Daniel Peterson wrote:Gadianton wrote:The fact that at least two members of FARMS other than DCP are monitoring this forum and enjoying Will's clumsy attempts at verbose put downs (lCoggins style) as well as the crude comments I think is fascinating.
Pardon me, but I don't think it a demonstrated "fact" that anybody from FARMS -- including myself -- is "monitoring" this wretched board. Is Tarski "monitoring" it? Is poor antishock8 "monitoring" it? Is Liz or Beastie "monitoring" it?
I can't absolutely guarantee that nobody with any connection at all to FARMS reads this board. We've published roughly three hundred different authors, and we have thousands of subscribers. But I'm positive that nobody has been asked by FARMS or the Maxwell Institute to "monitor" it; neither this board nor the board formerly known as FAIR has ever come up, even once, in any meeting of the leadership of the Institute nor in any conversation that I've ever had with any of them, and I'm reasonably confident that they don't even know that these two boards exist.
But has Will really claimed that these two alleged FARMS monitors actively follow everything he's said here, or that they've been looking in recently, or that they've ever done anything more than take a glance at this place and perhaps even at only a single thread?
Gadianton wrote:I call upon Will to reveal these FARMS participants this instant in the name of the greater moral good. Who are they, Will? If Will won't answer, then I demand the FARMS associates who Will refers to: Register and reveal yourselves immediatley. The fact that Will has said as much as he has implicates all of FARMS except DCP until the culprits come clean.
Good grief. It seems that we're back right in the middle of Scratchworld. With apologies to the great Leonard Cohen, even when Scratch isn't here "his spirit continues to drool."
Gadianton wrote:This is exactly like the case in grade school where you have a ring of friends, two of them do something wrong, suspicion is cast on the whole group, and it becomes to duty of the wrongdoers to admit their guilt at least for the sake of proving their friends' innocence in front of the class. Failure to do so is to act as a traitor towards one's friends. Will has already sold out his buddies, we'll see if these three kids (at least three) will sell out the rest of their group by not coming clean all the way.
What fatuous idiocy. There's no evidence that any "wrongdoing" has occurred here, nor that your two anonymous suspects even exist.
As should be quite evident by now, there is a considerable, and
significant, difference between what I actually say and what others
claim I have said. Even when I'm quoted directly (which is quite rare) there is a considerable, and
significant, difference between what I have actually said and the manner in which I am then paraphrased by those constructing the evil Schryver strawman.
I have never really claimed that these individuals (my "FARMS friends" -- I’ve never given a number) “monitor” this board at all. In fact, I’m quite sure they don’t. Prior to two weeks ago, one of them was blissfully unaware of
The Great and Spacious Trailer Park™. Another has occasionally amused himself, but (to my knowledge) only when following my particular escapades, and then only infrequently.
I also happen to know that these particular friends are acutely conscious of the semantic distinctions between a
circle jerk as
an activity engaged in by adolescent boys (it has nothing to do with homosexuals, contra cksalmon’s frequent misrepresentations thereof) and a circle jerk as
"a pompous, self-congratulatory discussion."
Then again, these are educated men who also know the difference between
intercourse as
"sexual contact" and intercourse as
"connection or dealings between persons or groups." As also the difference between
incestuous as
” sexual intercourse between persons so closely related that they are forbidden by law to marry” and incestuous as meaning simply
”excessively or improperly intimate or exclusive”. As also the difference between
whore as
”a promiscuous or immoral woman” and whore as
“a venal or unscrupulous person”.
In the final analysis,
when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.
And I choose my words carefully.
Thus, when I characterize Mr. Scratch as a wanton whore whose diseased stench afflicts every corner of this wretched place,
that is precisely what I mean. Neither more nor less.
That I have friends (“in high places” as it were) who occasionally find my comments amusing is less attributable to their
vulgarity (or my own, for that matter) than it is to their familiarity with the nuances of the English language and their admiration for someone who knows how to wield it with a certain
savoir faire. Indeed, much of their amusement is attributable to the motivated ignorance of the majority of the posters here in the GSTP™, and the banal ways in which that apparently-intentional ignorance manifests itself in the comical reactions to the things I say.
