Trial Beat: Kenny Be's complete cartoon coverage of the Ward Churchill trial

• So, I wonder when Kenny Be will issue a cartoon that will be fittingly humiliating for the chairman, and the regents of CU who have been found to have wrongfully fired the professor in question. The publishers of Westword, I believe, have a responsibility to fill in the blanks of this assassination gambit, and, maybe set a few heads rolling in response to the "TRIBAL BEAT" it has led to. Maybe this attempt on the dignity of Ward Churchill can serve as the pink-slip, and justification, for the author's own termination? I think I would prefer this latter scenario because I can imagine that the ranks of the unemployed, in our post 9/11 economy, may really deserve a new sense of humor, just like Kenny Be's. There is no question that the Westword has embarrassed itself with the publication of this cartoon (as though it were journalism!) and I think that the entire handful of you who are in support of its false and racist characterizations need to reflect seriously on how worthless you have made your little piece of paper. Why couldn't this have been an occasion, back in March, to support the people who were defending free speech and academic freedom at least as much as the jury, in this case, decided to in April? It would have been in line with the spirit of our time. Instead, the featured article above proves itself to be out of step, out of touch, and even a bit out of control. Time to get a grip on the editorial board, fellas, and to replace those empty seats with fairness and accuracy.

• Kenny Be, as usual you are spot on and thought-provoking for people on all "sides" of the issue. Progressives need to admit that assclowns like Churchill et.al make us all look like assclowns, and be willing to call them out on their b.s. Wart is genetically and culturally white, and all this unapologetic white-yuppie bashing just makes him look like the over-entitled, not very intelligent white guy that he is. He sure as hell doesn't speak for me, and I doubt he speaks for many Native Americans.

• You need to give it up, and step off of the executioner's stage, grateful to hang onto your own collars.

• Travis- Churchill is not kidding about violence. He writes himself how he abused his Indian wife Leah Kelly. http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2006/02/assault-on-leah-kelly.html Leah's entire tribe complained about Churchill. http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2007/05/canadian-ojibways-support-family-of.html

• Travis- You need to look up Churchill's "facts." Now listen carefully. Churchill claims that MAdeleine Albright responded in 1996 to charges of genocide made in 1998. I suggest starting here: http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2008/01/ward-churchill-ties-his.html He's going down. Change your name.

• Jesus Christ, you're fucking everywhere, Snapple. Anyway, the kids strike back: http://tinyurl.com/bmmkhm This is kinda fun.

• Oh, and, pardon me: "exaggerations."

• However I may lighten your mood, I don't think any kind of politically motivated speech that you are engaged in will prevent the Jury from granting Churchill's rightful retainment at CU, or rewarding him damages appropriate to what he has endured. Real justice will be served when you see that the condemnation you levy, in the above noted sic/joke column and in these commentaries, are politically motivated attacks which you paradoxically appear to ascribe to the author in question. They are eggagerations, misrepresentations, and falsifications. If I could copyright the propaganda techniques which you and your magazine are using (as they have been used before) you would be in clear violation of these signature methods of character debasement. It is obvious to me, given the low-level at which your tools of rhetoric are being deployed, that these efforts amount to a conspiratorial attempt to reBuff Churchill�s critique of US hegemony where it comes to the annihilation of the Native American, the decimation of the people of Iraq, and (as argued in his controversial essay) in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina where, in the last eight years, we have seriously (and admittedly) lacked intelligence and leadership. More so, you have missed out on the gains of real academic analysis that is here to redeem the guilt we bear as a country and to illuminate a path toward justice and responsibility. To sustain a defense for yourselves in this effort to fire a tenured professor, you will need to use different tools than the very ones that you are charging Churchill with employing; and they include both the acceptance and reflection of one truth: railroading Churchill will not de-legitimate his critique of the events of 9/11. It will only force history to add your names to the list of henchmen that engaged in forcefully silencing such critiques. How aghast you seem at his use of language, however angry it is, seems so phony and immature that it appears you would also confuse his "hangman" metaphors with what our government actually did to Saddam Hussein. No academic literally takes the stage of executioner (it is not their job), and Churchill is not being charged with violence of any kind. He only means to make a point, with protected speech, just as the 8th grade game of hangman will help you fill in the meaning of: "W_KE UP!" You've got only one leg left.

• Looks like some of these boys above only scored 3 - 4 points on the Rally Pal personality quiz. Someday you'll have your own cause and cult of personality!! I can just feel it!

• You may know nothing about what you speak of, and a bad author, but at least you're entertaining.

• Ward Churchhill wasn't and never really has been an academic worth the money or prestige that CU-Boulder gave him. His sloppiness in research, plagiarism, and mis-stated facts wouldn't pass muster in any graduate coursework. Let alone be considered "professorial." We don't even have to consider his radical past and his unethically passing himself off as Native American to see the absurdity of his "free speech" case for being unlawfully terminated. Whether or not you agree with what he said, his speech is free-speech. But his actions as an academic under the purview of CU is where he failed. The Kenny Be cartoons do a service in showing the absurdity of the trial and thankfully bring a sense of levity.

