Mister Scratch wrote:I was nosing around in some old MAD threads when I came across this:Daniel Peterson wrote:IMHO, Daniel, if [Grant Palmer's] book is such bunk, then why didn't Farms just ignore it? Instead of reviewing it not once or even twice for good measure, but FIVE times?
Whether the book is bunk or not, some people, as I say, have found it persuasive. Anyway, here's the scoop on the five reviews:
I first sought a single review. One person agreed to do it. He then recruited a colleague to help. Eventually, they decided they would prefer to write two separate reviews. Then two other people contacted me and asked me if they could say something about Palmer. Since they were both interesting writers, I said yes. But, by this point, I couldn't gracefully have told the first two reviewers to drop their writing even if I had felt so inclined -- which I didn't. That led to four reviews. And then, when my friend Jim Allen sent me a copy of his review, which he had been asked to write for BYU Studies but which had grown too long, I offered to run the full version (since I liked it), while BYU Studies ran a shorter version. Hence, five reviews. No panic, and no initial plan to publish so many. But I like them, and I'm happy to have published them.
The MAD thread in question can be accessed here:
http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index. ... topic=5277
What's intriguing about this quote, in my opinion, is the way that it reveals the sort of "Good Ol' Boy" network that is responsible for the output of FARMS Review. This DCP posting, coupled with the recent mention of the mysterious "l-skinny" BYU listserve, only helps to bolster the theory that FARMS Review truly is without serious academic merit, and is instead run by a "cabal" of Church "yes-men" who plot revenge on Church critics via their "l-skinny" gossip channel. Furthermore, the fact that The Good Professor was "happy to have published" a whopping five attack articles dealing with one "terrible" book, shows that the primary purpose of this journal is to launch "academic"-sounding character assassinations.
Anytime I read DCP's comments like this and the thread you linked, I am blown away with the mediocrity, stupidity, irrelevance this guy exhibits. The best I can describe is "Genuine Mormon Gossip Soap Opera".
My favored palabra de jour is, he calls GP's book "awful".
having said all this nasty things about him, I have to hand it to him; He is by far the most entertaining Mormon Apologetic
Clown there is.
I owe a deep gratitude to LDS Church to let Him entertain us infidels.
