Micah Wright - Chairborne Ranger

My wife and I took a cruise to the eastern Carribean a few years back. At one of the stops, the cruise line offered a short scuba dive in a calm bay, something on the order of 15 to 20 minutes, I would guess. Since we both enjoy scuba diving, we signed up for the dive, took the gaily colored bus across the island, stopped at the scuba dive shop, got our gear, and headed for the beach. We each had the minimum; bathing suit, tank, regulator, weight belt, snorkel, mask, and fins. I think that was pretty much it, if I remember right.
In our group was a father-son team that looked like they were getting ready to work for Jacques Cousteau. They had (now remember, this is a half-day trip with a 20 minute dive on a carribean cruise, not a dive holiday trip) with them the following; wet suits with hoods, gloves, booties, their own regulator and octopus, dive gear bag full of other stuff that never made it out of the bag, dive computer/wrist depth guage, a very expensive BC with an emergency mini-tank, flashlite, and the son had a knife that he attached to his leg. We had to wait, with our gear on, for the two of them to get all suited up. The son has all sorts of trouble with his octopus leaking air and scaring off all the fish we were trying to feed, and he kept bobbing to the surface, never more than 15 or 20 feet above us. My wife ended up going to lay on the beach after the dive was half over, saying that she was a little cold. But I think the constant tapping and fussing with the gear that the man and son did turned her off of having a nice relaxing dive.
In the end, I'd be willling to guess that this man and his son were very inexperienced divers, probably had just finished thier diving classes prior to the cruise, and with credit card in hand, had bought nearly everything that looked cool in the dive shop that gave them their class and license. I've found that often times, people who are somewhat embarrassed by their inexperience in something make up for that by going overboard in some other way. I've seen it with skiers, boaters, rock-climbers, and many others.
So along comes this guy who does sometimes funny, sometimes witty, sometimes tin-foil hatted posters against...well you name it. He's clearly against President Bush and John Ashcroft, though if his fears were even a tenth as true as he wishes they are, he'd have been arrested years ago. His name is Micah Wright, and he is clearly talented (I don't know art, but I know what I like, and I had the Ann Coulter poster on my office wall, back when I had an office), and he says that he's anti-war, but he's been doing this since before the Iraq war started, so I'll put him in with the anti-America crowd. A quick peruse of his posters will show you that it's the normal "everything the US does is bad, everything the US opposes is good".
But Micah is a lot like the two guys I ran into on that dive in the Carribean. Since he was new at this activity (denouncing America), he decided to impress via useless baggage. Well, useless baggage is probably too nice a term for what he did, but it's useless baggage anyway. To help cement his ability to criticize without being called an America-Hater, and to help defray some of the comments he was sure to receive from those of us who did/do serve in the military, and just for his own shits and giggles, he invented a military past for himself. But not just any military past, no that wasn't good enough for Micah Wright, hater of America. (sing it now) He had to be an Airborne Ranger, lived him a life of guts and danger. He jumped into Panama. He got to kill both near and far. (end song) Not only did he invent this club he was to use on critics, he used it frequently and without mercy to defend his biases and his constant Bush/Ashcroft/America bashing. He out-Kerry'd Kerry, and assumed the current Kerry mantra, "How dare you criticize me, I've defended America, what have you done!" Only problem was, he hadn't. Not only had he not been an Army Ranger, he had never even been in the military. He says that he was in ROTC in college, but I find that kind of suspect as well, because he says that he "decided that eight years of military service was not for me and I left the program." I know about ROTC, it's how I got my commission. And not a single person I know in the program incurred an eight year obligation. So I think he might be lying about that as well. Let me tell you something else about ROTC, it's a cakewalk. It's by far the easiest way to get a commission in the Armed Services. That is why I chose ROTC. If he couldn't stomach the stroll-thru-the-park that is ROTC, then he's a pussy. He's a lying pussy. And he deserves to get his ass beat by every Ranger he walks by, from the 80 year old guys (they can do it) who climbed the cliffs at Point du Hoc on D-Day, to those who fight right now every day in Afghanistan and Iraq.
His website is called The Propaganda Remix Project. Propaganda. Remix. Indeed.
Lie to your girlfriend about your service so you can get laid. Lie to the guys down at the VFW so you can get a free drink. Lie to your buddies so you can pass on a great story that wasn't really about you, but it sounds better if you put yourself into it.
But don't lie to all of America so you can make a bigger profit off your book decrying war profiteering, you sack of shit. And don't lie about your service so you can pretend to be one of us.
Micah Wright, you don't deserve to lick the goat shit off the bottom of my desert boots, you lying leftist chickenshit.
(Update) You want to see something really funny, written by a real Airborne Ranger, who really did do a combat jump (Grenada) and really did shoot commies? Then click here and marvel at the Modern Drunkard, and notice that as near as I can tell, the editor never once mentions that he was an Airborne Ranger.
(Update II) In my comments section, Paul Stinchfield directs me to this post, by Mrs. Spoons, who dated Micah during the time he says he was in Panama. Of course that doesn't give us any new information, except that he had better taste then than he does now in who he kept company with. She says that he was in ROTC, but that even then he used his time there as a personal excuse machine, with virtually no intention of fulfilling his obligation. Thank God! The Army can absorb a lot of different personalities, but he is just plain damn creepy.
So I take back my statement that I think he was lying about being in ROTC. He didn't lie about that, he just lied about the only thing in his bio that made his posters worth thinking about.

