Dyslexia and English Orthography was "surprise"

[Wilson Gray]

Was that remark original with Kissinger? For real?

Though I fully agree with you, Mark, I admire his gall. I would have
run away in tears by now, whereas TZ has taken our best shots and
emerged ego-undamaged.

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 3:07 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Dyslexia and English Orthography was "surprise"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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>

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