Is DCP Accusing the Brethren of Censorship?

[_Tom]

Doctor, to be perfectly frank, I credit my preternatural intellectual capacity as a child and teenager—for example, I devoured, and was heavily influenced by, both Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and, of course, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus while in middle school—for keeping me grounded today. (Truth be told, working at Nordstrom in the housewares department one summer in high school helped as well.) Sure, I have my faults, but I have avoided the arrogant elitism and pretentiousness that sometimes afflicts academics and my fellow intellectuals and Mensa lifetime members.

[_Lemmie]

She has the advantage over her readers, of course, and very much has the advantage over John Gee, since his book has been effectively silenced and suppressed — at least temporarily. In some quaintly antiquated circles, it continues to be imagined that the best method for responding to a bad book, or to a book that one dislikes or with which one disagrees, is to rebut it.

It’s stuff like this that hurts Peterson’s reputation. Is he lying? Or did he literally just not read Reiss’ piece?

Here’s her statement, with a link to a rebuttal underlined:

The controversies about the book hinged upon some problematic statements the author made about sexuality, including that victims of sexual abuse “are more likely to become sexual abusers of children” themselves and that “homosexuality is related to childhood sexual abuse.”

I won’t address those problems here, as they have been very competently discussed elsewhere and were a small portion of the book.

And then there is Reiss’ actual rebuttal of how Gee used data from her book:

But I’d like to weigh in on the larger problems in how Gee treats sociological research, particularly since he utilizes the data that Benjamin Knoll and I collected for “The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church.”

What follows are 5 or 6 paragraphs of “rebuttal,” which Peterson seems to think is not a rebuttal. Reiss also discusses a problem that seems to afflict mopologetics in general:

A second problem is that Gee seems to be reading mostly scholars who agree with him, while neglecting important researchers who have reached opposite conclusions (Sherkat, Zuckerman) and even those whose conclusions would support at least some of his critiques (Woodhead, the later writings of Berger).

She continues to rebut Gee’s misinterpretations and simplifications. Peterson’s response, though, is classic Wasatch Front passive aggressiveness:

[ I am reminded that someone else once told someone to ] Shut up. [ same to you. ]

brackets added to fill out Peterson’s thought. Deniable? Of course.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Dr. Peterson: “[Dr. Gee’s] book has been effectively silenced and suppressed — at least temporarily.”

It has? Strange that one can buy a copy of an effectively silenced and suppressed book through FairMormon and other outlets. The book will be effectively silenced and suppressed when the First Presidency directs members to turn in all copies to be destroyed (see the following link for an apt historical instance of a legitimate attempt by the church to silence and suppress a book: http://jared.pratt-family.org/first-pre ... tions.html).

Great points, Tom. It is very telling that the book is still available via Mopologetic outlets, such as FAIR Mormon. But it would seem that the "Powers that Be" want to make it harder for rank-and-file Latter-day Saints to obtain a copy of it. Perhaps some of the commentary in the book could lead to apostasy?

[_Doctor Scratch]

Some interesting conversation in the "Comments" section of this posting:

Removal from Deseret Book is proof the Brethren had the book removed. The Brethren run Deseret Book and the BoT runs BYU.

I doubt very much that the Brethren were involved in this.

So...who, then? "Middle management"? And why would "they"--whoever they are--have a beef with Gee and his book?

I was under the impression that the Brethren -- at very least the Bishop -- are executive management at Deseret Book.

They oversee it generally. They don't micromanage it.

And I'm not sure that this decision was even made at Deseret Book.

Huh? So it was the publisher, then? (Deseret Book, of course, is part of a network of publishing entities which are controlled by the Church.)

In any case, the conversation continues:

I hope the wonderful folks at FairMormon will follow the Brethren and pause distribution of Professor Gee's book.

Why? What is so terrible about Professor Gee's book, that you would see a need for it to be censored?

I have no evidence and no reason to believe that the Brethren were involved in this matter.

(Rather humorously, Dr. Peterson seems to have accidentally down-voted his own comment. LOL!)

Here's the thing: DCP is basically trying to depict this as a case of incompetence on the part of somebody within the administration of the publishing arm of the Lord's Church and University. This isn't some low-level functionary or bureaucrat--it is quite literally someone who has the power to pull books off of shelves and websites. Even Amazon cannot engage in control on that level. Booksellers complain about how much Amazon throws around its weight: if you don't get along with Amazon, then you can basically kiss your profit margins goodbye, because there aren't very many other games in town, except hyper-niche micro publishers and academic presses whose circulation is nowhere near what Amazon can do.

