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Pat Tillman an "idiot," not a hero

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Guest Redhawk
Thursday, April 29, 2004

UMass grad student: Tillman's not a hero

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ESPN.com news services

AMHERST, Mass. -- A University of Massachusetts student has openly criticized Pat Tillman, calling the former NFL player a Rambo-like idiot in the school paper.

 

 

The column in question was submitted by graduate student Rene Gonzalez and published Wednesday in the Daily Collegian. It was titled "Pat Tillman is not a hero: he got what was coming to him."

 

Gonzalez writes that Tillman was a "Rambo" who probably acted out of "nationalist patriotic fantasies." In his own neighborhood in Puerto Rico, according to Gonzalez, Tillman would not have been considered a hero, but a "pendejo," or idiot.

 

The column drew harsh criticism from many on campus. University president Jack Wilson says the op-ed piece was "disgusting, arrogant and intellectually immature."

 

Tillman, who gave up his NFL career to join the Army Rangers in 2002, was killed in combat one week ago in Afghanistan. The military announced on Wednesday that he has been posthumously promoted to the rank of corporal and awarded the Purple Heart and Meritorious Service Medal.

 

"You know he was a real Rambo, who wanted to be in the 'real' thick of things," Gonzalez writes in his column, which is posted on the collegiate paper's Web site. "I could tell he was that type of macho guy, from his scowling, beefy face on the CNN pictures. Well, he got his wish. Even Rambo got shot in the third movie, but in real life, you die as a result of being shot. They should call Pat Tillman's army life 'Rambo 4: Rambo Attempts to Strike Back at His Former Rambo 3 Taliban Friends, and Gets Killed.'"

 

Gonzalez also says that Tillman's service was not "necessary."

 

"It wasn't like he was defending the East coast from an invasion of a foreign power. THAT would have been heroic and laudable," Gonzalez writes. "What he did was make himself useful to a foreign invading army, and he paid for it. It's hard to say I have any sympathy for his death because I don't feel like his 'service' was necessary. He wasn't defending me, nor was he defending the Afghani people. He was acting out his macho, patriotic crap and I guess someone with a bigger gun did him in."

 

In a letter to its readers Thursday, the Daily Collegian says Gonzalez' opinion in no way reflects that of the newspaper's editorial board. A column by one of the editors praising Tillman's sacrifice ran in the paper next to the one by Gonzalez.

 

"We do not hold back from printing news stories, columns or editorials that may upset our readership -- instead, we seek to both inform and stir debate through our publication," the letter, also posted on the Web site, reads. "Our decision to publish Gonzalez's column -- an opinion piece written by a member of our campus community -- is the only way for us to live up to this ideal."

 

Tillman will be eulogized at a public memorial service in his hometown of San Jose, Calif., early next week, and funeral arrangements are pending.

 

The body of Tillman arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Monday. His brother, Spc. Kevin Tillman, also a Ranger with the 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment, was expected to accompany the body to the funeral home, Lawrence said.

 

Tillman was killed in a firefight on a road near Sperah, about 25 miles southwest of a U.S. base at Khost.

 

After coming under fire, Tillman's patrol got out of their vehicles and gave chase, moving toward the spot of the ambush. Beevers said the fighting was "sustained" and lasted 15-20 minutes.

 

The Cardinals said they will retire Tillman's No. 40 and name the plaza surrounding the new stadium under construction in suburban Glendale the "Pat Tillman Freedom Plaza."

 

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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Guest MikeSC
Thursday, April 29, 2004

UMass grad student: Tillman's not a hero

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ESPN.com news services

AMHERST, Mass. -- A University of Massachusetts student has openly criticized Pat Tillman, calling the former NFL player a Rambo-like idiot in the school paper.

 

 

The column in question was submitted by graduate student Rene Gonzalez and published Wednesday in the Daily Collegian. It was titled "Pat Tillman is not a hero: he got what was coming to him."

 

Gonzalez writes that Tillman was a "Rambo" who probably acted out of "nationalist patriotic fantasies." In his own neighborhood in Puerto Rico, according to Gonzalez, Tillman would not have been considered a hero, but a "pendejo," or idiot.

