I delivered this lecture on Tuesday night<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve previously mentioned \u00a0my Malevolent Stalker, a curious fellow who, for roughly the past fifteen years, has sought to portray me as among the very worst people alive. \u00a0To that end, he\u2019s combed through IRS records, found forty-year-old anecdotes about me on websites of which I had never heard, scrutinized (and critiqued) the Amazon.com Christmas wish list of my then eight-year-old son, and so forth. \u00a0His commitment to his life\u2019s mission is really, in its remarkably odd way, quite impressive, as is the cleverness with which he systematically distorts, misrepresents, and twists everything I\u2019ve ever done and said, fantasizes about things that I\u2019ve never actually said and done at all, and attributes base motives to me for the horrible things I\u2019ve supposedly done and the ghastly things I\u2019ve purportedly said.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s the Mini-Stalker, a substantially less talented but equally driven individual, who chimes in with rather repetitious and distinctly less clever comments in the same place where his more able hero posts. \u00a0His repertoire is quite a bit more limited, relying to a large extent on crude lies about me rather than on his master\u2019s favored tools of spin, cherry-picked and decontextualized facts, and malignant mind-reading, but his motivation seems to be, if anything, more elemental: simple, obsessive personal hostility. \u00a0He very rarely comments on any other subject than me.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
So far as I\u2019m aware, I\u2019ve never met either of these two worthies, nor had any real-life contact with them.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anyway, my visit here in Australia has discernibly inflamed and aroused them, and they\u2019ve been inspired by it to a certain degree of new inventiveness. \u00a0Stalker Sr., for example, professed sorrow over the disdain for my family shown by my being here in Australia on Thanksgiving Day rather than with them. \u00a0But that trial balloon seems to have found little resonance with his target audience. \u00a0Nor did his pious indignation over the fact that I had responded critically on Thanksgiving Day\u00a0(!)<\/em> to an atheist who comments daily on my blog. \u00a0After all, Australia doesn\u2019t celebrate American Thanksgiving and, anyhow, Australian time is a day ahead of the United States \u2014 which means that a post that appeared on Thanksgiving Thursday where Stalker Sr. performs his labors was, most likely, written on post-Thanksgiving Friday<\/em> in Australia.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stalker Sr. had quite a bit more luck with his suggestion that the goofing off here in Australia that my wife and I have done comes at the expense of duped donors to the Interpreter Foundation. \u00a0I take such accusations somewhat seriously, however, and feel that I should not let them remain on the public record unchallenged and uncontradicted. \u00a0So I carefully explained that my wife is paying her own expenses, and that we\u2019ve both paid all of our expenses for the parts of our trip here that can be considered \u201cvacation.\u201d \u00a0However, the University of Notre Dame Australia, which invited me to deliver its seventh annual Religious Liberty Lecture, also picked up some of my expenses. \u00a0And some of my other expenses were covered by a fund at BYU that was established several years ago by a good friend of ours with the specific goal of furthering work on religious freedom and of strengthening relationships with Muslims. \u00a0Since I was speaking at Notre Dame on the subject of Islamophobia and religious liberty, I felt \u2014 and she agreed \u2014 that my lecture would fit her fund perfectly. \u00a0And, yes, some very limited Church funds were used to help with my food and lodging in Sydney and Melbourne, where I presented firesides to large LDS audiences and, with Church leaders, met with local representatives of other faiths.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, even after that explanation, one of Stalker Sr.\u2019s victims declared his disbelief in my alleged claim that I\u2019ve paid for this entire trip out of my own pocket. \u00a0(Sigh.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 I\u2019ve previously mentioned \u00a0my Malevolent Stalker, a curious fellow who, for roughly the past fifteen years, has sought to portray me as among the very worst people alive. \u00a0To that end, he\u2019s combed through IRS records, found forty-year-old anecdotes about me on websites of which I had never heard, scrutinized (and critiqued) the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2556,68,2553,2550,936,2562,2544,2547,2541,2559],"class_list":["post-67899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anti-mormon","tag-apologetics","tag-apostate","tag-critic","tag-daniel-peterson","tag-obsession","tag-pay","tag-payment","tag-salary","tag-stalker"],"yoast_head":"\n
The Odd Couple (Part One)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\" I've previously mentioned \u00a0my Malevolent Stalker, a curious fellow who, for roughly the past fifteen years, has sought to portray me as\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/11\/the-odd-couple-part-one.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Odd Couple (Part One)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\" I've previously mentioned \u00a0my Malevolent Stalker, a curious fellow who, for roughly the past fifteen years, has sought to portray me as\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/11\/the-odd-couple-part-one.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" 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<\/a>