March 21, 2009
CU Cultural Studies Professor Ben Whitmer: “Why I Support Ward Churchill” [UPDATED]

Just in time for the Ward Churchill Support Rallies, here’s what passes for “intellectual” support for an academic suing to get his job back — the result of which, should his suit prove successful, would be that students or faculty engaging in plagiarism can always point to the Churchill precedent as dispositive should disciplinary action be taken against them. Ben Whitmer:

I’ve spent four years defending Ward Churchill in every way I could think to do so.‭ ‬And not because of any esoteric principle of academic freedom.‭ ‬If my time in universities has taught me anything,‭ ‬it’s that trying to inject principle into academia is as worthwhile as trying to train geese to shit indoors.‭ ‬Likewise,‭ ‬though I’m about as vehement a proponent of the human right to free expression as you’re likely to meet,‭ ‬I find the idea that it’s routinely abrogated‭ – ‬both by the right and the ‘left’‭ – ‬about as shocking as the daily sunrise.

I defend Ward Churchill because he was the first to write the obvious about the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September‭ ‬11,‭ ‬2001.‭ ‬That the technocrats on the upper levels of the World Trade Center weren’t targeted because they provided some symbolically metaphysical representation of American power‭; ‬they were targeted because they made their living on the bodies of Arab children.‭ ‬This is not to say that everyone in the World Trade Center was a‭ “‬little Eichmann‭”‬,‭ ‬a point Churchill made clear.‭ ‬He used a different term for the service workers and children in the World Trade Center,‭ ‬one popularized by the US military.‭ ‬They were‭ “‬collateral damage‭”‬,‭ ‬a miraculously precise and objective term that,‭ ‬as the reaction to Ward Churchill’s essay evidences,‭ ‬is divested of all precision and objectivity when one is staring at the corpses of their own dead.

In other words,‭ ‬I defend Ward Churchill because,‭ ‬not in spite,‭ ‬of his little Eichmann metaphor.‭ ‬It does everything a good metaphor should do.‭ ‬It manages to convey new meanings to both the subject and the object,‭ ‬and to expand the discourse surrounding both.‭ ‬From Churchill we learned a new way to perceive the technocrats at the top of the World Trade Center,‭ ‬just as we learned a new way to perceive Eichmann.‭ ‬And from these perceptions,‭ ‬many of us learned something indispensable about the bureaucratic functioning of power.

Actually, far from conveying “new meanings to both the subject and the object” that “expand the discourse surrounding both,” all Churchill’s “metaphor” does is manage to scapegoat, which was a specialty of the Nazis — making the metaphor itself a bit of useful projection for thugs like Churchill and Whitmer who make their livings winding up young impressionable wannabe revolutionaries (and their aging holdover predecessors, who would otherwise be farting dust while selling homemade bead necklaces on the sidewalks of campus) from the relative safety of their wood paneled departmental offices, living off money from both the state and the generosity of benefactors who likely didn’t make their fortunes subsisting on organic beet farms.

One doesn’t require a new way to contextualize Eichmann. And the only thing a dispassionate person will learn about the “bureaucratic functioning of power” is that colossal assholes like Whitmer and Churchill have learned to count on it for their livelihoods — so much so that Churchill is fighting to get back inside the safety of its nurturing, tenure-friendly womb.

Whitmer, who once “wished a female newspaper editor [from the local Westword] had been ‘fucked with a wood rasp,’ has found his self-importance “sticking it to the Man” from inside the Man’s own house, even while he feeds himself on the Man’s money, provided by taxpayers (and the athletic department), all of whom, in addition to the service workers among them “forgiven” by Churchhill (many of whom likely aspired to be “technocrats” themselves, though they were likely thinking of other things when the chose to leap from the towers rather than be consumed by buring jet fuel) subsidize those who would celebrate the symbolism that their slaughter as metaphorical “little Eichmanns” provides.

Whitmer likes to play at being revolutionary. Fine. But he is no more an “academic” than is Churchill: sure, they’ve learned the jargon of sociology and the argot of their individual arena of grievance study. But they have done so simply to provide themselves an academic veneer to what is at base a self-serving and narcissistic endeavor: namely, to pretend themselves Champions of the People, fighting a system they routinely rail against — even as they are supported by that very system and rely upon it to give them an air of intellectual legitimacy.

Had they the courage of their convictions, they’d leave the academy and peddle their ideas in the free market — not rely on a PC culture to ensure that they are constantly provided throngs of students to indoctrinate with sophistry, faulty history, and an “intellectual” grounding in failed Marxist revolutionary thought.

Frauds, fakes, wannabe revolutionaries. Plagiarizers and peddlers of empty rhetoric based on falsified facts in service of grievance narratives they then use to blackmail guilty whites into conferring upon them intellectual legitimacy that they haven’t truly earned. That’s who these people are, and their supporters are enablers of such anti-intellectual bullshit. If there really is a symbol in all this that “manages to convey new meanings to both the subject and the object,‭ ‬and to expand the discourse surrounding both,” it is Churchill suing to get back into the safety of the academic cloister, even as his acolytes pass out homemade brochures that call for a razing of The System.

