Why nobody gets that Sarah Silverman did (and said) the right thing at the TED convention this week

WWW--The reaction to this has been--well--retarded, and that's being far too kind to most who organized and attended TED. As the story goes, Sarah Silverman was invited and paid to do her stand-up routine at the TED convention in the ugly town of Long Beach, California that took place from February 9-13.

Silverman's appearance seems to have been on the last day. Most Americans don't even know what the fuck this convention is or even care (I'm in their ranks), but they made the news with Silverman's routine and are smarting over it for some reason. They're also trying to misrepresent what happened and show a great case of being unable to think laterally or outside of the box. In other words, the public doesn't know or care about TED for most of the right reasons.

This is what TED is: a lot of bullshit propped-up by money and more bullshit to recruit and to not listen to people with ideas, misuse and misapply them, piss the originators of said ideas off, and then watch them quit in disgust a few months later like most employer-employee relationships in the happy old US of A. But hey, when you have a dumbshow of already ossified bourgeois mummies you have to at least go through the motions:

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize. ... The annual conferences in Long Beach and Oxford bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). (Ted.com, "About" page)

That's exactly what they got from Silverman, yet the organizer of the event, Chris Anderson, isn't exactly a genius, and that's why he's not showcased as a real thinker, slagged Silverman for her routine. This was the talk of Silverman's life and she felt very strongly to do what she did, think what you will. Did she take the TED engagement seriously? I believe so, this wasn't a "for the hell of it deal." You see...how soon we forget.

Silverman's repertoire and themes are always changing, just as they have with the great American stand-up comedians and social critics like Dick Gregory, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Mort Sahl, and even Noam Chomsky (one of the most often-quoted intellectuals in Western history, yet apparently never invited to speak at TED in its 26 year history). For some reason, the onus is on Silverman for saying the word "retarded" at least ten times in her stand-up routine, and again, remember that she was invited, she didn't crash the event and run up onstage yelling the word without any logical context. That would be the job of another woman named Sarah, a goyische one, a WASP one. Besides, seeing things without any logical context--as we all know--is the job of CEOs, politicians and the public in these here United States. Context is everything, or nothing, if you find thinking painful.

But not more than two weeks ago we had a "controversy" about the word "retarded" and all of its many permutations (my favorite being "tard," mostly because it sounds funny and makes the person saying it look and sound funny), and it was trotted-out all over by a supplicant media and Internet by none other than failed VP candidate, Sarah Palin who has a child with Down syndrome. It should be mentioned here that most women approaching and past the age of forty years old are or should be informed by their personal physician or gynecologist that the risks of having a child with Down syndrome become considerably higher with a woman in this age range. But she had a child anyway, and drags the poor baby around the country while she's trying hard not to get elected. Never mind all this, it's just context, very inconvenient context, and it's all about that evil Sarah Silverman.

It gets better, and in case you've been in a coma, here's a little summary of the last couple weeks of political and cultural idiocy and general human folly:

The latest battle over the R-word kicked into high gear with a Jan. 26 Wall Street Journal report that last summer White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel blasted liberal activists unhappy with the pace of health-care reform, deriding their strategies as "[expletive] retarded." Palin, the mother of a special-needs child, quickly took to Facebook to demand Emanuel's firing, likening the offensiveness of the R-word to that of the N-word. Limbaugh seized the low ground, saying he found nothing wrong with "calling a bunch of people who are retards, retards," and Palin rushed to his defense, saying Limbaugh had used the word satirically. Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert took her up on it, calling Palin an "[expletive] retard" and adding, with a smile: "You see? It's satire!" ("The case against banning the word 'retard'," The Washington Post, 02.14.2010)

Yes, it's "satire," but only the elect (not elected, however) get to use the term, and in whatever context they feel they want to use it in. But not anyone else, and they'll use the word to suppress other words if they have their way. Players only, yo.

As a matter of fact, the herding instinct has already set in and very naive and pathetic people are taking pledges like it's go time at Masada. In that same Jewish tradition, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel fell on his sword, but probably not without a lot of prodding from his ostensible boss, the president, a man who seems intent on fucking-up and showing no vision or leadership skills unless he's left with no other alternatives. Hey, it's America.

