Midgley wrote:Dr. VelhoBurrinho seems to have bought hook, line and sinker the kind of thing that Simon Southerton, a certain Australian former Latter-day Saint, who is is a plant geneticist, argues. And hence, it seems, that the "Little Old Donkey" is no longer believes that there were Lehites, and hence that the Book of Mormon is fiction fashioned by Joseph Smith. This seems to explain why he posts as Dr. LOD (Little Old Donkey) on that violently hate filled fake Dr. Shades board. To see clearly what this entails, all one has to do is to notice the up and down voting from the fake Doctors and Professors that slither in from that sewer.
This explains why Dr. VelhoBurrinho is hostile to both Professor Peterson and me. And it may help explain his absurd claim that I have a a latent racial bigotry toward Maori Latter-day Saints.
The previous tiny little difference of opinion that Professor Peterson and I had with "Little Old Donkey" over whether the traces of the DNA of the three migrations mentioned in the Book of Mormon now be present in all native Americans rests on ignorance of the reasons this simply has to be so.
But sic et non is not the place to try to sort these issues with the Little Old Donkey. Those who have tried to follow his absurd claim that what is commonly know as the Maori Latter-day Saint historical narrative is not something that I fashioned as a missionary in New Zealand in 1950, which I am not trying to project on the Maori Saints.
And for the Little Old Donkey to claim, as he does, that Dan and I are trying to deal with the rubbish being peddled by Rodney Meldrum about where the events described in the Book of Mormon took place is rubbish.
In another post, quoted here, Midgley seems to attach Dr. LOD on the basis of his ethnic ancestry:
Midgley wrote:Sam, the "highly educated native American--the infamous Dr. VelhoBurrinho (or Little Old Donkey) if he notices your remark, will accuse you of merely co-oping the story of those people who have had their culture trashed by you as you project your opinions on them in an effort to have trophy Polynesian members to shore up your own stupid faith.
And Dr. LOD punches back:
Dr. LOD wrote:Professor Midgley, by the tone of your post it is very clear you are picking out my race and heritage. That sir is racism.
I have only criticized or challenged your opinions or beliefs that you have shared here. I never did a personal attack against your appearance, race, national origin, sexuality, or age.
About your religion which we do share, the closest I would have come to anything was to challenge your loose use of "Saints" when you try to justify what really is bad behavior on your part in "defending" the church.
Suffice it to say that issues of race are rather tense at the moment over on "Sic et Non"--at least, to anyone who is paying attention. Unless, perhaps, you are the blog's chief author, owner, and proprietor, that is. Just get a load of his latest post, entitled, "A couple of songs from my first residence in the Middle East." Now, DCP has taken heat in the past for his, uh, "checkered" past as an insensitive youth traveling in the Middle East. While he attempts to frame this entry through the lens of "folk music," it doesn't really do much to help out the basic odiousness of the post. This is the set up:
Peterson wrote:My first stay in the Middle East was six months with a BYU study abroad group in Israel. For roughly the first half of that 1978 program — just eleven years after Israel had seized control of East Jerusalem (and the West Bank and the Sinai and the Golan Heights) during the Six-Day War of 1967 — we were housed (and had our classes) in the Vienna Hotel, a Palestinian establishment in an Arab neighborhood called Shaykh Jarrah. (The building has long since been demolished.)
Huh. Well, at least the conflict was "eleven years" in the past, which sort of makes you wonder why he's using those political details to set the stage. But he soon reveals the basic "western" attitudes that he and his young comrades had towards the Middle East and its people:
SeN wrote:The Vienna Hotel wasn’t exactly the Ritz Carlton. Here’s a song that my roommate and I (mostly my roommate, if I recall correctly) made up in honor of that august place of lodging:
V is for the vermin in the bathtub.
I is for the instant milk we drink.
E is for the broken elevator.
N is for that nasty sewer stink.
N is for the nutrients we’re lacking.
A’s for Abu Fu’ad slinging slop.
Put them all together, it’s “Vienna.”
For refugee camps, it’s the top!
Since we aren't given any more details (such as whether any of this is even remotely true), you have little choice but to see it as a sort of "first world" arrogance: here are these spoiled white American kids, flipping the bird at the "poor, impoverished 'Other'". I have to admit, the line that bothers me the most is this: "A's for Abu Fu'ad singling slop." Is this ignorance? I.e., DCP and his friend just didn't understand the food? Did it look "weird" to them? Like: "Ewww! Those gross Japanese people eat raw fish!!!" That kind of thing--racism born out of ignorance? Or, was the food just not "up to snuff" according to the sophisticated palates of these budding young "Men from Davos"?
But the story gets even better (or worse, I guess?):
DCP wrote:Somewhere near the midway point of our program, we spent a couple of weeks up north in the Galilee, first at the collective farm Kibbutz Deganya Alef or Deganya A (דְּגַנְיָה א’). The permanent settlement was established in 1910, making it the earliest socialist Zionist farming commune in Israel. It’s sometimes called “the mother of all kibbutzim.”
We were essentially agricultural workers, spending much of our time pruning banana trees. (In order to escape the banana-tree pruning detail, I volunteered to spend most of one night loading geese onto trucks. They bite. I went back to pruning banana trees. They don’t bite.)
But that’s a story for another time. Anyway, here’s a little piece that my roomate and I made up, to be sung to the tune of “Go Down, Moses.” I would sing it, with choral response, while we were working in the fields. Galbraith, of course, refers to the director of the BYU Jerusalem Program at the time, David Galbraith (later a friend and BYU faculty colleague). Izzy (presumably short for Israel) was one of the leaders of Kibbutz Deganya Alef, and the person most responsible for our group’s being there:
When BYU was in Israel land
(Let my people go!)
They worked so hard they could not stand.
(Let my people go!)
Go down, Galbraith! Go down Deganya way!
Tell old Izzy, “Let my people go!”
Wait, wait, wait.... DCP says he would "sing it, with choral response" while he was working in the fields?? So, basically, he was amusing himself by imagining that he was a black American slave, doing agricultural labor out "in the fields"? Because it really is impossible to separate that song from the history of American slavery. See here, for example, for your friendly Wikipedia listing for the song. (The entry notes that Harriet Tubman "used "Go Down Moses" as one of two code songs fugitive slaves used to communicate when fleeing Maryland.") And, of course, the song was popularized by the great African American singer, Paul Robeson.
Look: there is a part of me that wants to dismiss this sort of thing as mere "infelicities of youth." But if DCP was acting like a spoiled, naïve and racially insensitive twerp as a youth, then why is he bringing it up now? Especially considering the blows being exchanged by Midgley and Dr. LOD? I guess DCP thinks this sort of stuff is still "good for a laugh"?
In any case, it would be nice to get some clarification from him on what this was meant to accomplish. Quite embarrassing, if you ask me.
