May 03, 2004
A MOMENT OF CLARITY
In light of Micah Wright’s fantastic lies about his military career, check out this 2003 article by Erika Gonzalez of the Rocky Mountain News:
Wright knows about war first hand. A former U.S. Airborne Ranger, Wright participated in the invasion of Panama in 1989. He discovered his antiwar side after a stray American bomb left one of the country's poorest neighborhoods in ashes.
"Standing in Panama City in 1989 on the roof of a six-story apartment building and looking out over a burned-out ruin the size of a medium-sized American town, I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity: everything I had been told while growing up was a pack of lies," Wright notes in the introduction to his book.
That introduction is a comedy goldmine. Here’s another extract, in which Rambo Wright comments on news reports of the attack on the Panamanian Defense Force's Rio Hato Military Base by his Charlie Company, Second Ranger Battalion/75th Ranger Regiment, on the night of Dec. 20, 1989:
NBC's Tom Brokaw exclaimed on December 20, 1989: "We haven't got [Noriega] yet." PBS announcer Judy Woodruff concluded on the following day: "Not only have we done away with [the Panamanian army], we've also done away with the police force."
Strange, I never saw Tom Brokaw humping an M-60 down the Rio Hato runway next to me. Perhaps I was distracted by the sight of Judy Woodruff providing covering fire on the runway control tower.
Beautiful.
Posted by Tim Blair at May 3, 2004 03:44 PMDowdify the word "been" out of that and you get "everything I had ... told while growing up was a pack of lies"
Posted by: Sortelli at May 3, 2004 at 03:54 PMTim,
Don't miss this post by Mrs. Spoons. She knew Wright in college.
My favorite part:
...I remember his chuckling to me one day in 1992 that he'd gotten out of a class in a very creative way. He was in an anthropology class that he hadn't been attending or doing any work for, and now it was too late in the semester to withdraw, so he'd be stuck with an inevitable F. Well, instead, he went to the professor's office in his ROTC uniform, told the prof that the reason he hadn't been in class was that his ROTC unit had been deployed to Iraq for the Gulf War, and he'd only just returned. She thanked him for his service and immediately gave him and W (withdrawal) instead of an F. He crowed all afternoon at her gullibility.
Hey, she didn't even check it out. She deserved to be lied to! (Hmm. I wonder if she can retroactively give him an F, thus voiding any degree he may have gotten.)
Posted by: Angie Schultz at May 3, 2004 at 03:58 PM
Another tidbit from Heidi MacDonald, a comics reporter who interviewed him: "Micah constantly goes on about the Rangers. Maybe he was playing it up for a reporter, but this wasn't something he tried not to talk about. He made constant references in his conversation to it. I remember him looking at a billboard of some sixpack-sporting male models in a beer ad and remarking how phony that was. 'Even the guys who were in the Rangers who were in really good shape didn't have those kind of six-packs,' he said."
And in another comics interview, Wright said that when he was a kid he always wanted to grow up to be Sgt. Rock. Well, this was almost as good, huh?
Posted by: Jim Treacher at May 3, 2004 at 04:27 PMGood Lord! And this character actually still has credibility with the left?
Amazing. If the left actually appreciates and supports his blatant lying, any complaints about lies from the White House (or some other similar location) from that part of the universe are sheer hypocrisy.
And by "support", I mean that he isn't called on this by his editors and readers. Otherwise, he might as well become the editor of the New York Times. Wright certainly has the qualifications.
Posted by: JeffS at May 3, 2004 at 04:29 PMNow, I'm sure that if Bush "admitted" that he made "mistakes" and "lied" that they'd embrace him and support him because he only did it to sell something he thought was right. That's really why those pesky reporters kept asking him about his "mistakes", right? Right? All those mistakes like believing intelligence agencies and the lies about making up that whole 9-11 deal as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and set up IXL's oil pipeline... if Bush would just come clean, he'd get the same mercies as Micah.
Now if you will excuse me, I must go bark at the moon until those dastardly Jews get out of Palestine.
Posted by: Sortelli at May 3, 2004 at 05:41 PM(Hmm. I wonder if she can retroactively give him an F, thus voiding any degree he may have gotten.)
The grade can definitely be changed to an 'F'. There is no statute of limitations on that. Also, if the 'F' (vs. the W he was given) makes him ineligible for his degree, then his degree can be revoked.
Posted by: MattJ at May 3, 2004 at 10:06 PMAlso, if the 'F' (vs. the W he was given) makes him ineligible for his degree, then his degree can be revoked.
Would this make dubya (W) a miserable failure(F)?
And to think, if he'd got a C, he too could have been president
Posted by: Andjam at May 3, 2004 at 11:04 PMIt's not quite a proper Micah remix, but I am fond of it.
Posted by: Sortelli at May 4, 2004 at 12:14 AMI wonder why associates, relatives or friends who actually knew Micah Wright during the period in question never surfaced to blow the whistle on him? Is it possible he's such a retarded turd that there aren't any?
Visiting his web page and scrolling through the comments on the thread devoted to his confession is a lot of fun. It was approaching 400 last time I looked. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth from lefties who used Micah's material to convert the heathens.
