Happy Valley Photo Essay

[_sock puppet]

I think this whole Shumway photo essay and DCP's comments episode reveals DCP to be clueless about how he comes across to others when dishing out his mopologetics and/or to not possess the self-discipline to restrain himself when it would be discrete to do so.

When this is considered in the context of just 6 weeks he ago he fouled thecafeteria by violating its charter groundrules--the domino that led to its collapse--the real DCP emerges as the proverbial bull in the China shop.

[_Doctor Scratch]

I'm betting that we won't see any more "Comments" from DCP on that Web site.

[_sock puppet]

I'm betting that we won't see any more "Comments" from DCP on that Web site.

Doctor Scratch, I hope you didn't put $10,000 on the bet with Mitt Romney.

His Pomposity just posted this:

My "attitude"?

I've attacked nobody. I've done no name-calling. But anybody who cares to scroll through the comments here will see that I've been called a large variety of very insulting names.

And then, in a richly comical gesture, the very people who've been insulting me and calling me names exhort me to be more accepting of other opinions and to treat other folks with more respect.

Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2011/12/05/hap ... z1gNoq0E4A

[_Jersey Girl]

Do I need to bundle up the condescending remarks he made and post them here?

Because I'll do it.

[_Stormy Waters]

Insulting the quality of the photography was petty and vindictive.

But what if the photographs really weren't all that great? They looked, to me, like someone handed his or her 12 year-old kid a camera and set him or her loose to snap a bunch of random shots.

I am artistically illiterate, so I cannot comment on the quality of the photos. What I meant was that the apologists were just insulting the photography because they were lashing out at the artist for speaking unfavorably of Mormonism.

[_schreech]

Do I need to bundle up the condescending remarks he made and post them here?

Because I'll do it.

I say yes...I can't stand the navigation on that site.

[_Jersey Girl]

Here's one of the denial comments he made previously:

Oddly, the bitterness, anger, and condescension seem to be coming almost entirely from the CRITICS of the Evil Trio of Hamblin, Parker, and Peterson. Certainly all of the name-calling does.

Really?

My apologies. I would never have guessed -- how could I? -- that, in order for you to desire heaven, I need to express public enthusiasm for Mr. Shumway's photographs, to be awestruck at the idea of a sixteen-year-old reading Nietzsche and Sartre and Fromm, and to agree that Mormons are forbidden to watch television or visit friends on Sunday . I do hope you'll reconsider.

I don't actually have any strong feelings about the photographs, one way or the other. They don't offend me, but they don't seem particularly remarkable in any other way, either. (Am I permitted to respond to them that way?) I thought the little essay somewhat pretentious, and not overly accurate. (Is it permissible to say that?)

I haven't been angry at all -- what's there to be angry about? mediocre photography is scarcely cause for indignation -- and not even remotely as condemnatory as the people who have criticized me here.

I suppose the mediocrity of Mr. Shumway's photographs would be easier to forgive if it weren't for the intellectual pretentiousness of the accompanying article. I mean, Wow. Like, umm, he read Friedrich Nietzsche (note the correct spelling) and Jean-Paul Sartre and Erich Fromm at sixteen? So did I. In California. And now I'm a believing Mormon academic.

And Mormons can't watch television on Sundays? What's with those Tabernacle Choir broadcasts on Sunday mornings, then? And those other Church-produced Sunday television programs on Church history and the like? And we shouldn't visit friends on Sundays? What???

Nonsense.

In this area, set up for comments on a set of photographs and a little accompanying essay, I said that I wasn't especially impressed by the photographs and that I thought the essay, which was not written by the photographer, suffered from a sense of complacent superiority to the subjects of the photographs.

For that offense against the kind and civil discourse that they claim to advocate, a small group of critics here (many of them familiar to each other and to me from another location on the web) have, thus far, repeatedly called me “discourteous,” a “know-it-all,” “disgusting,” “cruel,” “hostile,” “hurtful,” “petulant,” “disdainful” "bitter," merely “reflexive” rather than thoughtful, “nasty,” “disrespectful,” “vitriolic,” "angry," "condescending," “rude,” a "goon," "insecure," "foolish," a “hack,” a “buffoon,” “petty,” and suffering from a “persecution complex,” claiming that my allegedly horrible behavior here is damaging the image of my church and my university.