 

The column drew harsh criticism from many on campus. University president Jack Wilson says the op-ed piece was "disgusting, arrogant and intellectually immature."

 

Tillman, who gave up his NFL career to join the Army Rangers in 2002, was killed in combat one week ago in Afghanistan. The military announced on Wednesday that he has been posthumously promoted to the rank of corporal and awarded the Purple Heart and Meritorious Service Medal.

 

"You know he was a real Rambo, who wanted to be in the 'real' thick of things," Gonzalez writes in his column, which is posted on the collegiate paper's Web site. "I could tell he was that type of macho guy, from his scowling, beefy face on the CNN pictures. Well, he got his wish. Even Rambo got shot in the third movie, but in real life, you die as a result of being shot. They should call Pat Tillman's army life 'Rambo 4: Rambo Attempts to Strike Back at His Former Rambo 3 Taliban Friends, and Gets Killed.'"

 

Gonzalez also says that Tillman's service was not "necessary."

 

"It wasn't like he was defending the East coast from an invasion of a foreign power. THAT would have been heroic and laudable," Gonzalez writes. "What he did was make himself useful to a foreign invading army, and he paid for it. It's hard to say I have any sympathy for his death because I don't feel like his 'service' was necessary. He wasn't defending me, nor was he defending the Afghani people. He was acting out his macho, patriotic crap and I guess someone with a bigger gun did him in."

 

In a letter to its readers Thursday, the Daily Collegian says Gonzalez' opinion in no way reflects that of the newspaper's editorial board. A column by one of the editors praising Tillman's sacrifice ran in the paper next to the one by Gonzalez.

 

"We do not hold back from printing news stories, columns or editorials that may upset our readership -- instead, we seek to both inform and stir debate through our publication," the letter, also posted on the Web site, reads. "Our decision to publish Gonzalez's column -- an opinion piece written by a member of our campus community -- is the only way for us to live up to this ideal."

 

Tillman will be eulogized at a public memorial service in his hometown of San Jose, Calif., early next week, and funeral arrangements are pending.

 

The body of Tillman arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Monday. His brother, Spc. Kevin Tillman, also a Ranger with the 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment, was expected to accompany the body to the funeral home, Lawrence said.

 

Tillman was killed in a firefight on a road near Sperah, about 25 miles southwest of a U.S. base at Khost.

 

After coming under fire, Tillman's patrol got out of their vehicles and gave chase, moving toward the spot of the ambush. Beevers said the fighting was "sustained" and lasted 15-20 minutes.

 

The Cardinals said they will retire Tillman's No. 40 and name the plaza surrounding the new stadium under construction in suburban Glendale the "Pat Tillman Freedom Plaza."

 

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

The paper has since said that they printed the column because they are dedicated to the 1st Amendment.

 

This same paper refused to print an ad by David Horowitz opposing slavery reparations.

 

That is all.

-=Mike

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Guest Redhawk

To be fair, from my experience working on a college paper, the decisions on which ads to accept and which opinion columns to run are two different animals. It's not really censorship if you don't want to run and ad...that could just be as business decision. Not running columns because people won't like them is closer to censorship.

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Guest MikeSC
To be fair, from my experience working on a college paper, the decisions on which ads to accept and which opinion columns to run are two different animals. It's not really censorship if you don't want to run and ad...that could just be as business decision. Not running columns because people won't like them is closer to censorship.

If you're going to refuse a controversial ad --- than claiming you ran a column due to your support of the 1st Amendment (which, as we all know, is one red herring of an argument ANYWAY) is more than mildly hypocritical.

-=Mike

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Funny how that works, eh Mike?

 

But you know what -- I'll let that one slide.

 

This kid had a right to publish his view on the matter.

 

Now can someone please find this guy's e-mail so I can use my right to free speech to tell him what I think of this gem of an article...

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The guy in question better have some Rambo-esque survival skills when people start being able to identify him walking on campus as the guy that wrote the article (I know someone who goes to UMASS and they actually have a class with this guy; amazingly, Mr. Gonzales wasn't in class today. I doubt that was a coincidence.)