• Travis- These are not small errors. A real scholar doesn't call for hanging someone when he knows so little about the person that he can't even spell the person's name. Churchill's argument in the cited passage rests on his proposition that Albright "responded" to Halliday. She can't respond in 1996 to what he says in 1998. Also, Churchill "quotes" Halliday but doesn't cite the quote. He says it was in the NYT in fall of 1998. This is the main quote about US "genocide" on which Churchill bases his argument. I can't find it in the NY Times. Halliday was unhappy and spoke out, but I didn't see this allegation in the NYT. Churchill wrote anti-FBI propaganda for the KGB. The publication is called the Covert Action Information Bulletin. He claimed the FBI backed death squads that killed 342 Indians. It's a ridiculous, stupid lie. The AIM got money from the Iraqi Baath Party, according to Denver/Boulder Colorado AIM. Churchill is for sale. He's a crude, blatant propagandist. His fabricated smallpox story is like the KGB fabrication that America invented AIDS to kill black people. He denigrates Indians who don't fall in step with his vision of AIM. He whitewashes criminals who victimized Indians and murdered people during the Wounded Knee take-over. He gets away with his anti-Indian agenda by claiming to be an Indian.

• A whiny college kid finding his or her political voice is one of the greatest sources of unintentional comedy. It really must be exhausting being outraged so much.

• I think it reveals the stakes of the Ward Churchill trial if, on this list of comments, we ask who the real dissenters are. It is clear to me that the respondents here, and the readers of the racist cartoon you've published, want to protect free speech and reward scholarship while the dissenters concoct 'evidence' against him that are nothing more than personal attacks, and mock us ('boo-hoo') in what we are standing up about, and, regarding your article, what we are NOT going to stand for. Too bad you've lost so much time digging up the typos and the minor inaccuracies of a real argument because those of us who want to read his books, and some of us who have invested time and effort in his classes, actually do some learning. Having done some learning, we know that the ad hominem critiques here, meant to undermine his character (with caricatures), reflect, and rather honestly, that the opposition is in the minority and have no real argument against the importance of this writer or the right he has to tenureship. What a shame it is that you have found some worthwhile incentive to give up your freedom to think critically about the real issues his work presents or those more personal issues that his trial presents. Other educated people know how to read what they are seeing, and how to understand what you are showing us. Ps. Here is your next headline: "ReWARD Churchill."

• I know that Ward Churchill's essay "Some People Push Back" was considered protected free speech, but he makes a lot of dumb mistakes in that article. He can't spell the names of Madeleine Albright and Denis Halliday. This shows he is no expert on the UN sanctions on Iraq. He claims that Albright appeared on "Meet the Press" and made some controversial remarks about child mortality in Iraq. Actually she appeared on "60 Minutes" in 1996. Churchill "quotes" UN official Denis Halliday making claims about genocide in Iraq. Churchill claims Halliday's quote was in the NYT and other media in the fall of 1998, but he doesn't cite his source and I couldn't find it. Churchill claims that Madeline Albright "responded" to Halliday's 1998 remarks on Meet the Press. How could Albright respond in 1996 to what Halliday allegedly said in 1998? Does she have ESP? Ward Churchill didn't even know how to spell Madeleine Albright. He totally flubbed his account of her ill-considered remarks. He claimed she was "responding" in 1996 to Halliday in 1998. After all that stupidity, Wardo demanded that Americans "rise up" and "hang" Albright if we want the terrorists to stop attacking us on the home front! When Wardo is not otherwise occupied with "jokes" about "snuffing" babies, he likes to tell this joke to put down people who ask questions: �I really have to cite this to people who are capable of tying their shoes without instructions?� But the joke's on Wardo! Now everyone knows that he makes this joke because he REALLY CAN'T cite his sources. Details here: http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2008/01/ward-churchill-ties-his.html

• Actually, Ward Churchill was doing what he always does when he denigrated the 9-11 victims as "little Eichmanns." In "Struggle for the Land" (p. 369) Ward Churchill denigrates Indians he doesn't like as "hang around the fort Indians." On pages 369 and 399 he denigrates some Indians as "Vichy Indians." On page 370 he calls some Indian leaders "craven puppets" with "Quisling impulses." Churchill is calling these Indians NAZI collaborators. These smears don't have a lot of credibility with me because I know that Ward Churchill cut his teeth writing for the KGB-sponsored "Covert Action Information Bulletin." In this KGB mouthpiece Churchill claimed that the FBI backed death-squads that murdered 342 Indians. Yeah, right... Who peer-reviewed that article? Ward Churchill calls Indian people who don't toe his party line stooges, but really he's the stooge. http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2009/03/ward-churchill-denigrates-indians-he.html

