A closer look at FROB 3, Part 1

[_Mister Scratch]

I take a very different view of communication, it seems. I am far from perfect, but my general outlook is one that takes more interest in what I can do in situations. I can't make people apologize or do my bidding, but I can evaluate my own position, see how I may have contributed to the problem, and then apologize with no other motive than to say I am sorry. Hoping that they may reciprocate, but not making my apology contingent on such.

Well, LoaP, when it comes to Mopologetics, this is an extraordinarily naïve view.

Are you going to pay for my airline ticket? I live thousands of miles away from you, LoaP.

I didn't know you live so far away, you've never said such. I think you could have just told me so when I first invited you in a private message.

Well, hey: If I had believed your offer was sincere, then maybe I would have. Since your outlook is one that takes more interest in what you can do in situations, maybe you can evaluate your own position, see how you may have contributed to the problem, and then apologize with no other motive than to say you are sorry.

Besides, maybe I'm lying. Maybe I live right down the street. ; )

[_Daniel Peterson]

Oh, yeah. Your online persona is just *so* charming!

I'm a very bad person.

Thankfully, though, you've revealed it, despite the fact that it's apparently obvious to everybody.

Just ask the dozens of people you've harassed on RfM

I don't post on RfM.

But I'm sure I'm guilty, nonetheless.

And it's especially galling that I would so viciously harass the gentle people who frequent that sunny place.

or the people you've held up for ridicule on SHIELDS.

By posting their notes to me, and my replies.

Just ask Mike Quinn, Grant Palmer, Simon Southerton, Tal Bachman, and Steve Benson.

I've been especially harsh, no doubt, on the lamb-like and sweet Steve Benson.

If I could only remember when, how, and where I brutalized him.

Just ask Robert Ritner.

Yes, my treatment of Professor Ritner, whom I've never met and with whom I've never had any interaction, has been especially callous and cruel. Why, just last night, I was beating him about the head with a tire iron.

Har de har har. Do you think this fools anybody? Do you think that acting like a goofball somehow absolves your sins?

Absolutely not. My sins are as scarlet. But, you see, I'm not only mendacious but grotesquely incompetent. I simply can't help it.

The reality is that your Ward Cleaver-esque, Brethren-sanctioned sense of humor only proves how right I am.

Everything proves how right you are.

"The truth of the matter is that there is literally no way that this [as yet unseen] letter is not damning in some way." (Scratch, 7-30-08, MDB) "Actually, you lose either way." (Scratch, 7-31-08, MDB) "Why not admit defeat. . . ? There'd be more dignity in it." (Scratch, 8-12-08, MDB)

You are too weak to apologize, and even your gift as sophistry cannot spin away these "crimes," so you make lame jokes and puns.

I'm pathetic, as well as incompetent and mendacious.

Fortunately, though, "Scratch . . . always tries to see the good in people." (Gadianton, 7-11-08, MDB)

Ah, yes--the pun that careworn staple of "Goofus and Gallant" cartoons and "safe" 1950s humor. No wonder you're so fond of it.

I'm stuck in a time warp.

Your apparent loathing of the 1950s is very interesting, though. (I begin to suspect a reason.)

More Mormon-friendly humor. How witty!

I do the best that I can. I can't aspire to your lofty heights of madcap hilarity and side-slapping adventurousness, but I do what I can within my inborn limits.

You genuinely admit that you have been looking to besmirch Mike Quinn's character?

I admit to every evil deed committed in the Western Hemisphere after roughly 1929, and I'm implicated in most of those committed in the Eastern Hemisphere since the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258.

If so, I'm glad to hear it. You deserve praise for your integrity and courage.

On the other hand, if you are yukking it up, "Leave it to Beaver"-style yet again... Well, what does that say about you?

It says that I regard you as a genuine wack job.

ALitD was apparently horrified at your lying through the use of your "FreeThinker" sockpuppet.

I don't know who ALitD is or was.

But I'm pretty horrifying.

I come galumphing into the gentle tulip-filled world of internet message boards with my cruelty and viciousness, spreading pain and sowing despair where there had been only light, and decent people naturally respond to me with fear and loathing.

Ho ho ho! Hilarious, Prof. P.! I hear that the writers for I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners are looking for a good, ol' fashioned writer. I mean, your comedy is just so hip and fresh. And yes, of course: you will get to have a laugh track. The Brethren will pay for it.

I hang my inferior head in shame.

ROFL! Getting desperate now, I see.

Terribly.

But the searing agony that I feel is merely just recompense for the pain and suffering I've inflicted on innocent people worldwide during my criminal reign of unprincipled Mopologist terror.

Go ahead, Dan: ignore me. I dare you to.

From now on, though I don't promise to grant you free rein to post without my ever responding, I will only occasionally reply with the message immediately below:

The following is a standard response: Master Scartch has devoted himself since at least 2006 to publicly defaming me while maintaining his anonymity. I flatly deny virtually every allegation Master Scartch has ever made against me, and this one is no exception. I regard Master Scartch as an obsessive and malignant 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)

It amuses me endlessly that Mopologists perceive me as being "full of hate." Mission accomplished!