****
update: Mr. Whitmer responds in the comments:

Nice to see how easy it is to set you sensitive little assholes up in arms. I’d like to point out the following, though.

1. I’ve never taught “Cultural Studies”. I don’t even know what the fuck that is.
2. I’m not a professor.
3. I’m not an academic.
4. My so-called teaching career consists of a few adjunct classes when CU’s American Indian Studies department was big-time understaffed (you can probably guess why), and that ended nearly two years ago when they restaffed with full time American Indian Studies professors. Other than that, I’ve always been in the “free market.

But, hey, other than that you’re batting 1.000.

Fucking idiot.

American Indian Studies is a branch of Cultural or Ethnic Studies. Different universities have different names for these “educational” sops to identity politics, so I’m not sure how someone who’s spent a good portion of his life imbibing the politicized “academic” manifestos that routinely emanate from the depths of Humanities and Sociology departments shant have heard the term before today.

That he’s not a professor (I saw him referenced that way elsewhere) is somewhat heartening, I suppose — though the fact the Churchill, Ayers, and Dohrne are or were cancels out any credit the academy accrues by keeping this guy out of any kind of permanent position.

Generally, those who teach at the University level are called academics — even if they wish to resist to the label. Whitmer, who taught as an adjunct, clearly wishes to do so. Churchill, on the other hand, is suing to get back into that very arena where academics operate.

Which leaves us with the rather sad spectacle of a part-time adjunct who acts as a full-time Ward Churchill groupie.

Glad he set the record straight, though I’m not sure he comes off looking any better. At the very least, most academics mouth this kind of faux-intellectual claptrap to carve out a niche in the academic market. Whereas Mr. Whitmer seems to believe it.

As for calling me a fucking idiot, well, we’re both in Colorado so he is welcome to do so directly to my smiling face. He might also use that opportunity to tell me how many of those in the Trade Center had it coming, the little Eichmanns, and then we can see just how tough he thinks having a tattoo and a blustery delivery really makes him.

My guess is not nearly tough enough.

97 Comments  :::   Post a comment »

  1. Comment by Joe on 3/21 @ 10:57 am #

    Am I missing something? Beyond all the Ward Churchill bullshit, academic freedom, and other assorted crap, when did Universities start tollerating plagerism? Whether you think Churchill is a visionary voice or a completely degranged nutjob, he steals other people’s work and calls it his own. Isn’t that a firing offense?

  2. Comment by cranky-d on 3/21 @ 11:04 am #

    There was a time when academics from all disciplines were respected, and they deserved that respect. It’s people like Churchill and Whitmer who, not being worthy of any respect at all, have managed to tar every academic with the same brush in the minds of classical liberals. They diminish us all by their existence.

  3. Comment by jimw on 3/21 @ 11:08 am #

    Just contrasting the writing talents of Whitmer and Jeff gives me hope for the Republic. I suppose Whitmer’s talents, if he had any to start with, probably have atrophied during his time feeding pablum to the remedial english patients that make up the freshmen classes these days, but when you don’t have to defend your position the intellectual foundations get weak in a hurry. A battle of wits with Jeff can leave you looking unarmed.

  4. Comment by geoffb on 3/21 @ 11:08 am #

    ‬both by the right and the ‘left’

    The right has actual existence for him, the left is in quotes because what I would think of as the left he sees as normal, common, everyday humanity. As opposed to the right which is a small and inhuman sect trying to conquer and thus destroy all others.

  5. Comment by Joe on 3/21 @ 11:13 am #

    Ward Churchill is so fucked up, he made up that he was an American Indian (or if you prefer, Native American, First Nation Member, etc.). Churchill is a complete loser with no talent who promotes himself by acting like a lunatic. And he steals other people’s work and passes it off as his own.

  6. Comment by SarahW on 3/21 @ 11:13 am #

    “They were “ collateral damage ” , a miraculously precise and objective term that, as the reaction to Ward Churchill’s essay evidences, is divested of all precision and objectivity when one is staring at the corpses of their own dead.”

    No, they were targets. The undocumented man-made disaster workers made as many deaths as possible the GOAL, it was not an unfortunate side effect of their efforts to ding a select group of “oppressors.” In fact the whole point was death to everybody, for Allah’s sake.

  7. Comment by Serr8d on 3/21 @ 11:18 am #

    I left a message on RAIM-D’s Ben Whitmer post; something about the conflation of geese shitting on the floors and defending poor academic metaphors. Then, I found out it was ‘moderated’. Next post I left..

    Heh. Moderation.

    Something Ward Churchill and this blog author (“Fuck the Troops”) needs to have shoved up their asses with help of a pitchfork. Then, the tar and feathers.

    For the metaphoric discourse!

    I’ll be willing to bet neither comment sees light of day.

  8. Comment by Jack M. on 3/21 @ 11:26 am #

    Who the hell would want to train a goose to “shit indoors”?

    It would be much easier to have them shit outdoors, were they trainable at all.

    Is this a “new way of looking” at geese shitting, or am I just an OUTlaw?