Still, there is no way around the fact that this is fundamentally a criticism of the way that the Church is being run. So, the Brethren aren't involved? Then why is this branch of the Church's publishing arm screwing up and behaving--per Peterson's analogy--like Nazi book-burners? Dr. Peterson is depicting all of this like it is something out of Fahrenheit 451, and yet he is directing this at people who are within BYU.

Maybe he thinks that this kind of feistiness is okay, since he's mere months away from retirement? Still, I would imagine that there are those among the Twelve who do not appreciate this sort of impudence.

[_Gadianton]

"A second problem is that Gee seems to be reading mostly scholars who agree with him, while neglecting important researchers who have reached opposite conclusions (Sherkat, Zuckerman) and even those whose conclusions would support at least some of his critiques (Woodhead, the later writings of Berger)."

Without even reading Gee's book, it can be dismissed for this reason. I would say this is the first problem. But it's not just picking scholars who agree with him, it's that he's not actually doing any research. He has no interest in finding the real answers to sociological questions. He assumes a very conservative version of the Church is right and that the thinking has been done, and then combs through whatever is out there to justify the Church.

[_I have a question]

Given Sheri Dew’s position as head of Deseret Book and close friend and travelling companion of Mr & Mrs Nelson, you have to assume they are now complicit with the books removal, even if they weren’t to start with. The negative publicity it has attracted (for very good reason) means they know about it, and they know about its withdrawal. They must, therefore be happy to let the decision stand rather than intervene.

He may not have been intending it, but Peterson is (now) definitely accusing the Brethren of allowing censorship.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Given Sheri Dew’s position as head of Deseret Book and close friend and travelling companion of Mr & Mrs Nelson, you have to assume they are now complicit with the books removal, even if they weren’t to start with. The negative publicity it has attracted (for very good reason) means they know about it, and they know about its withdrawal. They must, therefore be happy to let the decision stand rather than intervene.

He may not have been intending it, but Peterson is (now) definitely accusing the Brethren of allowing censorship.

These are all very good points, IHAQ. Meanwhile, there is some frankly laughable attempts at spin-doctoring underway:

The thought that a mid-level bureaucrat manager at Deseret Book would have the authority (and audacity) to pull a book written by a well-known and well-respected BYU professor is quite frightening.

Actually, the notion that ecclesiastical leaders are making immediate decisions about individual books - decisions that would render mid-level managers entirely redundant at Deseret Books - is at least very odd, if not outright absurd.

For 99% of books I would agree with you. But this is a book written by a well-known BYU professor. Unsurprisingly the move has created unwanted media attention. So this is a case where I would hope the Brethren were at least made aware before the book was pulled.

There is no evidence to suggest that your hope is well-placed, DSiPT.

So, let's roll the clock back to June of 2012, when Dr. Peterson and friends were kicked out of the Maxwell Institute. All along--rather like in this case--they have tried to pin all of this on a "mid-level manager"--i.e., Gerald Bradford. But the reality is that there *was* intervention by a General Authority: Elder Holland. DCP and Kiwi's remarks about "micromanaging" are a distraction. Nobody here has said anything about the Brethren "micromanaging" anything; instead, the claim is that the Brethren have decided to intervene in this particular instance, something that, in fact, they do all the time. Think of the many times that the Mopologists have cited the Brethren showing up to give talks that support their ideas. Think, for example, about Midgley going nuts about the "spanking" that was supposedly delivered to the "new" MI. Was that a case of Elder Holland "micromanaging"? Or, instead, do they trust Spencer Fluhman to run the MI in a responsible manner? Or what about Pres. Hinckley calling for FARMS to be absorbed into BYU. More micromanagement? And what about Elder Packer allegedly interfering with Rodney Meldrum's book? Micromanagement?

Just because the Brethren occasionally step in to take charge of a situation doesn't mean that they are "micromanaging" something. At the end of the day, the Mopologists are struggling mightily to explain away the fact that this was quite a public rebuke of Gee's book. And Dr. Peterson still hasn't walked back his comparison of the people who pulled the book to Nazi book-burners.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Midgley points something out:

DSiPT: Those "wonderful folks at FairMormon" do follow the Brethren, but that does not entail pausing distribution of Professor Gee's book. Why? There is no evidence that the Brethren had a thing to do with what has taken place. It is, however, possible that they might get involved. We will see what happens. Yesterday it was still possible to purchase Saving Faith from FairMormon.

