It would be fair to say that the Council took than a small amount of heat on behalf of the Blessed Village Shrine, merely for having had an occasional kind word to say about them. (We were even threatened with a meritless lawsuit on one occasion). Given this, one could certainly argue that it would be its due, when it was its turn to come under attack, to at least get a fair minded hearing from the Blessed Village's leadership. Nothing of the sort even came close to occuring this time.

Staci, the "high priestess" of the Blessed Village Shrine, was the first to chime in, with one of the most childishly petty non-sequitirs we've ever seen. As we've mentioned elsewhere, somebody had called Staci with the incorrect information that Antistoicus was listed as a contact for Blessed Village, on the Agora. No such remark was ever made here. But, instead of taking the time to check her facts, Staci immediately called him at home and started ranting at him about this non-existant remark. When she was informed that no such claim was present and was invited to check the site for herself, to see that this was true, she merely grew more abusive, until Antistoicus ran out of patience and simply hung up.

This was some months ago, and, reasonably enough, Antistoicus assumed that this was old news and people had gotten over it. Certainly he had, and he was the only party with a legitimate complaint. With this thought in mind, when Sally wrote that letter of attack, and cc-ed it to the staff of the Blessed Village (Staci included), he responded by followup, as you have seen, as one group organizer would to another. The respect was misplaced. Staci seized upon this occasion as an excuse to bring up her old complaint, all over again, in front of an audience, as we see in her letter.

True to form, Staci refused to so much as look at the things she was commenting on. With the letter from Sally (that you have already seen) literally right under her nose, she had the nerve to refer to the rebuttal which came as a followup to that letter as an unprovoked bashing. A similar, hypocritical tone could be found in the response from Frank (another member of the "clergy", over there), mixed in with a little paranoia about the FBI, as he complained about the so-called personal attacks made by Antistoicus, turning a strangely blind eye to those made clearly by Sally and Staci. We have to admit that we are somewhat intrigued by the suggestion that if somebody lies about one of us and the one lied about then sets the record straight, that the act of doing so constitutes a "personal attack" against the one who had been lying. (An ethics inverting suggestion which we've heard parroted by more than a few Wiccans since.

We are even more intrigued by Frank's application of this bold new philosophical principle. It only seems to apply when the one doing the lying, is one of his friends. If you recall the beginning of Frank's letter, he comes out and states that the only reason that he had continued responding to the person whose name we blacked out, was to correct the lies he had allegedly been spreading. Apparently, though, it was not OK for Antistoicus to do the exact same thing, when he was the one lied about. No extrapolation, here. Check out the man's letter. He came out and said it himself. Do as you say, and not as you do, Frank? Principle is nothing, clout is everything.

There's a term for this. It's called a double standard. As a matter of established custom, and philosophical preference (see the discussion of The Uniform Base Code of Morality) Antistoicus decided that the wisest course of action would be to put an end to all association with Frank, who promised to be a source of nothing more than future headaches. This, he explained to Frank, as gently as the preposterous circumstances allowed.

His only regret was that he hadn't rid himself of Frank's company sooner, before acquiring some of Frank's probably well-earned enemies by association. With considerable regret, for reasons detailed in his letter to Bob, he then had to ask Bob (the high priest over at Blessed Village who he had invited) to not drop by.

It was not, he said, that he had anything against Bob, but the political situation would have been too awkward at that point. He also asked us to ask others, if they had anything unkind to say about Bob at this point, to please keep it to themselves. Some, as we have seen, love to seize upon unhappy situations as an opportunity to push their own share of unhappiness upon the rest of us. But, he said, even if what was said were true, it would be nice to be able to walk away from this situation with at least a few illusions intact.

Is anyone not getting a sense of why we might retreat from embracing the community more fully? We have not, most of the time, been meeting very good people, or very honest ones. Given that we're supposed to talking about religion here, if you lose that, what's the point to continuing?

Here's a happy thought for you to walk away with, though. Frank fancies himself to be an investigative reporter and has been taken seriously enough in this role, that his reports have broken reputations in the community. Yet, this "investigative reporter" has proved incapable of seeing a letter that was literally right beneath his nose. One can't help but wonder how much he has overlooked, in those cases in which he'd have to do a little digging in order to get to the truth.

(Addendum, August 27, 2003 : We would later be informed, with too much independent corroboration to ignore, that "Frank" had been embezzling charitable contributions earmarked for "missionary work in South Africa" for his own private real estate investment, which cast this whole incident in a new light. Somebody, as we have noted, had good reason to not want to see an independent Pagan press get started and his friends certain did their darnedest to see to it that such would not occur. Oh, and Bob turned out to be one of Frank's partners in crime. As much as somebody wanted to avoid hearing the bad news, it came looking for him, anyway).

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