Eutrusca
23-05-2005, 23:49
NOTE: For those of you who advocate leftist ideals based on your own closely held beliefs, this character is giving you a bad name. For those of you who are veterans, this character is claiming to be a Ranger and a combat veteran.
Micah and Me (http://www.thespoonsexperience.com/archives/2004/05/a_guest_post_by.php)
A GUEST POST BY MRS. SPOONS
The blogosphere's all abuzz right now over the story of Micah Wright, a semi-successful leftist-wacko writer and cartoonist. (See Glenn, Greyhawk, Michele, Treacher, Jay Reding, and the Washington Post, just to name a few).
I like to think of myself as reasonably well informed, but I'd never read anything about this guy. He apparently got an anti-war book published and had another on the way, partially due to his creds as a veteran who is now a rabid peacenik. Evidently, when challenged to defend his position that the Bush White House was heading an enormous conspiracy to round up innocent Arabs in the US, deprive all American citizens of their civil rights, and take over most of the Middle East, Wright would use the "chicken hawk" defense: he can have an opinion about war and national defense, but nobody else can, because he was an Army Ranger. Here's an example of this interesting logic in an e-mail from Wright to Kevin Parrot:
"You're dreaming if you think we started that war to free the Iraqi people or that everyone who was against this war was FOR the slavery of the Iraqi people. I'm just as happy as anyone else that Saddam is dead (or, if you want to start yet another war, hiding in Syria) but I think the President would have been far better served if he told the American people the real reason we invaded Iraq: because we want a good base to invade Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt from. I've seen combat to "liberate" people before in Panama. Have you? Did you volunteer to fight for your country? I f*cking doubt it. I especially doubt your leg ass ever made it through Airborne School and I KNOW for a fact that you wouldn't have survived one week of Ranger School."
However, the Washington Post just published an article announcing that Wright was never in the Rangers. Everything Wright ever said about his gallant service and bravery, on his website, in newspaper interviews, and even in his book, were all lies. His publishing company just canceled the release of his next book, and lots of the Internet community is understandably up in arms about this revelation. I just wish I had done a cursory google search on Micah Wright a couple years ago and found out what he was up to. I could have told Kevin Parrot, WaPo, and Wright's publishers that I knew Wright hadn't been a Ranger during the American invasion of Panama.
Because I was dating him in Tucson, Arizona at the time.
I was a freshman at the University of Arizona, and Micah was a junior. We met my first month at school at a mutual acquaintance's birthday party in September, 1989, and sort-of dated each other and generally hung out together that year. The Panama invasion started in December, 1989, and ended with Noriega's surrender in January, 1990. Micah was definitely at the U of A, not Panama.
I must admit to being pretty shocked to not only see my ex-boyfriend's name pop up on Instapundit, but also to find out he'd been embroiled in very public hoaxes and lies for quite a while. Shocked, but, when I thought about it, not really all that surprised. Let me explain.
Even though we stopped dating after my Freshman year, Micah and I remained friends for about two years after that (no, not in the empty "let's just be friends" way, but actual friends). When I knew him, Micah wasn't a left-wing wacko yet. He was just a general wacko, in an entertaining way. Nuts, but fun. He was outspoken and amusing and always interesting. Though always kind to me, he was sometimes rudely outspoken in that way of saying things to people I would never have had the guts to say (but really wanted to). That's a fun friend for a teenager to have.
He enjoyed provoking people even then, but back then he was more subtle and light-hearted about it. One of our mutual interests was comic books (he introduced me to some of the finest titles out there, like Sandman, Hellblazer, and Justice League), and I remember one day in 1991, he picked me up to go the comic book store wearing his ROTC camos, knowing that Charlie, the comic book store cashier, was so pacifist that he'd gone to Attica for refusing the draft. Micah didn't say anything to rile Charlie, didn't do anything out of the ordinary. He just loved seeing Charlie's face when he walked in there in uniform. He loved to be a shit.