Not that conservatives don't have liars...look at David Brooks. Of course he has $2,000,000 now to start a website to watch the media for conservative "lies". Obviously he has the Wright stuff.
Posted by: Theodopoulos Pherecydes at May 4, 2004 at 12:51 AMWell, just watch the "comics fans are retarded" stuff, huh, Theo? We prefer "mentally challenged."
Posted by: Jim Treacher at May 4, 2004 at 12:58 AMThink of Micah Wright as the Rigoberto Menchu of the moment. It doesn't matter that he's a fraud, after all what constitutes "The Truth?"
Maybe he's trying for a Nobel Peace Prize?
Posted by: Bruce Rheinstein at May 4, 2004 at 01:05 AM"Strange, I never saw Tom Brokaw humping an M-60 down the Rio Hato runway next to me. Perhaps I was distracted by the sight of Judy Woodruff providing covering fire on the runway control tower."
Well, you know, if you look at this the right way, he really didn't see Brokaw because he wasn't there to see him. So it's really an elegantly nuanced response.
And how dare you challenge his patriotism — oh, wait, isn't this the Kerry thread?
Posted by: Richard McEnroe at May 4, 2004 at 01:15 AMI forgot to mention to JeffS: Wright's publisher, Seven Stories Press, has cancelled his next book. Considering they've published Chomsky, Zinn, Ramsey Clark, Mumia Abu-Jamal, etc., just think how bad you have to fuck up to get them to cancel your book. And it was supposed to come out in two short weeks, so that can't be a good situation for anybody involved.
Posted by: Jim Treacher at May 4, 2004 at 01:33 AMFrom Wright's interview:
"...I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity."
Hell, he lifted that line verbatim from "Pulp Fiction."
Posted by: Joey at May 4, 2004 at 02:17 AMTheo, I think you mean David Brock, not David Brooks.
Posted by: Annalucia at May 4, 2004 at 02:32 AMThe most interesting thing about the David Brock issue is that there's no proof that he lied.
He suddenly leap to the left with a tell-all book about how he'd been duped into being one of those meanie conservatives and how he'd lied about everything he'd said before and about how he just loooovvved the left and always wanted to be a lefty, but the bad right wing had brainwashed him.
And now the left just loves him.
But no one ever went back and proved his previous writing wrong. It's like the left just takes people at their word when they're saying what the left wants to hear.
Even though they keep geting kicked in the face over it. Sad.
Posted by: jack at May 4, 2004 at 03:48 AMThanks for the update, Jim, about Wright losing his book deal. I'm glad to see some people have some standards, even if they are low.
Actually I *do* think comic books are an astounding waste of time and think the people to whom they appeal are retarded.
But I apologize for mixing up Brooks and Brock. My esteem for the excellent NYT op ed columnist leaked over into my contempt for the disgraced Clinton critic.
Posted by: Theodopoulos Pherecydes at May 4, 2004 at 05:59 AMThis is nothing new.
As I recall, back in the days of the Vietnam war, some of the loudest, firiest members of Kerry's old outfit, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, turned out to have "inflated" their military experience more than a bit. By some odd coincidence, the lurid claims of personally-witnessed war crimes largely originated with the fakes....
Antiwar "veterans" should be assumed to be imposters until proven legitimate.
Actually I *do* think comic books are an astounding waste of time and think the people to whom they appeal are retarded.
Yeah? Yeah? Well... you're a poopie head!
Posted by: Sortelli at May 4, 2004 at 10:42 AMI've been reading up on this story around different blogs, and one of the things that maddens me the most is when people go, "Yeah, he's a liar, but I still kinda like his work..."
Folks, Micah ripped off the idea for his book of redone WII propaganda posters from the web, specifically from www.somethingawful.com. The forum members there did a huge number of them about six months after 9/11.
Here's the link to the Photoshop Phriday feature that they posted on the site-
http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=78
Here's one of the most widely circulated originals done up by forum member Ropekid-
http://www.freedomstavern.com/images/liberal_pussies1.jpg
Notice it's the same image on the cover of Micah's book.
Notice that the SomethingAwful feature predates his book by about a year. Notice how these mock ups are all about a million times more funny and creative than Micah's milquetoast reditions.
Now please spread the word that not only is Micah Wright a lying piece of shit, but an unoriginal, plaigarizing, untalented, lying piece of shit on top of that.
I've been reading up on this story around different blogs, and one of the things that maddens me the most is when people go, "Yeah, he's a liar, but I still kinda like his work..."
Folks, Micah ripped off the idea for his book of redone WII propaganda posters from the web, specifically from www.somethingawful.com. The forum members there did a huge number of them about six months after 9/11.
Here's the link to the Photoshop Phriday feature that they posted on the site-
http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=78
Here's one of the most widely circulated originals done up by forum member Ropekid-
http://www.freedomstavern.com/images/liberal_pussies1.jpg
Notice it's the same image on the cover of Micah's book.
Notice that the SomethingAwful feature predates his book by about a year. Notice how these mock ups are all about a million times more funny and creative than Micah's milquetoast reditions.
Now please spread the word that not only is Micah Wright a lying piece of shit, but an unoriginal, plaigarizing, untalented, lying piece of shit on top of that.