The Origin of FAIR/MAD

[_Rollo Tomasi]

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

As it is yours. Come clean, Dan.

He's saying that you didn't "check out" (as you appear to be doing now) when your "friend" was ratting on Quinn to you.

I don't recall any such conversation lasting even sixty seconds. I suppose I should have run screaming from the room when the subject suddenly came up out of the blue. Alternatively, I could have decked the guy. Neither response strikes me as very civil or very normal.

How about just telling your "friend" not to gossip ... or you simply not continuing his gossip? Both would be civil and normal.

you giddily leaped at the opportunity to smear a critic of the Church. You lapped up the malicious gossip like a starving kitten at a saucer of milk, and then you dispensed it to your fawning audience at FAIR.

As I say, it's like a (rather mediocre and overwrought) Hollywood production. Plan Nine from Outer Scratch, perhaps. Only less coherent and more malicious.

Nice dodge.

No doubt the orderly movement of the planets and the stars, the recurrence of the seasons, the periodic table of the elements, the basic axioms of geometry, and the collected works of William Shakespeare underscore my guilt, too.

Your words did that all by themselves.

Finally, I, too, like your avatar a great deal.

Tough luck. Neither your approval nor that of your junior Siamese twin will persuade me to change it. I don't value your opinion that highly.

Ooh, watch out, Dan's about to have another meltdown!

by the way, I still like your avatar.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Bravo! Keep it coming, Scratch Junior.

Everybody here is hungry for further repetitions of your claims.

You and Scratch Senior have a duty to fulfill. Don't disappoint your public.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

Everybody here is hungry for further repetitions of your claims.

Nah ... just your confession.

You and Scratch Senior have a duty to fulfill.

Our only duty is to the truth.

Don't disappoint your public.

Like you have?

I'm still lovin' your avatar.

[_Mister Scratch]

If you want to own up to this, and admit you did wrong, I'd be more than willing to drop the matter entirely.

I don't.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Your mission expires when you die.

He's saying that you didn't "check out" (as you appear to be doing now) when your "friend" was ratting on Quinn to you.

I don't recall any such conversation lasting even sixty seconds. I suppose I should have run screaming from the room when the subject suddenly came up out of the blue. Alternatively, I could have decked the guy. Neither response strikes me as very civil or very normal.

Prof. P.,

Do you take this stuff seriously or not? You keep waffling back and forth, saying on the one hand, "I regard this as a very personal matter," etc., and on the other making these glib little jokes. What you could have told your friend was this: "I don't think it's right to talk about this kind of thing, Bro. Midgley." But you didn't. Instead, you listened intently and then went ahead told everyone on the FAIRboard all about it. Face it: you are guilty of gossipmongering. No amount of joking will absolve you of this fact.

you giddily leaped at the opportunity to smear a critic of the Church. You lapped up the malicious gossip like a starving kitten at a saucer of milk, and then you dispensed it to your fawning audience at FAIR.

As I say, it's like a (rather mediocre and overwrought) Hollywood production. Plan Nine from Outer Scratch, perhaps. Only less coherent and more malicious.

More joking. More lame attempts to wiggle out of any accountability.

[_Mister Scratch]

Bravo! Keep it coming, Scratch Junior.

Everybody here is hungry for further repetitions of your claims.

That's not true. You said yourself that you had been PMed by people hoping for further elaboration from you. So will you provide it? Or will you beat a hasty retreat, as you have done so many times before? (E.g., your hinting at being privy to some shibboleth-like knowledge regarding Steve Benson's meeting with Elders Oaks and [I believe] Nelson, and then refusing to cough up the goods comes to mind. Come to think of it, this seems yet another instance of your penchant for peddling gossip.)

You and Scratch Senior have a duty to fulfill. Don't disappoint your public.

More pathetic attempts to avoid accountability. Why not be a man and just admit you done wrong, Prof. P.?

[Guest]

Do you take this stuff seriously or not?

On the whole, I don't. Your accusations are entirely without merit.

It's true that you two anonymous and malevolent cowards seek to do grave damage to my public reputation. But your audience is tiny, I suspect that many even here don't take your accusations at face value, and people who actually know me (and even those who've had genuine public contact with me) are highly unlikely to buy the malicious caricature of me that you've been so zealously propagating over the past couple of years or so.

So, no, I don't take this stuff terribly seriously. It irritates me a bit, when I think of it (which isn't very often, but is probably often enough to give you at least some limited gratification), but it doesn't loom very large in my world.

However, I do encourage you to keep posting on it here. People here can't get enough of it. They want to hear your charges again and again and again, and then again and again thereafter. You make a valuable contribution to this board by repeating your accusations against me many times each day. Perhaps you shouldn't limit them, however, to merely this one thread. (Just a thought.)

Now back to Scratch Junior.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Thanks for joining in again, Scratch Senior. Tag-team events are fun! I wish I could see the costumes you two wear when you participate in events like these. Do you use steroids?

You said yourself that you had been PMed by people hoping for further elaboration from you.

ROTFL! That's how you read what I said?

Oh yes. Absolutely true.

Why not be a man and just admit you done wrong, Prof. P.?

I already have. I did it from the grassy knoll, with a wrench, in the kitchen. While wearing a silk dress and reciting Chinese lyric poetry.

I didn't do wrong. To plead guilty to your ludicrous accusations would be to lie.

I hope that's clear enough for you.

You're free to disbelieve it, or to pretend to disbelieve it, but I've said it, and anybody who reads this thread can read what I've said. It's in plain English. When you pretend that I haven't said it, or even that I've said the opposite, they'll know how seriously to take you.

For Scratch Junior: I'm melting!

[_Rollo Tomasi]

Do you take this stuff seriously or not?

On the whole, I don't. Your accusations are entirely without merit.

Your previous words strongly suggest otherwise.

It's true that you two anonymous and malevolent cowards seek to do grave damage to my public reputation.

Utterly false. None of this has anything to do with your "public reputation." It has everything to do with private gossip about a man's sex life behind his back.

But your audience is tiny ....

Over 10,000 views suggest otherwise.

... I suspect that many even here don't take your accusations at face value ....

Yeah, those who can't read plain English.

... and people who actually know me (and even those who've had genuine public contact with me) are highly unlikely to buy the malicious caricature of me that you've been so zealously propagating over the past couple of years or so.

What "malicious caricature"? You engaged in harmful gossip. You made a mistake. Be accountable. Your persecution complex is warping your sense of reality.

It irritates me a bit, when I think of it (which isn't very often, but is probably often enough to give you at least some limited gratification), but it doesn't loom very large in my world.

I sense another meltdown coming ....

They want to hear your charges again and again and again, and then again and again thereafter.

They simply want to hear you admit the obvious.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

Do you use steroids?

One man's steriods is another man's Krispy Kremes.

I didn't do wrong. To plead guilty to your ludicrous accusations would be to lie.

Dan is like the Church institution or the Brethren -- he's never made a mistake (or at least one he is willing to admit).

I hope that's clear enough for you.

Crystal.

For Scratch Junior: I'm melting!

Ding dong, the witch is dead, the witch is dead, the witch is dead ....

[_Sethbag]

Boooooooooooooring. I read the first bit of this whole thread, and then jumped to Page (Holy Schnikies!) Twenty-freaking-three, and it's still more "did/didn't/did/didn't".

At some point, a topic ought to just collapse under its own weight and expire.