So, yes, Micah was in ROTC. That much is true, and that's no doubt where he learned enough of the lingo to fake his way through as a "Ranger" years later. And while I'm appalled at this news, I guess it also makes a twisted kind of sense, because Micah always had scams going. Sometimes they were small; Micah never paid for a newspaper as long as I knew him. He somehow (I never found out how) knew the lock combination to every single newspaper machine on the Arizona campus. He would just stroll up to a machine, dial up the combination, open it up, and take a paper.
Sometimes the scams were bigger. He wasn't the most diligent student (he was still there after I'd graduated), and 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.
Shades of things to come? It seems that as his age advanced, so did the scope and venality of his deceptions.
Though I continued watching Micah once a week in his comedy performances at the Union (he wrote for and performed in an excellent student sketch-comedy group), we had drifted apart by my senior year, and after I graduated in 1993, I had no more contact with him. I'd always had fond memories of my crazy friend, and occasionally wondered what had become of him. I am very sorry to see it is this. From what I've now read of Micah's writing and internet correspondence of the last few years, he's evidently become a pretty bad guy. His playful baiting and frank wit have turned into rabid accusations and nut-job tirades, he has apparently lost all ability in civilized discourse, and he has now torpedoed his own career because his tendency for using scams to ease his way took over any sense he had left. Pretending to be an Army Ranger in order to cheaply score points in political debate and to sell America-bashing books and posters is so scandalous and awful that I can barely believe this is the same person I remember. Yes, the origins were there, but I still can't believe where they led.
It's all especially hard to take in since neither one of us had been very politically aware when we knew each other. Perhaps this is just as well, since in his political maturation he became a far-left, Indymedia, Democratic Underground, Michael Moore, no-blood-for-oil type who told an enormous lie to further his professional career. And I, well, I'm a far-right, Little Green Footballs, National Review Online, Spoons-marrying, gun-totin' type. If I had ever tried to look him up in the years after graduation, I'm sure we would've just ended up yelling at each other.
Of course, being the one to expose his scam would've been pretty fun.
P.S. I just remembered-- Micah's dad was in the military. I can' t remember what branch. That's probably another way he knew enough about the service to fake it as a Ranger.
Jeez, his dad must be dead now. I can't see any way the guy would've failed to notice his son's lies.
Micah and Me (http://www.thespoonsexperience.com/archives/2004/05/a_guest_post_by.php)
A GUEST POST BY MRS. SPOONS
The blogosphere's all abuzz right now over the story of Micah Wright, a semi-successful leftist-wacko writer and cartoonist. (See Glenn, Greyhawk, Michele, Treacher, Jay Reding, and the Washington Post, just to name a few).
I like to think of myself as reasonably well informed, but I'd never read anything about this guy. He apparently got an anti-war book published and had another on the way, partially due to his creds as a veteran who is now a rabid peacenik. Evidently, when challenged to defend his position that the Bush White House was heading an enormous conspiracy to round up innocent Arabs in the US, deprive all American citizens of their civil rights, and take over most of the Middle East, Wright would use the "chicken hawk" defense: he can have an opinion about war and national defense, but nobody else can, because he was an Army Ranger. Here's an example of this interesting logic in an e-mail from Wright to Kevin Parrot:
"You're dreaming if you think we started that war to free the Iraqi people or that everyone who was against this war was FOR the slavery of the Iraqi people. I'm just as happy as anyone else that Saddam is dead (or, if you want to start yet another war, hiding in Syria) but I think the President would have been far better served if he told the American people the real reason we invaded Iraq: because we want a good base to invade Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt from. I've seen combat to "liberate" people before in Panama. Have you? Did you volunteer to fight for your country? I f*cking doubt it. I especially doubt your leg ass ever made it through Airborne School and I KNOW for a fact that you wouldn't have survived one week of Ranger School."
However, the Washington Post just published an article announcing that Wright was never in the Rangers. Everything Wright ever said about his gallant service and bravery, on his website, in newspaper interviews, and even in his book, were all lies. His publishing company just canceled the release of his next book, and lots of the Internet community is understandably up in arms about this revelation. I just wish I had done a cursory google search on Micah Wright a couple years ago and found out what he was up to. I could have told Kevin Parrot, WaPo, and Wright's publishers that I knew Wright hadn't been a Ranger during the American invasion of Panama.