Their comments strike me as . . . well, a bit ironic.

The responses to my
comments here have been fascinating, if not always amusing.



I commented pretty
straightforwardly that I didn’t find Mr. Shumway’s photographs very memorable,
but that I did find the little accompanying essay somewhat pretentious: Mr. Shumway’s independence of mind, it
implies – demonstrated by what he was reading at sixteen – led him to transcend
the provincial religiosity of “Happy Valley.”
But, as it happens, I read those same three authors at the very same age
in greater Los Angeles, and I’m a believing Latter-day Saint. So the implication seems problematic.


Contrary to
allegations here, I never suggested that every person needs to, or does, have
exactly the same experience with the Church.
I said nothing about that subject one way or the other.


I do find it somewhat
ironic, though, that several here seem to think that everybody should
experience, value, and appreciate Mr. Shumway’s photographs the same way they
do, or else should shut up about it. The
celebration of diversity, it seems, has distinct limits.

Nor did I say that we can't learn from those with different experiences or perceptions. I said nothing about that topic, either.

You and your allies here have been far harsher toward me than I was toward Brian Shumway and the author of the accompanying essay, and, in your demand that I validate and not criticize someone else's experience (which I never actually did), have effectively insisted that I deny mine. And you, of all people -- we both know your history -- should be careful about claiming that I mock others. You routinely mock my beliefs and my friends in ways that I have never done and would never do.

And, once again, the Maxwell Institute has absolutely nothing to do with this. I wasn't "coming from" the Maxwell Institute. (I have my own interests in photography and art, and, if I'm not mistaken, I'm permitted to have and express opinions on those topics.) That was a venture in well-poisoning and irrelevance. Mike Parker doesn't work for the Maxwell Institute; he lives hundreds of miles from it. And Bill Hamblin doesn't work for the Maxwell Institute, either. Your (successful) attempt to drag the Maxwell Institute into this was both a red herring and an ad hominem.

In my opinion, there was and is condescension here, but it's in the essay and, very arguably, in the photographs. It's precisely that condescension to which I objected.

Does he likewise object to his OWN condescension?

Does the man not know that what's coming out of his keyboard is viewable on the screen?

[_Jersey Girl]

Earth to you, Peterson. Belittling the work of others isn't a critique. It's a thinly veiled passive-aggressive attack.

[_Simon Belmont]

Simon, you are one odd duck. You know, you couldn't have paid me to put my name to Dr. Peterson's comments. I don't care whether "nuclear-grade meltdown" is the appropriate phrase or not. But, for many of us, it would take something big to move us to begin airing that kind of dirty laundry in popular public venue and under our own names. So forgive us for being average folks who find all of this odd, or not being the kind of people who think this is "run of the mill" online behavior for public comments on the website of a major national news source, but we are entitled to find it strange. Some might even think that our reaction was perfectly normal, predictable even.

Yes, the world is not full of flowers and rainbows, Kishkumen. What makes it colorful is it's diversity of ideas. When someone misrepresents someone else's faith, as that essay did, calling one person's experiences the standard for all of Mormonism, others are free to correct. That is what the comments section is for. What DCP said was very mild, and more mild than some of the other commentators. Why harp on him?

But, hey, that's OK, there are lots of people in the world. Some, like you, Will, and Dr. Peterson, would happily talk about Scratch, the "Malevolent Stalker," by way of apologia pro sua vita in a national public venue. There are also people who would willingly appear on Jerry Springer and there punch out their lesbian lover's ex-husband or what have you. That may not be the kind of thing I would do, but we can agree that there are those people.

"Scratch" is a pseudonym, so any reference to "Scratch" is not a reference to an actual real person.

Rest assured, if Scratch dared to post under his actual identity, and DCP or anyone else constantly said untrue things about him for five full years, I'd stick up for Scratch too.

[_Jersey Girl]

Belmont

When someone misrepresents someone else's faith, as that essay did, calling one person's experiences the standard for all of Mormonism, others are free to correct.

What was misrepresented?