  9. Comment by Darleen on 3/21 @ 11:30 am #

    That the technocrats on the upper levels of the World Trade Center weren’t targeted because they provided some symbolically metaphysical representation of American power‭; ‬they were targeted because they made their living on the bodies of Arab children.

    Uh… so, the WTC wasn’t a “symbol” but the “technocrats” (?? which floors?? what businesses?) were literally using dead Arab children as products? How, harvesting organs? Making lampshades from skin? Stem-cell research? Oh sorry, the last is reserved for [white] American embryos.

    In a long rant of tortured language, that sentence is one of the most tortureous. heh.

  10. Comment by brian on 3/21 @ 11:32 am #

    I don’t suppose that it would be worth my time to mention that Whitmer’s entire argument falls apart at his first premise, would it?

    Unless you actually believe that this is about “Palestine” and not the desire for Caliphate, that is.

    Nuance.

  11. Comment by SmokeVanThorn on 3/21 @ 11:37 am #

    Whitmer and Chruchill – Birds of a feather shitting together.

  12. Comment by Jack M. on 3/21 @ 11:37 am #

    Also, let me first to summarize Whitmer’s defense of Churchill as:

    BECAUSE OF THE GEESE SHIT!

  13. Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/21 @ 11:40 am #

    Yeah, Jack. I was wondering the same thing. Wouldn’t you want to train it to let you know when it needed to go out?

    But that’s just us imposing our western white male value system on the situation. In some cultures (such as, apparently, Whitmer’s) having a goose shit inside your house is considered a sign of good fortune.

    This man is no intellectual. He’s a poorly socialized child who’s discovered that he can make his peers giggle by shouting “POOOOPY!” at the top of his lungs.

  14. Comment by Rusty on 3/21 @ 11:40 am #

    #9
    I suspect even he doesn’t know what ‘technocrats’ he’s talking about. It’s a gut ‘feeling’ he has. If ever confronted by a real technocrat-whatever that is-, like a real ‘working man’, he’d shit his pants. Yet another Caric like figure full of sound and fury, ultimately signifying nothing at all.

  15. Comment by SarahW on 3/21 @ 11:41 am #

    Thanks Jack M. That was funny.

  16. Comment by louchette on 3/21 @ 11:42 am #

    sickening. i know i’m not actually adding anything to the conversation with that. but it’s all i got after reading this. just… this is sickening. the lying, the cheating, the plagiarism, the defense of the indefensible. just totally sickening.

    i would wish everything we here in the city went through that day and in the following months on these glib, cutesy assholes. except that i wouldn’t wish those things on anyone.

  17. Comment by bust of Churchill on 3/21 @ 11:42 am #

    All this and I’m the one they ship off to England?

  18. Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/21 @ 11:43 am #

    Darleen, as near as I can figure out, we’ve been exploiting the Arabs by importing (and paying for) millions of barrels of oil.

    I’d really like to know where I can sign up to be “exploited” in that fashion.

  19. Comment by Dan Collins on 3/21 @ 11:45 am #

    There’s an idea: Jeff can start working on the screenplay for The Remedial English Patient.

  20. Comment by B Moe on 3/21 @ 11:55 am #

    I don’t recall ever having to train a goose to shit anywhere, it always seemed to come pretty natural to the ones I was around.

  21. Comment by Jack M. on 3/21 @ 11:56 am #

    “The Remedial English Patient” as written by a dude who reads Jeff Goldstein.

    Scene 1, Act 1

    (Camera pans out to reveal a kindergarden classroom full of shitting geese sitting in a circle. One goose, Flappy, is shown walking clockwise around the group.)

    Flappy- Goose.

    Goose #1- …

    Flappy -Goose.

    Goose #2- …

    Flappy- DUCK!

    Goose #3- …

    Flappy- …

    Goose #3-…

    Flappy- …

    Goose #3- Did you intend to contextualize me as a different species? Patterico says I should be insulted, but I’m really not sure. Screw it. IT’S AN OUTRAGE!

  22. Comment by takeshi kovacs on 3/21 @ 12:05 pm #

    As I was saying, a legitimate argument would be that the US relationship with the corrupt Sauds is illegitimate, but they don’t really want to go there, because one, it’s Bin Laden’s argument
    for 9/11 and two, it means the Wahhabi tribes of the Ilkwan are the proper representative, and that would anger progressives, or maybe not I can’t tell anymore

  23. Comment by Darleen on 3/21 @ 12:11 pm #

    And there’s also the banner at the top of his RAIM page … showing and angry tribal black woman toting a rifle with a baby on her back.

    Whitmer is, of course, some wrinkly, old, radical-left, white guy teaching “Ethnic Studies.” How he didn’t worry about breaking the Left’s “code” and commodifying the image of black woman for his own profit …

    Hey Ben, you’re perpetuating WHITE PATRIARCHAL PRIVILEDGE!!11!1!!

  24. Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/21 @ 12:21 pm #

    Whitmer is, of course, some wrinkly, old, radical-left, white guy teaching “Ethnic Studies.”

    Ah. Just like Churchill. And Caric. And Ayers.

    Shouldn’t “Ethnic Studies” be taught by AUTHENTIC People of Diverse Ethnicity? I mean, really, people.

