Q & A

Wed Oct 31 15:48:30 CST 2001

Mackin:
No, but I know someone who sounds exactly LIKE McCarthy did.

That would be Quail with his charges of un-American activities and his
blowhard interrogation tactics, right?

No, I guess not.  You mean me.  Wow. First,  I'm Osama bin Laden (oops, no,
first I was a Nazi, according to rj/rjackson/jbor/rob j/? and Quail, way
back when, when they first showed up on the P-list), then bin Laden, then
the Beast 666, and now I'm Joe McCarthy!

I take it all back Mackin, you really are a funny guy. What's a little
anti-Semitism among friends, after all?  That the words might actually hurt
somebody -- and they did produce quite an effect on Derek, didn't they --,
oh hell, it's all in good fun, no sense in being a bad sport about it. And
if anybody raises a question about it, they're just a mean old inquisitor
like Joe McCarthy.  Yep. Funny man.

Malign, there's no need to "correct" anything, I included the relevant
posts and the urls so people could read the posts themselves.  It's true
that Derek interrupted an argument between rj/rjackson/jbor/rob j? and me
and the rest of your pack of trolls, yes, but your revision of the rest of
it doesn't stand up if you actually read the posts, so I wonder who's
really doing the lying here?  If you characterize what somebody else has
written in a way that substantially changes what they say, then insist that
your revision is the truth, is that lying? I really don't know, but it
doesn't sound terribly honest to me.  You might want to consult with an
ethicist, since this seems to be a concern of yours, and given the way
you're prone to judge the ethics of others -- maybe you'd like to get it
straightened out before you continue to call other people liars based on
their rejection of your own falsification of their statements. Or maybe
not, it's up to you.

Fact remains, Derek objected to the taunts and identified them as
anti-Semitic, and rj/rjackson/jbor/rob j/? and kai persisted, and they
never have apologized. You and rj/rjackson/jbor/rob j/? can deny this is
what happened, I guess, but in the face of the truth that it actually did
happen, as you can read in the archives, your denial begins to look just a
tad unhinged, don't you think?

I'll grant you that I don't know for a fact that  rj/rjackson/jbor/rob j/?
was really having _fun_ while he/she was taunting Derek, I was just giving
him/her the benefit of the doubt -- it could be that the emotional
difficultires that motivate him/her to drive one and then another Pynchon
scholar out of Pynchon-L, to attack people like Terrance along with the
many people who have showed up here and who have tried to join the
discussion and who got pounced upon by rj/rjackson/jbor/rob j/?,  don't
have anything at all to do with fun and more to do with compulsion and
inner pain, and, in fact, back when rj/rjackson/jbor/? was accusing Charles
Hollander and me of hacking into his -- rj/rjackson/jbor/?'s -- PC and
hacking into the P-list archives and beaming radio signals into his brain
and whatnot, I urged him/her to get some counseling. I guess he/she didn't
follow that advice. Tragic, really.  Such a fine mind, a terrible thing to
get wasted, as our other Quail, Danny, once said.

I do understand that you don't see anything wrong with the anti-Semitic
attack rj/rjackson/jbor/rob j/? and kai made on Derek, of course you don't,
your entire existence on Pynchon-L is predicated on ad hominem attack and
defense at all costs of rj/rjackson/jbor/rob j/?   But, you know, when you
push yourself into a corner like this, just to defend that creature,
despite the spark of intelligence that shines through your posts now and
again it's possible to believe, just for a moment, that you might in fact
be one of rj/rjackson/jbor/rob j/?'s alter egos -- I mean why else go so
far and make yourself look so foolish just to defend him/her?

And, while I've got your attention, I'll echo your buddy
rj/rjackson/jbor/rob j/? and ask you, are you slothrop666 at yahoo.com?
Another echo: now prove to me definitively that you are not AND no matter
what you say, I don't believe you. There, the logic-tight circle is
complete.

(Oh, Malign, where did we go wrong?  I can just see us now, you and I,
threads of our earnest discussion of the works of Nabokov and Pynchon still
hanging in the air along with feathers of cigarette smoke, as we lean back
against the wall of a cozy bistro down in Tribecastan somewhere, listening
to Ruben Gonzalez tickle the ivories....Can't we get back, somehow, to a
place before it all went so wrong? How I long for things to be different
between us....)

Yours sincerely,
Doug

PS  rj/rjackson/jbor/rob j/Perry Mason/?, here's that sequence again. I'm
not sure how it all works out with regard to actual times of day and time
zones, but the sequence is there nonetheless:

Here's where the thread started, I think, 13 hours prior to the offlist
message James received:

Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 11:05:05 -0700
From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
Subject: Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #2118

 jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
>[...]For a change most "anti-American" sentiment right now is coming from
>voices
>inside America, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

If it's coming from "Americans" (and I don't particularly like the way that
word is used, if it's U.S. residents we mean, because Canadians and
Mexicans are also "American), in a spirit of constructive criticism that
seeks to help the country live up to its ideals of democracy and justice,
it's hardly "anti-American."  Dissent has a long tradition in the U.S., in
fact lies at the heart of our nation-building project.

More accurate to call "anti-American" those voices that seek to stifle or
marginalize dissent, that wrap themselves in the flag and demand a
homogenous and uncritical patriotism that supports whatever the politicians
want to do, which is usually in the best interests of their financal
supporters, and which may or may not be in the best interest of the people.

>I think Pynchon in _M&D_ amply demonstrates the insidious ways that
>*language* creates ideology.

I'm not sure precisely what you mean by this, but it sounds good enough.
But, what creates language?

Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com
---

Here's that later post I wrote on Oct 6, 6 hours after my first post, my
last post in this thread:

Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 17:23:39 -0700
From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
Subject: Who's American?

I have Canadian and Mexican acquaintances who consider themselves American
because they are from North America.

Canadian James:
"Oh no we're not.  Canadians and Mexicans are North American.  Only
Americans
are American."

Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com

----

next, seven hours later, apparently, comes:

From: big one <slothrop666 at yahoo.com>
To: James Kyllo <plistmail at 666thebeast.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2001 12:05 AM
Subject: Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #2118

And finally, just a couple of hours later -- "A-and long enough for an
insomniac old guy like Paul to have done it, don't you think, Perry?" --
comes Mackin's post in this thread:

Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 02:33:05 -0400
From: "Paul Mackin" <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: Who's American?

- - ----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Millison" <millison at online-journalist.com>

> I have Canadian and Mexican acquaintances who consider themselves American
> because they are from North America.

Any of them named Barbara by any chance?

        P.

---------------

So, rj/rjackson/jbor/?, where were you on the morning of Sunday, October
07, 2001 at 12:05 AM?

best wishes

Doug "The Grand Inquisitor" Millison aka millison at online-journalist.com

PPS

rj/rjackson/jbor/rob j/?
"I realise now, of course, that unless I publish a counter-claim to
every
false accusations you make against me then you will dredge it up
against me
later as proof of guilt."

You are a real crack-up. How many times in the past 48 hours -- and past
couple of years -- have you insinuated I'm slothrop666 and asked me to deny
it and prove I don't post from other email accounts and so forth?  How many
times have you dredged that shit up?  Don't you even read this stuff before
you send it out?

Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com