Good point, bump to the top for wide reading.
Here on FReeper, seminar disruptors like to post what I call "onion links" to some statement or other that "proves" or at least "documents" their position. That statement on inspection turns out to be a passage from a position paper or public testimony quoting someone else in passing; and the someone else turns out to have been writing a book about something else in which she quotes two other people opining in a public forum about someone or something more or less germane to the topic, but not in a peer-reviewed medium or in any venue where the speakers' statements would be subject to examination and questioning. In one case, the person quoted as an eyewitness to someone else's professionalism, or lack of it, is dead -- and the statement is criticism which it is important to know more about, whether the speaker was making a truly dispassionate, measured professional evaluation, a political statement, or a professional "hit" in furtherance of a political agenda. In any case, the statement could not be evaluated -- which is the whole idea of an "onion quote".
Our friends scripter and EdReform probably recall and are familiar with the situation in question, in which a seminar poster, madg, put up a link to an "article" on a site operated by Poppy Dixon, a Christian-bashing lesbian ex-fundie, who quoted testimony given in an Australian pornography hearing, in which the person giving testimony quoted in extenso a book by libertarian authoress Avedon Carol, who in turn was quoting sexologists Robert Figlio and the late Loretta Haroian on the early work of Judith Reisman.
Good point, bump to the top for wide reading.
Here on FReeper, seminar disruptors like to post what I call "onion links" to some statement or other that "proves" or at least "documents" their position. That statement on inspection turns out to be a passage from a position paper or public testimony quoting someone else in passing; and the someone else turns out to have been writing a book about something else in which she quotes two other people opining in a public forum about someone or something more or less germane to the topic, but not in a peer-reviewed medium or in any venue where the speakers' statements would be subject to examination and questioning. In one case, the person quoted as an eyewitness to someone else's professionalism, or lack of it, is dead -- and the statement is criticism which it is important to know more about, whether the speaker was making a truly dispassionate, measured professional evaluation, a political statement, or a professional "hit" in furtherance of a political agenda. In any case, the statement could not be evaluated -- which is the whole idea of an "onion quote".
Our friends scripter and EdReform probably recall and are familiar with the situation in question, in which a seminar poster, madg, put up a link to an "article" on a site operated by Poppy Dixon, a Christian-bashing lesbian ex-fundie, who quoted testimony given in an Australian pornography hearing, in which the person giving testimony quoted in extenso a book by libertarian authoress Avedon Carol, who in turn was quoting sexologists Robert Figlio and the late Loretta Haroian on the early work of Judith Reisman.
"Onion links/onion quotes" -- thanks for two powerful concepts. I got the explanation of how phony advocacy "studies" work from Sandra Stotsky, in her painstakingly researched book, Losing Our Language: How Multicultural Classroom Instruction is Undermining Our Children's Ability to Read, Write, and Reason. Perhaps I should call phony advocacy studies "onion scholarship."