Yep
I appreciated Russell Means introduction to the thing shown on CSPAN (which is probably on their site cspan.org, you don't need cable) where he was talking about how his twin brothers who perhaps have a different father or mother were not eligible for his tribe until recently, even though they were in the same family, culture traditions etc. and he makes his living off his physical image as an western plains indian. Neither of them were using their indoor speaking voices on that, but I thought that was cool. After all, how many sane, polite american indians have been on CNN or Fox News this year. Society sometimes needs a certain percentage of less restrained speakers to remind others, even if they have some personality flaws- after all with Churchill's 'comparative genocides' subject, how much of a speed bump in the lives of americans is the death or despair of groups all over the globe like Aceh etc.meanwhile Amber Frey's book was recently a bestseller? I mean, I'm not a social sciences grad student, but I spend a fair amount reading, but I was really surprised at the number of incidents in Churchill's long list in Roosting Chickens that I hadn't even heard of.
When I saw Churchill at AK Press oakland last summer, I actually asked him why Horowitz and that CU Colorado student group that collects reports against professors hadn't done anything to him yet while much more minor figures have already been pilloried. He sounds polite on a personal level, and he just said that Horowitz would never mess around with him.
Anyways, below is someone's report on Russell Means on Hannity today. The guy is criticizing Hannity for being uninformed, but he isn't aware of the connection those two have. First... in news google there were all these dumb blog reports where people were calling Churchill marxist even though his first book was antimarxist, and saying he was a professor of ethics. Means makes a good impression when speaking, but he was a republican and then a libertarian candidate etc. and he was helping the contras in Nicaragua. Ann Coulter wrote a dumb article saying he should run against Howard Dean, where it seemed like she had an assistant compiling random misunderstood facts about him. I really like some of his books, and I'm crossing my fingers that those two academic criticisms don't quite pass muster. I think the Thomas Brown criticism falls apart, but maybe the john Lavelle critique might work- although that is in a different category where it isn't fraud or total shoddiness of academic work. he's going to be at the Golden Gate Park anarchist bookfair, which always is packed with 3-5000 people during the day. I remember John Zerzan hardly had any criticism and I wasn't brave enough to say anything. The speaker organizer wouldn't show up last year because he was scared of trolls on the sf.indymedia site after they had their negative split with the better indybay.org site when some people posting 24-7 were making threats. Germans wouldn't disagree with his major concepts as much. Look at these germans!- it's like they would appear to be pro-american, yet this is so unamerican, huh: http://de.indymedia.org/2005/01/105472.shtml Also, this very long article influenced my opinion- his wife who was known in activist circles in the bay area died right before he wrote that one Eichmann sentence: http://www.darknightpress.org/index.php?i=news&c=recent&view=6
------------------------------------ quote Anyway, at a speech Churchill made last week Russell Means did the introduction, and apparently Means has read and more or less endorses Churchill's book. Now, Means is a very complex guy, and a bit nutty in his own right. But he's got interesting things to say and is usually worth listening to if you let him get around to actually saying something. He's not an easy interview, because he takes a while to get to his point and isn't given to clear, straightforward answers.
What Russell Means really isn't well suited to is being interviewed by a foam-flecked lunatic who seems to have no interviewing skills whatsoever and wanted him to either recant his support for Churchill instantly or just sit there and be insulted for 5 minutes.
The first thing which became clear at the start of the interview is that Shawn Hannaty has no idea whatsoever who Russell Means is. For someone who is supposed to be a professional interviewer and who has a staff of some sort to look things up for him, that's inexcusable. Ok, maybe Hannity is too young to remember AIM and Means' activities in the 60s and 70s, but surely someone on his staff could have looked Means up. The man is in Who's Who in America. He's all over the internet. There are multiple published biographies on him. How hard is it to find out who he is so your front-man doesn't look like a complete idiot while talking to him? Hannity apparently thought Means was some sort of renegade leftist professor like Churchill, and when that turned out not to be true he latched onto Means mention that he was a part time actor and started gibbering about 'you hollywood people'.
The 'interview' itself didn't get very far at all. Hannity would read some statement from Ward Churchill, ask Means if he agreed, and then before Means could explain or qualify his agreement with the statement Hannaty would shout him into silence, ranting on about slain innocents. This type of exchange happened three times, and in the tirade at the end of the last one, before Means could even say much of anything, Hannaty started a rant in which he called Means a 'scumbag' five times, at the end of which Means had hung up. Of course, Hannity hardly noticed that Means was gone, and ranted on for another five minutes in a vacuum.
At the conclusion of this bizarre aural spectacle I felt more than a little queasy and wondering who the hell thought Sean Hannity was qualified to be interviewing people on the radio and TV in the first place. He's generally not as bad as this on TV, but I guess radio indulges his worst instincts.
Ward Churchill is clearly a nut. If Russell Means is supporting him - hard to tell from this interview - then he's made a pretty serious error in judgement. But why on earth is Hannaty bringing Russell Means on his show if he doesn't know who the hell he is in the first place, isn't going to let him get even one complete sentence out, and is going to shout him down and call him a scumbag? Russell Means deserves more respect than that, whatever his views on this particular topic may be.
As for Hannity, I'm at a loss. This was one of the most childish displays of unprofessional conduct I've seen in the media ever. More than that, this particular incident made him appear positively mentally unhinged, so overcome with emotion that he ranted like a lunatic street preacher and barked at his interviewee like a rabid dog. This type of display is neither informative nor is it entertaining. It's everything bad that liberals accuse talk radio of being. Usually they're wrong. In the case of Hannaty they appear to be dead on the money. He's one mad dog who ought to be put down for the good of the rest of the talk radio community.
Dave
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Where White Men Fear to Tread : The Autobiography of Russell Means Russell Means Book from St. Martin's Griffin Release date: 15 November, 1996
Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism Sean Hannity Book from Regan Books Release date: 17 February, 2004
(Amazon information updated at Thu, 10 Feb 2005 17:06:36 -0500) Posted by Dave Nalle on February 10, 2005 05:04 PM (See all posts by Dave Nalle) Filed under: Politics Comment on this post and/or leave a message for the author here. Comment 1 posted by Eric Olsen on February 10, 2005 05:08 PM:
mad dog=rabies, maybe an injection into the stomach would help
(See other comments from the same name, url or both. Experimental: IP) Comment 2 posted by Roy Smith on February 10, 2005 05:24 PM:
Its good to see there are conservatives out there who agree with me about Sean Hannity!
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