  25. Comment by BJTexs on 3/21 @ 12:21 pm #

    I’d like to point out that, from the original report of the review board of the university, one of the biggest problems they had in trying to deal fairly with the accusations made against his cherokeeness was his lack of response to the specific charges and his overarching arrogance to the entire panel.

    Churchhill and Whitmer represent the least intellectual aspects of radical left wing ideology. Under the auspices of academic rigor and study they put forth an arrogant, faith based narrative that has virtually no basis in fact and gainsays any attempt at debate by objectifying the debaters as “racist” or some such.

    Thus a proper and logical conclusion is that anyone yelling an ideology and shouting down any dissent in a most arrogant, self-serving way should be perceived as having no intellectual weight whatsoever, regardless of “academic achievements.”

  26. Comment by xchemist on 3/21 @ 12:25 pm #

    That, Jeff, was beautifully said.

  27. Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/21 @ 12:28 pm #

    Describe them as revolutionary parasites, who, if they suceeded in razing the system, would be the first ones taken down to the basement and shot in the back of the head by the new Gestapo.

  28. Comment by Christopher Taylor on 3/21 @ 12:36 pm #

    I like Dana Gould’s take on this sort of “revolutionary” who lives off the man:

    I have so little patience for these kids you see panhandling.

    They’re teenagers, you know: punks, shaved heads, couple tattoos…

    “Got any change?!”

    And they all have have an ethic — they all have their heroes: Trent Reznor T-shirts; Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against The Machine, but have you noticed that none of your heroes are here? that Trent’s not hanging out on the sidewalk today in front of the convenience store?

    Maybe he’s at work!

    He’s a professional musician. He gets paid money to sing “F*ck The System” to you!

    He takes that money and spends it on other businesses, creating an economy! This basic exchange of goods and services is the backbone of the very system that you claim to not want to be a part of, so I can’t give you my money. I’m not going to infect you with my dirty capitalist money! I’m not going to be the corporate snake that lures you out of the Eden-like paradise of sidewalk living.

  29. Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/21 @ 12:38 pm #

    “AUTHENTIC People of Diverse Ethnicity” are off working their ases off trying to make a buck.

    White reactionary leftist perfessor types don’t have to actually, you know, work.

  30. Comment by geoffb on 3/21 @ 12:39 pm #

    Describe them as revolutionary parasites

    They are the new SR’s.

  31. Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/21 @ 12:42 pm #

    “…as worthwhile as trying to train geese to shit indoors.‭ ”

    I’m quite sure that geese could do that very well, all by themselves.

    Training them to shit in a toilet would be an achievement.

    But that’d be like, you know, work.

  32. Comment by irongrampa on 3/21 @ 12:48 pm #

    Serr8, I’d love to buy you a beer. How anyone could visit a site like that, read some of it, and not immediately embark on a bloodletting has my utmost admiration. Shouldn’t have clicked on the happy birthday to the troops post, I guess.

    Fortunately, I’ll not likely come within reach of any of that bi-pedal feces in my life. Too old to spend the rest of my time in prison.

    Makes a mockery of free speech, imho.

  33. Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/21 @ 12:49 pm #

    Ha. Even the name Bolshevik was a lie.

  34. Comment by N. O'Brain on 3/21 @ 12:50 pm #

    “I hate Communism most for its cold-blooded murder of the truth! Pravda doesn’t mean truth. Pravda means whatever serves the world Communist revolution.”

    -Robert A. Heinlein

  35. Comment by Mike on 3/21 @ 12:53 pm #

    They have definitely “conveyed a new meaning” to my absolute, marrow-deep hatred of mollycoddled Left-wing academic parasites. Also deepened it, to a previously unimaginable degree.

  36. Comment by Dash Rendar on 3/21 @ 1:17 pm #

    Hmm, Mr. Churchill’s insistence of crafting a racially pure identity reminds me of someone else who so insisted upon racial purity in a couple books he wrote, though I can’t recall….

  37. Comment by Ben Whitmer on 3/21 @ 1:19 pm #

    Nice to see how easy it is to set you sensitive little assholes up in arms. I’d like to point out the following, though.

    1. I’ve never taught “Cultural Studies”. I don’t even know what the fuck that is.
    2. I’m not a professor.
    3. I’m not an academic.
    4. My so-called teaching career consists of a few adjunct classes when CU’s American Indian Studies department was big-time understaffed (you can probably guess why), and that ended nearly two years ago when they restaffed with full time American Indian Studies professors. Other than that, I’ve always been in the “free market.

    But, hey, other than that you’re batting 1.000.

    Fucking idiot.

  38. Comment by Akatsukami on 3/21 @ 1:24 pm #

    Churchill and Whitmer, big Eichmanns, not little ones.

