First of two comics-wanks... Micah Wright, fake Ranger.
Found through a friend. I suppose the best way to introduce this would be to quote him, as I'm afraid I'd never heard of this creator before now...

"I can't fucking believe this. Micah Wright has long been someone who I've respected and whose work I've greately admired. Not just his work on Stormwatch: Team Achillies but his books of satirical political posters and his essays. Here was someone who is intelligent, articulate, and knew what the hell he was talking about when it came to warfare, who was taking a stand aganst the Bush junta and telling it like it is. We've exchanged emails a few times, chatted a few other times, and I've defended his stance aganst so many pro-War/pro-Bush supporters that it's not even funny.

Now it turns out he's been lying about being a former Army Ranger. That one of the things he has used as a cornerstone for a lot of his views is completely fucking false. Other than pissed off, I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this."

So, the links: Micah's Big Fat Lie & Apology, a thread on his personal forum. It's full of marvelous wank, but unfortunately, if you don't have an account, you can't see it. So, for those without Delphi Forums access, his confession:

"Hi.
My name is Micah Wright. I'm a former Army Ranger, and I've been lying to you. I've kept the secret for years now, but all lies grow and eventually get out of control. This is me coming clean about my Big Lie. What did I lie about? Oh, nothing much...

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.

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. 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 havenít been able to sleep and Iíve just about given myself an ulcer. It's all become too much. 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.

I lied, and I apologize for that from the bottom of my heart... it was a lousy thing to do and I'm sorry about it. A special apology is owed to the people who I hurt by putting them in the position of spreading my lie, people taken in by the Hoax, and people whose credibility I've helped corrode.

There was one thing that I didn't imagine, that I couldn't imagine: that a lie like this would grow and grow and eventually consume every facet of my entire life. It has weighed on my heart and on my mind for two full years now, slowly crushing my spirits, contaminating my friendships, and threatening to destroy everything about me. I'm well shed of it now. I just hope that others can find it in their hearts to forgive me.

And please... no more death threats."


Not so bad, eh? Except the man's fans, who'd been defending him for years against trolls, now feel horribly betrayed.

"A part of me hopes that it will turn out that someone hacked your account and posted this to discredit you. The bigger part of me wants to break your nose, and other body parts, for all the times that I and others here sprang to your defense when people attacked you on the basis of your past."

"I can understand, if not necessarily agree with, a number of the explanations that you gave for the Big Lie, even if I don't necessarily believe that they excuse it, especially since I've found myself committing at least a couple of Big Lies during my own life, without ever intending to do any malice with them.

And I thank you for not hiding behind the Big Lie any longer.

However, when you told this Big Lie, you were not just telling it to the Big Media or to the Political Opposition ... you were also telling it to us, and unlike the Big Media or the Political Opposition, we had no reason to check your story or disbelieve you, because we were already on your side.

Speaking as a former enlisted military member who has taken part in two foreign wars that were supposedly against terror, I find this especially troubling, because your perpetrating this particular Big Lie will basically have the effect of screwing over everyone like me - that is, veterans of foreign wars who are against our involvement in this current conflict - since now, every neoconservative pundit will be perfectly justified in dismissing our views by questioning the validity of our service to our country.

Just as Jayson Blair did for young black journalists, so too have you made things measurably worse for the group whom you purported to speak for and represent, and I hope that you realize this.

This is why, even though I still agree with the views that you have offered online and in your work, I have become uncertain as to whether I can support either of them in good conscience."



Of course, the "trolls" post too:
"FUCK YOU for using a lie in debate, especially for throwing it in other people's faces. I always knew you were lying about your military record, but I could never find solid proof and didn't want to speak up. You're also a completely worthless piece of shit, and I've always known that, too:
http://www.kevinparrott.com/archives/000207.html
http://www.kevinparrott.com/archives/000195.html
http://www.kevinparrott.com/archives/000151.html
http://www.kevinparrott.com/archives/000192.html

Anyone calling him "courageous" about his "honesty" should know that he was about to get busted for his lies soon, and was just heading off and trying to damage-control the scandal:

http://www.suasponte.com/wannabe/
http://www.socnetcentral.com/vb/showthread.php?s=1805fb57944df4666bebf01cdd21004b&threadid=36668

And you must also like the taste of feces. Because that's what he's been doing all this time - taking a giant shit right into all of your mouths, and laughing up his sleeve at you every time you wrote a word in his defense.

Reap it, you smug motherfuckers, reap it."

Said troll is immediately gagged "for insulting everyone who believed Micah". But, he has his defenders...

"I have to say that I think gagging or banning posters for just about *anything* they post to this thread is absolutely the wrong way to go with this. The veterans who came here to tell us Micah was lying were gagged too. THEY KNEW THE TRUTH, but were challenged to "prove it" and were belittled as "trolls".

Now you're going to gag anyone who crosses some line of civility in pointing out that many posters here refused to listen to the truth?

I can't see it. In almost any other online discussion, I'm the one who gets disgusted by the lack of civility. But this is a cause that many people have given their lives and their limbs for. Micah's behavior is beyond the pale, and although those who believed in him did so in good faith the truth is they could have done more to question why he refused to provide proof of his service in a more concrete way.

People who honestly thought they were in the right actually were "smug motherfuckers" in retrospect. You saw the responses the Socnet guys got. Now that we know they were right, how can we blame some for having that view of those who called them liars, deleted their posts and mocked them?"



Oh, good one -- lying about your fake army service is like being in the closet!

"It never really influenced me, but this lie will make it difficult for anyone to take things you say at face value. In a bizarro world tangent, this was the kind of reaction I got when I first came out of the closet. While I didn't actively lie, I certainly didn't correct a lot of people while I was in the closet. When I came out, it blew a lot of people's minds and I lost some people I had considered to be good friends at the time. The feelings you described about your grand lie, in essence, is what a lot of people in the closet feel like every day."

Uh huh, someone replies. "It is one thing to obfuscate the reality of own's sexuality in society that is not always friendly to homosexuality. But it is another thing to construct a past to add gravitas to one's opinions and sell books."


Oh, there's just so *much* wank, I can't post it all. I think I'll have to settle for the bits where Micah digs himself in deeper...

For example, the confession on Delphi wasn't the original version. Newsarama quotes him blaming the media for the lie by their not catching him earlier.

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."


"I just sacrified a book deal, costing me tens of thousands of dollars, told every employer I've had in the last three years that I'd lied to them, told the 250,000 comic book fans on the internet and any other Joe who stumbles along in the future, so to think that I'm somehow "getting off easy" is a bit ridiculous.

I confessed because I'm sorry I lied. That's all there is to this story. I understand if people can't accept an apology and my regrets."

Sigh... I really want to quote more on this, but I don't want to spam much further. (Especially with the totally cracked-out wank I'll be posting later today.) So, let's just leave with the Washington Post article, and of course, Micah Ian Wright's Credibility, for sale on Ebay (really cheap).

ETA: Comic Book Resources also has an article on the situation. It includes a quote of (Very Big Name) comic creator Kurt Busiek's post to Micah's thread, where he told him, "Stop defending yourself. It only makes it worse," among other things. It also has a statement by the Washington Post article writer that "the story Micah Wright is peddling (that he outed himself) is another outright lie."