Today's tempest in a teacup comes from the grey laen where comic books and politics intersect. Yes, it's as worthless as it sounds.
Micah Wright is a comic book writer. I've never seen his comic book work, but I think I have linked to his entertaining anti-war posters, which repurpose World War Two posters into anti-Bush propoganda. I've given a few copies of the book as gifts.
As will happen to a vocal anti-war polemic in a time of contraversy, Mr. Wright experienced considerable retort. He responded in kind, unveiling his secret weapon: he was an Army Ranger who fought in Panama, and therefore above criticism.
But he actually wasn't.
This weekend, Wright blew the whistle. Depending on how you read his statements, he was either about to be outed in the Washington Post, and decided to confess to get ahead of the story, or broke the story to the Washington Post.
Here's how he put it (I'm reprinting the entire statement, because of his subsequent edits):
Mea Culpa
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Hi.
My name is Micah Wright. I'm a former Army Ranger, and I've been lying to you. I've kept the secret for years now, but all lies grow and eventually get out of control. This is me coming clean about my Big Lie. What did I lie about? Oh, nothing much...
Except that I was never an Army Ranger. I never served a day in a Ranger Regiment. I never went to Ranger School. The closest I ever got was Army ROTC.
This entire Army Ranger thing is a stupid lie which has its roots back in college. When I was in the Army ROTC (and I really was, trust me), I met a lot of Rangers, and got to know some of these amazing men. They always impressed me with their inspired competence and their commitment to one another. Though I enjoyed my time in Army ROTC, I decided that eight years of military service was not for me and I left the program. That ended my involvement with the military. But once I was out of the Army ROTC program, there was a lingering impression among friends that I had been in the Regular Army.
Skip forward years later to 2002. It's post-9/11. We'd bombed and invaded Afghanistan. The War On Terror had officially begun. The Patriot Act had passed. Thousands of Muslims had been swept up and held on secret charges. America was becoming a scary place.
That's when I started creating my propaganda posters. I took familiar and iconic war propaganda images from World War II, replaced their text with new messages urging the viewer to reject the lies that they were being fed by the President, and by the news media to which America turns for the facts.
Immediately upon putting the Remixed Propaganda posters on the internet, I received some of the most appalling and hateful email that I'd ever imagined possible. It was an ugly time in our country and people were lashing out in anger and fear against perceived "domestic enemies." I got countless death threats and letters accusing me of being a "traitor" for speaking out against George Bush. I should have my eyes gouged out, knees broken, be shot in the face, killed like a rat with a shovel, on and on. I received such a deluge of these letters that I began to seriously worry about my safety. I even had my phone number de-listed after some threatening phone calls.
In that atmosphere the old Ranger lie came easily to mind. I put up a "companion page" to the posters which claimed that I was a military veteran and who were these people to tell me what I could or could not say? I was a Veteran, dammit, not just a Navy fry-cook or an Air Force typist, either, I was a former Army Ranger! I was interested to see how that one piece of information juxtaposed against the posters would change people's minds about what they were seeing.
After posting the webpage saying that I was a former Ranger, the number of death threats dropped drastically. I still got hate mail, but it was now of a different sort, telling me that my opinion was idiotic or that I had been misled. My fellow Americans seemed to believe that if you had served in the military, this gave you leeway to say what you felt... but if you were NOT a veteran, God forbid you should think opposite of what everyone else thought. Did any of that justify my lie? No. But it made it easier to tell. Too easy.
Then I was contacted about doing a book of the posters. The editor knew the work was good, but that wasn?t the best part. Here, he said, was a man who had been to war but who was AGAINST war! That would be the sales hook! A simple confession at that moment would have ended the lie?and, I felt, my hopes for publication. I chose to continue the lie and to claim that I -was- indeed a Ranger. What would it hurt, I thought, it's not like I'm applying for a job as a policeman or something, I'm just writing a book, right?
And so the Big Ranger Lie grew and grew and grew... and eventually grew out of my control.
As the book progressed, I was enthusiastic... it was shaping up really well. Then my Editor mentioned that he wanted me to detail all of my Ranger experiences in Panama for the foreword--my Big Ranger Lie had tripped me up again. I immediately threw myself into my research, learning as much as I could about the Rangers, talking to Panama vets online, reading contemporary accounts of the invasion and several books and papers from Panamanian sources to get the other side of the story.
