The 2023 Sampson Avard Golden Scepter Award

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Or maybe pull a Time Magazine stunt and name "Mopologetic Mendacity" the award winner for 2022.

I always thought there should be the Golden Running with Scissors award for these guys. They’re so reckless, like Tim Ballard, that it’s inevitable they blow their lives up.

- Doc

[Kishkumen]

I always thought there should be the Golden Running with Scissors award for these guys. They’re so reckless, like Tim Ballard, that it’s inevitable they blow their lives up.

- Doc

Agreed. That's a fitting name for an award for these "skills."

[drumdude]

Congratulations Mike Parker!!

I've heard through the grapevine last week that relations between Mike Parker and DCP are chilly at best right now. Apparently, DCP is very disappointed that Mike isn't continuing his attack blog.

On the other hand, I've heard that Mike isn't too thrilled with DCP and feels he was hung out to dry with little or no support from DCP. Mike has learned a valuable lesson we've all known for years. Namely, Mopologetics is a harsh mistress, and that DCP is a total dick.

DCP got Mike to come out of retirement just for you.

Will he be brave enough to post on his blog again?

[I Have Questions]

Congratulations Mike Parker!!

I've heard through the grapevine last week that relations between Mike Parker and DCP are chilly at best right now. Apparently, DCP is very disappointed that Mike isn't continuing his attack blog.

On the other hand, I've heard that Mike isn't too thrilled with DCP and feels he was hung out to dry with little or no support from DCP. Mike has learned a valuable lesson we've all known for years. Namely, Mopologetics is a harsh mistress, and that DCP is a total dick.

Well this seems to have hit a nerve...

Over on the Peterson Obsession Board, there is a poster who goes by the pseudonym Everybody’s WC, or something of that sort. One of his odd specialities through the years has been inventing fictions about me that, unless and until he’s called on them, he tries to pass off as true. Among his most egregious lies was claiming to have been an unbelieving bishop who went on one of the tours that I led to Israel in order to observe at first hand my buffoonish antics and my shameless falsehoods. But that’s only one among many such instances. It’s pretty safe to assume, whenever he pretends to know me well or to have damning inside information on me from, say, my neighbors, my university colleagues, my former Maxwell Institute associates, my fellow volunteers in the Interpreter Foundation, and so on — he’s claimed all of these on various occasions — that he’s either lying or, much less likely, that he’s being played.

A few days ago, supposedly on the basis of intelligence from his supposed network of supposed informants, Everybody’s WC revealed to his eagerly credulous marks that relations between me and Mike Parker (a.k.a. “Peter Pan”) have grown frosty because of my refusal to come to Mike’s defense when his identity as the person behind the invaluable Neville-Neville Land blog came to public light. Since that was the first that I had ever heard of such “frost,” I wrote to Mike to ask him about it and to inquire whether he needed me to act in some way or to do something that I hadn’t. This is his reply, which I share here with his kind permission:

"Now that I’ve picked myself up off the floor from laughing so hard that I was wheezing, I can say no, there’s nothing that I need from you.
Honestly, where do these people get this stuff? There is not even a shadow of a thread of truth in his claim."

Not surprisingly, a gullible member of the audience for whom Everybody’s WC performs responded very quickly by reminding them of a previous act of similar disloyalty on my part: When my late and lamented friend Bill Hamblin was involved in an informal but public online debate with a prominent non-Latter-day Saint academic about the historicity of the Book of Mormon, I did not come to his assistance despite the fact (as they imagine it to be) that he was being badly beaten and publicly humiliated. This, of course, further confirms the verdict of Everybody’s WC, that I am [an unrepeatable epithet].

However, back in the day when that claim about my alleged disloyalty to Bill was all the buzz at the Obsession Board, I dropped a note to Bill about it. I explained to him that I had judged him to be doing just fine in his back-and-forth with Professor X, and that I hadn’t thought that he needed any help. Still, I asked, had he felt that I had let him down? Quite seriously and honestly, I wanted to know. No, he responded. He hadn’t needed any help, and I hadn’t let him down at all or left him twisting in the wind.

(I expect that the usual suspects will claim that I’m lying about that exchange with Bill, but it’s authentic. It’s just that I have literally thousands of notes from Bill and see little value in spending the time to comb through them all in order to find it: The Obsession Board would just dismiss it anyway.)

Mostly, I don’t respond to the myth-making of my Malevolent Stalker and of his less-talented wannabe, Everybody’s WC. Doing so in every case would be the equivalent of a full-time job, and not a very satisfying one. Now and again, though, I feel that I need to flatly deny some of the allegations, lest, unchallenged, they become a permanent part of my online “biography.” I apologize for taking the time and space here for so unworthy a subject.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 02137.html

Peter Pan (Mike Parker) commented:

I can and do gladly confirm Dan's account of our conversation.
Honestly, I've been busy with other things for the last few months and have let things slip with the Neville-Neville Land blog. I may take it up again sometime, or I may not. Either way, it boggles my mind that anyone would fabricate such an outrageous story about me.
The internet is full of people who need professional help.

Should we wait for the penny to drop?

[Moksha]

I think Dr. Peterson can make amends by publishing an article from Richard Nygren in the Interpreter.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Peter Pan (Mike Parker) commented:

I can and do gladly confirm Dan's account of our conversation. Honestly, I've been busy with other things for the last few months and have let things slip with the Neville-Neville Land blog. I may take it up again sometime, or I may not. Either way, it boggles my mind that anyone would fabricate such an outrageous story about me.The internet is full of people who need professional help.

Should we wait for the penny to drop?

Every accusation is a confession with these guys, so I have to accept that Mike “Peter Pan” Parker, from Bumfart, Utah is getting professional help. Let’s just hope it wasn’t from a recently jailed therapist!

- Doc

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Every accusation is a confession with these guys, so I have to accept that Mike “Peter Pan” Parker, from Bumfart, Utah is getting professional help. Let’s just hope it wasn’t from a recently jailed therapist!
- Doc

Indeed. Dave Sanderson posted this in response to Mike Parker:

Peter Pan: it boggles my mind that anyone would fabricate such an outrageous story about me.

That's exactly what Richard Nygren said a couple of months ago. Please, hold your applause.