|
A repuke friend said that today, so I took a few excerpts from various articles and emailed the idiot. Haven't heard back, but I thought some of you DUers might find them interesting. BTW, this repuke clown flunked out of college more than once, and eventually dodged the draft thanks to his rich daddy's influence and a nice, safe slot with the National Guard.
Behind the scenes of football glory, Pat worked diligently on his marketing degree - graduating Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Marketing from ASU's prestigious W.P. Carey School of Business in just three and a half years (3.85 GPA). His intense focus and sheer determination led him to three consecutive selections to the Pac-10 All-Academic Football Team, a 1st team Academic All-American honor, as well as the NCAA's Post-Graduate Scholarship for academic and athletic excellence. Perhaps Pat's most impressive accomplishment as an ASU student was the high regards he received from nearly everyone he came in contact with, especially his professors and coaches.
"You don't find guys that have that combination of being as bright and as tough as him," said Phil Snow, Pat's defensive coordinator at ASU. "This guy could go live in a foxhole for a year by himself with no food."
Despite Pat's popularity in college, he remained humble and unassuming while continuously striving to improve himself. He was known for his well-thought out questions, which he used to stir up conversations in topics ranging from international political systems, world religions, or more trivial matters like the best type of sausage or merits of a good latte, to the personal concerns of his friends. However, his periodic visits with family and close friends became essential to 'recharge his batteries'.
----------------------------------------------------------
Tillman talked about everything, with everyone. According to the speakers, he had read the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and he underlined passages constantly. Garwood recalled how he'd mail articles to friends, highlighting certain parts and writing in the margins: "Let's discuss.'' A quotation from Emerson, found underlined in Tillman's readings, adorned the program.
----------------------------------------------------------
Pat Tillman turned down a five-year; $9 million offer to sign with the St Louis Rams in 2001, citing his loyalty to the Cardinals. He accepted a one-year deal worth $512,000. The following season, Pat Tillman was offered a three-year contract worth $3.6 million, but enlisted in the U.S. Army instead.
----------------------------------------------------------
Tillman joined the Army specifically to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but was sent to participate in the invasion of Iraq against his wishes. He called the invasion, "so fucking illegal."
--He was an avid reader and fan of Noam Chomsky. Tillman was scheduled to meet Chomsky upon his return from Afghanistan.
--Tillman was an independent-minded, outspoken Bush critic who planned to vote for John Kerry.
----------------------------------------------------------
Furthermore, it turns out that the brainy Tillman, who while an NFL player, pursued his masters in history, hadn't signed up to parrot the administration line. His self-appointed mission was to fight bin Laden and Taliban. He was thus dismayed to find himself briefly stationed in Iraq, which he thought was an illegal war.
Not only that but, as his mother said, "a friend of Pat's even arranged a private meeting with Chomsky, the antiwar author , to take place after his return from Afghanistan--a meeting prevented by his death."
----------------------------------------------------------
THE CHOMSKY FACTOR
Tillman, we now know, was also in contact with one of his favorite authors, America's leading intellectual dissident, Noam Chomsky. According the Chronicle, Tillman had set up a meeting with Chomsky to take place when he returned from Afghanistan, where he eventually wound up after serving his tour in Iraq.
This image of a Chomsky-loving, anti-Bush, anti-Iraq-war hero (at a time when most of the U.S. population supported the administration's foreign policy), flew in the face of the official Bush administration portrait of Tillman, painted by dutiful media whores like Ann Coulter, who once described him in near-racialist terms as "An American original--virtuous, pure and masculine, like only an American can be." (Max Blumenthal, blogging for the online Huffington Post, asked if we could have Coulter's line in the original German).
As both wars droned on, Tillman, the picture perfect poster boy, evolved into something of a wild card. With a Chomsky meeting on the horizon there existed a very real possibility that Tillman, in the weeks leading up to the 2004 presidential election, might go public with his anti-war, anti-Bush views, dealing a critical blow to the very foundation of the Bush administration's propaganda pyramid. That day never came, however. On April 22, 2004, Tillman was killed while on patrol in Afghanistan by three American bullets to the head.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
