Wendy McElroy on PARC


9thdoctor

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I have no experience with McElroy apart from her writings, and I haven't read anything about PARC except for criticisms of it. So I don't regard myself as having sufficient information to judge this correctly. However, from her writings I am certainly tempted to presume you are correct and she is perfectly capable of recognizing intellectual dishonesty. But I think she made it clear in her review that PARC was not a levelheaded and dispassionate work of historical analysis.

Quoting: "Valliant's book is not a scholarly work that aims to provide a balanced view; nor does it pretend to be."

In other words, she has recognized the fact that PARC is indeed a one-sided, biased-to-all-hell hatchet-job.

Andrew,

No, actually she hasn't. Not in public, anyway.

What she said about PARC was little different from Bill Perry's claim that it was a closing argument delivered by the prosecutor. (Perry is a retired prosecutor, so he meant that as a compliment.)

And Perry is a wholehearted supporter of Valliant, to the point that he has credited PARC with convincing him to publicly denounce TheBrandens ™ and leave the employ of The Atlas Society.

PARC is much, much worse than McElroy's statement makes it appear. She read it. She is capable of seeing how bad it was. Her decision to give it even qualified support has to be explained strategically.

Passion and JD/MYWAR clearly do not support the defamation of Rand we currently see. I openly stated that I loved Passion and considered it a very sympathetic portrait that dealt with Rand's flaws fairly.

I brought up the defamations of Rand because my argument is that McElroy's limited endorsement of PARC seemed to come from a psychological angle, that the book functioned as a counterbalance to the downright mean treatment Rand receives in popular discussions (by "popular discussions" I am not referring to Passion or JD/MYWAR).

You're not attributing all this bad stuff to TheBrandens ™. But Valliant is.

What's the subtitle of his opus? Who, according to Mr. Valliant, is capable of producing only lies or arbitrary assertions, where Ayn Rand is concerned?

McElroy says nothing in defense of either Barbara's book or Nathaniel's. She frames her complaint against unnamed individuals, but anyone with a modicum of information about PARC will think that she has lined her sights up on TheBrandens ™.

PARC is one of the worst books ever written, on any subject. Its multi-factorial awfulness cannot be appreciated without reading the book cover to cover and comparing Valliant's allegations against the sources he claims to be citing.

I wish I could promise that you could read it carefully without developing the various illnesses that H. L. Mencken reported contracting when he tried to read Thorstein Veblen. But I can assure you that you will survive the experience :smile:

Robert Campbell

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PARC is much, much worse than McElroy's statement makes it appear. She read it. She is capable of seeing how bad it was. Her decision to give it even qualified support has to be explained strategically.

You're not attributing all this bad stuff to TheBrandens ™. But Valliant is.

What's the subtitle of his opus? Who, according to Mr. Valliant, is capable of producing only lies or arbitrary assertions, where Ayn Rand is concerned?

McElroy says nothing in defense of either Barbara's book or Nathaniel's. She frames her complaint against unnamed individuals, but anyone with a modicum of information about PARC will think that she has lined her sights up on TheBrandens ™.

Maybe I'm simply far too naive about the whole Reasonable Woman scandal and the social-politicking and ego-motivated-backstabbing that seems to be far too common in the Rand-ish world. When I read McElroy's review, I thought the reason she didn't single out the Brandens in the text was that she wasn't reacting against the Brandens but rather the state of popular Rand criticism.

That said, I completely agree that Valliant's attack on the Brandens is, to put it very gently, misplaced; it is not the fault of the Brandens that Rand's haters will misuse and distort their books to justify defaming Rand.

If it is true that McElroy deliberately omitted anything in defense of the Brandens because of a personal vendetta against Barbara arising from the Reasonable Woman scandal, I certainly do not approve of McElroy's conduct.

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I wish I could promise that you could read it carefully without developing the various illnesses that H. L. Mencken reported contracting when he tried to read Thorstein Veblen. But I can assure you that you will survive the experience :smile:

Hmm, I'm not familiar with that bit of Menckeniana, I'll have to look it up. Meanwhile, this called to mind some funny material I recall, dating from when PARC first came out.

http://rebirthofreas...s/1208.shtml#16

James, you must read the book. Just as, if you own a bullwhip, you must lash yourself with it. Is there a wall in your house? Bang your head against it. Is there a streptococcus culture in the pantry? Swig it down. Don't let the potentials of these things go to waste. Let them flourish and actualize.

