Colorado professor should keep comments to himself.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
I know it's been a while, but I was reading about this and I couldn't refrain from commenting on this. As I'm sure that most of you are already aware, there is a professor from Colorado University that is in hot water right now for some comments that he made about the World Trade Center attacks. To be more specific he referred to the people inside thos ebuildings as "Little Eichmanns" and that the punishment was "befitting their participation" in "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."
I didn't make this up. If you want to read the entire text of the article it can be found at DarkNightPress.com.
The article, which first appeared in Pockets of Resistance #11, Sept. 2001, seems to focus around the WTC attacks as being the results of U.S. actions in Iraq. He says that these are all the results of various "surgical bombings" and other U.S. military actions that led to the sufferings and deaths of "500,000 kids."
What's more is that he blames the U.S. public for this saying that we did nothing to stop this because:
"There were, after all, far more pressing things than the unrelenting misery/death of a few hundred thousand Iraqi tikes to be concerned with. Getting "Jeremy" and "Ellington" to their weekly soccer game, for instance, or seeing to it that little "Tiffany" an[sic] "Ashley" had just the right roll-neck sweaters to go with their new cords. And, to be sure, there was the yuppie holy war against ashtrays – for "our kids," no less – as an all-absorbing point of political focus."
Well, sorry Mr. Churchill. In 1993, it just so happens that I wasn't old enough to vote. And you know what else? I'm sure that some of the people inside those towers also weren't old enough to vote at that time. In fact, there were day cares in the towers for the parents who were working there. If it hadn't been for the effort of several innocent and truly courageous people, then at least 28 children, probably more would have been killed in those attacks. And isn't this what your article is all about? The children?
And as to your allegations, Mr. Churchill, that the American public is too caught up in itself to worry about what happens in the rest of the world, I would like to ask youwhat you are doing to make the world a better place? You're a professor at a college in the midwest. I'd like to see how many of those ½ million children that you did anything to help. Or is the indignance that you feel, the result of your guilt over having done nothing for your life to help anyone but yourself out? I'd like to remind the reader that Mr. Churchill is a tenured professor at a major college and therefore likely has his Ph.D. Therefore, it can be inferred that while he may not be rich, he isn't living ina carboard box on the street either.
I have to apologize. This shouldn't degrade into attacks against Mr. Churchill. I just don't see the same connections that you do. Even Mr. Churchill himself said that his work that was published wasn't exactly thought out.
"The preceding was a "first take" reading, more a stream-of-consciousness interpretive reaction to the September 11 counterattack than a finished piece on the topic. Hence, I'll readily admit that I've been far less than thorough, and quite likely wrong about a number of things."He then goes on to criticize the U.S. for almost every war that it has been in.
I know that this is heard very often in this country from polemics on either side but I think that this is a case where it truely fits.
Posted byJ. R. Guinness at 10:00 PM 0 comments
Interesting Things Over at Drudge.com
I was reading an article over at Drudge.com. The article by Thom Hartmann is entitled: Young People: The Key To Republican Single-Party Rule. It was about younger people and how the Republicans are trying to get them to vote for Republican candidates. Or, at least, that's what I thought it was about. It's actually a piece of rhetoric about the Social Security issue and how "big, bad Republicans" are trying to spin things so that they benefit them and so that the younger crowd of voters will vote Republican because they are being fooled.
Wake up! Spin works both ways. I seem to remember that during the months leading up to the 2004 election, there was a lot of advertising on MTV and other youth oriented programs by Rock the Vote. An almost blatantly partisan group to urge younger people to vote. All that you had to do was look at their website to know who they were rooting for. Besides, which party do younger voters typically vote for? Democrats.
So why are people in a huff that the Republican party is trying to rally more younger voters to their cause? Your guess is as good as mine. I, for one, think that it's great that the Republican party is showing younger people that politics does affect them. We need to be more aware of what is going on around us. As for spin, that's for everyone to sift through for themselves. If you need a big, loud yelling radio host or a big, loud movie editor to give you your views, then it's your own fault.
Just remember what Aristotle said:
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
Posted byJ. R. Guinness at 9:30 PM 0 comments
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