I, for one, was always confused about this. Will's behavior was condemned by a fairly significant segment of the Mormon Studies community: Blair Hodges, J Green, David Bokovoy, Brian Hauglid, and a number of other LDS commentators repudiated Will's behavior, and yet...strangely, Daniel C. Peterson, the "Kingpin" of LDS apologetics, said nothing. Instead, he anchored himself in Will's defense.
For a very long time now, I have been asking myself, "Why?" The obvious answer is that a true Mopologist will not give an inch. But, in light of some recent publications, I may have to reassess my position.
I don't know how many people have kept up with Dr. Peterson's "personal blog." I know that I have looked in on it from time to time. Mostly it is nothing special, but the recent postings have been striking. Reading them, I could not help but feel as if I was gazing upon something very peculiar.
Do you remember the old "Magic Eye" posters? Where you would stare at them, partially crossing your eyes, or "gazing into the horizon," until some unseen image suddenly came into focus? This was what I experienced as I read these recent DCP blog postings.
As best I can tell, it began with the commentary from Hilary Rosen, who accused Ann Romney of "never working." DCP has tried to frame this as an issue of Rosen attacking Ann Romney for being "family-oriented" (i.e., the old canard about stay-at-home moms "not working"), though as best I can tell, the critique was aimed more at the Romneys' upper-class status--i.e., that she can actually afford to be a stay-at-home mom.
In any event, Rosen's comments have been a springboard for a series of DCP posts in which he has, among other things, posted images of women in burqas as a means of attacking the Obama administration. Personally, I think this is in bad taste, but that is not really the main point of my thread.
Following his acidic commentary on the Ann Romney issue, and following his bizarre rant about the Obama administration's record on the treatment of women, Dr. Peterson posted a strange entry about "The Greatest Movie Ever Made," which, in his view, is Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray. But this quote was remarkable:
Daniel C. Peterson, BYU Prof. wrote:Incidentally, I like The Manchurian Candidate even apart from the scene where Angela Lansbury's character gets shot. That part just makes it even better.
I can't account for my wholly irrational dislike of Angela Lansbury. By all accounts, she's a very talented lady, and extraordinarily nice. But there you have it.
http://dcpsicetnon.blogspot.com/
I've seen The Manchurian Candidate. And for the life of me, I cannot figure out why Dr. Peterson would so relish watching the major female character get "shot." This would have been strange all by itself, but he followed it up with this:
I have a reputation, in certain quarters -- carefully nurtured and cultivated by a number of my critics -- for being ruthless, unprincipled, cruel, and mean-spirited.
But I doubt that even my most hostile and spin-adept enemies can find anything in my literary oeuvre that is anywhere near as nasty as this passage, written by Los Angeles Times columnist Burt Prelutsky:
“Frankly, I don't know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we're Number One. There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on Macbeth. The four of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words."
"Why," I wondered, "is Dan Peterson posting this on his blog?" He explains immediately thereafter:
DCP wrote:I don't think that I would ever write such a passage, but I do admire it, in a certain way.
(My thanks to Stan Barker for bringing this item to my attention.)
I have to ask: Why would Dan Peterson highlight what he himself describes as "nasty," a piece that is devoted to attacking strictly female politicians from California? Not only does he quote it, he says he "admire[s] it, in a certain way." Why is that? Because they are women who deserve to be "put in their place"? Because they are from California (DCP's home state)? Because they are Democrats?
This, of course, brings me back to MsJack's epic thread. The most important question she posed in her OP was this: Are women welcome in Mormon Studies? The support for William Schryver, she argued, was clear evidence that there were forces in play that aimed to alienate women contributors. What needed to happen in the wake of this--many agreed--was that people, especially the male leaders at the Maxwell Institute, needed to step forward and take a legitimate position on Will's antics. Interestingly, Dan Peterson was always silent, save for his bizarre comment about how Will "didn't seem like a monster."
Now, it may very well be that I have been mis-reading his recent blog postings, but in my honest opinion, his latest offerings have seemed to be a very candid view into his real feelings. As I said, it is as if he was joking in such a way that it revealed his "real" feelings, values, and character. I, personally, will not brand him a "misogynist." If that's a title he deserves, I will leave it to others to apply it to him.
In the meantime, I suppose the rest of us can sit back and recline and marvel at the fact that this Professor of Middle Easter Studies at BYU--this father and former bishop--takes great delight in seeing Angela Lansbury of Murder She Wrote, killed by a bullet from a gun.
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