\u201cThe Odd Couple (Part One)\u201d<\/a> about my Malevolent Stalker and his wannabe sidekick, who plays Lefou to Stalker Sr.\u2019s Gaston. \u00a0Mini-Stalker, or Stalker Jr., rarely posts on any subject other than Daniel Peterson. \u00a0Unlike Stalker Sr., though, whose approximately fifteen-year anonymous public crusade against me has manifested a certain weirdly determined and (to me, anyway) psychopathologically perverse talent, Stalker Jr.\u2019s rather limited repertoire seems largely confined to manufacturing and publishing outright lies about me. \u00a0He arrived on the scene several years after Stalker Sr. had launched his campaign, but his obsessive personal hatred is much more crudely overt, far less suave and ironic, than is Stalker Sr.\u2019s. \u00a0His lies and misrepresentations are designed to make me look absurd on the rare occasions when they don\u2019t depict me as cruel and morally depraved.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
For at least the past six years, I\u2019ve been receiving personal emails from someone whose consuming hatred plainly needs more gratifying release than he can achieve by posting anonymous public attacks on me. \u00a0Is this a separate case of Peterson Derangement Syndrome, inquiring minds might ask, or is it related to the Odd Couple?\u00a0 The answer is beyond reasonable dispute:\u00a0 For various reasons of theme, timing, and vocabulary, it\u2019s undeniably clear that, whoever the person sending them may be, he is part of Gaston and Lefou\u2019s circle.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
His emails are typically short and coarse, occasionally more than a little opaque, often obscene, and invariably insulting. \u00a0Very, very odd.\u00a0 They come under various pseudonyms and by various circuitous routes, and I don\u2019t know who is behind them. \u00a0\u00a0Perhaps, if it\u2019s ever advisable, law enforcement authorities will know how to figure it out.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But they\u2019re all unmistakably from the same person.\u00a0 And, if I were compelled to guess, I would place my bet on the Mini-Stalker. \u00a0This is subjective, of course, but, to me, they feel like his work.\u00a0 They steam with the same animus.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Characteristically, these emissions are limited to roughly one daily. \u00a0(Occasionally, several days will pass without any at all.)\u00a0 Sometimes, though, for whatever reason, the sender\u2019s productivity will rise. \u00a0Today, for example, he\u2019s carefully crafted not one but two such works:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
how to vacation with cult tour dude denial c. pasterson\u2026. \u00a0use a walker.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\ncult road show with pasterson-smeldrum\u2026cult hand signals past\u00a0and present\u2026pantomimed in cult magic underwear\u2026disregard pasterson\u00a0shill dirty ass\u2026dude been eatin nacho cheese\u2026gobble gobble<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
He hit a double yesterday, too:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
wow liyin [sic<\/em>] bloated shill at his trough\u2026<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\ncult pyramid scheme<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Perhaps this is how the spirit of Christmas manifests itself in his life.\u00a0 Fortunately, the language over his past two workdays has been quite clean.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
His highest recent creative spike, however, came on 28 November, when he managed to produce not one, not two, but fully three<\/em> of his characteristic communications in a single day. \u00a0Two of them cannot be quoted on a family-oriented blog such as this. \u00a0However, the third one cited an email that I wrote from Jerusalem back in June 2012 to the then director of the Maxwell Institute, after receiving his note dismissing me as (founding) editor of the Institute\u2019s principal journal and announcing an enormous unilaterally-chosen change in direction for the Institute.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
My email to the director was leaked shortly thereafter and has since been read by Gaston and Lefou and by a few others among Stalker Sr.\u2019s small circle of followers as damning proof that, notwithstanding my denials, I\u2019ve pocketed great gobs of cash from my efforts to defend the claims of the Restoration\u2014that, in other words, I\u2019ve been paid, and paid well, for apologetics.\u00a0 (For a while, at least, they tried to claim that my recent lecture visit to Australia was funded by gullible and unsuspecting donors to the Interpreter Foundation, which, in fact, laid out not a single cent, neither American nor Australian, for that trip.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll deny it yet again:\u00a0 I\u2019ve never received a single nickel of salary for apologetics.\u00a0 Neither the Church nor the University has ever paid me to do apologetics.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s as clearly said as I know how to say it.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In my leaked email, I referred to the fee that I was paid (not for most of its existence, but in its last few years) for editing individual issues of the FARMS Review<\/em>. \u00a0The fee was either $1000 or $500. \u00a0I can\u2019t recall which. \u00a0And it was paid for the work of planning each issue, selecting the books to be reviewed, choosing and recruiting reviewers, carefully examining and then either approving or rejecting submitted non-review articles, suggesting emendations and modifications, doing the final read and copy edit on the entire contents of each book-length issue, and so forth. \u00a0All of the work was editorial in nature. \u00a0None of it was apologetic in nature. \u00a0I didn\u2019t make a single dime more whether I myself had an article in any given issue or not. \u00a0Like any other reviewer, I would receive a free copy of the book to be reviewed and, when my review appeared, I received a free copy of the journal. \u00a0Nothing more. \u00a0(And, not infrequently, the book that I was given for review was a book that I ended up not liking and didn\u2019t want.)