But what did Silverman say exactly? This is where things get kind of sketchy since we're not seeing any footage with audio yet, but I would imagine we will eventually. Tech Crunch.com seems to have the most cogent version so far from a female attendee in the audience:

“I want to adopt a special needs child (to which one person applauded), because adopting a special needs child, who would do that? Only an awesome person, right?” I looked around the room and I knew exactly what was coming next. She was going to say retarded and not only was she going to say it, she was going to drop it like 10 times. I knew it wouldn’t be ok, but I was excited about it.

Words are powerful. They are mightier than the sword and all of that, but if you let them have too much power, you can create what I feel is evil. You create a society of people who are so concerned about what they say and what is PC and you destroy creative expression. ...

She went on to say:

“The only problem with adopting a retarded child is that the retarded child, when you are 80 is well, still retarded and that she wouldn’t enjoy the freedoms of setting them free at age 18, so she was only going to adopt a retarded child with a terminal illness so it has an expiration date, because who would adopt a retarded child with a terminal illness? Well, someone who was awesome like her”.

The room went silent and she went on with her show and sang a song about how all of the penises in the world couldn’t fill your heart holes. ... ("TED Organizer Trashes Speaker [Silverman], Fails Social IQ Test, Tech Crunch.com, 02.14.2010)

According to the attendee, roughly half of the audience applauded, and out of those, half appeared to have "gotten" the real message. We're a slow culture, so bear with me, please, since the future hinges on it. Apparently they, and a few others in attendance, have a clue where Silverman and the nation have been and what actual stand-up looks and sounds like. It's no secret that she's a shock comedienne, she's even on Comedy Central with her own show, and has been around for over twenty years. It seems TED is as ignorant about Silverman as the public is about them.

Certainly the well-heeled puds that were populating some of the ranks of the audience that received her well-aimed cultural assault on the suppression of words had little idea of who she is and what kind of a comedienne she represents. Silverman is a social critic and a satirist. She is brave, and she's cut through the bullshit of our culture...if only we had eyes to see it and ears to hear it. At least some of us do. Sarah Silverman just did America a very big favor and she's a hero, you betcha!

"Is Sarah Silverman Retarded, posted 10.13.2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRegd02Qiew

"TED Organizer Trashes Speaker [Silverman], Fails Social IQ Test, Tech Crunch.com, 02.14.2010: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/14/ted-organizer-trashes-speaker-fails-social-iq-test/

TED (not your uncle): http://www.ted.com/pages/view/id/7

Babs Streisand Bullish on Billary Clinton, as Lilli Marlene was for Adolf Hitler

NYC--Ever notice you can take the prose from Poe's 'The Raven,' and put it to the melody of 'Superman'? Try it, it works. Right, not all Jews are Noam Chomsky, Karl Marx, David Cronenberg, or Jesus. Some are wrongheaded turds like everyone else, happily helping shovel the bodies into the ovens. Babs is no exception to this kind of insensate human being, and she loves parading her iniquities everywhere she can.

Gay men: stick with Judy Garland, she was the best. But we knew this, or why would you have rioted over her memory at Stonewall? That was a real woman--a mother--with genuine class. She suffered so much in her life. Babs is a far-cry from Judy, more like the groveling, fawning Lilli. But there's a certain kind of woman who claws-her-way to the tyrants, those strongmen who display (b)absolute certainty at every turn.

Let's not forget about Waco in 1993, or the fact that it was Bill Clinton who authorized and pushed for most favored trading status with China. He was just finishing the work that began with Nixon, carrying over from Ford, Reagan, Bush, and finally Bubba. Sure, he's our first 'Black President' alright--black as the eyes of a lion before it sinks it teeth into the flesh of a gazelle. Forget Babs, forget the schnoz, and the ridiculously high tickets prices for the so-so shows of a terminally spoiled psychotic.

Retire Babs, you always sucked. You just hate actually paying your share, you tax cheat. We should also remember that Bill Clinton ordered the destruction of Iraqi-infrastructure during the 1990s during the 'no-fly zone' period, bringing about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children.