 

And, Mike, when yours is the second post, there's no need to quote the ENTIRE FIRST POST ... even the dumbest of us can recognize what you're responding to.

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actually, he quoted it and I was still a little confused what he was talking about.

 

Good job Mike.

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To be fair, from my experience working on a college paper, the decisions on which ads to accept and which opinion columns to run are two different animals. It's not really censorship if you don't want to run and ad...that could just be as business decision. Not running columns because people won't like them is closer to censorship.

Having been in charge of multiple school papers in my youth, the whole "business decision" excuse to not running an ad that might get some readers mad is a copout.

 

The only exception would be if someone would run an ad that says "I Hate Jews," or something of that nature. Those Horowicz ads aren't anywhere near that.

 

On a side note, some schools won't run ads for booze because the ad will be read by people under 21 years of age.

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Guest MikeSC
actually, he quoted it and I was still a little confused what he was talking about.

 

Good job Mike.

I'm here for you, Rip.

-=Mike

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Guest Olympic Slam

What an ass. I swear I just want to beat the shit out of smart mouthed fairy boys like this guy. They always try to take the so-called "intellectual high ground" and bash our soldiers and war supporters by saying we all suffer from some disease like too much patriotism. Pat Tillman was a hero even if you don't like the war or support any of the wars. Fuck you Rene Gonzalez and go back to that pile of crap called Puerto Rico.

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Guest Redhawk

I just tried to read the whole column online, but the UMass paper is getting too much traffic. This story is on CNN.com and ESPN.com right now.

 

I wonder what else will happen with this? A couple of years ago, a U of Washington student wrote a column basically saying Yao Ming was not a positive role model for young Asian males, because he played a sport dominated by Black men. Which is bad, the guy wrote, because Black people are all ghetto and ignorant and what-not. At the next UW basketball game, there were people picketing the UW paper and calling for this guy's head. They got like 100+ letters about the column.

 

I'd like to see how the UMass campus reacts to Gonzalez.

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Guest Redhawk

"A couple of years ago, a U of Washington student wrote a column basically saying Yao Ming was not a positive role model for young Asian males, because he played a sport dominated by Black men. Which is bad, the guy wrote, because Black people are all ghetto and ignorant and what-not. At the next UW basketball game, there were people picketing the UW paper and calling for this guy's head. They got like 100+ letters about the column."

 

Here's that column...

 

Ming has run completely afoul

 

by Rick Chan

2002-12-09

 

The signs are not good at all when Yao Ming, the 7-foot-5 basketball rookie for the Houston Rockets, becomes a positive spokesman for Asian-American males. I hoped for an intellectual Asian role model who completely negates the martial-arts shenanigans of Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Bruce Lee, but now I have to put up with a new NBA player who is in league with filthy rich lowlifes from the ghetto.

 

Does Ming bite back at the negative American images about Asian men? No, he is the new abominable Shanghai snowman joining the hall of shame of stereotypes that include the enslaved railroad worker, the kung-fu savage, the scowling communist official, the sneaky take-out owner and even the effeminate gay Asian wearing nothing but a see-through black tank top.

 

But Ming represents a certain circumstance of racial representation -- the problem not only lies with him, but also with the NBA and its black-male dominance.

 

The NBA is one of many organizations for which I have the lowest regard. It is one of the typical dreams -- besides being a spoiled-brat gangsta rapper -- that marginalized black boys chase. Very often, they do not see themselves as professors, doctors, politicians, literary authors or even prime ministers. Because underprivileged black boys feel cold toward more-intellectual aspirations, they can only dream of Madison Square Garden as their holy land.

 

The NBA stage depicts the street-ball court from the ghettos of New York or Chicago, the lost paradises of gang activity, drug dealing and gun crime. But the only difference the NBA games have is that the ghetto dreams of black boys become a spectator sport for the general public.

