And you’ll excuse me this moment of excess

(Cover the kids’ ears.)

I’ve spent the last four years watching a good man get his name drug through the mud for making the eminently reasonable point that you ought not be killing other peoples’ kids. And that if you are in the business of killing other peoples’ kids, they have the absolute right to fight back in any way they can.

I’ve seen the most vicious smear campaign of my lifetime. A horde of shiteating columnists and radio shockjocks have made it their life’s work to destroy one man. They went after his life, his livelihood, his family, and his reputation. There is no level to which they haven’t stooped to ruin him.

I’ve watched Denver’s local media crawl like dogs to eat the shit of their canine superiors in the rightwing national media. There has not been a single article in the Denver media to actually interrogate the trumped-up charges of academic misconduct levelled by the hopelessly biased CU investigative committee. Not one. Like with their coverage of the Iraq war (or for that matter, the preceding sanctions), they have gone to incredible lengths to never actually investigate the shit they were more than willing to eat out of the paws of their presumed betters.

Moreover, in that so-called bastion of higher learning at CU, I can count on my fingers and toes those faculty members who were willing to actually stand up and point out the absurdity of the smear campaign launched against Ward Churchill. Almost to a man or woman, they refused to make any kind of stand for the principles they pretended, every day, to represent. Nothing has been more disheartening than the absolute, unmitigated cowardice of the faculty of my alma mater. I’ve met pedophiles and rapists with whom I’d rather share an occupation.

But, I’ve also watched Ward Churchill, with his family, put their stake in the ground and refused to back up an inch. That’s what courage is, and I’ve been proud as hell just to witness it. In the last round of McCarthyism, there were very few to fight back. I think of Dashiell Hammett, and I think of Ward Churchill.

So this one’s for CU. And for Bill O’Reilly, Caplis and Silverman, Vincent Carroll, and the rest of the Denver media. 

Fuck you.