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David Brown is pithier.

But Mencken on reading Veblen (available in A Mencken Chrestomathy) is a classic in its own way.

But if a sense of duty tortures a man, it also enables him to achieve prodigies, and so I managed to get through the whole infernal job. I read “The Theory of the Leisure Class” (1899), I read “The Theory of Business Enterprise” (1904), and then I read “The Instinct of Workmanship” (1914). A hiatus followed; I was racked by a severe neuralgia, with delusions of persecution. On recovering I tackled “Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution” (1915). Marasmus for a month, and then “The Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation” (1917). What ensued was never diagnosed; probably it was some low infection of the mesentery or spleen. When it passed off, leaving only an asthmatic cough, I read “The Higher Learning in America” (1918), and then went to Mt. Clemens to drink the Glauber’s salts. Eureka! the business was done!

Robert Campbell

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I posted this today at Laissez-Faire Books' site, in response to Wendy McElroy's article on Ayn Rand's flaws. It's cleared moderation, but I see no harm in reproducing it here:

********

“It speaks well of those who took responsibility subsequently and I give them a nod of respect for doing so.”

I must admit to being confused, because the people who supposedly didn’t take responsibility in the 1970s obviously included Nathaniel and Barbara Branden.

This, in turn, would imply that their books, The Passion of Ayn Rand and Judgment Day/My Years with Ayn Rand, are not merely efforts to divert attention or blame from their authors by “smearing” Ms. Rand.

But in 2005 Ms. McElroy gave qualified praise to The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics: The Case against the Brandens by Jim Valliant. And Mr. Valliant’s book doesn’t just charge Nathaniel and Barbara Branden with writing their books to divert attention and blame from themselves. It charges that anything either of them might say that might make Ayn Rand look bad is a lie, an arbitrary assertion, or (assuming such a thing can somehow happen) both at once.

Perhaps Ms. McElroy has changed her opinion of Mr. Valliant’s book?

Robert Campbell

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This thread is being read by someone with a bug up his or her rear end.

Good.

If a person is boneheaded enough to buy into the PARC crap in the manner Valliant tried to put over on the public, that person deserves to lose his or her serenity over those who recognized Valliant's rationalizations as the garbage they are. Especially when Valliant's reality-challenged reasoning, scapegoating and lack of honest scholarship got exposed as mercilessly as we did--and the public responded by walking away from the PARC gobbledygook and the boneheads.

I feel for this person, though. It's hard to believe in a myth, then try to impose that myth on real people when reality keeps contradicting it. That hurts like nothing else. But you just can't make facts up at whim and expect reality to conform. That's actually good. Mankind has too many religions already.

Here's what happened. I received an email--a long email--from a person regurgitating the standard PARC BS about the Brandens. It was copied with all due bashing to Roger Bissell and Robert Campbell. The person even bashed ARI Watch and Ed Hudgins for good measure. Then there was something about Anti-Objectivism Lying.

Finally the Big Gesture, the sign-off:

"Now I am finished with you."

Hell, I wasn't aware this person ever started with me until this email.

:smile:

From what I can tell, the name signed in the email is female (Caryn Goddard), but I think it's made up. The email account is from GMX, a standard free email company. A different code name is on the email address. I am almost sure this person is one of the parties interested in the PARC dispute.

Ain't Internet anonymity cool?

You can posture to Kingdom come without risk.

Aw shucks... Wendy, is that you?

Or Holly Valliant?

Or even a SLOPPER on a sacred crusade?

:smile:

Ask me if I care.

Anyway, here is a note to the angry person who wrote to me: I'm writing to you--in public and under my real name--because I know you will read this. People like you who live in the shadows in la-la-land can't not read these things.

First, I am not going to post your email. You know full well there is a no Branden-bashing policy in the OL posting guidelines and I will not allow you to sneak your bashing in under false pretenses.

Second, and far more importantly, I feel sorry for you. I do.

I know you suffer, but you don't control me or anyone else on this board. You might as well get used to it because you have no power and no choice. You are not even an insect influence-wise about this and, frankly, your only impact on me is light entertainment that I will forget before long. (I am pretty sure I speak for several others, too.)