• I am laughing with anger! I think the WESTWORD, given the "coverage" of the Ward Churchill case, should soon be bought out by MILE HIGH COMICS. You have made journalistic integrity seem like a piece of nostalgia. You next issue should certainly make as professional a case out of the idiots who have once called your publication a magazine. I am no longer part of that group. To treat suggest that the suppression of a native American's academic freedom is a joke, a comedy suitable for comics, should stirr you with the horrors of the past that Churchill has spent his life bringing light to. When will there be time to discuss the genocide of the indigenous Americans when propaganda like this is allowed to be diseminated through your press? Given the shallowness of your treatment, I think that your readership should get serious about freeing the native people from their oppression, and closing the doors on your yellow rag!

• these cartoon are total crap way to slob the conservative knob, glad you're a minority

• Ward Churchill certainly did say in THREE books that mothers should "snuff" their babies and kill themselves "to do the planet a favor." He also wrote about JonBenet Ramsey in the same paragraph as he wrote that Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger should be hanged. He also complained that 24 books were written about Jonbenet. He COUNTED the books. You can see these quotes right on Google book search. Here are the details with the evidence. http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2009/03/ward-churchill-counted-number-of-books.html http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2009/02/ward-churchill-jokes-in-three-scholarly.html

• This is utter drivel.

• Oh Whitmer: http://thedrunkablog.blogspot.com/2007/10/dum-duh-dum-dum.html "Urie seems at first to be identifying Whitmer also as the one who grabbed him and pulled him toward the door, saying 'I'll fucking make you leave'" The blog posting also talks about how hostile the Churchies are: "Chutchites, hostile? Urie has to be making it up. But think of Wart, sitting there smirking over his Pall Mall as his thug blows smoke in Urie's face. Scum." Apparently they only believe in Freedom of Speech when it's coming out of their mouths, or if it's a lie. Speaking of deception and ethics, another great boner from Whitmer!: "Following an e-mail exchange with Moredock, Crowell employed the 'view source' command in his Microsoft Outlook system to discover that the sender was actually Benjamin Whitmer, an untenured, part-time CU instructor in the very same Ethnic Studies program that had long employed Churchill." http://www.westword.com/2007-01-18/news/try-again/

• I love how Ben, I mean Academic Freedom Activist (or do you go by just Ben?), is so riled up about this. Our economy is burning faster than a Ward Churchill cigarette, and all Ben can think about is poor Churchill's ass. boo hoo! BTW, since cartoons and satire are apparently new to you, why don't you bone up on historical political cartoonists. http://www.politics-and-candidates.com/articles/political-cartoons/political-cartoonists.php While you're at it, why don't you research satire. They apparently don't teach that to spoiled liberal twats in Boulder. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire Oh, and for those that are interested, Ben seems to be always confused about the media portrayal of whackjobs: http://www.dailycamera.com/blogs/letters-editor-blog/2008/jun/02/whitmer/ http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2007/01/surprise-benjamin-whitmer-uncritically.html

• To me this article represents the "apolitical idealism" that has exploded out of so many youth subcultures. While I enjoy seeing hilarious distortions of my fellow students faces, am thoroughly infatuated and disgusted by the appropriation of the culture-jamming methodology for the creation of this publication, and finally pleased aesthetically- let's face it, this article has nothing real to say about the issues concerning academic freedom nor does it prove to commit itself to investigating thoroughly or philosophically the issues at hand.

• It's a friggen cartoon. Get a sense of humor, please.

• The worst part is that half the so-called jokes are about how Ward Churchill smokes cigarettes. (Which is funny because, like, smoking sucks.) It's about as edgy or interesting as Dan Caplis' limp dick. Whyn't you rotate your staff every couple of fucking millenia, Patty?

• It's incredibly inappropriate and bad professional ethics to publish caricatures of random Churchill supporters along with their full names. It also simply doesn't make sense even in the context of the cartoon. As journalists, you have the responsibility to respect the privacy of people who are not in the public arena, and the individuals you caricaturized are not public figures, such as David Lane or Ward Churchill.

• Academic freedom activists! LOLZ! ROLFZ! I think we found ourselves a new internet meme!

• Hilarious. Perfect way to let the wind out of Little Big Mouth. I love Kenny Be!

• This is crap. I've learned nothing new from this. Great job, you just drew pictures mildly resembling the likeness of figures and then didn't write anything of merit.

• I've never been witness to a more non-journalistic issue in such a prominent publication. You would think that for people who previously talked about "getting out of your car and get on your bike" would have a clue about what they were talking about. They seek to portray academic freedom activists at CU as irrational and social outcasts. Furthermore, calling-out non-public individuals by name who really don't have much, if anything to do with the issue and portray them in offensive caricature is totally inappropriate.

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