Thanks for that useful self-definition.

Anyways, Dan, I'm sure you know that these Brethren-safe little parodies of yours do little to brush away the uncomfortable fact surrounding your misdeeds. All but your most slavish bootlicks can see that rather plainly, I'm sure.

I seem to have several very "slavish bootlicks" here on this board, even among the non-LDS.

[_LifeOnaPlate]

Well, LoaP, when it comes to Mopologetics, this is an extraordinarily naïve view.

Perhaps for you. For me, it is the way I ideally attempt to communicate with people. It's something I am trying to develop; far from anything I have mastered. Why would you consider this overall method of communication naïve in regards to "Mopologetics"?

Well, hey: If I had believed your offer was sincere, then maybe I would have. Since your outlook is one that takes more interest in what you can do in situations, maybe you can evaluate your own position, see how you may have contributed to the problem, and then apologize with no other motive than to say you are sorry.

Besides, maybe I'm lying. Maybe I live right down the street. ; )

Sure. I think our past bantering, and the fact that I often agree with conclusions of Dan Peterson, have resulted in your viewing me as something of an enemy, as though our conversations are competitions. The trouble for me is, I can't erase the past, nor can I recall all instances where I might have been offensive. So in saying sorry, I will have to try a general approach, which you may not find sufficient. In offering such an apology, however, I risk opening the door to demands for apologies for every single difference we've had in the past. Sometimes the differences will arise from, honest differences of opinion. Your expectations of what constitutes an apology might include my "admitting" to being wrong, even if I don't believe I was wrong. If that is the case, we will reach an impasse, regardless of apologies.

I recognize you and I have gone back and forth sometimes, and sometimes I have done some ridiculing. If this is offensive to you, I do apologize, and will try to avoid being offensive in the future. Some people don't mind a little give-and-take online, so it is hard to tell. So if I have given you reason to suspect my invitation was anything more than an attempt to get to know you I do apologize.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Close your eyes, baby.
Follow my heart.
Call on the memories
Here in the dark.
We'll let the magic
Take us away,
Back to the feelings
We shared when they played

In the still of the night.
Hold me darlin', hold me tight.
So real, so right.
Lost in the fifties tonight.

These precious hours
We know can't survive.
But love's all that matters
While the past is alive.
Now and for always,
Till time disappears,
We'll hold each other
Whenever we hear

In the still of the night.
Hold me darlin', hold me tight.
So real, so right.
Lost in the fifties tonight.

Incidentally, just for the record: Napoleon XIV recorded his classic Scartch-inspired "They're Coming to Take Me Away" in 1966, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in mid-1967.

[_harmony]

While Todd Compton and I went to the same graduate school, Mike Quinn went to a different one.

According to a reputable source (Uncle Jim, the keeper of the family tree), Todd Compton is a distant branch on my family tree.

Yea.

For especially appalling examples of our smear tactics, I suggest starting with the reviews by Brant Gardner, Michael Heiser, Lavina Fielding Anderson, David McClellan, Larry Morris, John Butler, David Bokovoy, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Richard Bushman, David P. Wright, Todd Compton, James Allen, Blake Ostler, and Steven Harper.

Why did you not include Dr Midgley in this list? How long has it been since Todd Compton or Lavina Fielding Anderson reviewed a book for the FROB?

[_Trevor]

I think I'll pull a Nate Oman and write an "Open Letter to the FARMS Review."

[_Daniel Peterson]

Thanks for mentioning Nate Oman.

While we're at it, let's add Nate's name -- that's Nathan Oman -- to the list of egregiously vicious writers for the Review. Nothing but name-calling and ad hominems.

And, lest the subtlety be too great for some, let's explain that the list above was intended very, very ironically. I included names of people on it who cannot reasonably be characterized as vicious by any stretch of the imagination (outside of Bizarro Scartchworld, of course, but that's somewhat redundant since I've already stipulated "reasonableness"). The list could be considerably extended.

[_harmony]

And, lest the subtlety be too great for some, let's explain that the list above was intended very, very ironically. I included names of people on it who cannot reasonably be characterized as vicious by any stretch of the imagination (outside of Bizarro Scartchworld, of course, but that's somewhat redundant since I've already stipulated "reasonableness"). The list could be considerably extended.

Oh. Then you're saying Dr Midgley could be reasonably characterized as vicious? (He wasn't on your list)

[_Daniel Peterson]

Oh. Then you're saying Dr Midgley could be reasonably characterized as vicious? (He wasn't on your list)

No, dear, I'm not.

But, in the case of people like Nate Oman and Richard Bushman, anybody characterizing them as vicious would be manifestly insane (or, perhaps, a resident of Bizarro Scartchworld).

[_harmony]

Oh. Then you're saying Dr Midgley could be reasonably characterized as vicious? (He wasn't on your list)

No, dear, I'm not.

But, in the case of people like Nate Oman and Richard Bushman, anybody characterizing them as vicious would be manifestly insane (or, perhaps, a resident of Bizarro Scartchworld).

Yes, dear heart, but then why wasn't Dr Midgley on your list?