<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I also mentioned the supplemental amount that I received, on top of my regular salary, as a director of the Maxwell Institute. \u00a0This revolved, by that time, principally around my role as the head of the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI), an entirely non-apologetic project. \u00a0Such supplemental payments\u2014quite small, I\u2019m told, by the standards of many academic institutions\u2014are paid at BYU for temporary and out-of-the-ordinary administrative responsibilities, such as those of deans, department chairs, and directors of institutes. \u00a0They were never paid to me for writing apologetics or giving firesides or anything of that sort. \u00a0They were paid to me for my involvement in seemingly endless administrative and financial meetings, negotiations, and so forth, on behalf of an organization that was involved in a whole spectrum of efforts, many of them not \u201cMormon\u201d-related and a large percentage of which had no connection at all to apologetics (e.g., work on digitizing the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Maya murals at Bonampak, multispectral imaging in Italy and Jordan and at the Vatican, publication of medieval Jewish medical texts and classical Islamic philosophical texts, and etc., and etc.. \u00a0These were obligations that substantially interfered with my own personal academic work during those years. \u00a0Certain other people at the Institute (and many administrators elsewhere on campus) received exactly the same small supplemental payment without ever penning a single line of apologetics or uttering a single word in defense of the claims of the Restoration, and continue to do so.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
My Malevolent Stalker has also claimed for years that I was paid $20,000 annually for the several years that I served as chairman of the board of the old Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), during a time of unusually demanding duties in that role, when FARMS, originally established as an independent non-profit organization, was coming under the aegis of Brigham Young University.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve repeatedly denied his claim.\u00a0 I did receive a supplemental director\u2019s fee, slightly larger than I received when I was no longer chairman, but it was never anywhere near $20K.\u00a0 Nor, for that matter, anywhere near $10K<\/em>. \u00a0Nor even half<\/em> that.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Stalker apparently based this accusation on a misreading of some Internal Revenue Service documents.\u00a0 Candidly, I\u2019m neither an accountant nor a tax lawyer, and I would rather submit to a root canal than spend more seconds than absolutely necessary on anything connected with the IRS, so I\u2019m not sure how he arrived at his figure of $20K.\u00a0 As I recall, there were some people at the time\u2014not friends of mine and not friends of the Church\u2014who told him that he was misreading his sources, but he has persisted in his claim.\u00a0 He likes it because he pretends, at least, to regard it as proof that I\u2019m dishonest.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the claim is false.\u00a0 As it always has been.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I respond to such claims as this because, if accepted as true, they would entail false conclusions about my character.\u00a0 So I won\u2019t permit them to be entered into the public record without a public denial on my part.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I preserve the bizarre emails from my obsessive anonymous correspondent because I find them psychologically intriguing.\u00a0 They don\u2019t hurt my feelings.\u00a0 (I\u2019m sure that that saddens him.)\u00a0 I simply regard them as deeply odd.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the hostility on this fellow\u2019s part is so curiously intense, and has been so persistent over at least six years, that I want them publicly known.\u00a0 If I ever meet a violent or suspicious end\u2014I\u2019m not terribly<\/em> concerned about this, but it does sometimes flit across my mind\u2014I would want investigators to consider him a prime suspect.\u00a0 Normal people don\u2019t do things like this day in, day out, year after year after year.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Postscript: \u00a0He\u2019s just written me again, so he\u2019s now equalled his recent 28 November performance:<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
dont lie.\u00a0\u00a0youre a paid shill fer cult corp.\u00a0\u00a0your paper\u00a0thin cv proves youre a paid shill nigglin fer cultcorp<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
And the day is young! \u00a0He may yet swing for the fences.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 \u00a0 Nearly two weeks ago, I posted a brief entry titled \u201cThe Odd Couple (Part One)\u201d about my Malevolent Stalker and his wannabe sidekick, who plays Lefou to Stalker Sr.\u2019s Gaston. \u00a0Mini-Stalker, or Stalker Jr., rarely posts on any subject other than Daniel Peterson. \u00a0Unlike Stalker Sr., though, whose approximately fifteen-year anonymous public crusade […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-68178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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