say, he himself has placed her name, her life--and her death--into the public arena, and I am absolutely free to comment upon it.

My quotation of a paragraph written by Churchill in my post and my editorial comes directly from an article he himself wrote, and yes, that paragraph contains disturbing things about the nature of Ward Churchill's character and integrity (or lack therof). Since C.U. is now almost certainly going to make this fraud a multi-millionaire at Colorado taxpayer expense (and Rush Limbaugh, I'll deal with you in another post), and since his supporters have been assaulting us with the tenure card, the paragraph I quoted in both post and editorial wherein Mr. Churchill values tenure so little that he is willing to skip the country and head for Canada and live off his 24-year-old wife, well, that's not poor journalism, that's research. That's finding an appropos quote by the man himself as to how very highly he valued tenure at a time when the only thing that seemed to really matter in Ward Churchill's life was the seeking of any Native credentials he could find. My post explains all of that much more fully, and I'm not really interested in re-posting my entire argument.

In the spirit of my post/editorial, I decided to post here something written in a Boulder paper dealing with Leah Kelly and her family. For background, Leah Kelly, an Ojibway woman and Churchill's third wife--not second as the Boulder article says--, died in 2000, her blood alcohol level extremely high, struck by a car at night while fleeing barefoot across a Boulder street. Ward Churchill's book In My Own Voice purports to deal with the facts of Leah's life and death, but as the article below shows, it doesn't quite reach that esteemed pinnacle of truth. I have edited the article for brevity, but the link to the actual article can be found at the bottom of this blog entry.

The family of Ward Churchill's deceased wife says he misrepresented her in a 2001 biography, prompting Canada's indigenous groups to denounce the book as an "inaccurate portrayal."

Now the sister of Churchill's second wife, Leah Kelly, is disputing some facts in a book based on Kelly's life and death.

The school's examination of Churchill's works probably will include the biography of Kelly, a CU spokeswoman said, although officials are not looking for factual errors. The review is intended to determine if Churchill violated the boundaries of free speech with his controversial opinions, officials said.

Churchill described Kelly — a member of the Ojibway tribe of Canada — as an alcoholic driven to suicidal thoughts because of mental illness and childhood abuse. Further, the piece blames her fate on decades of European descendants devaluing and traumatizing indigenous people in North America through "residential schools" or "Indian schools" designed to assimilate them into the rest of society.

He wrote emotional details of his life with Kelly, including a violent encounter in 1996 and her descent into alcoholism. He referred to her fondly as "my wife, my chosen one, the person who in her very presence afforded me a sense of direction, fulfillment and completeness I'd neither known nor believed possible."

Kelly's sister, Rhonda Kelly, said some of Churchill's characterizations of her family and tribe are inaccurate "because it made for better reading." For example, she disputes that her sister had mental health problems.

Rhonda Kelly said Churchill didn't contact her family for research. "He didn't know enough about our history, not enough to be able to write about our family," she said Monday. "It's ironic that he protests about the way we're portrayed, yet he does it himself. He's not native."

First, I would point out to any critics who may find themselves "dismayed" that I would choose to defend Leah Kelly posthumously and use her name to make a point about her husband, that C.U. have themselves brought the book into their review. I have a few other cogent things to say on this topic, but that can wait for a later post ;)

I myself fully plan to contact Rhonda Kelly and try to get her side of the story. Ward Churchill's entire academic career has been littered with inaccuracies, plagiarism, copyright infringement, and just plain lies, and this definitely sounds to me as if he has also, through his own writings available to anyone with access to a modem or a library or a bookstore, posthumously slandered his own third wife.

Link for article from the Boulder Daily Camera: The Daily Camera: News You may be asked to register before gaining access to the article, but registration is free and takes just a minute.

I wonder if folks are aware that the institution from which Ward Churchill draws his $90,000 + a year salary has active connections to such things as the Department of Defense? Not to mention all of the venture capital resources listed on that link. Wouldn't that, by the fact that he accepts paychecks from said institution, make Ward Churchill himself a technocrat and therefore a "little Eichmann," by his own definition?