 

Like a raging feminist who wants to burn down the neighborhood strip club, I attest that professional basketball is a similarly degrading carnival. I noticed a game photograph from the ESPN Web site that features Ming trying to hold on to the ball while a swarm of four black players attempt, with all their predator rage, to steal the ball away. This display of savagery was exemplified by the raw exhibition of black and yellow flesh. Muscles bulge intensely from the players' long limbs, sweat pours down their faces, and their jerseys are so light that they could care less about putting on a Chippendale's minstrel show.

 

So is Ming a new idol that Asian boys look up to? Absolutely not.

 

For the Chinese-American adolescent who strives to be like Ming, he really dreams of staying out of the civilized world. And let me assure you that the civilized world is engineered by present inequality -- there are civil spaces for the status quo, like the university, the press, and Congress, and then there is the circus staffed by the marginalized. The NBA is as close as it gets these days to putting on a sideshow of six-foot tall freaks ripping each other apart.

 

The new Chinese-American dream of becoming a basketball star bloodily spits in the face of enlightenment and progress. You dare not throw away 16 years of your education in order to shoot hoops.

 

Some are calling Ming the Ichiro of basketball, which I absolutely reject. There is a huge gulf of difference between the two athletes. Ichiro, of the Seattle Mariners, plays the game of the white American suburb. Specifically, baseball is void of all the show of brutality that commences at Seattle's Key Arena. Baseball is a demonstration of reason and critical thinking: players have to know when to steal third base, how fast to pitch, what pitch is thrown next and when to walk rather than hit. It demands a lot more waiting and calculation; it is American cricket with none of that all-or-nothing pestilence that rages on the basketball court.

 

Essentially, Ichiro is Japanese, and he came from a Westernized Asian nation which called the Chinese the sick men of Asia during World War II. Between Ichiro and Ming is the binary opposition between civilization and the jungle -- a difference, for example, that the Bush administration exploits when forming its China policy.

 

Sport, especially basketball but except baseball, is probably the least erudite of all human activities, and Ming presents more of an ethnic curse than a blessing. It is already too easy to associate black males with showing off physical aggression, and now the doors are open to attach Chinese men with similar animalistic barbarism. Even worse, Chinese men are now both emasculated and physically brutal, analogous to arguing that black males are both immature and super strong. Shame on him and thousands of Asian fans for treating this new phenomenon as a great leap forward.

 

I find it beyond essential to encourage more Asian Americans to join the republic of letters rather than the thug gangs of the NBA. Our Asian boys need to aspire to become teachers, professors, writers, reporters and even politicians because they have a responsibility to interrogate the negative images of Asian men that circulate public space. The Abercrombie & Fitch caricatures of slit-eyed Chinese workers are a call to arms to rip open the stereotypes that exist. Only by entering the temple of wisdom and critique can real progress be made, instead of becoming one in a pack of hungry wolves.

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Guest
I'm also pretty sure that "pendejo" means "asshole"...

It means different things in different Hispanic countries, in Mexico it means dumbass.

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What an ass. I swear I just want to beat the shit out of smart mouthed fairy boys like this guy. They always try to take the so-called "intellectual high ground" and bash our soldiers and war supporters by saying we all suffer from some disease like too much patriotism. Pat Tillman was a hero even if you don't like the war or support any of the wars. Fuck you Rene Gonzalez and go back to that pile of crap called Puerto Rico.

Beat the hell out of the professors first.

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The College professors probably bought him a beer.

 

I'm glad I was able to get out of college before they brainwashed me. I had to take two showers after school everyday because I felt extremely dirty listening to their bullshit.

 

Remember everyone, you should all think differently...cept in college where you should think what they tell you to think.

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What a tool. Why am I picturing some fat kid that could never get in the military no matter how hard he tried sitting behind a computer writing this story?

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What a tool. Why am I picturing some fat kid that could never get in the military no matter how hard he tried sitting behind a computer writing this story?

Actually, he's a skinny little punk looking kid. Here's a picture, complete with a "Priceless" tag. That didn't take long.

 

rene3.jpg

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Guest Jay Z. Hollywood

UMass is where the village idiots of Massachusetts high schools go because they couldn't get in anywhere else or their parents were too cheap.