That's genocide, Babs, that's what you're supporting. You don't care, you spoiled, evil bitch. The Clintons also bombed Kosovo in 1999, causing over 200,000 Eastern Orthodox Serbs to flee. That's ethnic cleansing, but our crimes never happened. Barbara Streisand is our era's Lilli Marlene, a singing whore for neo-Nazis.

Perhaps we can conduct the killing of our victims with Barbara's songs blaring in-the-background. Hey, they played music at Auschwitz, so why not her crappy singing? That would be torture enough.

It would make a lot of sense for those interned at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base to have to listen to her drivel all-the-time. Marlene Dietrich knew a fascist when she saw one--what's your excuse you walking parody of humanity? What a moral imbecile, that Babs.

An interview with Dr. Noam Chomsky, from "Interpol Magazine," February 1995 (Part 2 of 2)

This was an interview conducted through the mail with Dr. Chomsky while I was finishing my degree in American History at Ball State University. Just two-months after I received his answers in the mail, we all witnessed the Oklahoma City bombing, and the first stirrings of the war on terror (really a domestic one against all of us). It's been a long road from the Spring of 1995. At that time, the internet was just starting to become accessible, and its impact on the political and cultural discourse is only now being realized. 1995 was a year when the "zine revolution" was occurring, and it was quickly-supplanted by the high-price of paper and the internet.

This interview was done for one of those little zines--my own--called "Interpol." I actually got copies of it in zine-central, the legendary Quimby's Queer Store in Chicago. It was pretty surreal going up to the Windy City and seeing those copies in the store (I never got paid, incidentally), it felt pretty good.

All that said, I would never trade the blog format, it's superior in every respect to that old digest format, and it's getting better all the time. Dr. Chomsky is a very friendly and encouraging person, and when he passes from this world, we will have lost a wonderful human being. Appreciate the flowers in life, they are fleeting. Try to be that person you admire, and strive to make a better world for all. That's the meaning of life.


Matt Janovic: Is "Leftism", as defined by the mainstream culture, more a problem of semantics, rather than a cohesive movement? It seems that throughout much of the 20th century, when groups worked and protested and acted for honest political change, the press and various "populist" elements resorted to labeling them "anarchists," "reds," "communists/commies," "pinkos," etc. . Do you agree with the analysis that often mob actions are stimulated from above, or are there complex social and economic reasons behind scapegoating and vigilantism?

Noam Chomsky: If I were a PR specialist trying to indoctrinate and marginalize people(as they do, quite consciously), I'd try to deprive all words of meaning, so that it's impossible even to think and talk coherently about things that matter (the powerful will continue in their own ways). To a large extent, that's happened. Personally, I keep away from words like "left," "liberal," "conservative," etc.

They have been so deprived of meaning as to become useless. Take "conservatism." The Reaganites were called "conservative." In fact, they were statist reactionaries; a genuine conservative would have turned over in his grave to hear the way the term is used today. There's also been a massive falsification of the "sacred texts." Take Adam Smith. We are supposed to worship at his shrine, but if anyone takes the trouble to read him, they'll find a very different picture from the official version handed down in the doctrinal system.

As for "mob action," it has so many different causes and sources that one can't generalize. CIO organizing and the civil rights movement were "mob action" from one point of view; the rampages of Hitler's organizations were too. Usually, when destructive mob action is stimulated from above, as it often is, it appeals to genuine social and economic concerns, manipulated for that purpose. Those are the tools in trade of demagogues, of every stripe. We've got plenty of experience with it throughout US history, dramatically right now.

Matt Janovic: What can the average person learn from the fall of the Soviet Union?

Noam Chomsky: The simplest lesson is a familiar one: in a conflict, the more powerful adversary tends to win. Europe began to separate into two parts in the 15th century, the West beginning to develop, the East becoming its "third world." That continued right to the early years of this century--for much of Eastern Europe, until 1945. There are some rules of the international game: (!) service areas have to fulfill their function, not get uppity about following an independent path; (2) if they do take off on their own and turn out to be successful in terms that appeal to others in the same boat, they really have to be crushed--in official rhetoric, they are a "virus" that might "infect others," a "rotten apple" that might "spoil the barrel."

