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Wilbur on Churchill

I don’t know ODE Reporter Nick Wilbur very well, but I really do enjoy most of his stories. (Sorry student government types!) His article on Ward Churchill today is a great example of why:

He often asks his students, “What is it you do free of regulation?”

“You are free in this country,” Churchill said. “Absolutely free in this country. Free to do absolutely what you’re told.”

From sleeping to bodily functions, he said, there are rules for every activity a person can engage in.

He told the audience to try sleeping in a park.

“Try sleeping out there tonight; see if there’s not rules,” he said.

He added that he tells his students, “stand up there and take a dump on the floor. There are rules for (that), too.”

Repression by the state and educational institutions reinforce each other in maintaining that “order,” he said.

Fucking fascists! The right to shit on the floor is clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights, right next to the right to piss on a police officer! And hell, it’s even implied in the fifth amendment, if you want to play semantics.

Although I couldn’t make it due to my daily crazy asshole quotient being filled, there were some people from the Commentator at the speech so we’ll hopefully have another post or two on the subject later today.

  1. The Master says:

    *whaps M*

    Bad dog. No biscuit. Go lie down by your bowl.

  2. M says:

    Ah yes. Lots of things make “since” to you.

  3. Dallas says:

    Wilbur credibility… Thats a term I refer to when someones full of shit.

    (i.e. “Your not drunk? Yes you are drunky…you have Wilbur credibility.”)

    Its actually starting to become popular around campus. The other day I heard a freshman call another individual a Wilbur after he lied about sleeping with the kid’s girlfriend.

    Its strange, but it makes since to me.

  4. Niedermeyer says:

    Oh, and from what I understand, the Churchill “uninvitation” last year was less an issue of the actual controversy of what he had said, but rather the unwillingness/inability to provide security for an individual with a death threat count as high as Wards. Or, maybe Ward Churchill is to “real” for the Wayne Morse Free Speech Center. Like his lawyer said on O’Reilly just before Tyler went on “everyone has their own truth.”

  5. niedermeyer says:

    Taking anything Ward Churchill says without disclaimers in the year 2006, specifically since May 16, 2006, is simple naivetee.

    I attended and recorded the speech, which ran for just under an hour and a half, and was also able to get about 40 minutes of on-record interview. While Wilburs piece was a fairly straight-up reporting of what Churchill would probably most like to see remembered, in my mind there were many other quotes which shed far more light on his situation, his views and his politics. I certainly assumed that a man who is as highly critical of as many people and institutions as Dr Churchill is would have more to contribute to practical issues such as diversity plans and academic freedom, two issues with which he has significant first-hand experience. Unfortunately, (the honorary) Dr Churchill’s force of character is such that any question presented to him is reframed in his answer rather than directly adressed, creating a decidedly frustrating interview experience, made even more difficult by the presence of a number of young “true believers” surrounding us and interjecting into the interview. My overall impression was of a man who, having made a career out of brashness and confrontation now sees his multitude of enemies as stormtroopers of a monolithic system which cannot tolerate his dissent. A man who in the same speech can complain about not being able to live on a professors salary (over $90,000 per annum since 2003, according to this ) and without batting an eye call for the destruction of the state. Ward Churchill personifies the tragedy of resistance ideology, which makes for great rabble-rousing with its grandiose proclamations, but cannot offer a single word of advice for making the world a better place besides contributing to a fund to support jailed “ecoterrorists” and “tearing down the whole system, so as to live in harmony with nature.”

    More on the confusions and contradictions of the martyr Ward Churchill in the upcoming issue.

  6. Olly says:

    I deliberately didn’t get into numbers. The point stands: Eichmann’s crime was not ordering (otherwise, why not call ’em “little Hitlers”?) but expediting.

    In addition to being executed, he was also sentenced to become a go-to metaphor for lazy anti-capitalists.

  7. Ian says:

    All valid points, Olly. Although I still suspect because of them you probably enjoyed his article at least as much as I did.

  8. Timothy says:

    Eichmann was responsible for ordering only half of the Nazi killings? I’d have suspected he probably ordered a number more than half.

  9. Olly says:

    OK, sorry to keep on, but this is ridiculous, as well. I’m usually one to defend the ODE, by the way – they do a good job, but this week they seem to have knocked off early.

    Symposium organizers decided that canceling the professor’s keynote address was the best way to keep their event from straying onto the topic of the Churchill controversy.

    Indeed. Yo: folks at the “proper” newspaper on campus – when you’re writing about a controversial speaker on campus, perhaps consider taking five minutes on Google to find out why he’s so fucking controversial. (Hint: the answer isn’t “Look! He said ‘Nazi!’) And if it’s not too much trouble, by the way, who paid for this fraud’s expenses?

  10. Olly says:

    Actually, this piece is pretty bad.

    Churchill made national news after Sept. 11 when he called some terrorist-attack victims “little Eichmanns,” a reference to Nazi chief Adolf Eichmann, who was responsible for ordering the extermination of three million Jews during the Holocaust.

    The point of the Eichmann comparison is not that he “ordered the extermination” of Jews, it was that he was the ultimate faceless bureaucrat. Eichmann is probably the most famous proponent of the “I was just following orders” defense. (For him, it didn’t work.) Churchill’s point was that the people in the World Trade Center were as complicit in evil as Eichmann was, whether they knew it or not. It’s nonsense, but it’s more subtle than just calling them Nazis.

    “It’s nice being exposed to a perspective that most of the white people would never grasp,” he said, referring to Churchill’s Native American ethnicity.

    To describe Ward Churchill in this way, with no disclaimers, in the year 2006 – frankly, it raises questions about the reporter’s credulity.

  11. Ian says:

    Now, is Wilbur, as the author of this piece, not obliged to point out that he is also the Emerald reporter referenced within it? I

  12. Olly says:

    Oh, the times: they are good.

    Actually, that reminds me of something, fan of Wilbur though I am. Consider this.

    The editorial, which focused on the Student Senate, referenced a guest commentary Deley wrote that said an Emerald reporter was
    a sensationalist. Deley said he wrote the commentary in response to coverage of the ASUO Executive.

    Now, is Wilbur, as the author of this piece, not obliged to point out that he is also the Emerald reporter referenced within it? I’m just askin’.

    (This post has to do with Alex Deley, so if you’re a regular commenter who’s been waiting for a chance to deploy your latest spelling of the word “douche,” then it’s like Christmas in May for you.)

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