 

Out of state or out of country, they'll take anyone who can spell their last name.

 

Take that for what you will.

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Guest Redhawk

And hours later....

 

Associated Press

AMHERST, Mass. -- A University of Massachusetts at Amherst graduate student has apologized to Pat Tillman's family.

 

 

Rene Gonzalez wrote a column for the campus paper saying the football player-turned-soldier who died in combat in Afghanistan wasn't a hero -- but rather a "G.I. Joe guy who got what was coming to him."

 

 

Gonzalez did not respond to telephone and e-mail messages left Thursday by The Associated Press, but in an e-mail to Boston's WBZ-TV, he apologized to the Tillman family "for all the pain that my article has brought them."

 

 

Gonzalez said he was trying to convey that Tillman's celebrity came into play when the former Arizona Cardinals player was labeled a hero.

 

 

"I felt that his celebrity had been a factor in American society calling him a 'hero,' and I felt American society had arrived at that conclusion without much thinking, but rather as some sort of patriotic 'knee-jerk' into hero worship," he wrote. "That was my point. I did it [admittedly] in such an insensitive way, that the article was not worth publishing."

 

 

UMass president Jack Wilson issued a statement saying the comments in The Daily Collegian on Wednesday were "a disgusting, arrogant and intellectually immature attack on a human being who died in service to his country."

 

 

The newspaper's editorial board ran a letter to readers in Thursday's edition saying Gonzalez's views do not reflect The Collegian's opinion.

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Sad thing is he could have written an excellent column about how the media have been over-killing (no pun intended) Tillman's death. I mean, this guy did everything possible not to stick out in the crowd, but now when he's dead, just about every media outlet is going against his wishes. Personally, I got sick of all the coverage by the first day.

 

Problem is, this grad student would have had to, you know, think before he wrote (something I have a problem doing myself, btw...)

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This guy is fucking clownshoes. Opposed to the war in Iraq? Fine. Opposed to our actions in Afghanistan? Go for it! Opposed to the LIVES of the HUMANS in our military... I can't fucking believe it. All I can say is this, he should thank his lucky fucking stars that hes in a country founded on personal freedoms, because I'm a liberal man, and even I want him the fuck out.

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1) I hope this little fucker realizes that anyone in ANY Armed Forces training for the wrong reasons (Rambo-esque adventures) would be weeded out before being shipped anywhere. You get to where Tillman got, you have to be in it for more than just adolecent, Hollywood fantasy

 

2) I don't know if this is dead on, but a sports show host in NYC figured that this little fucker was probably someone without much of a family structure and didn't know anything about what it means to serve to protect freedom. What it means to fight for ANY cause (just or unjust) and the actual meaning of the word, Patriot.

 

Steve

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2) I don't know if this is dead on, but a sports show host in NYC figured that this little fucker was probably someone without much of a family structure and didn't know anything about what it means to serve to protect freedom. What it means to fight for ANY cause (just or unjust) and the actual meaning of the word, Patriot.

The fact he's a grad student at a Northeastern University pretty much says all I need to know in order to figure out his ticker...

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Guest Dids
I just tried to read the whole column online, but the UMass paper is getting too much traffic. This story is on CNN.com and ESPN.com right now.

 

I wonder what else will happen with this? A couple of years ago, a U of Washington student wrote a column basically saying Yao Ming was not a positive role model for young Asian males, because he played a sport dominated by Black men. Which is bad, the guy wrote, because Black people are all ghetto and ignorant and what-not. At the next UW basketball game, there were people picketing the UW paper and calling for this guy's head. They got like 100+ letters about the column.

 

I'd like to see how the UMass campus reacts to Gonzalez.

Heh, I happened to randomly read the Daily that day and saw that. That guy was a massive idiot.

 

The Tillman guy, he just wanted attention. I kinda think his editor should have warned him that he was going to fuck up his life for the next two years if it got printed. (ETA- when I say "The Tillman guy" I mean the writer, not Tillman. I'm one of the least patriotic, most anti-war guys you can find and *I* respect Pat Tillman).

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