If it's a speck in the Caribbean, it takes a weekend. If it's 1/6 of the world, it takes 70 years. But the logic is rather similar; and not surprisingly, much of Eastern Europe is returning to its earlier origins. Sectors that were part of the industrial West, like the Czech Republic, are returning to that status; parts that were basically service areas are returning to the typical third world model. There are all sorts of nuances and complications, but that's a fair approximation.

It's worth stressing that despite much pretense, Western leaders had no serious objections to Stalin's awesome crimes, any more than they had fundamental objections to Hitler or Mussolini, or to Saddam Hussein, or to a host of similar and lesser monsters. On that, the documentary record is very clear, and one can learn about it in arcane monographs (or the marginalised dissident literature). In a really free society, it would be on the front pages and in the school texts, along with much else that is consigned to the memory hole, as Politically Incorrect (in the operative sense of this ridiculous term).

Matt Janovic: Dr. Chomsky, what kind of direct improvements would you envision for the American worker in the workplace, if there was more democracy in most institutions of our society? How do you think that could be brought about?

Noam Chomsky: Right now [1995] one can't look for any improvements; the immediate problem is to preserve the rights that were finally achieved at least in part in the 1930s, after a century of bitter struggle, and have been eroding ever since. They are now under very sever and cruel assault, not just for working people: the same is true of family values, as I mentioned. A traditional stance within the US labor movement and intellectual life, as American as apple pie, is that industrial democracy must be a central component of operative democracy.

If the central decision-making institutions of a society--in production, commerce, finance, ideology, etc.--are in the hands of unaccountable private power, then democracy is a thin reed at best. That's traditional and mainstream. Today it sounds exotic, but that's because the American tradition has largely been demolished, also being "Politically Incorrect." How can democratic practices be extended to the central institutions of the society? There's only one answer, always: the same way they were slowly extended to governmental functions. That was never a gift; it was the result of committed popular organization and action.

Matt Janovic: In a truly democratic society, what do you think our educational system would be like?

Noam Chomsky: Education in a democratic society would try to encourage the natural curiosity and independence of mind of children, instead of suppressing it and channelling them into obedience and conformity. It would celebrate the traditional values of the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, which held that teaching should not be like filling a vessel with water, but helping a plant grow in its own way by allowing it to have proper food and light. These traditional conservative values are, of course, anathema to contemporary statist reactionaries.

Matt Janovic: Lastly, what is your idea of international humanism, and do you believe that to impose Western democratic and humanistic ideals (as the Chinese communists/nationalists loyal to the party argue) on non-Western nations is cultural imperialism?

Noam Chomsky: The idea that the West tries to impose "western democratic and humanistic ideals" on the rest of the world is one of the most ridiculous scams that the commissar class has indulged in. Western leaders, including intellectual elites, are dedicated to undermining these professed ideals at home, and centuries of brutal history show how they have "fostered" them elsewhere. Take simply the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UD).

The official line is that we courageously defend its universality, fighting off the "cultural relativists" of backward countries who say it doesn't fully extend to them. As even a moment's attention will show, the US flatly rejects about half of the UD even in principle, and grossly violates the rest. That's not controversial; the documentation is readily available. But for the doctrinal managers, it doesn't matter: what is important is ideological warfare, not truth or honesty--in fact, those are the values that have to be undermined.

Link to Part 1: http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2007/05/interview-with-dr-noam-chomsky-from.html#links

End of Part 2 of 2 (and statement of intellectual ownership): This interview is the intellectual property of Dr. Noam Chomsky and Matt Janovic, in toto. Permission to reprint, quote, or reproduce can be obtained through written permission from the authors. Quotes of up-to four lines are acceptable without permission. All rights reserved as of 2007, Noam Chomsky and Matt Janovic.

An interview with Dr. Noam Chomsky, from "Interpol Magazine," February 1995 (Part 1 of 2)

This was an interview conducted through the mail with Dr. Chomsky while I was finishing my degree in American History at Ball State University. Just two-months after I received his answers in the mail, we all witnessed the Oklahoma City bombing, and the stirrings of the war on terror (really a domestic one against all of us). It's been a long road from the Spring of 1995. At that time, the internet was just starting to become accessible, and its impact on the political and cultural discourse is only now being realized.

