Dyslexia and English Orthography was "surprise"

[Mark Mandel]

Yes, I was over the top, I admit it, and I regretted that posting
shortly after I sent it.

However, if you are at all familiar with the history of Mr.
Zurinskas's involvement with this list, you should also be aware that

1. From the very beginning of his posting, many members of this list
(I among them, though far from the most knowledgeable) tried honestly
and earnestly to answer his questions and to correct his
misunderstandings and the gaps in his knowledge.

2. Within a few months, his refusal to accept or acknowledge the
expertise available to him here and his insistence on the superiority
of his own intuition became clear to many of us.

3. I realized his attitude while many of our other members were, with
increasing frustration, banging their heads against the brick wall of
his obstinacy. For a while I would point this out, while still being
unable to keep myself from being drawn into the disputes. Some members
thanked me, off-list or on.

4. Eventually I took the rather drastic* steps of
  - switching my subscription from digest to individual emails, and
  - from my office to my personal email account
  - so that I could have anything sent by him deleted without having
to read it or even see it.

* I have been using the Internet regularly since, I think, the
mid-seventies. Mr. Zurinskas became only the second or third person I
have ever killfiled in all that time.

5. The latest chapter of this foofaraw seems to have brought the man's
true attitude toward scholarship to everyone's full awareness. But Tom
Zurinskas, by wasting our time and effort and starting fires, has
caused much, much more damage to this list and to the cause of
"advancing the interest in and study of the English language as spoken
in North America" than my one outburst ever could do.

I regret the word that I used. I neither regret nor withdraw my
descriptions of the man as ignorant and obstinate.

Mark Mandel


On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Bill Palmer <w_a_palmer at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> I'm curious to know how an obscene ad hominem attack such as this post
> carries could possibly construed by anyone as advancing the interest in and
> study of the English language as spoken in North America.
>
> I'm reminded of Henry Kissisnger's remark that professorial egos within the
> humanities are so large, because the consequences are so small.
>
> Bill Palmer

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