Reality4u
04-05-2009, 12:53 AM
Carroll: Mea culpa on Churchill
By Vincent Carroll
Posted: 04/04/2009 12:30:00 AM MDT
At long last, I get it.
I was slow on the uptake, I admit, but have finally come around. For much of my life, you see, I labored under a great delusion. I thought public officials had a duty to speak out and rebuke someone in their ranks — or even a prominent constituent — who said something morally repellent.
If a prison warden professed indifference toward sexual abuse within his facility, or a college football coach was caught distributing racist or neo-Nazi propaganda, I assumed that elected officials should stand up and object — that they should climb upon a soapbox, if necessary, and start waving their arms.
And if a professor at a state university celebrated the mass murders of office workers and airline passengers while justifying more of the same, I thought it was obvious that elected leaders should voice their outrage, too.
Why, I even believed that those public officials were free — no, obligated — to state their belief that the warden had no business supervising prisoners, the coach had no business guiding young athletes, and the professor had no business teaching our children — and that they could say these things, moreover, without jeopardizing whatever due process those individuals were entitled to as public employees who might be determined to hold onto their jobs.
That's how ignorant I was.
I stand corrected, thanks to Ward Churchill's attorneys and the media apologists for this week's verdict in favor of the former University of Colorado professor. And I am most grateful for the education.
It turns out that the proper political response to vile statements by a public employee is ... silence — or, at most, a bland and ambivalent expression of discontent.
One should never, for example, dub an outrageous statement "disgraceful" or suggest it brought "dishonor" to an institution. Both of those strong words were employed by CU's regents in response to Churchill's 9/11 essay glorifying terrorism, and we've been instructed that their use was a mistake. Worse than a mistake, actually: These expressions of opinion themselves became, through some strange alchemy that I still strain to understand, an assault on free speech.
A professor is free to say anything; public officials are, too, so long as they don't say much of anything about the professor.
That's why a governor dare not call for the head of a tenured professor, no matter how disturbing that person's views. Silence by the governor is the preferred option, but if he must say something, every phrase should be chosen with care.
Governors in need of a template that can be tweaked to cover almost any occasion might consider the following: "As chief executive of this state, I deplore professor so-and-so's support of genocide in Rwanda but have no opinion as to whether she is fit to continue teaching the history of central Africa at our flagship university. I am sure her superiors will take whatever action is appropriate, or no action at all if they feel like it. While I personally would never support genocide, I appreciate that others might disagree and await the just outcome that will surely put to rest this unfortunate controversy."
Public officials who feel debased by such an obtuse statement should ask their doctors to put them on heavy sedation so they can fulfill their duty: In the face of moral depravity, duck.
Who would have thought? It's certainly a shock to me, but I've been willing to learn and can now boast, in the words of Cool Hand Luke, that I got my mind right, too.
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12068010
If you ask me, this is a perfect example of how political correctness has in so many ways, replaced common sense in America.
Ward Churchill is a pig... a disease... He is the poster boy for everything that is wrong with America today, yet the courts sided with him.
By Vincent Carroll
Posted: 04/04/2009 12:30:00 AM MDT
At long last, I get it.
I was slow on the uptake, I admit, but have finally come around. For much of my life, you see, I labored under a great delusion. I thought public officials had a duty to speak out and rebuke someone in their ranks — or even a prominent constituent — who said something morally repellent.
If a prison warden professed indifference toward sexual abuse within his facility, or a college football coach was caught distributing racist or neo-Nazi propaganda, I assumed that elected officials should stand up and object — that they should climb upon a soapbox, if necessary, and start waving their arms.
And if a professor at a state university celebrated the mass murders of office workers and airline passengers while justifying more of the same, I thought it was obvious that elected leaders should voice their outrage, too.
Why, I even believed that those public officials were free — no, obligated — to state their belief that the warden had no business supervising prisoners, the coach had no business guiding young athletes, and the professor had no business teaching our children — and that they could say these things, moreover, without jeopardizing whatever due process those individuals were entitled to as public employees who might be determined to hold onto their jobs.
That's how ignorant I was.
I stand corrected, thanks to Ward Churchill's attorneys and the media apologists for this week's verdict in favor of the former University of Colorado professor. And I am most grateful for the education.
It turns out that the proper political response to vile statements by a public employee is ... silence — or, at most, a bland and ambivalent expression of discontent.
One should never, for example, dub an outrageous statement "disgraceful" or suggest it brought "dishonor" to an institution. Both of those strong words were employed by CU's regents in response to Churchill's 9/11 essay glorifying terrorism, and we've been instructed that their use was a mistake. Worse than a mistake, actually: These expressions of opinion themselves became, through some strange alchemy that I still strain to understand, an assault on free speech.
A professor is free to say anything; public officials are, too, so long as they don't say much of anything about the professor.
That's why a governor dare not call for the head of a tenured professor, no matter how disturbing that person's views. Silence by the governor is the preferred option, but if he must say something, every phrase should be chosen with care.
Governors in need of a template that can be tweaked to cover almost any occasion might consider the following: "As chief executive of this state, I deplore professor so-and-so's support of genocide in Rwanda but have no opinion as to whether she is fit to continue teaching the history of central Africa at our flagship university. I am sure her superiors will take whatever action is appropriate, or no action at all if they feel like it. While I personally would never support genocide, I appreciate that others might disagree and await the just outcome that will surely put to rest this unfortunate controversy."
Public officials who feel debased by such an obtuse statement should ask their doctors to put them on heavy sedation so they can fulfill their duty: In the face of moral depravity, duck.
Who would have thought? It's certainly a shock to me, but I've been willing to learn and can now boast, in the words of Cool Hand Luke, that I got my mind right, too.
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12068010
If you ask me, this is a perfect example of how political correctness has in so many ways, replaced common sense in America.
Ward Churchill is a pig... a disease... He is the poster boy for everything that is wrong with America today, yet the courts sided with him.