  39. Comment by Ted Nugent's Soul Patch on 3/21 @ 1:26 pm #

    “Whitmer, who once “wished a female newspaper editor [from the local Westword] had been ‘fucked with a wood rasp,’ has found his self-importance “sticking it to the Man” from inside the Man’s own house, even while he feeds himself on the Man’s money, provided by taxpayers”

    There’s a reason that academics, since the early 20th Century, are usually among the first class of people to be sent to the gulags in totalitarian societies, and it isn’t because they speak “Truth to Power” or any other blowhard nonsense. It’s because the totalitarians recognize that modern academics are among the biggest parasites on society–they contribute little but their own meanderings and are generally disdainful of the very people that provide them with food, shelter, and security. So when David Dictator takes over the country, he provides a few of these people with government jobs so that they can serve as propogandists for the state, and eliminates the rest. He’s bought the loyalty of the former, and eliminated the nuisance of the latter.

    Che, for instance, HATED academics and artists because he didn’t consider them to be productive workers in the classic Marxist sense. The Cultural Revolution in China, and North Korea in our modern time, are also good examples. Churchill, Whitmer, and the other dessicated hippies and marxist wannabes at CU and other universities don’t know how good they have it, and once in a while, I wish someone would demonstrate that to them in real time.

  40. Comment by Taggart on 3/21 @ 1:33 pm #

    So, Ben, do I read you right here in that you want Ward Churchill’s plagiarism and falsification of scholarship excused because he’s a batshit leftist like you? Because the last I looked, he wasn’t summarily bounced from his position for his batshit utterances.

  41. Comment by AJB on 3/21 @ 1:52 pm #

    Heh, I see that PW has finally discovered the wonders of Maoism Third Worldism. These people make Chomsky look like Krauthammer.

    http://redguardcamp.blogspot.com/2008/03/overview-of-fw-maoist-entities.html
    http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/
    http://www.youtube.com/user/shubelmorgan
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKbEaZ-Jnws
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsOMEUamYkc

  42. Comment by Mikey NTH on 3/21 @ 1:56 pm #

    Academia has become an Edsel*.

    *The automobile. By all accounts, Edsel Ford would be revolted by this. He actually had taste and ability.

  43. Comment by Techie on 3/21 @ 1:58 pm #

    One of my consolations is the knowledge from history that Whitmer’s ilk are usually up against the wall when the “revolutions” they so yearn and desire for actually happen.

  44. Comment by Jack M. on 3/21 @ 2:04 pm #

    “Nice to see how easy it is to set you sensitive little assholes up in arms.”

    Actually, I’m concerned about what you do with your geese.

  45. Comment by Rob Crawford on 3/21 @ 2:18 pm #

    2. I’m not a professor.
    3. I’m not an academic.

    Nor are you educated, moral, or a man. You’re a fascist little pussy, gleefully cheering as the Hated Other (those who were in the WTC, on those four jets, and in the Pentagon on 9/11) are murdered.

  46. Comment by slackjawedyokel on 3/21 @ 2:27 pm #

    #37
    Ben:
    I find your views intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

  47. Comment by Taggart on 3/21 @ 2:43 pm #

    Will we get to shoot back in this revolution? ‘Cause I’m starting to see a silver lining here…

  48. Comment by Christopher Taylor on 3/21 @ 3:02 pm #

    I’m quite sure that geese could do that very well, all by themselves.

    Yeah, they pretty much poop everywhere they are without any need for prompting or training.

    1. I’ve never taught “Cultural Studies”. I don’t even know what the fuck that is.
    2. I’m not a professor.
    3. I’m not an academic.
    4. My so-called teaching career consists of a few adjunct classes when CU’s American Indian Studies department was big-time understaffed (you can probably guess why), and that ended nearly two years ago when they restaffed with full time American Indian Studies professors. Other than that, I’ve always been in the “free market.

    Hmm according to this report you were teaching “Ethnicc studies” at Colorado University and assaulted a Daily Camera reporter, and according to This report you issued a death threat against a cartoonist for daring to question Professor Churchill. Touchy about the man, are you? Did you wish that cartoonist to be assaulted with a wood rasp as well?

    For not being an academic you have taught at a university, what exactly do you think “academic” means?
    I even found a really lousy story written by a CU graduate named Ben Whitmer, is that you? “That’s when I understand that I’m not going anywhere.” seems unusually self-aware for someone who so greatly supports and defends a known plagiarist and faux Native American.

  49. Comment by cranky-d on 3/21 @ 3:07 pm #

    1. I’ve never taught “Cultural Studies”. I don’t even know what the fuck that is.

    On one hand, that’s a blessing, on the other, you’re stupid.

    2. I’m not a professor.
    3. I’m not an academic.

    Praise be to G-d. I am happy to admit that I obviously assumed you were, since often only what passes for academics these days are that dense.

    4. My so-called teaching career consists of a few adjunct classes when CU’s American Indian Studies department was big-time understaffed (you can probably guess why), and that ended nearly two years ago when they restaffed with full time American Indian Studies professors. Other than that, I’ve always been in the “free market.

    The fact that you have taught anything is unfortunate. The fact that it was “American Indian Studies” sort of makes it not as bad, as anyone in that class is lost already to the rational world.

    But you go on with your bad self!

    OUTLAW!!

  50. Comment by Abe Froman on 3/21 @ 3:09 pm #

    Would someone be a good boy or girl and categorize the multiple absurdities in Ben’s comment so I can stay by the door with my Halloween candy in case the Obama across America people show up with my pledge?