This is not a put-down. (I am far more talented when I want to put down someone.) it's just the way it is.

So take a powder and pipe down. I suggest you expend your efforts elsewhere. Who knows, you might find some happiness in something (or someone) you can control.

Michael

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Earlier today, while finally burning the final disc for people who purchased my "Files Project," I found an old folder with many files about PARC. I had planned to write an extensive critique of PARC, but, for reasons I won't go into here, I was never able to finish the ambitious project.

However, I did find a number of files with first drafts of material I had planned to include, in one form or another. The following is an example. I don't remember much about writing this, and I didn't check it for typos, etc., but here it is. It is not bad for a first draft, and perhaps the other sections (I think there are 4 or 5 more) are not too bad either. Anyway here is the file "01 PARC."

01 PARC

George H. Smith

June 07, 2007

The absurd allegations and conceptual confusions in PARC are so numerous as to exonerate Valliant of any suspicion that they result from conscious, willful distortion. No reasonably intelligent person who deliberately set out to fabricate falsehoods could possibly botch the job to the extent that we find in this book. Hence, in deciding whether disingenuousness or incompetence is the most plausible explanation for the many flagrant inaccuracies in PARC, incompetence emerges as the clear winner. I therefore wish to make it clear that my criticisms of Valliant, however severe they may be, are not predicated on the presumption that Valliant is deficient in either integrity or sincerity. He did the best job he could -- a fact that might cause critics to temper their outrage with sympathy.

But sympathy has its limits, even when dealing with a person who undertakes a project in good faith that is clearly beyond his abilities. Here we should recall the common scholastic distinction between vincible and invincible error. If some errors are beyond our control in a given context, it is also the case that these errors could sometimes have been avoided by mastering certain skills or acquiring the background knowledge necessary to avoid them.

Consider, for example, Valliant’s first major complaint, one that appears in the Introduction to his book. After correctly noting that Rand’s critics have often misunderstood or misrepresented her ideas, he proceeds to discuss another trend that is of even “greater concern,” namely “crude ad hominem attacks” that seek to discredit Rand’s ideas by demeaning her personally. After presenting an egregious example of this tactic from an article by Professor James Aune, Valliant informs us that the “this particular form of Rand-bashing, the root of this trend, can be traced to two persons: Nathaniel and Barbara Branden.” (2)

Even if we accept this allegation for the sake of argument, it is nothing short of incredible to suggest that ad hominem attacks against Rand did not occur until after the Brandens split from Rand in 1968 and (as Valliant would have us believe) went on the rampage seeking revenge. Indeed, Valliant seems to locate the precise origin of this trend to the Brandens’ “biography and memoir” -- a claim that, literally construed, would mean that ad hominem attacks against Rand didn’t become popular until around 1986 (the year that The Passsion of Ayn Rand was first published).

We must therefore wonder whether Valliant has read anything that was written about Rand before 1968, or even 1986. Has he not read Whittaker Chamber’s notorious review of Atlas Shrugged that was published in a 195? issue of National Review?. Is he unaware of Is Objectivism a Religion, a book by Albert Ellis (published in 196?) in which the supposedly “authoritarian” features of Rand and Objectivism constitute the major theme?

Many such examples could be given; the very suggestion that the Brandens were the “root” of ad hominem attacks against Rand, when such attacks were commonplace years before the split in 1968, is so preposterous as to leave readers scratching their heads, bewildered by this bizarre allegation.

To make matters worse, the specific allegation that Valliant levels against the Brandens doesn’t even qualify as an ad hominem argument -- a detail that renders even more mysterious his charge that they were the root of this trend. The problem here seems to be Valliant’s failure to understand the nature of an ad hominem argument. When Professor Aune wrote that “the particulars of [Rand’s] private life call into question the validity of her moral philosophy,” he committed a textbook example of an ad hominem fallacy, because he sought to discredit Rand’s theories by attacking her personally. But in tracing the “root of this trend” to the dastardly duo, Valliant claims only that that the Brandens promoted a “dark picture” of an “authoritarian” Ayn Rand whose “personal and psychological problems” made them and her “utterly miserable.”

