Eagerly Counting Down Ward Churchill’s 15 Minutes

Posted by Morbo

Andy Warhol is famous for, among other things, claiming that everyone would have 15 minutes of fame.

Morbo could not disagree more. Most people don’t get even 15 second of fame — and they like that just fine. A life of quiet obscurity suits most. They’re happy to make a personal impact on friends, family and loved ones without ever touching the larger culture.

Others clearly overstay their 15 minutes. Take Nick and Jessica Simpson. Who are these people, where did they come from, what talents do they allegedly have, and, most importantly, when are they going away?

Also take Prof. Ward L. Churchill. Please.

This guy, a previously unknown instructor at the University of Colorado, has the right wing’s nylons in knots because he wrote an idiotic column in which he called some of the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks “technocrats” and “little Eichmanns.” Apparently, Mr. Churchill is so vacuous as to believe that those victims who worked in the financial industry were soulless cretins akin to a loathsome Nazi leader, and their deaths are no big loss.

I know who the real soulless cretin is, and it wasn’t any of the 9/11 victims.

Anyway, the rest of the story is predictable: Churchill’s public speeches are being cancelled. An investigation into his other writings is already under way. The governor wants his head. Demands that he be fired are legion. Right-wing talk and radio show hosts are so worked up you can see purple veins pulsating in their necks when they talk about the guy.

Is any of this necessary? Churchill’s dumb musings would have been read by nine people in cyberspace if the right wing hadn’t decided to make him into a free-speech martyr. Had they said nothing, Churchill would be still be stuck in his own corner of obscurity, never to get his 15 minutes.

Now we have to put with the spectacle of him strutting around on campus in those goofy sunglasses as his ego grows larger by the day. Just let them come after me, he growls. I have tenure! I’ll own this place. Blah, blah, blah. Trust me, the man is a horse’s patootie and not worth all of this angst.

There are two ways to deal with someone like Churchill. One is to ignore him. This works 99 percent of the time. Number two is to allow him to speak and wait for him to hang himself. In other words, just give him enough rope. Works every time. If necessary, his daft ideas can be publicly refuted, but it’s often not worth the effort.

I’ve heard many free-speech advocates defend Churchill’s right to speak, but I’ve heard no one defend the content of his essay. What exactly is the right wing afraid of? Do they believe Americans are going to read Churchill’s piece and start thinking, “Hey, maybe that guy is right. Maybe some of the 9/11 victims really were like the Nazis. I never thought of that before!”

One outraged letter writer in The Washington Post asked if we should have given Hitler the right to free speech. The analogy does not hold up. Hitler started with a few followers but quickly built a national movement that vowed to overthrow the existing order. Other than a few starry-eyed co-eds, no one supports Churchill’s argument — and the coeds won’t stick by him for long. Churchill has marginalized himself with an outlandish argument, and continuing to try to shut him up only feeds his delusions of grandeur and extends those 15 minutes. Let it end. Let it end.

There’s a final reason why we should not try to shut the man up: America is better than he says. Every time we let him speak, we prove that.