Comments

[Paul Stinchfield]

Mrs Spoons reports that she knew Micah in college, and although he was in ROTC he was nonetheless already telling self-serving lies about it:
http://www.thespoonsexperience.com/archives/002152.php

[Diggs]

Paul, thanks, I've done an update.

[Flakbait]

I'm an MS-II in ROTC right novw at Iowa State University, and I can certify that, although he may be a lying sack of something or other in most ways, we're going four and four out of Army ROTC here: Four active, four reserve. Or eight active. But we're definitely doing eight years, so he's got his facts right there even if he is lying about personal inolvement.

[IraqNow]

For what it's worth, I'm the same age as Wright, and an ROTC graduate. I incurred an 8 year obligation, as well. It was the standard at that time.

Jason Van Steenwyk

[Black Oak]

Couple thoughts on his supposed ROTC activity. Got mine(commission) back in the mid 80's and things change - so this may no longer be accurate but:

1) your obligation length can vary. My total obligation was only 6 years because I didn't apply/get/want a scholarship. Those on scholarship had to do a total of 8 years.

2) There are two distinct phases of ROTC. Phase I is before you sign a contract. The classes (if memory serves) are more history/physical/outdoor oriented. Are usually 1 or 2 credits worth of an easy "A". You are under NO obligation at this point and aren't issued a uniform.

Phase II starts after you "sign your life away". You, at that point, have basically enlisted in the Army. You get issued a couple of uniforms. You will be entering the Army one way or the other. Either as a 2LT after graduation. Or as a "Spec 4, Chemical corps" if you decide to try and get out of the contract for whatever reason.

So, I don't think the Micah guy was ever in ROTC - at least not under contract. Maybe he attended some MS I & II level classes, but that's it. The uniform was bought for effect only.

The definitive "PX" Ranger

[Andrea Harris]

Great post... I just wanted to take issue with one thing -- the idea that the posters were "his" posters. What they actually are are old World War I and II posters, flyers, and so on that he merely altered the words, and perhaps some of the artwork, on, albeit in a clever way. But these works were actually created by others, and he does not deserve to claim them entirely as his own, and I wish others would not do that for him.

For the record, I also think that pop songs that depend on the "sampling" of other peoples' music for their own melodies, rhythms, and words are not purely creations of the person doing the sampling either. Call me old-fashioned.