It's simply not true that Ward Churchill "would obviously have had a lot better chance of getting people to pay attention, at least, to his basic idea if he hadn't dragged in this old Nazi reference, which was indeed 'crap.'"
The only reason Ward Churchill (whose scholarship has seen better days) is getting attention now, rather than in 2001, is Fox News got on his case. Otherwise, no one -- including LBO-talk subscribers -- would be talking about his crappy rhetoric (or kernels of truth, such as the fact that the sanctions on Iraq had genocidal impacts on Iraqis, sadly buried underneath it) in the infamous essay. That's the state of the corporate media and US politics now.
The thing is that, if 9/11 survivors, 9/11 victims' families, and their supporters wanted to picket a Ward Churchill appearance at Hamilton College, heckle him, pack the venue and stage a walkout, etc. to protest what he said in the essay, that would have been fine. They have the right to free speech, just as Churchill does.
However, the Right that are attacking Churchill -- from Fox News and state lawmakers who are threatening funding cuts to terrorists who issued death threats against not just Churchill but also the Hamilton College president and others and vandals who pained swastikas on Churchill's truck -- are behaving like fascists. Who knows, the vandals and terrorists in question may even be genuine neo-Nazis, doing the dirty work for neoliberals as usual.
The punishment for Churchill should be exactly the same one that Alan Dershowitz (who believes that torture should be legalized because torture has been and is being practiced anyway <http://counterpunch.org/whitney06092004.html> and whose book The Case for Israel plagiarized a fraud From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters, according to Norman G. Finkelstein <http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/24/1730205>), Lawrence Summers (who said that "the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable" and that "underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted" <http://www.metrojustice.org/NewsLetters/news01/Apr01/SummersHarvardPrexy.htm> and believe that women are biologically inferior to men when it comes to science <http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,11812,1392804,00.html>), etc. have received. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>