You can learn a lot from a man with intellectual curiosity. George Michael Evica was that kind of man.
The lack of this kind of curiosity defines a leader like George Bush - swagger, self-assured, stubborn and mostly wrong.
George Michael Evica was the antithesis of people like George Bush.
George Michael Evica, the longtime host of Assassination Journal, which was broadcast each Tuesday on WWUH, died this past weekend.
He laughed at those who dismissed him as a conspiracy-theorist, and rightfully so, because much of what he presented on his show that seemed, on the surface outlandish, impossible and unbelievable, eventually proved to be the the truth.
If he wasn't cutting close to the truth so often, then there's little explanation for the reams of files that our government kept on him.
George Michael was brilliant, gracious, funny, acerbic and until the late stages of his cancer, indefatigable.
I listened to his show regularly. It was a forerunner of many of the shows which we now consider pioneers of alternative news and broadcasting. I can't say there's any one story or fact that stands out as eureka moment for me, because there were so many of them. And George Michael's great ability to synthesize, and connect-the-dots, allowed him to point the light of his intellect at shadowy areas that threaten democracy.
What I learned most from George Michael was a way of thinking. Ask questions. Don't accept facile facts. Don't believe what your government tells you (and unfortunately, this is a necessary practice most of the time.) Don't believe what you read in the papers (this is something my dad told me too). And most of all, don't settle for anything less than the truth.
I thought of George Michael this morning when I heard a newscaster report that US military leaders in Iraq say violent attacks are down, proving that the "surge" is working. The newscaster reported this government report as fact. I thought, "Who created this report? What figures are they using? Why would they want me to believe this? If violence has decreased, what are the real facts (neighborhood-by-neighborhood ethnic cleansing, the flight of the monied and intellectual classes, alliances with forces which were once considered the enemy). And finally, why should I believe anything the government, especially this government, is telling me?
Do I believe what that newscaster said? No. Could it be the truth? Maybe, but unlikely. I'll wait for the facts.
And for this healthy skepticism, I can thank George Michael Evica. We'll miss him at WWUH, and his audience will miss his absence every Tuesday at noon.
UPDATE: I've had unconfirmed reports that Susan Campbell will read her Hartford Courant tribute to George Michael on WWUH during what had been his Tuesday noon slot on 11/13. Also take the time to read Colin McEnroe's excellent blog about Evica, and while you're at it, read his obit on Mailer.
2 comments:
Thank you very much, again, Ed, for your kind words. Few ever take the time to discover the truth for themselves as my father did.
For those who feel moved to do so, there is a memorial service and reception to follow at St. John's Episcopal Church, 679 Farmington Avenue in West Hartford, at 11 a.m. on Saturday, November 17.
Donations in place of flowers, please can be made to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 10 Brookline Place West, 6th Floor; Brookline, MA 02445-7226
For those who would feel more comfortable doing so, i also encourage you to make a gift In Memoriam to WWUH, without which my father's reach would have been so much smaller.
Thank you again.
I sent the following to the Courant Forum in response to Susan Campbell's excellent tribute. If I get a chance to present it (or an abbreviated version) at tomorrow's memorial service or reception, I would be honored to do so.
As a long-term colleague, friend, and admirer of George Michael, I grieve his passing. He was a legend, not quite on the Camelot level of the man he admired and studied so much, especially after his gruesome assassination, but a legend nonetheless. Though maligned by Vincent Bugliosi and others, Evica was, to me--and at the risk of parroting Gilbert & Sullivan--the very image of integrity in pursuit of justice.
I can add a perspective others perhaps can't on GM. I taught the first course on the JFK assassination with him. We even netted a spread in Parade Magazine, a dubious "honor" not often bestowed upon academics.
Co-teaching that course was a wonderful and difficult experience. Wonderful because close interaction with GM was stimulating and challenging in ways "normal" academe rarely is. Difficult essentially for the same reason: George Michael was prone to flights of fancy and elaborate, at least triangular, connections. To him, these proved or strongly suggested guilt by association, but that strained credulity and called for closer scrutiny, which I tried to supply, sort on the fly.
In this way, hoping not to be misunderstood on such a serious topic, I was the equivalent of his "straight man" on a comedy team. It was as if I was always chasing him with "however" and "how sure are you of that?" To his everlasting credit, GM was okay with that, patiently providing chapter and verse when available, or promising to return with further evidence, which he did.
I shall remain forever grateful to George Michael Evica for this introduction to "sleuthing" just after I finished my PhD and was looking for an interesting diversion. I have not yet made it through Bugliosi's enormous Reclaiming History, but I owe it to GM, and to a former student and naysayer about GM who said I must, to do so.
Even if Bugliosi convinces me Oswald did it, I shall still sing hosannas to my mentor who pushed me to look behind established (or establishment?) "facts" and who warned me I would end up on the FBI's list if I associated with him and wrote to Castro asking about Ruby. In these chilling days of government snooping, that isn't as amusing as I thought it was at the time.
Thank you, George Michael. May you rest in peace, knowing you did your best as a passionate public intellectual.
Fondly,
Harald
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