  51. Comment by ushie on 3/21 @ 3:25 pm #

    “Whitmer, who once “wished a female newspaper editor [from the local Westword] had been ‘fucked with a wood rasp,’”

    Yes. You fucking worthless gutless tool. Of COURSE you’re a “revolutionary,” of course you’re a leftist, of course you’re a radical. You can be outrageous by hurling sexist claptrap against a woman because even though I’m sure you’re a “feminist,” you also get to wish rape on a woman who displeases you, because you’re just so outrageous! You’re wild! Untamed! Primal in your leftism! Any woman should fall to her knees and suck your outrageous leftist dick in admiration of the revolutionary wonder that is you!

    Get lost, you worthless useless tool of the patriarchy. You accept your white man priviledge in all you say and do.

    Oh, and Churchill is a plagiarist. Look the word up in a dictionary and then crow about his invaluable contributions to academia, why don’t you? Oh, wait, looking up a word would constitute some kind of action, and your lazy ass won’t allow that sort of thing.

  52. Comment by louchette on 3/21 @ 3:30 pm #

    went over and poked around that site. and now i need to take like 50 showers.

    honestly, i can’t take anyone seriously who is more concerned with the slavery that ended 150 years ago than they are with the slave trade that’s ongoing right now. the christian god botherers and others who are trying to abolish the practice of treating human beings as objects and commodities i respect. a lot. those who would never dare criticize the horrifying ‘cultural’ practices of their over-romanticized fetishized Other/s, not so much.

  53. Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/21 @ 3:54 pm #

    I’ve never taught “Cultural Studies”…My so-called teaching career consists of a few adjunct classes when CU’s American Indian Studies department

    So American Indians don’t have a culture?

    That sounds plenty racist, Ben E. WHITE-mer.

    And whassupp with that “American Indian” jive, homie?

    Do they also have “Oriental Studies” and “Negro Studies”? Or is it “Colored Studies”?

  54. Comment by Great Mencken's Ghost! on 3/21 @ 4:08 pm #

    #24 — Why do you think Ethnic Studies were created in the first place? It was to keep all the “affirmatively-acted” new young academics since the 60’s from crowding the old white fogeys away from their tenured chairs. Celebrate diversity! Put them in their own fucking faculty lounge!

  55. Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/21 @ 4:12 pm #

    GMG: then why are all those departments full of crusty white senile hippies like WHITEmer and Ward Hard On the Beaver*?

    *That’s his “Indian name”, you know?

  56. Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/21 @ 4:16 pm #

    What real Indians think about Ward Hard-on-the-Beaver”.

  57. Comment by B Moe on 3/21 @ 4:47 pm #

    Fucking idiot.

    Hey you are the one worried about teaching geese to shit.

  58. Comment by Dash Rendar on 3/21 @ 5:10 pm #

    From link at 56:

    “Churchill started coming around in 1992 or 1993 [to the reservation -ed.]saying he wrote some books and was a big time author, and convinced us he could help our people…”

    How fitting. The largesse of the egomaniacal leftist.

    “Churchill has fraudulently represented himself as a member of the Keetoowah Nation of Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma, which he is not. When challenged to show proof of any Indian ancestry he waves an associate membership card that at one time the Keetoowah Nation would give to anyone who would promise to help them.”

    I’ll trade you my advocacy if you vouch for my racial purity.

  59. Comment by Dash Rendar on 3/21 @ 5:12 pm #

    “With deceit and treachery, he has been able to manipulate the Denver Indian community into giving him and his co-conspirator, Glen Morris, credibility and cover. Glenn Morris is a professor at the University of Colorado who is another Caucasian American masquerading as an Indian, This is designed to confuse Indians and non-Indian alike.”

    The white man’s treachery continues.

  60. Comment by Wm T Sherman on 3/21 @ 5:22 pm #

    Whitmer is not old, he is in his thirties. He has a Masters, but not a Ph.D. He has some sort of job connected to marketing textbooks. As he stated, he worked as an adjunct at CU, and was never tenure-track.

    He had an office on campus while teaching, and also managed a filty pro-Churchill blog called “Tryworks,” which he ran under the pseudonym “John Moredock.” A profane commenter at Tryworks named “Charley Arthur” was almost certainly Ward Churchill himself. Whitmer erased the blog when the identity of John Moredock was inadvertantly revealed by Whitmer himself in an e-mail from his university account:

    http://www.pirateballerina.com/blog/entry.php?id=514

    In general, Whitmer appears to be a local “activist” type, writing letters to the editor, dreaming of street battles with The Man, and working to put together demonstrations and protests that typically, come to nothing.

  61. Comment by Celtic Dragon on 3/21 @ 5:27 pm #

    Hey Whitmer, you piece of inhuman goose shit, those “technocrats” in the WTC towers you and that other piece of shit Churchill crow about were actual human beings who did useful work, not parasites like you and him. If anything, your anti-human opinions make you MORE deserving of death than those people, who you claim as legitimate targets.