Everything in the foreword to "Back The Attack" is based on the truth? except none of it happened to me. It happened to other people, other Americans, other Panamanians. What I learned while researching government and military control of the press in the Panama of 1989 seemed increasingly crucial in examining what was happening around us in the America of 2002... many of the same exact tools were being used and NO ONE in the media was questioning them. It was infuriating to read the Pentagon's words about the War On Terror being directly parroted by the media without any analysis or fact checking. And that anger became my justification for continuing the lie.
That was when my petty Big Ranger Lie became the Big Ranger Media Hoax. How much of my story would anybody bother to verify? Would they ever bother to do even the most basic fact-checking? I actually planted conflicting evidence online, claiming in some places to have served in the 3rd Ranger Battalion, claiming in others to have served in the 2nd Ranger Battalion. Would anyone notice? I put up a photo of "my" Ranger Class on my website and identified myself as an African-American Ranger. Would anyone in the media notice? I gave out fake Platoon Sergeant and Company Commander names... would anyone in the media bother to check to see if they were real? To get quotes from them about what kind of "Ranger" I had been?
The answer was NO. A resounding NO. A roaring stupefying deafening NO. I watched in amazement and simultaneous horror as the story of my "service" spread from small press book reviews to mainstream news outlets. The story appeared in the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, the Fox News Channel, and countless smaller places.
The peak of the Ranger Media Hoax, though, was a 2-page story in The Washington Post. A reporter called me... I decided to push it. The reporter listened to the story about Panama. He asked if I'd been involved in other military combat. I told him about various imagined secret and classified missions in Peru, Honduras, Costa Rica... I had myself fighting in countries that the United States had never bothered to fight in, I put myself alongside The Nicaraguan Contras... back when I would have been in 8th grade. Would he notice? Or would he eagerly demand more, more, more? He couldn't get enough. Had I been involved in many battles? Had I ever been wounded? Had I ever killed anyone? I hesitated... most of the vets I'd spoken to about this subject were very reluctant to discuss these things. How should I approach it? Claim to have beheaded Manuel Noriega myself? Would he fact-check THAT? Did I have any photos of myself in the Army, he asked? No, I claimed, I'm notoriously camera shy. This should have set off alarm bells: the soldiers I have known have all been camera crazy... there are tons of combat photos of Panama. Meanwhile a photo of "my" Ranger Class was online with myself identified as a black man. Did he clue in? Nope. I was astounded... one of the most important Newspapers in the world was about to print what I said, simply because I affirmed that it was true.
A day later, the article ran. My outrageous lies were printed verbatim. They'd dedicated two full pages to a ridiculous hoax which could have been exposed with a half hour's work. My beliefs in the veracity of the corporate media had been shaken previously, but now they were shattered. I couldn't figure it out. How had this happened? I stared at the paper in shock. Then I realized that the Washington Post had only done what they normally do: run whatever anyone in a uniform or position of authority told them to.
It certainly wasn't unprecedented. After all, Governor George W. Bush had done the same thing in 2000 when running for president. Questions arose and were quickly squashed about his military service. Even today, Bush still hasn't released all of his military records but NO ONE in the media is crying out for them. It's no wonder that my much smaller-scale hoax worked! Of course, this doesn't excuse my hoax... but it certainly motivated it.
Within hours of seeing print, the edges of the hoax began to unravel. I received two separate emails from real Rangers and Special Forces soldiers. They had seen right through me. No matter how much research you do, you can't fool an expert, and in this case the experts weren't fooled for a second. Web pages sprung up overnight: Micah Wright is a Big Fat Liar. "Yes," I thought, "I am." Outraged Rangers started phoning the Washington Post. We haven't heard of this guy. His photo isn't familiar, who the hell is he? The Post, chagrined, began "investigating" after the fact... by calling ME and asking if I was telling the truth.
On the face of it, it was an easy story to disprove. A simple Freedom of Information Act request would turn up no records of me having an active duty military career. Was sending that piece of paper too hard for anyone in the corporate media to do? No wonder huge corporations get away with Enron-sized ripoffs. No wonder Jayson Blair was able to get away with making up the news. No wonder that 55% of Americans still think that Saddam Hussein carried out the 9/11 attacks. The media was sleeping on the job. The Jayson Blair story exploded at the New York Times in April of 2003--the story about "Ranger Micah" ran in the Washington Post on July 6th, 2003. It wasn't like they had no idea that there was a problem or that they should check their sources. Why were they so asleep at the switch?