It would seem that FAIR Mormon only has one copy of the book left in stock, but that it "can be backordered." Are they sure about that? And when should a prospective buyer expect the stock to be replenished? I wonder if this is a case of them being allowed to sell of their remaining stock, but this will be the end of the book's run? Amazon claims that more copies will be available later this month. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[_Dr Exiled]

Dr. Peterson:

It seems that perhaps the brethren didn't like hearing their spiritual child (Dr. Gee) regurgitate their anti-lgtbq rhetoric back to them in the form of the now banned book? It is always difficult to hear your children mimic your own wrong headed ideas. I'm sure they didn't bat an eye to the outdated theories about lgtbq persons being victims of sexual abuse, thus negating biological reality. However, hearing it come from one of their apologist children and the political uproar the outdated theories cause, was just too much. The book needed to be reworked or axed.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Incidentally, the book from which Dr. Peterson quotes is actually titled The Young Immigrunts, and Dr. Peterson has silently altered the punctuation in the quotation.

A short literary passage that seems to me increasingly apropos to our culture of rising intolerance and cancellation — see this egregiously silly case, for example — appears at Ring Lardner, The Young Immigrants (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1920), 78:

“‘Shut up,’ he explained.”

Tom:

I wonder if our colleagues know the rich history behind Dr. Peterson's use of that quotation? Of course, it was the epigraph for Dr. P.'s notorious article--an attack piece that followed in the wake of legal threats from Signature Books--called "Questions to Legal Answers." (And yes: he misspells the title in the "peer reviewed" article, too, and he does it at the same time that he thanks Hamblin and Welch for having reviewed the draft!)

But his reference to the Lardner work is interesting for other reasons:

In 1919 Daisy Ashford, a woman living in England, unearthed the manuscript of a novella she had written thirty years earlier, when she was just nine years old. Ashford managed to find a publisher for her precocious Victorian society novel (à la Thackeray) and it appeared, misspellings and malapropisms intact, as The Young Visiters, or Mr. Salteena’s Plan. The book became an instant, phenomenal best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic. Recently The Paris Review’s Alice Bolin came across the book and discussed how, a century ago, “readers regarded it as a remarkable specimen of children’s grand and unselfconscious ridiculousness.”

Wait a second.... Nine years old? That's impossible! How could she do it? Did she have a seer stone to help her with the composition? Read on:

Although the novel’s provenance has been fairly well verified, many skeptics initially questioned its authorship, with some critics believing that it had actually been written by Peter Pan author J. M. Barrie (who contributed a preface for the book when it was first published). Ring Lardner was among those who doubted that Ashford had written the novel as a nine-year-old (or at all). In a 1925 letter, when asked to review The Prince of Washington Square (by nineteen-year-old Harry Liscomb), he similarly doubted the claims for its authorship, adding, “I didn’t, and I don’t, believe Daisy Ashford in spite of [English novelist Frank] Swinnerton’s testimony and that of other ‘witnesses.’ ”

Wow: my head is spinning. It's so seldom that I see so many references to Mopologetics crammed into a single paragraph. Peter Pan, eh? Now, why does mention of that name seem oddly relevant? And, wow, a *nineteen-year-old* was able to write an entire book, too? Blow after blow continues to rain down on the Mopologists. And how do you like that last line? Ring Lardner himself is trashing the claim that Ashford wrote her "amazing" book! The topper is the last bit: he actually puts the word "witnesses" in scare quotes!

Plus, you get the bonus of the backstory as to why DCP uses the quote so often: it's because one of the Library of America editors told him to:

We recently asked Ian Frazier (who edited the just-published Library of America collection of Ring Lardner’s best work) which Lardner work was his favorite:

The Young Immigrunts! This is a magic piece of humor writing. “ ‘Shut up,’ he explained,” is as funny as it is possible to be in only four words.

Very interesting! You sort of have to give credit to the Heartlanders--they were the ones who spotted the Mopologists' "deep cover" tactics. And here is another example: you have another case of prominent critics (such as Lardner) claiming that some "extraordinary" literary production (such as a novel written by a nine-year-old girl) is a "fraud," but the whole claim is apparently "saved" thanks to the testimony of "witnesses." So long as you get an institution like the Library of America to say in print that the "provenance has been fairly well verified," then everything is A-okay. But the problem with the Book of Mormon is that its provenance is allegedly from God, and from an angel, and from gold plates that can no longer be verified or examined.

Still, you have to find it interesting that Dr. Peterson so often pulls a quote from a novella that's connected to this strange history. And hey: if a 9-year-old girl can write a novel, then why is it so odd to think that Joseph Smith could have written the Book of Mormon?