As to those in the World Trade Center . . .Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved [Diana Trent's emphasis] – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants.

Ignorance is no excuse, Ward. While you were busy braying self-righteously to anyone idiotic enough to come within 10 feet of you, you were, by cashing your paychecks, responsible for "the starved and rotting flesh of infants." Must be because of your own "absolute refusal to see."

Seems that Al-Qaeda was targeting New Zealand-born and current resident of Australia, actor and rancher Russell Crowe, in 2001. If Al-Qaeda carried out the 9-11 slaughter against us because the U.S. is responsible for murdering half a million Iraqi babies, then what in the name of God did this one man do to deserve their ire? I may e-mail Ward Churchill and ask him just that. This article spells out the details, and says:

When asked who might have been targeting him, Crowe replied: "Um ... well, that was the first conversation in my life that I'd heard the phrase al-Qaida."

New Zealand-born Crowe, who won the Best Actor Academy Award in 2001 for "Gladiator," said he was told a French policewoman in Libya or Algeria had picked up the threat in a recording.

"I don't think that I was the only person (targeted). But it was about -- and here's another little touch of irony -- it was about taking iconographic Americans out of the picture as a sort of cultural-destabilization plan," he said.

This one has also been edited to remove actual names. I wanted to post it here, though, so anyone who wanders by can see exactly how Ward Churchill's "criticism" of the government is being perceived by his most rabid supporters. My reply to this person is first, while his e-mail is below. I will be posting any replies he sends me here, in a public forum (sans actual names), as well as any replies I may receive to any of my own free speech from Ward Churchill himself.

Hi, Nxxx, I don't know you, but I wonder, would it have been loving to criticize Bill Clinton's presidency? Is it loving to say that "more 9-11s" need to happen? Is it loving to tell a man to his face, as WC did, that his son deserved to die? Do you have kids, Nxxx? What jobs do they hold? Are any of those jobs in the "technocratic" spehere, or are they all gurus and swamis living off the land and selling handmade leis to those tourists whose kneecaps WC wants shot out--in a loving way, of course? Because Nxxx, unless your own children are planning that sort of future, the sort of future wherein they take nothing from the evil American government (including welfare)--then they are also little Nazis who deserve to die. Wow, what a loving dad you must be. I bet holidays are a hoot at your place.

Where do you buy your family gifts, speaking of holidays? Where do you buy your clothes? What kind of car do you drive (bet you anything it's a Volvo or a Beemer, something that screams STATUS)? Because, Nxxx, unless you walk to work every day in clothes your wife made from cotton she picked and spun and sewed herself with thread she somehow also made herself, then you are living off a technocratic society and you are a little Nazi who deserves to die, at least according to this maniac Ward Churchill you defend. After all, he said that ignorance is no excuse. If you profit from a technocratic society (he apparently gets his $90,000 + a year in beans or something, it couldn't possibly be a--gasp!--check he deposits in a--gasp!--bank, now could it? Into an interest-bearing account? And will he reject Social Security checks from the technocratic government he wants destroyed?) then you are a little Nazi who deserves to die.

You know, the image I get when I think of the fact that WC's "loving" criticism of George 43 would involve the "US out of existence altogether, and take Canada with you when you go" is a hideous one, an image of a man in a drug-induced almost sexual daze, quietly and lovingly pulling the trigger. That ain't love, Nxxx, that's anarchy and treason and yes, my friend, hatred.

[Diana Trent]

In a message dated 09-Mar-05 1:37:43 AM Mountain Standard Time, Xxxxxx writes:
In a message dated 3/8/05 10:36:00, nxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx writes

re: Your interest in Ward Churchill, inter alia

Dear Xxx: To criticize the misdirection this country is going to under the misgovernment of George 11 is an act of love not hatred. Too bad you don't get it. Nxxx

I received this wonderful e-mail from a new friend of mine, who said I could post his name and e-mail address, but I'd rather not. I don't want him receiving hate mail. If you wish to e-mail him, send the e-mail to me at diana_trents_email@yahoo.com and I will forward it. I have edited his e-mail to remove names.

