Pahoran wrote:And we are still left to suppose that there might be something to the absurd picture that "Someone in the BYU library had spent an enormous amount of time and effort to excise every single reference to Sonia Johnson that had ever appeared in print" before Martha's search, and then subsequently, someone else -- or maybe the same someone -- "spent an enormous amount of time and effort to" seamlessly restore "every single reference to Sonia Johnson that had ever appeared in print."
Why -- just so Martha wouldn't find them?
Now just how believable is that, really?
This is just my perspective, for what little it's worth, but I would
not be surprised if BYU removed or censored material it did not like. We don't have enough details from Martha's book to do a scientific test of the veracity of her claims in this regard, so we'll never know. I'm just saying such behavior at BYU would not surprise me.
And the silly "ankle hair as pubic hair" folklore as the official reason for the BYU sock policy "comes across as very accurate to" you?
I heard about that at BYU, and always considered it folklore as opposed to official policy, but so many things in the Honor/Dress code seemed so stupid (like men having to wear socks, while women did not) that I may have believed it if someone told me it was official policy. This may be another example of hyperbole where Martha was trying to get a laugh more than anything else.
The panel discussion in which she participated, including four (actually three) participants in which the non-existent "mid-level church leader" blamed the victims of child abuse (no he didn't, because he wasn't there) "comes across as very accurate to" you?
I honestly know nothing about this, as I wasn't there, so I only have the book to go on. Although I do recall BKP once referring to abuse as "the first semester of first grade" (or something like that), which I found incredibly insensitive. Blaming the victims of child abuse, in my opinion, would not be much of a stretch from what BKP said.
The male ladies' hairdresser who demands to call Martha's husband to get his "permission" to give her a haircut (because male ladies' hairdressers are just so very conservative, you know) "comes across as very accurate to" you?
Actually, this comes across as very believable to me. An example: shortly after women were once again allowed to give prayers in sacrament meeting, I remember one priesthood holder leaving the meeting whenever a woman got up to offer a prayer. Let's face it, there are some priesthood holders who are nuts and do have a problem with "unrighteous dominion" (a big enough problem for there to be scripture about it).
The students nodding sagely when a male student in a class she taught told her that he would always know better than her because he held the Priesthood (why was the almost certainly ficticious jerk even in the class, if that was what he really thought) "comes across as very accurate to" you?
Absolutely. I've interacted with nuts like this before. They exist.
The "wiretapping" of her phone by crossing the phone lines at a junction box in the nearby LDS meetinghouse -- the existence of the junction box in an LDS meetinghouse -- "comes across as very accurate to" you?
Absolutely, ever since I found out about the SCMC.
The claim that Danites are actively murdering people in Utah "comes across as very accurate to" you?
No, but Martha's book (as I read it) did not seem to make this literal; nevertheless, there are always those on the fringe (the Lafferty brothers come to mind) who may take blood atonement a bit too literally.
The claim that she wondered if Ruth Killpack might have been related to Heber J. Grant because of the shared surname "comes across as very accurate to" you?
Martha has denied that Killpack was the "Rachel Grant" referenced in the book.
Is there anything that Martha could say, in the line of sticking it to the Church of Jesus Christ, that would not "come across as very accurate to" you?
Perhaps in an effort to make her book more readable (and marketable), she overdid the Utah Mormon caricatures, but it was not intended to be a history book (like Quinn's books) but a readable narrative of her life as she experienced it.