"OARP! OARP! OARP!"
Posted on 05/03/2004 11:01:42 AM PDT by kidkosmic1
MICAH WRIGHT: "I WAS NEVER AN ARMY RANGER"
On his Delphi forum, Micah Wright has posted a confession – he never was an Army Ranger, something he had claimed since shortly after his debut as a comics writer, as well as the author of remixed Propaganda, a book which lampooned World War II-era American propaganda posters.
A version of statement had been on Wright's website since April 25th apparently, however, he opted to post it on his Delphi forum Saturday.
Wright began his statement (which has since been edited) with a recap of what he used to tout as his credentials, and then added: “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.”
Wright went on to say that he began using the Army Ranger lie shortly after he began “remixing” the posters – something which brought him numerous death threats. “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.”
According to his post, Wright felt the hoax/lie had gotten out of control when he spoke with the Washington Post last year, adding lie upon lie, heaping (he thought) obvious falsehoods so high that surely, a reporter, or at least a fact checker from the Post would notice them.
They didn’t.
“A day later, the article ran,” Wright posted. “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?”
Further down in the statement, Wright gives his reasoning for why he opted to come clean now, posting: “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."
However, this too may be a statement coming through a particular lens, as Newsarama has learned that tomorrow’s Washington Post will contain a story about Wright, exposing his Ranger story as a fiction.
Click the link above for Wright's full post.
In his biography on his homepage, all mentions of Army service have been removed, with this passage added: "Micah was cloned in a labratory from the DNA of Victor Lustig, Charles Ponzi, Frank Abagnale, Henry Gondorf and Limehouse Chappie. He is an accomplished practical joker, hoaxer of the Corporate Media and a fabulous & incredible prevaricator."
UPDATE: 5.02.04 - In his column in today's Washington Post, Richard Leiby, in speaking of Wright's record wrote:
"Wright, it turns out, is a liar. He never served in the military -- and confessed that last week to his publisher, Seven Stories Press, after we insisted on evidence of his service. Pursuing a tip from real Rangers who'd never heard of Wright, we filed three Freedom of Information Act requests with separate Army commands -- and last month finally confirmed that Wright never served."
according to Leiby, Seven Stories, who published Wright's You Back the Attack! We'll Bomb Who We Want! has cancelled publication of Wright's next book, If You're Not a Terrorist, Then Stop Asking Questions, and that the publisher will remove Wright's fictional account of parachuting into Panama under fire during Operation Just Cause from all future printings of You Back the Attack!
Gee, I was in Navy ROTC - does that make me a Seal?
Let's hear you bark for a fish.
"OARP! OARP! OARP!"
"OARP! OARP! OARP!"
Come on, now. Let's not oversimplify his reasoning. It's positively Kerryesque. It's not just that the media is at fault. It's more like:
A. People were threatening to kill him, so the lie was in self defense.As you can see, this was an amazing tour-de-force of BS-itude. Please don't dismiss it so casually.
B. People only listened to his Truth speaking if they thought he was a veteran, so lying was his noble sacrifice of his own dignity to further the Truth.
C. It wasn't a lie. It was a joke. To his amazement, people were just too stupid to catch on.
D. He tried to tell the truth by cleverly telling even bigger lies to the media. But he didn't realize the pro-military media are not allowed to question veterans, so it just came across as more lies.
E. It was more of a hoax than a lie, and he did it out of fun. But now it's not fun anymore, so I'm letting it go.
and finally...
F. I'm sorry for lying.
I wonder which version of it he really believes. He may not even know himself.
Now play a simple tune on the bike horns for us.
Extrapolation: He wasn't even in the Army.
The Real Military Record of George W. Bush: Not Heroic, but Not AWOL, Either
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