I just went to [Diana's] blog on Ward Churchill. The guy is a real piece of goods alright. One blurb in the blog caught my attention. He is threatening to move to Canada. Please do whatever you can to keep him out of Canada. We do not want him, or need him. We are not a haven for terrorists or their sympathizers. Sure we have a large community of expatriate Americans in Canada, lots of them former draft dodgers, some fugitives from American justice, and most for legitimate reasons, but we don't want or need the likes of Ward Churchill up here. If you know his email please forward this to him to tell him he is not welcome in my Canada.

North Vancouver BC

This is an Open Letter to the Board of Regents and President of C.U.

Dear Regents--I would urge you, when you read Ward Churchill's piece in today's RMN, to consider every angle of this case. Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman have played the entire tape of Mr. Churchill advocating a terrorist strike on Wall Street and Seattle--the tape is available on www.khow.com at any time. In it, Mr. Churchill does, indeed, tell the young man asking the question that he should send himself, with his hair cut and his beard shaved and briefcase in hand, to accomplish an act of terrorism. This is not, as Churchill would have you believe, taken "out of context" (the standard defense of the indefensible) in any way whatsoever.

As for Chruchill never advocating terrorist attacks similar to 9-11, he repeatedly says in his own writings that "more 9-11s may be necessary." If that isn't advocating what happened on 9-11, I'd like to know what is.

KHOW and its sister station KOA have been unflinchingly determined in their sleuthing on this matter. For Churchill to attack Caplis and Silverman over a "paid ad" when his own supporters the day before took out a "paid ad" is ludicrous. These two men have not set out to do anything more than to expose this fraud for who and what he is--a dangerous, dangerous man.

"By framing my statements as they [Caplis and Silverman] have, and then repeatedly broadcasting their spin to a broad audience, there is an obvious possibility that they might actually precipitate an act of terror by some unbalanced individual." Ward Churchill in today's Rocky. This says quite clearly that Churchill's words can, indeed, be construed as terrorist speech. Period. If someone acts on his words, it will not be the fault of Caplis and Silverman, but the fault of Ward Churchill for broadcasting his own terrible spin to a broad and anarchist audience.

There is a reason that no reputable publisher will touch Churchill's work. There is a reason his venom is only spewed across the pages of anarchist publications such as "Green Anarchy," a rag that, in the same issue in which they published Churchill's "Roosting Chickens," ran a piece by the Unabomber.

I would, again, urge caution when listening to the bile coming from this self-proclaimed member of the Weather Underground.

Please, do not give in to the temptation to buy this man out. If you do so, he will have learned several lessons, and he will have learned them well. If you pay him millions of dollars (some of which come from me, by the way) then Ward Churchill will have learned:

1. If you whine loudly enough, someone will eventually cave in and give you what you want.

2. If you whine long enough--preferably while throwing a full-on tantrum in the form of violent hate speech and anarchist threats--then someone will eventually cave in and give you what you want. (He will have instilled fear in his superiors, and he will then have control over them.)

3. If you scream loudly enough that it isn't your fault, that those bad reporters took your words "out of context," then eventually someone will believe you and feel sorry enough for you to open their checkbook.

4. If you continually turn the subject back to your First Amendment rights, then people will begin to forget that you are a plagiarist, an admitted bomb-maker for the Weather Underground, a resume liar, a bully to your students who disagree with you, a man who teaches terrorist tactics repeatedly and loudly, a copyright thief, and another white man who has broken all faith with Native Americans.