    So go fuck yourself with a wood rasp…

  62. Comment by louchette on 3/21 @ 5:34 pm #

    OT: celtic dragon — vendui! and i got to it late but i left you a response on the PAL thread from the other night. dunno if you went back there or gave up on me replying. if you have any other questions feel free to email me at my yahoo acct, the infos are in my lj profile. no need for us to spam up our lovely host’s site with that stuff.

  63. Comment by ushie on 3/21 @ 5:42 pm #

    Marketing textbooks! A fine, limp cock, indeed.

  64. Comment by Jeff G. on 3/21 @ 5:43 pm #

    Correction made in update.

    I also sent Ben a nice email inviting him to call me a fucking idiot in person, right after he finishes telling me how the Little Eichmanns had it coming.

    You can see photos of his bad self in a couple of the links I supplied. Looks like he occasionally flanks Ward as a type of bodyguard.

    Which is fine by me. I’m so sick of trash like this taking craps on decent people and the murdered Americans who went to work at the Towers that I welcome his street activism coming in contact with my desire not to hear it.

  65. Comment by Wm T Sherman on 3/21 @ 5:43 pm #

    Jeff G, regarding the update: in the past, Whitmer challenged particular folks who dislike Churchill (and Whitmer himself) to come visit Whitmer at CU and he would “demonstrate my manhood,” as he put it. I think he meant he was willing to fist fight. (I hope that’s what he meant.) Anyway, I shall be curious to see if you get some response out of him amounting to a prim repudiation of physical confrontation as a measure of a man’s character; since he has certainly stated that it is a measure of character.

    If he can be believed, he has quite a gun collection, and he expresses quite a number of violent fantasies. However, I think he’s quite aware of what would get him jailed, and scrupulously avoids it. If you actually get into it with him, don’t try a knockout punch to his chin — he doesn’t have one.

  66. Comment by router on 3/21 @ 5:59 pm #

    obamathugs

  67. Comment by SteveG on 3/21 @ 6:01 pm #

    Who signs off as “fucking idiot” when their given name is Ben?
    I fear for his self esteem..

  68. Comment by Joan of Argghh! on 3/21 @ 6:05 pm #

    New US Census rules now seem to allow anyone to claim any ethnicity, lest the government be forced into the “one drop” test for minority status. I believe but cannot verify that census-takers (much like ACORN organizers) use this to an advantage for the sake of academia and government’s wedge-driving for pet projects.

    Therefore, the census guidelines state that the census taker must account for the cultural identity as believed and practiced, and as one having an affinity or strong identity with said group. Which means a census taker has to be sensitive, as it goes further to state that a census-taker can, in a “sensitive” manner, judge for themselves as to a person’s ethnicity.

    Therefore, Ward Churchill can be whatever he says he is.

    I plan to use such broad interpretations to my own advantage and would suggest that in true OUTLAW! spirit that we are all now Native Alaskans in solidarity, community and spirit with Todd Palin.

    Fuck the census. We are all Ward Churchills now.

  69. Comment by Jeff G. on 3/21 @ 6:19 pm #

    He wrote back and didn’t accept my offer.

    No matter. That wasn’t really a prerequisite.

  70. Comment by Sdferr on 3/21 @ 6:28 pm #

    Could’a been a perquisite though.

  71. Comment by Jeffersonian on 3/21 @ 7:04 pm #

    I’m going for a full professorship at my alma mater soon on the laurels of my book, “Moby Dick.” I’m following it up with another that I’m thinking of calling, “Vanity Fair.”

  72. Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/21 @ 7:19 pm #

    obamathugs

    Speaking of which, did anyone have a confirmed siting of the Fascist Loyalty Oath Brigade today?

    Nary a one here. I didn’t really expect them, though, given that only one person in my extremely left-wing city had signed up to “canvass”.

    Carin was planning to go down and join the gathering in her city. Anyone heard from her?

  73. Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/21 @ 7:20 pm #

    I wrote The Epic of Gilgamesh.

    Top that, Jeffersonian. :-)

  74. Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/21 @ 7:21 pm #

    confirmed siting

    Or even a confirmed sighting. Durrr…

  75. Comment by SarahW on 3/21 @ 7:29 pm #

    I’m writing a book exploring themes of reason vs. feeling. “Sense and Sensibility” is catchy for the title, is it not?

  76. Comment by Jeff G. on 3/21 @ 7:30 pm #

    Carin noted in the other thread that no one at all showed up. No one.

  77. Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/21 @ 7:30 pm #

    Hah! Thanks, Jeff. I must’ve missed that.

  78. Comment by Darleen on 3/21 @ 7:37 pm #

    SPB

    Carin reports here

    And it looks like the thugs of CT Worker’s Party, accompanied by ACORN showed up at AIG headquarters to aggitate and were matched by the press 1 to 1

    Same fuckwad press that pointedly ignores the hundreds and thousands that show up for Tea Parties.

  79. Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 3/21 @ 7:43 pm #

    Got it, Darleen. Thanks!

    Maybe the Tea Party folks should start holding them in front of their local newspaper offices.

  80. Comment by Jeffersonian on 3/21 @ 7:47 pm #

    I wrote The Epic of Gilgamesh.