1995 was a year when the "zine revolution" was occurring, and it was quickly-supplanted by the high-price of paper and the internet. This interview was done for one of those little zines--my own--called "Interpol." I actually got copies of it in zine-central, the legendary Quimby's Queer Store in Chicago. It was pretty surreal going-up to the Windy City and seeing those copies in the store (I never got paid, incidentally), it felt pretty good.

All that said, I would never trade the blog format, it's superior in every respect to that old digest format, and it's getting better all the time. Dr. Chomsky is a very friendly and encouraging person, and when he passes from this world, we will have lost a wonderful human being. Appreciate the flowers in life, they are fleeting. Try to be that person you admire, and strive to make a better world for all. That's the meaning of life.


Matt Janovic: Dr. Chomsky, in the past you've made comments on the importance of the FBI's COINTEPROs (Counterintelligence Programs) against the Black Panthers and the multi-faceted "New Left" as having a preponderant effect on the demise of these groups in the 1960s and early 1970s--do you feel that the effect of this element of American History is overlooked by most historians?

Noam Chomsky: There is no doubt that this material has been marginalized--by historians, the media, and the intellectual community general. Merely to give one personal example, I have a long article on "domestic terrorism" that is still unpublished after 15 years, apart from excerpts way at the margins. Recently, a leading criminologist asked for it for an anthology, but was finally unable to work it in (not his judgement; he wanted it).But the story is far more dramatic. Simply consider the relative attention given to Watergate and to COINTELPRO. It's a very revealing comparison. They were disclosed at the very same time. COINTELPRO was vastly more significant: it was a program by the national political police, acting on the highest authority through three administrations, to undermine and destroy independent thought and political action; its methods reached as far as Gestapo-style political assassination, under Nixon. These facts are not contested. In contrast, Watergate was a tea party.

For unknown reasons some tenth-rate burglars ransacked a Democratic Party headquarters; one minor part of COINTELPRO was massive disruption of a legal political party, which has the same status as the Democrats in our constitutional system, except that it has no private wealth behind it (the Socialist Workers Party)--that single episode is far more significant than all of Watergate. There was great outrage over Nixon's "enemy list"; nothing happened to anyone on it, as I know personally, since I was on it. But also on it were the head of IBM, McGeorge Bundy, etc., and to call powerful people bad names in private is a scandal that undermines the foundations of the republic. In contrast, to assassinate a Black Panther organizer in an FBI-organized early morning police raid, killing him in bed (probably drugged), is quite OK. And on, and on.

Now, simply check the reaction to these simultaneous disclosures. Ask yourself how Watergate and COINTELPRO figure into the political culture and history crafted by the privileged and educated, and what the impact has been on the repeated disclosure of these very startling and revealing facts. There is only one conclusion: it's a crime to annoy the powerful, but it's fine to terrorize and disrupt the lives of the weak. It could hardly be more clear that that is the dominant value of the political-intellectual culture.

MJ: In past interviews, you've refrained from any call for specific action, yet your analysis of the present domestic and world situation regarding the rights of individuals seems bleak. In the face of such widespread oppression and exploitation by various transnational corporations (usually implemented by the apparatus of domestic governments), why do you generally refrain from doing so?

NC: I don't refrain from calls to specific action. I've undertaken plenty myself, and recommend them to others. What I don't do is stand up on a podium and say: Do This or That. I don't feel I have any right to do so. What I try to do--whether successfully or not others can judge--is to lay out the situation as I see it, encourage others to inquire with independent minds, and when they draw their own conclusions, to act to change what I am convinced they will see as dangerous and often horrifying developments. If asked about specific actions, I always try to answer. And as I mentioned, I've undertaken plenty myself, including organizing direct resistance.

MJ: How did the discussions on the Donahue/Pozner show [Ed-the short-lived political talk show from the early-1990s] on CNBC come about? Did the main host, Mr. Donahue, have any serious problems taking you on a network that is mostly owned by General Electric, a major defense contractor to the Pentagon?