Please, Regents, you have more sense than this. I am a Coloradan born and bred, my Dad is a C.U. alum, and I want very badly to see the university rise above this with heads held high. If you give in to this bully rather than facing him head-on, he will have learned that crime pays, that he will never be held accountable for any of his treasonous actions--and I do not mean Free Speech here. I mean actual actions that should be punishable by imprisonment, terrorist beliefs that could bring down buildings. He has actively taught bomb-making, and he is on tape teaching a man how to turn himself into a suicide bomber. He has used false claims to genetic heritage to obtain high-paying tenured positions--he did, after all, get his job at C.U. in the first place by checking the Native American boxes on his application.

If you pay him millions of dollars, he will take that money and spew his vicious terrorist beliefs from one end of this earth to the other.

Do not reward crime. Do not reward hate. Do not reward anarchy. Do not reward terrorism. Do not give an admitted member of the Weather Underground $10,000,000. Stand up for what C.U. is, for what it could be. Stand up to the bully. Do not allow yourselves to be held hostage. He is only one man, and the future of the state of Colorado isn't worth the price he's demanding.

Thank you.

Ward Churchill's take on Betsy Hoffman's resignation:

"I see it as part of an agenda for a political viewpoint to assert absolute state control over the university. It's been public that the intent is to review every instructor, all content, every core course to vet it for adherence to a political line. She has been resistant to that idea, has been working to defend the principle of academic integrity in the face of almost stonewall opposition to the idea that quite a range of viewpoints are deserving of articulation."

Um, Ward, no, it is not "public that the intent is to review every instructor, all content, every core course to vet it for adherence to a political line." That's a flat-out lie on your part--do you even know how to tell the truth? Once again, a statement made up out of whole cloth, with not a shred of evidence to support your ridiculous claim. If such a thing is public, it's only "public" in the editorials of the weird little anarchist rags that agree to print your treasonous venom. It's certainly not "public" among the Board of Regents or in any news source I can find.

And as for "academic integrity" I'll say this much--you yourself, Ward Churchill, wouldn't know academic integrity if it bit you on your embattled arse.

And news flash--this isn't about free speech anymore, so please spare us your pathetic attempts to return to that issue. Like any common crook stopped for a bad tail-light and then arrested for murder, you were looked at for one thing and found wanting on so many criminal points it's ridiculous.

Academic integrity from Betsy Hoffman? The woman who marched on the Capitol building here and then freaked out when reporters asked tough questions? The woman who told everyone this was "a new McCarthyism"? Gimme a break. She has less integrity of any kind, academic or otherwise, than my cat.

I wonder which of the 57 varieties advertises this on its label? And the fact that the cancer-causing bottles of poison were distributed in China makes me seriously wonder what game Heinz is playing at. It's stuff like this, see, that gives America a bad rep world-wide, and we seriously need to find some way to put a curb on such activities. I wonder if Mrs. Kerry could be helpful at all. After all, she had supposedly never even heard of "chilli" until she and John went to Wendy's with the Edwardses.

Effective June 30, 2005, Elizabeth Hoffman will no longer be President of the University of Colorado--Boulder. She announced her resignation just minutes ago.

NO LICENSE TO LIE is an in-depth analysis of the Ward Churchill issue, and parses the various aspects of this case quite carefully. Makes for interesting reading.

It would seem, rather embarrassingly, that it's now going to be the left which is seeking to deny free speech rights on a university campus. Guys, if you're going to rage and rant and scream that Ward Churchill deserves his paid-speech rights (he wants to keep making $90,000 a year to have his say, after all) then it must be conceded that the right has every bit as much claim to the First Amendment. I wonder whether any of the Western cultures profs have ripped off someone else's artwork or taught the Weather Underground how to make bombs, though. I have no doubt whatsoever that we'll shortly hear about it if they have.

UNC profs want talk nixed with foundation
BY ERIC FERRERI, The Herald-SunMarch 2, 2005 10:30 pm

CHAPEL HILL -- A large group of UNC faculty is demanding that the university stop talking with a conservative philanthropic foundation about a controversial proposal to create a new Western cultures program.

A letter signed by 71 UNC faculty members demands that university officials stop talking with the John William Pope Foundation, a conservative group that has made many professors uneasy due to its financial support of organizations often critical of the university.