DENVER- Court Room 6 is packed once again as Ward Churchill takes the stand to detail his wrongful dismissal by CU. His testimony began yesterday afternoon, and Attorney David Lane is outlining the basis for damages. Churchill isn’t asking for money. Says he, “I want my job.” Churchill testified that his publishing output is 5% of his usual, only two or three articles in journals, and four books under contract but still awaiting delivery. But Churchill is quick to reassure the room that the works are forthcoming, and he is upbeat, despite CU committee members having testified, sadly but triumphantly, of having reduced Churchill’s reputation, thirty years and twenty books, to a pitcher of warm spit. Lane asked Churchill: “How does this make you feel?”
“Angry” is Churchill’s reply. “But anger is no new feeling for me.”
Cross-examination has begun, Attorney Patrick O’Rourke is inadvertently treating the jury to the very character assassination upon which Churchill has been making his case. O’Rourke’s first question pretended to inform the jury that he and Churchill had become familiar over the course of these many legal actions, and thus direct questions would not be improper or disrespectful. But he loaded his question thus:
“I’m going to ask direct questions, will you be willing to give me direct answers?”
O’Rourke used a second question purportedly to frame his his line of questions. “Professor Churchill, is it fair to say that you’ve been accused of many things, of not being a real Indian, for example, and after your 911 essay, of a half million things it seems like, would that be fair to say?”
“Uh, yes. Although probably not a half million…”
“Well, I’m not going to ask you about any of those things, I’m going to stick to just the allegations made by the committee.”
Later O’Rourke questioned why a previous witness, Russel Means, had referred to his colleague as Doctor Churchill. “You don’t have a PhD, do you?” He asked Churchill. “You only have a Masters, isn’t that correct?”
Churchill explained that he had been given an honorary doctorate, to which O’Rourke replied, “So it’s just an honorary doctorate?”
Asked Churchill: “Do you mean to dishonor it?”
This comes at about the right moment…
Since the people who accuse him had no trouble at all with Bush using Manifest Destiny and especially Cotten Mather as justifications for amongst other things, his conquest and occupation of Iraq…
Cotten Mather being the one who viewed American Indians as being not really human, and a construct of the Devil, because we’re not mentioned in Genesis.
…and, advocated killing us all…
Wasn’t very kind about my Irish relatives either.
BUT, they’re about to have Territory Days in just a couple of months…
Where once again they’re going to celebrate the Jingoistic Anti-American(Indian) proponents of Manifest Destiny and extermination of the Natives like General William Palmer and Colonels Chivington and Custer.
The Gag-Zette eulogized Palmer recently as being a “pacifist” and “an environmentalist”..
I know they must be capable of knowing the difference between what they say and write, and THE TRUTH, but damn, don’t you sometimes wish they would show it?
But these are the same Socially Retarded Animated Sphincters leading the pack, locally, howling for Churchill’s blood (literally)
At least one member of the Colorado Hysterical Society published the thought that Dr Churchill should only be allowed to teach history on Death Row…