The Simkin Spectacle

[Thomas Graves]

[...] When it came to Tom Scully, I asked John to show us where Tom had called Albarelli "a liar" which was the very reason he said Tom's account had been deleted. He did not respond until today when he offered this quote:

"Now that Janney is in the business of making claims misleading to the point that they are deliberate lies, Albarelli's continued silence about what Janney has attributed to Albarelli in "Mary's Mosaic" is inexcusable."

Anyone with even the most basic of comprehension skills can see that nowhere in that sentence did Tom call Albarelli a liar as Simkin erroneously claimed he did. [...]

[emphasis added by T. Graves]

Dear Martin,

I respectfully disagree with your interpretation.

Of course Scully didn't come right out and say, for example, "Janney is a liar," or "Janney is in the business of telling lies." It would have been foolhardy of him to do so, wouldn't it?

IMHO, what Scully said was tantamount to calling Janney a liar, and he phrased it very cleverly in a long, convoluted sentence in an attempt to fly it under Simkin's radar, but, unfortunately for Scully, Simkin caught it.

What Scully said would be very similar to someone's saying, for example, "Janney deliberately makes misleading claims." In my book, that's the same as calling Janney a liar.

And for from the what it's worth department, Scully's phrase "deliberate lies" is a redundancy. All lies are, by definition, "deliberate" in that they are statements that are known to be false by the speaker, but the speaker goes ahead and says them anyway, in a non-joking or a non-story telling way. One can only wonder, then, why Scully would use the word "deliberate" with the word "lies," when using the former was unnecessary to the point of being redundant.

Perhaps to emphasize something?

Sincerely,
--Tommy
(aka "Thomas," aka "Tom")