DENVER- This week’s cover of WESTWORD portends the upcoming Ward Churchill trial. The cover features Churchill and colleagues as unsavory caricatures of what looks like a circus of creeps. It points not to a cover story, but to a cartoon gatefold of equally squalid details, viewable online.
What you can’t see online is the editorial slant stuck into the contents page pointer. Two clever puns perhaps, betraying Westword’s miserable intent to disinform. Ward without end: academic freedom is a long bore. Separation of Churchill and state: apropos to nothing, maybe closer to the opposite, actually. The separation of education from the people.
The Westword jokes ride on a single unquestioned assumption, that Churchill is guilty of plagiarism. I think that’s an odd argument to pretend has already been proved. The University’s case is trumped up, and many academics have jumped to Churchill’s aid. Now that the charge faces a Denver courtroom, and not a stacked board of trustees, the baldfaced accusation will easily be refuted.
My bigger question is, from whom could Churchill have borrowed?!
Ward Churchill’s critics are wildly opposed to the findings of his scholarship. They’re angry that he points to genocide perpetrated against Native Americans, angry that he rails against the racism which undergirds American imperialism, and terrified that he completely exposed the government’s programs aimed at silencing dissent, COINTELPRO’s workings still lying unsprung on college campuses.
Ward’s opponents deny every of his conclusions, but they want to pretend he’s not alone? This is going to be like the naked emperor, accusing the little brave truth-teller of simply having mimicked his friends. Even true, the emperor is still naked.
Here’s another example of Westword’s humor. While every detail about Churchill seems framed to be a put-down, it looks like they also mean that to include the ethnicity of his wife.
I haven’t been paying attention to Denver’s alternative weekly. When did Westword become such douchebags?
Weeklies like Westword always put on a grand show of being supposedly hip while being just as reactionary as the corporate dailies are. This cartoon jism is an example of just that style. In reality, most of these supposedly hip weeklies are fueled by alcohol, nightclub, tobacco, and ‘massage parlor’ advertising and other small business advertising, too. They are not about to begin to rock anybody big’s boat, and they never do.