Ward Churchill vs. Tony Randall
Over at National Review, Victor Davis Hanson likens Colorado's most famous academic product since Condi Rice to TV's Felix Unger (well, to be more precise, to one of the worst performances ever given by Tony Randall, thus keeping alive the weekend's unplanned bad movie meme, itself a result not of human design but of human action).
Ward Churchill proclaimed that he is a Native American of various tribal affiliations; he is not. Even his ridiculous costumes, occasional threats, and puerile rants cannot disguise that fact.
He seems to be a pop artist of sorts, but his canvasses are not quite his own either. Those of like political mind have praised his scholarship, but much of what he writes seems derivative, or misrepresents or outright plagiarizes others.
Churchill has spoken of the firsthand trauma of battle service as a combat veteran, both as a paratrooper and as a sniper–among the most hazardous of corps in the United States military. Once again, there is no such evidence that he served in any capacity other than what his official duties in a motor pool and as a projectionist entailed….
No one knows what to make of his various arrests, boasts of bomb-making, trip to Libya, angry and traumatized ex-wives, braggadocio about petty vandalism, tales of phone threats, and the variety of other sordid stories that surround this fabricated man….
Who really is this strange creature who calls himself Keezjunnahbeh? The Paris Hilton of the campus, a Peter Sellers-like fraud in his own Being There, or a Tony Randall turning into all sorts of strange beasts in Dr. Lao's circus? He is nobody in fact, but also everybody in theory.
Whole thing–an interesting analysis of how identity politics plays out at the faculty level at universities–here.
Tony Randall, RIP here.
And the real question: Who is academia's Jack Klugman, particularly the Jack Klugman of Who Says I Can't Ride a Rainbow, featuring TV's Oscar Madisoy (intentional mispelling, Odd Couple fans), as a desperate dreamer hoping to start a pony farm in Greenwich Village–a role only slightly more preposterous than his turn as the switchblade-savvy Juror #5 in Twelve Angry Men, the most unconvincing Hollywood portrayal of a Hispanic this side of Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil?
