Isolation Ward
Regarding Matt Labash's "The Ward Churchill Reality Tour" (April 25): As a University of Colorado graduate and the father of a current CU student, I am embarrassed by Ward Churchill. One truly has to question how this man became tenured at what I thought was a high quality state university. Until recently, Churchill was even head of the ethnic studies department, which tells us a great deal about his fellow professors.
It is quite clear that our public education system, from K-12 schools through the colleges and universities, is in many ways both morally and intellectually bankrupt. Churchill's "arguments" (if one can call them that) would never survive in any hard science discipline (or even real academic debate). Why are they so often the norm in the soft sciences? It seems political idiocy has taken over far too many areas of what used to be true academic thought.
John Conlin
Littleton, CO
I am a junior at Bowling Green State University and have subscribed to The Weekly Standard for about two years. I enjoy every issue, but I have to say you've really outdone yourselves with Matt Labash's piece on Ward Churchill--I was laughing so hard I cried. Thanks for making my week.
M. Christian Wayne
Bowling Green, OH
Secondhand News
The practice of cobbling together news stories from suspect or unconfirmed sources (Scrapbook, April 25) may be deplorable, but it is certainly not a recent phenomenon.
As exchange students in the former Soviet Union in 1982, my friends and I spent quite a bit of time with some of the American reporters stationed in Moscow. They all shared information as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Reporters who'd met with a source, official or underground, would come back to the compound where they were all staying and casually share the crux of the interview with whoever was hanging around.
Bylined articles would then be written--and appear in different publications--as though each reporter had personally secured the information, lending a hefty dose of credibility to what was in reality just one rehashed source. (Ever since then, I automatically translate "unnamed source" into "drinking buddy" when I read mainstream papers or watch the news.)
I was also shocked at how willing the media were to report officially disseminated information as true, without even trying to ascertain the information's validity. The day after Brezhnev's death was announced, for example, the New York Times ran a front-page story that said all Moscow theaters had been closed the evening before in honor of the chairman's passing. There was no "we've been told," "officials say," or any other such qualifier that might have told the reader the information was unconfirmed.
When I told the Times bureau chief that I myself had been at the theater in Moscow that night, he laughed and told me not to tell the reporter (who, he said, had been filing stories slavishly and would not be in the mood to hear about his mistakes).
Whether some or all (or any) theaters closed on that night doesn't make much difference in the grand scheme of things. But it made me wonder what other official information the Times had reproduced without question over the years, and what other enemy governments were receiving such kid-glove treatment.
It seems nothing has changed. But today, perhaps for the first time, at least the problem is being discussed.
Frances Erlebacher
Rockville, MD