Mister Scratch wrote:Did you seek to make a series of "winking" in-jokes about Hatch without ever giving the man proper citation credit, as per Chicago style?
This has nothing whatever to do with any rule in the Chicago Manual of Style.
You're an obsessively malevolent loon, Scartch.
Let me try to state things in terms that are very clear:
Did you write your piece in such a way as to hint at Hatch? Yes or no?
Mister Scratch wrote:The following information was passed along to me via PM. Now, this "informant" was merely speculating, but it would appear that Master Wordsmith DCP was having a bit of "punny" fun at the expense of John Hatch. Here is the "informer's" introduction to the issue:
Agent Y wrote:Even though the introduction seems to be a response to John Hatch's Sunstone presentation entitled "Why I No Longer Trust the FARMS Review of Books," Peterson fails to mention Hatch or cite Hatch's presentation at any point. (This is strictly in keeping with the Chicago Manual of Style's rules regarding shadowboxing.)
Yes, of course. As The Good Professor has stated, he only bothers to use the Chicago Manual when it suits him. Otherwise, conventions--such as properly citing verbatim quotes--get tossed out the window. Anyways, here is the "brilliant wordplay" in question. One wonders whether readers "got it," or whether they had to be given a "heads-up" via l-skinny.
"It is no mere legal escape hatch."
"But conclusions, tone, and approach are no more hatched in the conspiratorial conclaves of some sort of reviewer cabal than they are controlled by a single hyperactive editor-dictator."
"I'm rather proud of the fact that the Review has frequently served as a kind of hatchery for intrinsically important articles, for new ideas and cutting-edge arguments."
(bold emphasis added)
These are all from issue 13/2, by the way. (Also: is anyone curious as to which articles DCP thinks are "intrinsically important," and which ideas are "cutting-edge"? Does he include the anti-Family Night articles among them, I wonder?)
Is there any possibility that Agent Y is actually DCP giving you a wind-up?
Mister Scratch wrote:Did you write your piece in such a way as to hint at Hatch? Yes or no?
Yes, I did.
It never occurred to me that it would require a network of creepy anonymous informants to reveal that rather obvious fact. As you may someday realize, I didn't exactly try to hide it very much.
Mister Scratch, I think you are setting a dangerous precedent, targeting all minor puns. DCP dances around the issue of recognition by not actually referring to a specific piece of work. The issue has all the substance of a dank Danish dangled by your dandiacal Dantean tormenter as bait to get one’s dander up, dang-it-all.
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
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
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)
Mister Scratch wrote:Did you write your piece in such a way as to hint at Hatch? Yes or no?
Yes, I did.
It never occurred to me that it would require a network of creepy anonymous informants to reveal that rather obvious fact. As you may someday realize, I didn't exactly try to hide it very much.
Thank you for at last answering what was really a very simple and straightforward question. Here is a simple and straightforward follow-up:
What was this kind of thing doing in a supposedly "serious" and "scholarly" publication such as the FARMS Review?
(by the way: I'm just so impressed with your "This is a standard response" rhetorical tactic. Wow, Professor P.! Did you learn that at college?)