However accurate or inaccurate this characterization may be, it has nothing to do with ad hominem arguments. An ad hominem occurs only when a personal attack is used to discredit a person’s ideas, and even Valliant recognizes that the “truth of Rand’s philosophy is, of course, untouched” such any such allegations, be they true or false. Fine, but what does this have to do with the “dark picture” of an authoritarian Rand that Valliant attributes to the Brandens? Given that Valliant doesn’t even claim that the Brandens used this “dark picture” to discredit Rand’s ideas, it remains a mystery what any of this has to do with ad hominem arguments against Rand’s philosophy.

If I claim that you are a hypocrite in your personal life and that your arguments are therefore invalid, I commit the ad hominem fallacy. But I say that you are a hypocrite and that this fact has made both of us miserable, I have merely made a psychological observation, one that is either true or false -- but I have not committed a logical fallacy of any kind, much less the ad hominem fallacy. .

It may be that Valliant intended to say only that the Brandens criticized Rand in a personal manner that was later seized upon by critics and used as the foundation for ad hominem arguments against her ideas. But this contention -- which, however false, at least make sense -- is not at all what he actually says. But, then again, since what Valliant actually says makes virtually no sense, what he intended to say is anyone’s guess.

This conceptual jumble, which appears in the first two pages of PARC, is a disturbing harbinger of subsequent allegations made by Valliant against the Brandens. All too often we don’t even get to the question of whether his allegations are accurate, because the allegations themselves are so vague and poorly expressed that it can be difficult to determine precisely what his point is supposed to be, and what would count as evidence for or against it.

That muddled thinking is a way of life for Valliant -- rather than a hobby in which he occasionally indulges -- and that readers can therefore expect more of the same throughout PARC, becomes painfully evident from other charges in his Introduction….

Ghs

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George,

I just looked over the email again and "Caryn Goddard" had some good things to say about Justin Raimondo's bio of Rothbard, but bad things about "Roychick Childs" and "The Bore Machan." There was some babble about John Hospers, including a weird part about Hospers believing Nathaniel murdered his first wife, Patrecia. (That part is typical of the vitriol in the email against both Brandens. Funny, this Caryn person called NB "Nathan" over and over.)

I think she was going through the Corners of Insight and commenting on the people featured on OL. (I'm calling this person a "her" without really knowing, based solely on the name "Caryn.")

She also claims to have lived in Israel for two years. And some random things about Szasz, Chomsky and Peikoff.

She sounds libertarian, but in a true-believer sort of way, with Randroid sauce for flavor. Different strokes for different folks, I guess...

Maybe she isn't Wendy or Holly, or even a SLOPPER, but I still think this person was involved in the PARC controversies and is using a false name.

If she is bona fide, I pity her even more.

I really hate the cultishness and what it does to good minds in our subculture.

Michael

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The many crimes of Nathaniel Branden....

Here is another file from my recently rediscovered PARC folder. Titled "Name Calling List," this was my compilation of Valliant's allegations against NB. These charges were spread throughout PARC. But when you put them all together, you can see how silly PARC truly is.

According to Prince Valliant, Nathaniel Branden is:

a moral coward who is guilty of widespread intellectual and moral evasions

a controlling manipulator

a person with an essentially dishonest history and character

a phony guilty of professional exploitation and fraud

a person who has contempt but also a compulsive need for people

an opportunistic social climber whose professional and intellectual life was just as much a fraud as his personal life

immoral

a “rationalist” and emotional repressor

a deeply disturbed and immoral man

a spiritual fraud of the highest order who, “in a least one crucial respect….never really understood Objectivism, which “never agreed with his actual values, probably from the start.”.

a person for whom “Objectivism was never a description of reality”

A vicious and cowardly manipulator “of an aging woman’s feelings”

a dishonest man who was not merely deeply troubled or disturbed, but habitually immoral

a consummate deceiver

a person sexually motivated by power and position who has the “psychology” and “soul of a rapist.”

Ghs

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George,

I just looked over the email again and "Caryn Goddard" had some good things to say about Justin Raimondo's bio of Rothbard, but bad things about "Roychick Childs" and "The Bore Machan." There was some babble about John Hospers, including a weird part about Hospers believing Nathaniel murdered his first wife, Patrecia. (That part is typical of the vitriol in the email against both Brandens. Funny, this Caryn person called NB "Nathan" over and over.)

I think she was going through the Corners of Insight and commenting on the people featured on OL. (I'm calling this person a "her" without really knowing, based solely on the name "Caryn.")

She also claims to have lived in Israel for two years. And some random things about Szasz, Chomsky and Peikoff.

She sounds libertarian, but in a true-believer sort of way, with Randroid sauce for flavor. Different strokes for different folks, I guess...

Maybe she isn't Wendy or Holly, or even a SLOPPER, but I still think this person was involved in the PARC controversies and is using a false name.

If she is bona fide, I pity her even more.

I really hate the cultishness and what it does to good minds in our subculture.

Michael

"Caryn" is a fruitcake. For one thing, it was Rothbard, not Hospers, who made the malicious allegation (in a review of "Judgment Day") that NB may have murdered Patrecia. I almost became physically ill when I first read that crap, but John Hospers believed no such thing.

Not Wendy, Definitely not Wendy. I say this, as you know, as someone who is not exactly one of her fans.

Ghs

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George,

I just looked over the email again and "Caryn Goddard" had some good things to say about Justin Raimondo's bio of Rothbard, but bad things about "Roychick Childs" and "The Bore Machan." There was some babble about John Hospers, including a weird part about Hospers believing Nathaniel murdered his first wife, Patrecia. (That part is typical of the vitriol in the email against both Brandens. Funny, this Caryn person called NB "Nathan" over and over.)

I think she was going through the Corners of Insight and commenting on the people featured on OL. (I'm calling this person a "her" without really knowing, based solely on the name "Caryn.")

She also claims to have lived in Israel for two years. And some random things about Szasz, Chomsky and Peikoff.

She sounds libertarian, but in a true-believer sort of way, with Randroid sauce for flavor. Different strokes for different folks, I guess...

Maybe she isn't Wendy or Holly, or even a SLOPPER, but I still think this person was involved in the PARC controversies and is using a false name.

If she is bona fide, I pity her even more.

I really hate the cultishness and what it does to good minds in our subculture.

Michael

"Caryn" is a fruitcake. For one thing, it was Rothbard, not Hospers, who made the malicious allegation (in a review of "Judgment Day") that NB may have murdered Patrecia. I almost became physically ill when I first read that crap, but John Hospers believed no such thing.

Not Wendy, Definitely not Wendy. I say this, as you know, as someone who is not exactly one of her fans.

Ghs

I had various encounters with Nathaniel in the mid 1970s to the early 1980s including as my psychotherapist for over a year (1976-1977) and his early "Intensives"--so I know next to absolutely that he would have murdered his wife is absolute garbage. That his wife would have killed herself by drowning?--more garbage. As Barbara Branden noted many years ago, if you want to do a suicide by drowning you swim out to the place you cannot return from. It ain't your swimming pool! The reflexive action will prevent a drowning suicide in your swimming pool. Can't be done. It was simply a horrible tragedy. I wrote Nathaniel at the time: "Please take care of yourself, for I owe you so much and love you so dearly."

--Brant

that man was a man to me

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I just looked over the email again and "Caryn Goddard" had some good things to say about Justin Raimondo's bio of Rothbard, but bad things about "Roychick Childs" and "The Bore Machan."

This sounds like seymourblogger to me.

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Whoa... look at all the excitement I missed, not checking my email for 12 hours plus :)

I know for a fact that Wendy McElroy is extremely displeased with criticisms of her review of Mr. Valliant's opus.

But "Caryn Goddard" doesn't write like Wendy McElroy.

"Caryn" writes like a good old-fashioned whack-job.

Robert Campbell

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I had various encounters with Nathaniel in the mid 1970s to the early 1980s including as my psychotherapist for over a year (1976-1977) and his early "Intensives"--so I know next to absolutely that he would have murdered his wife is absolute garbage. That his wife would have killed herself by drowning?--more garbage. As Barbara Branden noted many years ago, if you want to do a suicide by drowning you swim out to the place you cannot return from. It ain't your swimming pool! The reflexive action will prevent a drowning suicide in your swimming pool. Can't be done. It was simply a horrible tragedy. I wrote Nathaniel at the time: "Please take care of yourself, for I owe you so much and love you so dearly."

--Brant

that man was a man to me

Of course the allegation was garbage. It was Murray at his worst, and Murray at his worst could make Rand at her worst look like a choir girl.

Murray wrote (at least) two reviews of NB's Judgment Day. I commented on the major review (Liberty Magazine, Sept. 1989) in my article, Nathaniel Branden's Judgment Day; Reviewing the Reviewers.

The outrageous allegation did not appear in Murray's Liberty review. Rather, it was published in some small circulation libertarian zine that I cannot now recall. And it wasn't a direct allegation, exactly. Rather, it was sleazy innuendo about the mysterious circumstances of Patrecia's death, and so forth. But there was no mistaking Murray's point, which was crystal clear.

I thought long and hard about whether to comment on this accusation in my "Reviewing the Reviewers" piece. I decided not to do so, partly because it was so beneath contempt that I didn't want to help circulate the smear; and partly because I almost got sick to my stomach just thinking about it.

I knew Patrecia pretty well during the early 1970s, and I attended her funeral. She was a great gal, always full of life.

Ghs

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I just looked over the email again and "Caryn Goddard" had some good things to say about Justin Raimondo's bio of Rothbard, but bad things about "Roychick Childs" and "The Bore Machan."

This sounds like seymourblogger to me.

You are a wise man, for one who has not lived even a single lifetime.

Ghs

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The outrageous allegation did not appear in Murray's Liberty review. Rather, it was published in some small circulation libertarian zine that I cannot now recall.

George,

I've seen Rothbard's first review cited as appearing in something called American Libertarian.

It's in the bibliography on LewRockwell.com, but the article is not available there.

Robert Campbell

PS. After his "trial in absentia," Rothbard sometimes tempered his hatred for Ayn Rand. But his antipathy toward Nathaniel Branden knew no bounds.

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George,

I just looked over the email again and "Caryn Goddard" had some good things to say about Justin Raimondo's bio of Rothbard, but bad things about "Roychick Childs" and "The Bore Machan." There was some babble about John Hospers, including a weird part about Hospers believing Nathaniel murdered his first wife, Patrecia. (That part is typical of the vitriol in the email against both Brandens. Funny, this Caryn person called NB "Nathan" over and over.)

I think she was going through the Corners of Insight and commenting on the people featured on OL. (I'm calling this person a "her" without really knowing, based solely on the name "Caryn.")

She also claims to have lived in Israel for two years. And some random things about Szasz, Chomsky and Peikoff.

She sounds libertarian, but in a true-believer sort of way, with Randroid sauce for flavor. Different strokes for different folks, I guess...

Maybe she isn't Wendy or Holly, or even a SLOPPER, but I still think this person was involved in the PARC controversies and is using a false name.

If she is bona fide, I pity her even more.

I really hate the cultishness and what it does to good minds in our subculture.

Michael

Two possibilities occur to me:

1) Michelle Fram Cohen (sp?)

2) A long-ago poster from Old Atlantis who at first, briefly, I thought "Seymourblogger" might have been. I soon decided not, too many discrepancies in background. However, the details Michael gives could fit this long-ago poster:

[....] I think the [ATL poster's] name was Sandra Mendoza (sp?). (George, if you're reading this, does that name ring a bell? She posted a whole ton of stuff about politics, a lot of it pertaining to Israel and Ariel Sharon.) She said that she'd been an NBI staff member and had seen lots of goings-on the details of which she kept saying she would reveal, but the net amount she did say about what she'd supposedly seen was little.

Sandra -- assuming I have her name right -- referred to Nathaniel as "Nathan." I forget if she ever mentioned the idea of NB's murdering Patrecia.

Someone else besides Rothbard who made that allegation was Virginia Hammel (sp?) in a mimeographed piece which was circulated to many people -- I don't know where Hammel (sp?) got her distribution list. She claimed to have examined the death certificate and found it questionable. I can't find the copy I used to have of the piece and don't know if it was published first or Rothbard's allegation.

Ellen

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The person even bashed ARI Watch...

I made a mistake here.

This Caryn person said she was friends with the person who runs ARI Watch. This came at the end of her email and I wasn't reading it for real by that point.

btw - I sent a copy to a person who loves a good inter-subculture schism mystery and contacted me privately, speculating about the identity of the email sender. Anyone want to guess who that is?

Here's a hint. She posts on OL, on this very thread in fact, and her first name starts with E. :smile:

I never do this with private emails, except this time I did.

(Who the f*** cares, anyway? :smile: )

Michael

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btw - I sent a copy to a person who loves a good inter-subculture schism mystery and contacted me privately, speculating about the identity of the email sender. Anyone want to guess who that is?

Here's a hint. She posts on OL, on this very thread in fact, and her first name starts with E. :smile:

How idiotic.

Michael also sent me a copy of the email. Whoever speculated that I had written that has paid dismally poor attention to what I do write.

Btw, I've never had any personal exchange with Marc, who runs ARI Watch. My only contact with him has been on OL.

Ellen

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Ellen,

Dayaamm!

I wrote poorly.

I meant:

"I sent a copy to a person who contacted me privately. She loves a good inter-subculture schism mystery. Anyone want to guess who that is? Here's a hint. She posts on OL, on this very thread in fact, and her first name starts with E.

She wrote to me speculating about the identity of the email sender."

I was trying to be cute and apparently it flopped. It's just the last sentence above dilutes the punch, so I tried it the way I tried it and it did what it did.

I want to blame it on the passive voice or something, but I didn't even use the passive voice.

:)

Michael

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Oops and LOL, Michael.

I just signed back on, suddenly wondering if I'd completely misunderstood your post. I did misunderstand it. Sorry. What threw me off was the appearance that the speculating came *after* your sending the copy. The sequence was the reverse. I speculated, and then you sent me a copy.

The person I had the thought might have written the email -- which I hadn't at that point seen -- didn't write it, I'm sure upon seeing it. I've sent Michael a different speculation. :smile:

Ellen

Edit: Btw, it isn't so much schism mysteries that I love, it's "whodunnit" mysteries. The long-time Agatha Christie fan in me.

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How idiotic.

Michael also sent me a copy of the email. Whoever speculated that I had written that has paid dismally poor attention to what I do write.

If, for some reason that I can’t fathom, Ellen were to take the time to produce a parody of seymourblogger, I think it would look like this email. But the same is true if I were to attempt it. BTW I asked RC to PM me the thing, so I’ve read it too. Maybe someone ought to post it in the blog section? Otherwise too many regulars either aren’t going to know what we’re talking about, or will be requesting it behind the scenes, forming an unseemly Waiting for Goddard queue. Obviously this thing violates forum rules, if someone posted it normally it would get deleted, but behind the blog curtain?

The main reason I now doubt that it is the work of seymourblogger is that it was sent privately. Above all, that particular loon craves attention, and for the amount of work that must have gone into this I don’t see the payoff in eyeballs reached. Reactions savored. Which means there’s someone nuttier than seymourblogger out there somewhere…

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Dennis,

You're right. It is discourteous to the other posters--and to OL's public in general.

If you want to post it, go ahead. (I won't.)

The nincompoop who wrote this thing is already discredited. I doubt anyone will take her (or him, as the case may be) seriously. I don't expect to see serious Branden-bashing coming from a discussion of it.

Normally I don't want private emails posted without permission. But ones from trolls under false names are not really private emails. To me, they are in a similar category as spam. Who are you going to ask for permission? A troll?

Michael

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The main reason I now doubt that it is the work of seymourblogger is that it was sent privately.

There are multiple reasons why I wouldn't suspect seymourblogger as the author. For one thing, the vehement negativity against Nathaniel -- about whom seymourblogger has said favorable things (for instance, that he behaved like a gentleman throughout). For another, the whole angle of the critique and focus of interest. For another, the structural coherence of the writing. For another, details of background which don't match seymourblogger's life history and which I don't think she could have managed to fabricate. For another, the display of some familiarity with OL history and posters. Although seymourblogger said she'd followed OL (for longer than the list has existed), she evidenced no familiarity. Does she even know, for instance, who Neil Parille is? Robert Campbell? What of James Valliant? As best I recall, she never mentioned him or PARC. (On a search of her posts here, I find no reference to either. Searching SOLO is unreliable and I didn't bother to try.)

If, for some reason that I can’t fathom, Ellen were to take the time to produce a parody of seymourblogger, I think it would look like this email. But the same is true if I were to attempt it.

I couldn't have written that email for any reason. I couldn't have thought of much of what the person said and couldn't manage to produce the style, and if I'd attempted a parody of seymourblogger, I hope I'd have at least somewhat sounded like seymourblogger!

Ellen

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