Massacre At Mountain Meadows Review

[_beastie]

Those are the people I have lined up thus far. Why do you keep pretending that I place no value on expertise in nineteenth-century Utah and Mormon history and on the Mountain Meadows Massacre?

Wait. Weren't you the one who just suggested Howe as a reviewer?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Wait. Weren't you the one who just suggested Howe as a reviewer?

He was one of several leads that I'm pursuing. He came very highly recommended to me.

And, apparently, Oxford University Press thought of him, too. (They probably didn't have your address.)

Do you have any reason to believe that he's completely ignorant on this topic?

[Tator]

He was one of several leads that I'm pursuing. He came very highly recommended to me.

And, apparently, Oxford University Press thought of him, too. (They probably didn't have your address.)

Do you have any reason to believe that he's completely ignorant on this topic?

I asked you if you were aware of any background knowledge in the topic on Howe's part. Your reply was to link me to a website that contained information I had already read. Nothing in his resume would indicate a background in this topic in particular. You are the one asserting that you do look for a certain amount of background experience in the topic. You had already contacted Howe. So did you or did you not look into his background experience in the topic?

by the way, I'm betting that the fact that Oxford published his award winning book may have something to do with the fact that they asked him to write a laudatory blurb.

Do jacket blurbs mean anything other than an obligation to a publishing company?

I don't really care who you get to review the book, by the way. FARMS is an apologetic organization with a clear goal and purpose. I feel very safe guessing all reviews will be laudatory in the extreme.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I asked you if you were aware of any background knowledge in the topic on Howe's part.

I wrote to some historians that I know and asked them for recommendations. His name came up. I've also contacted some of the others.

You surely have to realize that the pool of non-Mormon professional historians who have devoted any significant portion of their careers to the study, specifically, of the Mountain Meadows Massacre is extremely small, if it even really exists.

I'm doing the best I can with what I have.

You're welcome to do better.

I don't really care who you get to review the book, by the way. FARMS is an apologetic organization with a clear goal and purpose. I feel very safe guessing all reviews will be laudatory in the extreme.

I don't. The review I already have in hand is positive, but scarcely "laudatory in the extreme." And it's by a Latter-day Saint.

I can't guarantee -- though you evidently can -- that the non-Mormon historian(s) that I may persuade to write for us will be "laudatory in the extreme," and I rather doubt that any reputable non-Mormon historian is going to view himself or herself as a Mormon apologist.

But you're plainly more clued into such things than I am, so I shouldn't doubt.

[_beastie]

I wrote to some historians that I know and asked them for recommendations. His name came up. I've also contacted some of the others.

You surely have to realize that the pool of non-Mormon professional historians who have devoted any significant portion of their careers to the study, specifically, of the Mountain Meadows Massacre is extremely small, if it even really exists.

I'm doing the best I can with what I have.

You're welcome to do better.

It would have been a lot easier had you just admitted this from the beginning. I am sure that the pool of people who have devoted significant study to MMM is quite small. You have limited the pool even more by excluding Bagley and Quinn.

I don't. The review I already have in hand is positive, but scarcely "laudatory in the extreme." And it's by a Latter-day Saint.

I can't guarantee -- though you evidently can -- that the non-Mormon historian(s) that I may persuade to write for us will be "laudatory in the extreme," and I rather doubt that any reputable non-Mormon historian is going to view himself or herself as a Mormon apologist.

But you're plainly more clued into such things than I am, so I shouldn't doubt.

I was using the word "laudatory" as a reference to Howe's brief reply to you. Positive is fine.

I never said a nonmormon would view him or herself as a Mormon apologist. What I did say was pretty clear.

At any rate, I'd rather get back to the topic instead of enabling another diversion.

[_Mister Scratch]

So who, exactly, do you have in mind?

Do you really insist that it has to be Will Bagley, in the FARMS Review, or nothing? (What specific Mountain Meadows Massacre expertise has Mike Quinn demonstrated?)

Although contacting Juanita Brooks is a theoretical possibility for me, that doesn't seem to be a viable option for you.

The Mormon historians I've got writing for me thus far have published on the Mountain Meadows Massacre specifically, in the one case, and, in the other, very extensively on nineteenth-century Mormon and Utah history.

You obviously don't think that a Pulitzer-Prize-winning American historian counts (though Oxford University Press appears to have thought otherwise). So who is it that you demand that I publish on the subject?

I have no idea. I'm not in the field.

I guess it's naïve of me to expect that people writing a fairly detailed review of a text would have enough background experience in the topic to give a well-informed opinion.

"Background experience" has never been a pre-requisite for publication in the FARMS Review. Just ask Gary Novak and Russell McGregor. The only real "background" necessary is being friends with DCP.

[_dblagent007]

I'm going to respond more later, but quickly want to respond to one item in particular:

I have struggled to reconcile the contradictory ideas of massacre-as-demonstration-of-power with massacre-must-be-concealed.

You must be kidding.

Young never intended the threat to be "Mormons will attack and kill emigrant trains". The threat was that INDIANS would attack and kill emigrant trains. And that was never covered up - in fact, that was trumpeted as THE cause of MMM. What was covered up was Mormon involvement, and that was never in BY's interest to promote.

This is such an obvious flaw in the argument you shared here it's hard to take the rest seriously.

Okay, don't take it seriously. But, please help me understand how you dismiss it so quickly.

The Indians were initially blamed, but it seems more in an exculpatory way than in a chest beating "don't mess with BY or we will stop transcontinental travel" way. By the way, did BY or the church actively publicize MMM in a way that supports your thesis?

[_Daniel Peterson]

It would have been a lot easier had you just admitted this from the beginning.

Does such an entirely obvious thing really have to be "admitted" -- whether by me or by anybody else?

[_Daniel Peterson]

"Background experience" has never been a pre-requisite for publication in the FARMS Review. Just ask Gary Novak and Russell McGregor. The only real "background" necessary is being friends with DCP.

You poor, pathetic, obsessive, malevolent nutcase. You simply have to make this about me.

Many if not most of those who've written for the FARMS Review -- two or three hundred of them, by now -- are people I've never so much as met.

The following is a standard response:

Master Scartch has devoted himself since at least 2006 to publicly defaming me while maintaining his anonymity. A particular focus of his hatred is the FARMS Review, which I founded and edit.

The FARMS Review has been appearing, now, for very nearly twenty years. The entirety of every issue of the Review is available on line, at

http://farms.byu.edu/publications/review/

Anyone interested in inspecting the FARMS Review for himself or herself, without Scartch’s defamatory spin, without Scartch’s hostile selection and editing, without looking through the distorting Scartchian lens, is entirely welcome to do so.

I regard Master Scartch as an obsessive and malevolent loon, and have decided to refrain from further gratifying his weird fixation on me and those connected with me. Attempting conversation with him over the past many months has accomplished precisely nothing, and is, plainly, a complete waste of my time -- especially given the fact that it's his self-described "mission" and "amusement" to be "perceived" by "Mopologists" as "full of hate." (Scartch, MDB, 1 October 2008)

[_beastie]

Okay, don't take it seriously. But, please help me understand how you dismiss it so quickly.

The Indians were initially blamed, but it seems more in an exculpatory way than in a chest beating "don't mess with BY or we will stop transcontinental travel" way. By the way, did BY or the church actively publicize MMM in a way that supports your thesis?

Did BY or the church need to publicize MMM?

You aren't denying that BY used the threat of Indian violence to pressure the feds, are you?