NC: My impression is that Phil Donohue would be very pleased to have people like me on his show regularly, and to get enough corporate sponsorship (it's not easy to get any other, in our system of private tyranny) to allow such discussions to be widely heard. My impression also is that it's not easy even for a person of his stature in the mainstream media to break the rigid rules of Political Correctness imposed by private power, largely. As to whether these impressions are accurate in this particular case, you'd have to inquire elsewhere, of course.

MJ: This is probably pretty pedestrian to you by now, but: do you feel as an older man that youth culture can have a serious and positive impact towards humanistic thought and action, or is it just another social dynamic that we can only exert a minimal amount of control over? Specifically, I'm talking about non-conformist rock culture.

NC: I'm too ignorant to comment, frankly. My impression--and again it's only that--is that the rock culture has had an effect on getting young people to think and act independently. But like the youth culture generally, it's been readily absorbed into the vast system of private power, which wants to distort it to serve its own ends of commercialization, separation of people from one another, and so on. How these tendencies play out, others who know better than I would have to say.

MJ: Why do you think that Europe has maintained a greater tradition of Leftism than the United States.

NC: Europe has been rather different from the US in many respects. As England has fallen more into the US orbit, there are by now quite striking differences between an even broader Anglo-American model and a continental European-Japanese model. It shows up quite clearly in many features of the societies. Take family values: they have been under severe attack for the past 15 years in the Anglo-American model, while support systems have been encouraged and sustained these values in the contrasting model. This has been studied in some depth right in the mainstream, and the results are pretty striking, but you'd have to find all that out. I have some references and comment in the January and February issues of Z Magazine.But this is only one facet. It's even recognized by the Courts. Thus, the Sixth Court of Appeals in a 1994 decision denying legal protection to older workers thrown out of their jobs takes explicit not that "Unlike law and social policy in many European countries, the laws of the United States do not prohibit" actions by owners undertaken for private profit, whatever the effect on workers and communities. In brief, the prevailing values here are that what counts is private power, not human beings. The Court's decision is accompanied by a good deal of utter nonsense about "legal and economic theory," but the distinction the Court draws is quite real, and has been for a long time. US labor history, for example, is unusually violent. Even the right-wing press in England was appalled, for many decades, at the brutal treatment of American workers by the government security forces mobilized by the owners.

What are the reasons? It's a complicated story, but in part it reflects the fact that American society began as a kind of "blank slate," once the native population was exterminated or driven away. It therefore reflected the quite sharply the values of those who had domestic power, business interests overwhelmingly. Of course, they never believed in a free market, and still don't: the US is also unusual in its record of extreme protectionism and public subsidy to private power through the state system ("welfare for the rich," we would call it, if honesty were permitted).

That's the primary reason for the very rapid economic growth of the US. But though the business world has always demanded ample state protection from market discipline, and still does, they've naturally demanded such discipline be imposed rigorously on the poor and defenseless at home and abroad, and have relied extensively on state power to insure that result as well. In societies where industrial capitalism grew out of existing social networks, support systems, traditional societies that recognized a "right to life," etc., the edges of the system were softer, a labor movement was able to survive and grow, and a social contract was achieved that is scarcely known here.

In an era of transnational capital, those systems are eroding everywhere; that's a large part of the perceived value of globalization of production and the huge expansion of speculative financial capital. The whole industrial world is leveling downward under consciously undertaken social policy, for reasons that are well understood. That's not inevitable; contrary to their illusions, these are human decisions taken within human institutions with their own historically contingent power relations, not laws of physics (let alone economics). But it is entirely natural as private tyranny increases its sway worldwide.

On the other hand, there are respects in which the US is much more free than other societies. Take freedom of speech, for example. Since the 1960s, at least, the US leads the world in defending this fundamental right--and it didn't just "happen"; the great 1964 victory at the Supreme Court was part of the civil rights movement, to mention one example. There's also a streak of independence and a lack of deference and class subordination in American social life that's very refreshing, and different from most of the industrial world. More generally, it's a complicated story, and one should be wary of easy formulas.

End of Part 1 (and statement of intellectual ownership): This interview is the intellectual property of Dr. Noam Chomsky and Matt Janovic. Permission to reprint, quote, or reproduce can be obtained through written permission from the authors. All rights reserved as of 2007, Noam Chomsky and Matt Janovic.

Why did Patrick Tillman die?

