Barry Farber
Monday, Feb. 14, 2005

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  I accept the fact that most of us are just mice trying to become rats through bodybuilding. There's nothing wrong with striving for recognition, reward, glory, whatever you want to call it. But there are rules – unwritten, to be sure, but as fixed and immutable as the very law of gravity itself. A wise man came close to that rule when he said, "If you want to be remembered, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."

A football player has to star on the field to win that Hall-of-Fame thing. He can't just sprawl himself out on the ground close to where they made the tackle or strut around as though he were the one who blocked the punt. A performer must draw a crowd. A doctor must heal. A researcher must discover. A politician must win. So must a general. A businessman or businesswoman must deliver an impressive bottom line. A mountain climber must reach the summit – and not just write a poem about the shivering splendor of it all.

You don't win the pot in poker by proudly displaying the backs of five cards. You have to show the FACE of five cards, and they have to add up to a winning hand.

Ward Churchill did nothing resembling any of the above. Professor Churchill cheap-shot his way into prominence. Saying something outrageous to get attention is the exact intellectual equivalent of a girl stripping for the same reason. Shedding clothes may be attention-getting, to be sure, but there's not a lot of originality or merit surrounding the act no matter how much time and energy she puts into it.

Getting yourself on every talk show in the English language by calling the 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns" is nothing but a deliberate wardrobe malfunction of the mind. Why, then, does Ward Churchill now get to add this full-length column of mine to his scrapbook?

Not for his wretched contribution to thought and dialogue, I assure you, but rather because of some of the preposterous responses his yawn-worthy notions have provoked.

How can I call the notion that 9/11 was a fate fit for the victims "yawn-worthy"?

Because I've been around a while. I've seen the shapely ones strip and I've heard the likes of Professor Churchill say outrageous things long enough to have earned the right to yawn. If you haven't yet, don't scold me. Try to catch up with me.

When you hear Ward Churchill say that the men and women working at their desks inside the World Trade Center deserved annihilation, go ahead and get all squeaky-voiced and yell, "Did you hear what that Colorado professor SAID about 9/11?"

Don't be ashamed. You're just not there yet. I, meanwhile, will merely say to myself, quite calmly, "Grow up, America, and show me how quickly you can shrink this hurtful clown down."

One of my most treasured civil rights is the right to forgive the leftist leanings of anybody who looks like Paula Zahn. Ms. Zahn of CNN is intelligent, professional, unforgivably good looking, and a valiant soldier of what I call the "honest left." I don't believe Paula Zahn smolders with any self-assigned and sinister mission to bring down the Wall Street Oligarchy of Global Plunderers.

I've been following her since she did the morning show on CBS and, just like asbestos lodges in the lungs of those who work around it and coal dust lodges in the lungs of coal miners, I believe the casual, upper-class leftism of CBS and CNN just lodged in Paula's mindset. I mean, sharks don't realize they're worth making movies about. They're just having lunch.

When Paula Zahn welcomed Ward Churchill onto her CNN show, it was fascinating. It was the "couth" left versus the uncouth left. It was like a dignified lady Democrat trying to have Howard Dean's post-Iowa scream annulled. It was also a little like a mugger trying to break up a fight between two cops.

When you say "I love you," for example, you've got to have not just the right words but also the right melody. Poor Paula apparently felt she had to do more than "word" Ward Churchill into a corner. She had to approximate an indignation rating of at least 8.1 on the Hissie-Fit Scale of 1 to 10.

I understand that. I've been there. Logical destruction of an evil notion isn't enough for a TV audience. The caveman (and cavewoman) must pound the chest and roar once the righteous foot finds the guilty throat. So we heard a lot of "Are you possibly saying …" and "Do you really mean … ."

But the result was a little like the judge saying, "You are a murderer, a thief, a thug, an extortionist, a liar, a forger and a slob." Whereupon the accused party shouts back, "I am NOT sloppy!" Zahn's focus seemed to be on the broad brush of Ward Churchill's claim that the victims of 9/11 were "little Eichmanns."

Did he mean ALL the victims of 9/11 – the food servers and floor sweepers too?

Of course not! thundered the professor. They were innocent. The "Eichmann" Nazis, he explained, were the ones "speaking self-importantly into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transfers and ignoring the rotting flesh of half a million infants."

Well, once Paula had her food servers and floor sweepers separated from the indictment, like a nun having successfully shepherded her kindergarten flock safely into the embassy, that was it!

At no point was Professor Churchill ever asked to tell the world what the self-important cellphone users were doing that was so bad. Sure, American business, like any heavyweight champion, has its critics, but I have yet to hear what the charges are here. Is it wealth, capitalism, globalism, exploitation, success? The professor strikes me as another in that long boring line of folks who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin man without concluding the fat man got that way at the expense of the thin man.

Meanwhile, I could stand here without notes and rattle off the good things American might, wealth and power have done for less fortunate populations. I could do it rapidly, I could do it accurately. I could do it without a single exaggeration. And I could do it all night long.

But why bother? Why use dynamite when insect powder will do?

Editor's note: