My AmazonReview of "The Reasonable Woman," allegedly by Wendy McElroy

[Rich Engle]

Also, physical therapy really, really sucks.

Michael

Depends upon what you call physical therapy. I'm planning on some in a few minutes, and I must say I'm looking fondly forward to it.

rde

heh

Edited July 5, 2011 by Rich Engle

[Rich Engle]

Basic illustration of problem involving coming on OL anonymous:

rde

Expect Nothing Fucqing Less.

[George H. Smith]

Some time ago on this labyrinthine thread, I mentioned that I would be selling xerox copies of my original FOR transcript for $40. I printed up 10 copies and have sold 8 so far. Frankly, this was more trouble than it was worth, but since I still have two copies left, I am willing to sell those. After those are gone, I doubt if I will sell any more printed versions, given the hassles involved; instead, I will probably confine myself to selling and emailing the original Wordstar files from 1988.

The two FOR transcripts that I have left are copies of the manuscript that I printed in 1998, during the height of my public controversy with Wendy McElroy. The title page reads, in part:

Note: This is the original "Fundamentals of Reasoning" Manuscript. It is taken from a 5-1/4 floppy disk dated "Oct. 2, 1988." The original was in Wordstart 3.1, and has been converted to MS Word 6. Except for changing the double-spaced text into single spacing, nothing in the original has been altered. No effort has been made to correct typographical errors, misspellings, and the like.

For those who may have forgotten, this is the manuscript that Wendy claims to have completely erased from her hard drive in 1994, when she supposedly starting writing TRW "from scratch." Those of you with a copy of TRW will get a big laugh from this outrageous lie when you compare my FOR manuscript to TRW. Huge chunks were copied verbatim by Wendy, and most of the remainder was closely paraphrased. Indeed, I doubt if there is a single section in my FOR manuscript that Wendy did not appropriate in one form or another.

As I said, I only have two copies left. The $40 includes the UPS shipping fee, unless you live outside the U.S. The copies are numbered and signed by me. The single-spaced printout runs 98 pages.

If you are interested, please contact me offlist at: smikro@comcast.net.

Ghs

[Starbuckle]

See Wendy McElroy's responses to many of the issues raised in this thread, including the sexual content, at her web site. The posts are listed on this page: http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?cat.21

[Jonathan]

4 hours ago, Starbuckle said:

See Wendy McElroy's responses to many of the issues raised in this thread, including the sexual content, at her web site. The posts are listed on this page: http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?cat.21

Are there any posts there in which she addresses the evidence that GHS has presented here -- the side-by-side comparisons? After a quick look at her site, I didn't see any. The issue is somewhat interesting, but not enough for me to wade through paragraph after paragraph of nonessential, irrelevant stuff. Can you provide some quotes from her site of anything pertinent to the substance of GHS's accusations and evidence?

[Jonathan]

On 10/3/2011 at 9:19 PM, George H. Smith said:

Some time ago on this labyrinthine thread, I mentioned that I would be selling xerox copies of my original FOR transcript for $40. I printed up 10 copies and have sold 8 so far. Frankly, this was more trouble than it was worth, but since I still have two copies left, I am willing to sell those. After those are gone, I doubt if I will sell any more printed versions, given the hassles involved; instead, I will probably confine myself to selling and emailing the original Wordstar files from 1988.

The two FOR transcripts that I have left are copies of the manuscript that I printed in 1998, during the height of my public controversy with Wendy McElroy. The title page reads, in part:

For those who may have forgotten, this is the manuscript that Wendy claims to have completely erased from her hard drive in 1994, when she supposedly starting writing TRW "from scratch." Those of you with a copy of TRW will get a big laugh from this outrageous lie when you compare my FOR manuscript to TRW. Huge chunks were copied verbatim by Wendy, and most of the remainder was closely paraphrased. Indeed, I doubt if there is a single section in my FOR manuscript that Wendy did not appropriate in one form or another.

As I said, I only have two copies left. The $40 includes the UPS shipping fee, unless you live outside the U.S. The copies are numbered and signed by me. The single-spaced printout runs 98 pages.

If you are interested, please contact me offlist at: smikro@comcast.net.

Ghs

Have you considered copying and pasting the document into a modern format? Maybe post it here, or convert it to a fairly universal format, like a PDF file, and upload it to any of the free storage sites/clouds etc.?

[George H. Smith]

9 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Have you considered copying and pasting the document into a modern format? Maybe post it here, or convert it to a fairly universal format, like a PDF file, and upload it to any of the free storage sites/clouds etc.?

I don't want to fool around with this controversy any more. I am far too busy, and it would put me in a very bad mood. I have posted more than enough evidence to substantiate my claim of massive plagiarism, and Wendy has consistently refused to deal with any of the specifics. Instead she has played the victim, even going so far as to accuse me of hitting her in the face so hard as to cause partial blindness in one eye. This is a totally fabricated lie; I never touched Wendy (or any other person) in anger. True, she is partially blind in one eye, but she had that problem when I first met her in late 1975. I didn't learn about her problem until late May, 1977, when we attended the first showing of Star Wars at Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. The word about the movie wasn't out yet, so the theater for the matinee was only around half-full. During the film, I noticed that Wendy kept covering up one eye, as if testing her vision. When I asked her about this after the film was over, she told me that her vision in one eye was very bad---the result, she said, of getting hit by her previous boyfriend (a Reichian therapist). I thought the guy was a creep so I didn't doubt her story. I insisted that she get checked out by a doctor, so I made an appointment at the Jules Stein Eye Clinic at UCLA and drove her there. Tests were taken, and she made another appointment to learn the results. The doctor told her that the eye damage was not the result of getting struck. It was a natural occurrence, a hemorrhage that could occur in her other eye as well, which would be disastrous. Wendy and I worried about this possibility for a long time, but the other eye remained fine.

Wendy has told so many vile lies that they fail to enrage me any longer. From living with her for years, I knew that she had a tendency to recount  highly selective versions of past events, but I never imagined that she would stoop to this kind of desperate, malicious attack. But, then, after she stole and published under her own name my 200-page manuscript on the Fundamentals of Reasoning, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Anyone who believes her stories is a damned fool.

Ghs

 

[Wolf DeVoon]

Hahahahaha.

[Peter]

On ‎2‎/‎15‎/‎2018 at 6:47 PM, Wolf DeVoon said:

Hahahahaha.

I don't see anything funny. Did you hear the one about the . . . . fill in the blank.

[algernonsidney]

On 6/15/2011 at 2:10 PM, caroljane said:

You are right - didn't Young Lenny P. walk all the way to Los Angeles, or something?

I don't know of Konkin but my impression of the Brandens is that they escaped not from, but to-- towards their ideal which happened to be in the US. The Winnipeg of the 50s and 60s had a unique intellectual and social subculture which Barbara (I vaguely remember from PAR) found stifling, but which produced many notable artists, thinkers and writers.

Anyway you can escape Canada, but being Canadian you are stuck with unless you escape very, very young. "Choosing to be American" was fine for Ayn Rand and other unique souls who can transcend nationalism. The rest of us are just mired in our tribalism and collectivism.

This will always be Winnipeg's greatest contribution to world culture--Terry Jacks:
 

 

[Peter]

“Which Way You Goin’ Billy” by the Canadian group, Poppy Family and written by Terry Jacks is a good listen from 1969.

[algernonsidney]

On 6/25/2011 at 7:03 AM, Xray said:

This was really strange.

[algernonsidney]

On 5/18/2022 at 12:31 PM, Peter said:

“Which Way You Goin’ Billy” by the Canadian group, Poppy Family and written by Terry Jacks is a good listen from 1969.

Yes, I know that song. It means that Terry Jacks is NOT a one-hit wonder.

[algernonsidney]

When I heard about George's death, I felt the urge to peruse this thread again. Was George doing anything else for the  last 25 years of his? Or did he just spend every waking moment bitching about Wendy?

Well, he also gave us plenty of details about his sex life.

The board said that George posted 431 times in this thread alone.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Chris,

Here is a small peek behind the curtains. I have never spoken about this in public. Not for any reason. It's just something George and I lived and that was good enough for me.

For a time, George and I were in pretty frequent email communication. This was around the time PARC was coming out.

Barbara had wanted George to do a review of it (he, obviously, thought it stunk to high heaven), so she started sending him a barrage of information, quotes, and so on.

I saw that George was not progressing much on the idea--he wanted to wed his review to a bigger more universal concept like how to do critiques--especially seeing how Valliant had fallen so short on doing a critique. So George wanted to illustrate how to do it correctly while at the same time critiquing someone who did it incorrectly. (I actually like this idea.  )

So I got in contact with him outside of our little offline group and asked if he needed any help or something I could do. He said the sheer amount of material from Barbara was crowding him, but he didn't want to be brusque with her since he knew she was hurting. As we were discussing this, he suddenly sent me material of his on Wendy. Frankly, at that time, I didn't even know who Wendy was.  

As he went on, and as I asked questions and received more material, I saw he was terribly hurt by what happened between them. Obviously his feelings had been plain old vanilla flavored hurt. Rejection stings. But I honestly believe his life got turned upside-down due to the betrayal. I don't think his image of himself comported being plagiarized by an intimate after his public position of being against government protection of intellectual property. This makes me wonder at times if the universe has a sense of humor. As the saying goes, Man proposes and God disposes. (Sorry George...  )

So I asked him flat-out if he wasn't producing because he was stuck about all this. I was speaking from having gone through two different 12 step programs (alcohol, then drugs). I knew how bottled up rage and shame can paralyze you and I told him that. He said that was probably the case or something like that (I would have to consult my old emails to be 100% accurate.)

So I told him if he wanted to vent on OL and just get the all poison out of his system, I would take the heat. It did not matter what he said, I would take the heat. It would go up, stay up, and fuck the world. He thanked me, but then went silent for a few weeks. 

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, he opened the Wendy thread and it all came out. Every bit of it. And, boy, did I get heat. But like I promised him, I took it and made nary a peep at the time. It is all still up--and it will remain up.

 

After that episode, George got himself a different girlfriend (Marylin, who now works for the Atlas Society--or at least that's the last I heard of her). He also did that magnificent series of articles for Cato and, if I am not mistaken, another book or two. I cannot tell you how gratifying all that was to watch. Not because I felt like a puppet-master (I don't roll that way), but because I was, in my own way, paying forward what I had received from AA and NA.

George and I conflicted at times, too. He sometimes liked to boil everything down to a single cause, then use this as a pretext to eliminate other causes. For example, we clashed when he said the Civil War was not fought about slavery. And to prove that, he used a notice Abraham Lincoln published in a newspaper saying his whole purpose was to preserve the Union. To me, that argument is silly. One man and one reason do not a war make. People were hopping mad at each other over slavery back then and I'm pretty sure the Civil War would not have erupted had slavery not been an issue. Preserving the Union was one cause, but slavery was definitely another.

 

Another disagreement once prompted me to write a short story (a parody more than anything else). 

Here is a post I wrote to Jonathan a while back giving the context and the story.

On 1/22/2019 at 1:03 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I once got into a kerfuffle with George Smith over a religious historian named David Barton. George embedded a video by a lady who purported to debunk Barton in everything, apparently including being born  , but all she did was this gotcha crap, reams and reams of it, much of which was taking things out of context with total avoidance of the Principle of Charity. The opposite, in fact. Snark and gotcha, snark and gotcha. Her name was Chris Rodda.

I've noticed that, for people in general, when a snark and gotcha argument comes up and this defends their own beliefs, they just don't see the rhetorical method, although at other times, they would not only see it, they would object to it. For example, think of how the Objectivist fundies embraced James Valliant's book against the Brandens. There was no real substance to that book other than snark and gotcha, most of which was out of context. (With the exception of Rand's own journal entries.) But the fundies lapped it up, especially Valliant's misinterpretations. Even though I disagree with many of the fundies, I also acknowledge that there are many intelligent people among them. So I think this blindness to rhetoric is a human condition, an inbuilt cognitive bias that is a kissing cousin to confirmation bias.

Anyway, George and I were going at each other over David Barton and Chris Rodda. I got to the point where I started laughing although you couldn't tell from the posts. That's one of the drawbacks of forum writing. Who can see anyone through a computer monitor? I mean George and I were arguing over nothing important to either of us and the nastiness of the posts started making it look like we hated each other. At one point I cracked up. I couldn't even remember the arguments about Barton that Rodda presented that George agreed with.  

So I ended the topic with a story I made up on the spot. George even apologized for the hostility after reading it. I think he got a laugh, too.   (You can click the crooked arrow on the top right of the quote below and it will take you to the thread where you can read everything I'm talking about.)

On 3/5/2012 at 12:00 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I'm stranded on a desert island. Hopeless situation. I might never get rescued and I've been here over three years.

My pet rat died last month and I didn't train a new one. I'm tired of training rats for pets, anyway, It's just I get so damn lonely I've got to have contact with some form of friendly life.

Wait...

What's that in the horizon? It looks like a ship.

I'll be damned, It is! It is! It is!

I watch in growing anticipation and frantically start waving my arms. I'm yelling as it approaches.

Finally I see them lower a small boat with some men on it. They have seen me and they are coming for me!

Hurrah!

The tears stream down my face. They take me on the boat and we go to the ship. I am overwhelmed with gratitude.

I talk a little to the captain. He gives me a funny look and suddenly his men lead me to a small room that serves as quarters. They say they will take me back to civilization, but I must do a task first and a person will be down to see me shortly. They leave abruptly, smiling oddly.

I'm starting to feel uneasy. Something isn't right. Why the mystery?

I hear a knock. In walks a man with a laptop computer. He asks if I have ever heard of David Barton.

I say I think he's a religious historian or something. The man tells me I must watch a video. He puts the laptop on the table and turns it on. The video is of a woman named Chris Rodda. The man tells me I must watch the whole thing.

It is awful. The lady is a duckbill platypus on a sacred mission. Then the man says there is another to see. It is awful, too. He asks again what I think of David Barton. I say the woman doesn't like him much and he says that isn't good enough. There are another forty videos by her I have to see and they will explain the true David Barton to me.

I don't know what this has to do with rescuing me, but when I say I don't want to watch any more sucky videos, the man gets really angry. He says I am an ungrateful swine. He says I really don't understand anything about David Barton and I need to let Chris Rodda tell me all about that liar.

So I watch another ten videos. It is torture and I am turning into a nervous wreck. This is worse than that hurricane that hit the island last year.

The man asks again what I think about David Barton. I ask David who? And why does that Rodda woman sound like a sniggering buzzsaw? That does not please him and he says after those forty videos, he has a fresh batch coming. And I have to watch all of them until I can tell him for sure who David Barton is.

I give a lunatic cry, knock the man over and fly out the door. I run up the stairs to the deck and, without hesitation, jump overboard. I'm crying like a madman. Anything but another video of that Rodda woman!

I swim back to the island. As I come ashore, exhausted, I see a small young rat scurrying up in front of me. Hello, young friend, I think. I'm going to call you... hmmmmm...

George...

I like it.

I know he will be my best pet of all the others.

Life on this island is not so bad, after all.

That was in 2012. It looks like I haven't liked that snark and gotcha method of arguing for a long time.

 

 

 

Ah, me. I miss George. After I started supporting Trump, we drifted apart. I think that was a bridge too far for him.

I don't think he ever regretted one minute of our friendship, though. I know I did not and do not.

Oddly enough, Bloomington is not too far from where I live, Evanston. The distance is less than 150 miles. Kat and I talked about going down one day to see him, but we never did. I wish I could say why and somehow, I feel this must be important. But I don't know why and it isn't important. My friendship with George, even after it moved to a distance, is the important part.

Michael

[algernonsidney]

Thanks for those insights. I can understand the feelings of betrayal here. I don't know everything that happened between them. I do think men have a tougher time moving on from betrayals than women do. Women seem to have a period of lows and then they move on.

Wendy doesn't really talk about it much. I don't remember many details about what she shared with me. I do remember these words: "That man needs a hobby."

I really wonder how George reacted to all the events of 2020. I can't find anything about this online anywhere. It would have been interesting. As far as I'm concerned, Cato totally sold out in 2020. I can't imagine George endorsing any of this corona bullshit.

It doesn't seem that we even know for sure if this is George Smith.

 

[Peter]

5 hours ago, algernonsidney said:

Yes, I know that song. It means that Terry Jacks is NOT a one-hit wonder.

I listened to it again and it is excellent. Terry Jacks sings great backup.

[algernonsidney]

Michael, did George say anything about the events of 2020 and 2021? Did he say anything about all this corona insanity?

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Chris,

I haven't talked to George in quite a while, around the time Trump happened. (Actually, we did talk some on his Facebook page after that, but never about Trump.  It was about the new reading chair he bought, and the one I did, and things like that.)

His stroke happened months ago. I get the feeling he didn't want people to see him like that. And I don't think he was doing too well before his stroke.

I might be wrong, but I doubt he would have made any public statement on the state of the world in that condition. He had bigger problems.

Michael