The entire time the Hoax was running, I asked myself the same question over and over again: why did so many people believe it? Did it seem true because the media had reported it? If so, what does that say about our blind faith in these institutions? If the media got the story so horribly wrong about ME, what else are they horribly wrong about? What other whoppers have they passed along to us without checking the facts on? My take on the situation is that our media picks up a story and repeats the litany over and over again until it becomes fact. This time it was "Ranger Micah" -- what was it last time? What will it be next time?
So why come clean now, you ask? Why shouldn't I continue on, seeing how far I can push it? Well, frankly, I'm sick of it. The corporate-media-hoax part of the joke isn't fun any longer, and the personal side has never been fun. I'm sick of lying to my friends, to employers, to my fans, to myself. I'm not a Ranger. I've lied to so many people about this that it's made me physically ill. I haven?t been able to sleep and I?ve just about given myself an ulcer. The phone would ring and guilt, terror and panic would grip me: is this the day that I get found out? Or is it NPR wanting to do a story on me? How long should I compound the media hoax? To lie to more people? The waiting has become too much. I'm killing the hoax and I'm stopping the lies.
The cat?s out of the bag now... I've finally told the truth. I wish I had a long time ago. In the last year dozens of real Rangers have been killed or wounded overseas--how can I keep lying in the face of that kind of dedication? When I read about the death of Pat Tillman, who sacrificed a high-paying football career in order to join the Rangers, I felt like even more of a fake and a heel. It's time it all ended: I'm not a Ranger, I was never a Ranger and I'm sorry for ever saying that I was. I apologize to every Ranger and to the families of every Ranger.
I lied, and I apologize for that from the bottom of my heart... it was a lousy thing to do and I'm sorry about it. A special apology is owed to the people who I hurt by putting them in the position of spreading my lie, people taken in by the Hoax, and people whose credibility I've helped corrode. For the last two years, this has kept me up nights, wondering why I didn't just come out with it. I can only blame that most human of emotions: fear.
There was one thing that I didn't imagine, that I couldn't imagine: that a lie like this would grow and grow and eventually consume every facet of my entire life. It has weighed on my heart and on my mind for two full years now, slowly crushing my spirits, contaminating my friendships, and threatening to destroy everything about me. I'm well shed of it now. I just hope that others can find it in their hearts to forgive me.
And please... no more death threats.
yours,
Micah
April 15, 2004
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13755-2003Jul5.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/style/columns/reliablesource/
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Within a few hours of posting, he removed the most of the media criticism, leaving the current version on his site.
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Obviously, this is a story for a slow news day, which I'm in the middle of. The slow news day, not the story.
It brings two things specifically to mind. First, the kind of patriotic justification of opinion is something that's worried me since 9/11. Because I'm so in touch with humanity I guess, I was mostly worried about the amound of bad policy that would rammed though accompanied by various refrains of "I was THERE on September 11th!" and the like. This is the lefty opposite (and one reason John Kerry drones incessantly about his tour in Vietman), where we're only allowing a certain class the moral authority to speak to issues of war and national security.
That fallacy has been ripe since Vietnam, with all the unverifiable tales of vets being spaat on, and of how the protests underminded the boys at the front. And it's nothing new -- some Germans after the First World War blamed their defeat on a civilian "stab in the back."
And it's bullshit. The public has every right to voice a say on, and influence, national policy, especially questionable national policies like war. There may be be excellent reasons to continue warfare in Iraq, but it's stupid to inists that only current and former soldiers get a say. The civilians form the mass of America, and are entitled to dictate its direction.
More importantly, contributions to a public debate need to stand or fall on their own. If you are so unsure of your opinions you have to butress them with false resume, you'll want to brush up on your subject matter before it's necessary to play soldier to get respect.
Wright fell into that trap, and now he's gnawing his leg off in public.
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The second thing this brings to mind is the macho culture among writers. Ernest Hemingway liked to drink and go on safariis, depite being a writer and named Ernest. Lots of writers are reknowned for their expoits in bed, bars and brawls, and it's appealing, despite being statistically insignificant. I've been to the home pages of many writers who type brutal threats to critical emails, forgetting that the reality of an overweight man hunched over a keyboard isn't exactly intimidating. I'm sure I could kick any writer's ass (and there I go...). Pretending to be a Ranger is part of that pathology.
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