"While there was no one specific finding of fault, the investigation results indicate that Corporal Tillman probably died as a result of friendly fire while his unit was engaged in combat with enemy forces." --LT. GEN. PHILIP R. KENSINGER JR, May 2004

"The war in Iraq is so fucking illegal!"

--Pat Tillman, 2003

The United States of America--Pat Tillman was an extraordinary individual. As an accomplished athlete--and a student--he was the best and the brightest America had to offer. To his fans, he was an all-American, and friends and family have all stated that he really loved his country and its people.

Football players are part of the central iconography of this country--regardless of our feelings about "the game"--and the sport is often used as a metaphor for America's past-role in the world.

But, football is also used to stir-up a mindless super patriotism and an unthinking obedience to business, the State, and a competitiveness that is uniquely-American. It can contribute to a mindset of life being only 'winners-and-losers', but Pat Tillman wasn't a believer in all of this. He was a true believer in decency and what is right, and by all indications, he was a wonderful guy who genuinely wanted to protect his nation in the wake of the attacks of September 11th, 2001.

In 2002, he and his brother enlisted for a three year tour with the Army Rangers. There are more than 2,000-pages of testimony in the account of his 2004 killing in Afghanistan by fratricide ('friendly fire'). There are many contradictions in the testimony, and it was a full five weeks before his family was even notified of his death by the US Army. This fact alone is deeply-troubling, and doesn't serve the football iconography well for Statists. Neither did the real Pat Tillman--he was practically a closet-Leftist, and a critic of the War in Iraq.

Tillman's family was only told of his "friendly fire" death a few days before his burial (they were previously lied-to and told he was killed by enemy fire). It's unfortunate that his family thought John McCain would get any results for them, because he hasn't and won't. Entire sections of the reports on Tillman's death are still classified, and McCain hasn't delivered any major goods, just some belated consolation that earns him political points in Arizona.

A 2005 San Francisco Chronicle piece highlights Tillman's persona a bit:

Interviews also show a side of Pat Tillman not widely known — a fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history books on World War II and Winston Churchill to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author. (SFC, 9/25/2005)

It doesn't sound like your typical football-player, does it? My hunch is that Tillman saw something that night he wasn't supposed to, and had been pretty opinionated about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan around his fellow-solidiers.

I believe he went to Afghanistan to bear-witness as nobody in civilian life could. He was well-equipped to be a fighter for truth when he got back, and he was a very intelligent man who had graduated from college Summa Cum Laude. How many football players study to get a degree in history while playing professional football?

What's so disheartening is that immediately following his death, the Bush administration and their allies in the media seized-upon the icons, using a dead man who disagreed with them. This wasn't new to them as they used the bodies of 2,700 9/11 victims for political capital, until recently.

More disgusting epitaphs were the social Darwinist prose vomited by people like Ann Coulter [who] described Tillman as "an American original -- virtuous, pure and masculine like only an American male can be."' Right, there are no people anywhere else like this. Pat Tillman would have disagreed strenuously and he respected the underdog. Imagine if he had survived, and gotten to meet Dr. Chomsky as he had planned. Coulter and her ilk would have dragged him through-the-mud, or ignored him entirely.

It is possible that one-or-more of his comrades in A Company, 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment wanted him dead? We'll probably never know, since their stories keep-changing. It could easily be gross-negligence, but why wait five weeks? Why classify so much? Why was all of SPC Tillman's uniform and flak-jacket burned under orders? One investigating officer suggested some of the troops present at Tillman's death should be charged with "criminal intent." Why?

The questions are all troubling ones. Tillman also had a habit of keeping a journal all the time. What happened to his journal from Afghanistan? The Army began a criminal investigation in March of this-year. The prospects for human-survival are dimming, made-possible by your inaction.

Lightly Revised, 09.19.2008

Tillman Timeline:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?id=2517567

Related:
http://www.edgeofsports.com/2006-03-07-179/index.html
http://www.iraqwarheroes.com/tillman.htm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/25/MNGD7ETMNM1.DTL

A good blogpiece on the Diary:
http://the-wrecking-machine.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_the-wrecking-machine_archive.html

Dr. Chomsky:
http://www.chomsky.info/