    Top that, Jeffersonian. :-)

    Posh. My recent discovery of penicillin makes a mockery of such a paltry achievement. That, and my development of the Sham-Wow and Snuggie.

  81. Comment by John Bradley on 3/21 @ 8:11 pm #

    In general, Whitmer appears to be a local “activist” type, writing letters to the editor, dreaming of street battles with The Man, and working to put together demonstrations and protests that typically, come to nothing.

    So, in other words, a male version of She Who Must Not Be Named.

  82. Comment by happyfeet on 3/21 @ 10:40 pm #

    fascist little pussy

    I have nothing to add to that I don’t think. Whitmer person seems quintessential PBS/NPR/Pacifica axis in terms of lame agitprop but more repulsive cause even them ones won’t let him play for real. The Whitmer ones even Baracky Soros doesn’t have any use for. That’s when you know you’re pretty fucking useless I think.

  83. Comment by dicentra on 3/22 @ 2:24 am #

    Dear Ben (who has probably dropped his load and run, never to be seen again):

    Ward Churchill is a textbook example of a malignant narcissist: the arrogance, the fake identity, the plagiarism, and especially the morons who lavish him with the adulation he so desperately craves (hence his desire to return instead of finding another job elsewhere).

    If you can’t spot a phony like that, it’s either because you’re a moron or a phony yourself.

    But thanks for confirming my beliefs about his fan club.

  84. Comment by MarkD on 3/22 @ 8:17 am #

    In the interest of a balanced budget, and to ward off future mental health expenditures, I’d like to see xxxxxxx studies students ineligible for Federal student loans.

    They won’t get a job with this claptrap, but they will learn to go through life with a grievance. I’ve written this before, and I stand by it. That degree is an absolute disqualifier for me. I’ll hire a kid who can’t spell UNIX before I’ll hire someone with an ethnic or gender studies degree.

  85. Comment by Christopher Taylor on 3/22 @ 9:27 am #

    If you can’t spot a phony like that, it’s either because you’re a moron or a phony yourself.

    Or you have a big time, dewy-eyed crush on him.

  86. Comment by B Moe on 3/22 @ 9:40 am #

    If you can’t spot a phony like that, it’s either because you’re a moron or a phony yourself.

    Or you have a big time, dewy-eyed crush on him.

    I vote all three.

  87. Comment by dicentra on 3/22 @ 1:42 pm #

    I’ll hire a kid who can’t spell UNIX before I’ll hire someone with an ethnic or gender studies degree.

    Unless they’ve renounced the degree and gone OUTLAW, I hope.

  88. Comment by JD on 3/22 @ 1:52 pm #

    Whitmer is a twatwaffle extraordinaire.

  89. Comment by JD on 3/22 @ 1:55 pm #

    Whitmer’s posts titled “fuck the troops” and “FUCK THE TROOPS” are EPIC, if by epic, one means something that makes you violently vomit in the back of your mouth.

  90. Comment by Slartibartfast on 3/22 @ 5:45 pm #

    bust of Churchill

    Churchill had tits? Wonder if he is an uncredited inventor of the “bro”.

  91. Comment by Spam Heap on 3/23 @ 1:04 pm #

    As I understand it, Mr. Churchill lost his job because of assorted falsifications and fabrications that had nothing to do with his remarks about the 9/11 attacks.

    As I further understand it, his remarks caused a number of people to investigate his background and discover a history of plagiarism.

    This strikes me as a perfect example of someone living in a glass house throwing stones, and then crying about drafts.

  92. Comment by Christopher Taylor on 3/23 @ 2:26 pm #

    Other than that, I’ve always been in the “free market.
    …”

    Why do I get the impression he had a nametag and asked “do you want fries with that?”

  93. Comment by JD on 3/23 @ 2:31 pm #

    I just went through and read some of Whitmer’s crap over there. That is one certifiable douchenozzle.

  94. Comment by gregorbo on 3/23 @ 5:33 pm #

    Weirdly enough, I found a bit of Whitmor’s rhetoric (I think in support of Churchill) quoted on an anti-Whitmer / Churchill blog and it sounded very much like Jeff’s argument regarding Patterico’s mis-appropriation of his (Jeff’s) intent in that dust up on another thread.

    Here is Whitmer:

    “Academic freedom and the right to free speech never existed. They were fantasies. Yeah, you may not always be hauled off to jail for exercising them [no, not always--ed.], but the media will do everything they can to ruin you. They won’t bother getting you for what it was you said, they’ll just find some trumped-up charge to ruin you with,” Whitmer said.”Make no mistake, the only difference between it and McCarthyism is the manner of the smear.”

    Huh. So when it suits leftists in the furtherance of their politcal and ideological arguments they agree with Jeff G. about the nature of language and how it is abused in the acquisition of power . . . Kind of like Notre Dame’s staunch defense of the Catholic Faith–right up to that rubber-meets-the-road moment when such defense might negatively affect their worldly aspirations . . .

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    The lemony almost liquorice-like flavor of the Thai basil is subtle but it’s there because it adds that je ne sais quoi to the chicken. ,

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