Happy Valley Photo Essay

[_Simon Belmont]

What was misrepresented?

About half of the captions under the photos were misrepresentations.

[_MrStakhanovite]

About half of the captions under the photos were misrepresentations.

You are not really a good person Simon. I want you to know this.

[_Jersey Girl]

Here's one of the denial comments he made previously:

Oddly, the bitterness, anger, and condescension seem to be coming almost entirely from the CRITICS of the Evil Trio of Hamblin, Parker, and Peterson. Certainly all of the name-calling does.

Really?

My apologies. I would never have guessed -- how could I? -- that, in order for you to desire heaven, I need to express public enthusiasm for Mr. Shumway's photographs, to be awestruck at the idea of a sixteen-year-old reading Nietzsche and Sartre and Fromm, and to agree that Mormons are forbidden to watch television or visit friends on Sunday . I do hope you'll reconsider.

I don't actually have any strong feelings about the photographs, one way or the other. They don't offend me, but they don't seem particularly remarkable in any other way, either. (Am I permitted to respond to them that way?) I thought the little essay somewhat pretentious, and not overly accurate. (Is it permissible to say that?)

I haven't been angry at all -- what's there to be angry about? mediocre photography is scarcely cause for indignation -- and not even remotely as condemnatory as the people who have criticized me here.

I suppose the mediocrity of Mr. Shumway's photographs would be easier to forgive if it weren't for the intellectual pretentiousness of the accompanying article. I mean, Wow. Like, umm, he read Friedrich Nietzsche (note the correct spelling) and Jean-Paul Sartre and Erich Fromm at sixteen? So did I. In California. And now I'm a believing Mormon academic.

And Mormons can't watch television on Sundays? What's with those Tabernacle Choir broadcasts on Sunday mornings, then? And those other Church-produced Sunday television programs on Church history and the like? And we shouldn't visit friends on Sundays? What???

Nonsense.

In this area, set up for comments on a set of photographs and a little accompanying essay, I said that I wasn't especially impressed by the photographs and that I thought the essay, which was not written by the photographer, suffered from a sense of complacent superiority to the subjects of the photographs.

For that offense against the kind and civil discourse that they claim to advocate, a small group of critics here (many of them familiar to each other and to me from another location on the web) have, thus far, repeatedly called me “discourteous,” a “know-it-all,” “disgusting,” “cruel,” “hostile,” “hurtful,” “petulant,” “disdainful” "bitter," merely “reflexive” rather than thoughtful, “nasty,” “disrespectful,” “vitriolic,” "angry," "condescending," “rude,” a "goon," "insecure," "foolish," a “hack,” a “buffoon,” “petty,” and suffering from a “persecution complex,” claiming that my allegedly horrible behavior here is damaging the image of my church and my university.

Their comments strike me as . . . well, a bit ironic.

The responses to my
comments here have been fascinating, if not always amusing.



I commented pretty
straightforwardly that I didn’t find Mr. Shumway’s photographs very memorable,
but that I did find the little accompanying essay somewhat pretentious: Mr. Shumway’s independence of mind, it
implies – demonstrated by what he was reading at sixteen – led him to transcend
the provincial religiosity of “Happy Valley.”
But, as it happens, I read those same three authors at the very same age
in greater Los Angeles, and I’m a believing Latter-day Saint. So the implication seems problematic.


Contrary to
allegations here, I never suggested that every person needs to, or does, have
exactly the same experience with the Church.
I said nothing about that subject one way or the other.


I do find it somewhat
ironic, though, that several here seem to think that everybody should
experience, value, and appreciate Mr. Shumway’s photographs the same way they
do, or else should shut up about it. The
celebration of diversity, it seems, has distinct limits.

Nor did I say that we can't learn from those with different experiences or perceptions. I said nothing about that topic, either.

You and your allies here have been far harsher toward me than I was toward Brian Shumway and the author of the accompanying essay, and, in your demand that I validate and not criticize someone else's experience (which I never actually did), have effectively insisted that I deny mine. And you, of all people -- we both know your history -- should be careful about claiming that I mock others. You routinely mock my beliefs and my friends in ways that I have never done and would never do.

And, once again, the Maxwell Institute has absolutely nothing to do with this. I wasn't "coming from" the Maxwell Institute. (I have my own interests in photography and art, and, if I'm not mistaken, I'm permitted to have and express opinions on those topics.) That was a venture in well-poisoning and irrelevance. Mike Parker doesn't work for the Maxwell Institute; he lives hundreds of miles from it. And Bill Hamblin doesn't work for the Maxwell Institute, either. Your (successful) attempt to drag the Maxwell Institute into this was both a red herring and an ad hominem.

In my opinion, there was and is condescension here, but it's in the essay and, very arguably, in the photographs. It's precisely that condescension to which I objected.

Does he likewise object to his OWN condescension?

Does the man not know that what's coming out of his keyboard is viewable on the screen?
-------------------

A response...

Good grief. I'm evidently now being attacked back at the headquarters message board where many of the critics apparently get revved up for their appearances here, for having referred to the article above as a "little essay." This is said to be really, really condescending and, apparently, to at least partially justify all the names I've been called here and all the insults that have been leveled at me.

By my count, the article above is 774 words long.

I write a weekly newspaper column that typically runs roughly 715-735 words.

I don't consider my columns lengthy essays. They're hardly long enough, in my judgment, to be called "essays" at all. They're certainly nowhere near as long as, say, Emerson's "The Over-Soul" (6,926 words), "The American Scholar" (7,768 words), or "Self-Reliance" (10,184 words) -- to say nothing of such classic examples as T. S. Eliot's "Notes toward the Definition of Culture."

So it's not at all clear to me how it's "condescending" to describe the article above as a "little essay." I certainly wouldn't object or bristle if my columns were to be called "little essays." That's what they are. Though, in my view, just barely.

As I've said, there's really no justification in anything I've written here for the kind of over-the-top hostility, insults, and name-calling that have been directed my way in these comments. Such behavior plainly has its origin elsewhere, as this new and transparently fatuous criticism makes unmistakably obvious.

[_Jersey Girl]

What was misrepresented?

About half of the captions under the photos were misrepresentations.

You said that the misrepresentations were in the essay.

In which part of the essay was the faith of Mormons misrepresented?

[_Jersey Girl]

Which captions under the photos were misrepresentations?

[_Simon Belmont]

Which captions under the photos were misrepresentations?

Check out the post by Radex, I think he explained it well.

[_Simon Belmont]

You are not really a good person Simon. I want you to know this.

Really? Have you met me?

[_Doctor Scratch]

You are not really a good person Simon. I want you to know this.

Really? Have you met me?

How would meeting you change the things you've done and said on this board (and elsewhere)?

[_Jersey Girl]

Which captions under the photos were misrepresentations?

Check out the post by Radex, I think he explained it well.

Cutting to the chase here, you're full of crap, Belmont. You haven't bothered to read the essay OR the photo captions. You see that DCP is being exposed here and you've rushed in to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic.

Why on earth do you do this? If defending the man is important to you, it should be important enough to do the leg work and figure out what exactly it is that you're opposing on his behalf and do it well. Not go at it half-assed like you are.

And when someone like me asks you a straight up question based on the words that you yourself have written, it should be important enough to you to address those questions instead of dick dancing around them.

But it's not.

And we're back to square one, buddy.

[_Simon Belmont]

And when someone like me asks you a straight up question based on the words that you yourself have written, it should be important enough to you to address those questions instead of dick dancing around them.

Tell that to Scratch. I've repeatedly asked him where the "nuclear-grade meltdown" comments are, and he dodges.