Because I was dating him in Tucson, Arizona at the time.
I was a freshman at the University of Arizona, and Micah was a junior. We met my first month at school at a mutual acquaintance's birthday party in September, 1989, and sort-of dated each other and generally hung out together that year. The Panama invasion started in December, 1989, and ended with Noriega's surrender in January, 1990. Micah was definitely at the U of A, not Panama.
I must admit to being pretty shocked to not only see my ex-boyfriend's name pop up on Instapundit, but also to find out he'd been embroiled in very public hoaxes and lies for quite a while. Shocked, but, when I thought about it, not really all that surprised. Let me explain.
Even though we stopped dating after my Freshman year, Micah and I remained friends for about two years after that (no, not in the empty "let's just be friends" way, but actual friends). When I knew him, Micah wasn't a left-wing wacko yet. He was just a general wacko, in an entertaining way. Nuts, but fun. He was outspoken and amusing and always interesting. Though always kind to me, he was sometimes rudely outspoken in that way of saying things to people I would never have had the guts to say (but really wanted to). That's a fun friend for a teenager to have.
He enjoyed provoking people even then, but back then he was more subtle and light-hearted about it. One of our mutual interests was comic books (he introduced me to some of the finest titles out there, like Sandman, Hellblazer, and Justice League), and I remember one day in 1991, he picked me up to go the comic book store wearing his ROTC camos, knowing that Charlie, the comic book store cashier, was so pacifist that he'd gone to Attica for refusing the draft. Micah didn't say anything to rile Charlie, didn't do anything out of the ordinary. He just loved seeing Charlie's face when he walked in there in uniform. He loved to be a shit.
So, yes, Micah was in ROTC. That much is true, and that's no doubt where he learned enough of the lingo to fake his way through as a "Ranger" years later. And while I'm appalled at this news, I guess it also makes a twisted kind of sense, because Micah always had scams going. Sometimes they were small; Micah never paid for a newspaper as long as I knew him. He somehow (I never found out how) knew the lock combination to every single newspaper machine on the Arizona campus. He would just stroll up to a machine, dial up the combination, open it up, and take a paper.
Sometimes the scams were bigger. He wasn't the most diligent student (he was still there after I'd graduated), and 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.
Shades of things to come? It seems that as his age advanced, so did the scope and venality of his deceptions.
Though I continued watching Micah once a week in his comedy performances at the Union (he wrote for and performed in an excellent student sketch-comedy group), we had drifted apart by my senior year, and after I graduated in 1993, I had no more contact with him. I'd always had fond memories of my crazy friend, and occasionally wondered what had become of him. I am very sorry to see it is this. From what I've now read of Micah's writing and internet correspondence of the last few years, he's evidently become a pretty bad guy. His playful baiting and frank wit have turned into rabid accusations and nut-job tirades, he has apparently lost all ability in civilized discourse, and he has now torpedoed his own career because his tendency for using scams to ease his way took over any sense he had left. Pretending to be an Army Ranger in order to cheaply score points in political debate and to sell America-bashing books and posters is so scandalous and awful that I can barely believe this is the same person I remember. Yes, the origins were there, but I still can't believe where they led.
It's all especially hard to take in since neither one of us had been very politically aware when we knew each other. Perhaps this is just as well, since in his political maturation he became a far-left, Indymedia, Democratic Underground, Michael Moore, no-blood-for-oil type who told an enormous lie to further his professional career. And I, well, I'm a far-right, Little Green Footballs, National Review Online, Spoons-marrying, gun-totin' type. If I had ever tried to look him up in the years after graduation, I'm sure we would've just ended up yelling at each other.
Of course, being the one to expose his scam would've been pretty fun.
P.S. I just remembered-- Micah's dad was in the military. I can' t remember what branch. That's probably another way he knew enough about the service to fake it as a Ranger.
Jeez, his dad must be dead now. I can't see any way the guy would've failed to notice his son's lies.