From Tom Paul in response to post #254:
David Moriarty:
In the winter of 2008, some months before you wrote your essay, a group email was sent out by Patrick Mucci that was only some photo joke about some naked woman in golf. Both you and Tom MacWood had been off Golfclubatlas.com for an extended time. Via that group email I asked you to return to the website. You said you would only do it if you could produce an essay on the origins of Merion East. Wayne Morrison and I offered a couple of times to collaborate with you on it and you refused both times.We asked if we could see your drafts and you refused.
In April 2008 your essay was posted in the IMO section of Golfclubatlas.com. You had only shown your essay for review to Tom MacWood, Tommy Nacarrato, Ran Morrissett and Patrick Mucci.
If anyone reads the thread in which Ran Morrissett introduced your essay they cannot help but notice we were not critical of your essay until quite a good time later when we began to consider the massive stretches of facts you had made with numerous unsupported inferences off those facts and questioned you about that. We also produced additional information from MCC that you had never been aware of that directly contradicted many of your points, premises and conclusions in your essay. You denied it all and even went so far as to say that they confirmed your premises and conclusions in your essay. That is when this debate really began and it has not changed much since. At one point you even told Brauer that apparently everyone before you who had read this material must have misinterpreted it and that it was not until you analyzed it after a century that it was finally interpreted correctly.
And then MacWood claimed a number of times on this website that the historian of Merion was unethical; he even produced some treatise on the ethics of museum and library administrators. Thankfully all of the foregoing is still in the back pages of this website if anyone wants to reference it for the accuracy of the foregoing. That "authorized administrator" you mentioned above told both of you that you could have access to Merion's archives if you followed the same protocol that everyone does with Merion of coming to the archives in person. Both of you refused to do that and insisted that he should just send you any material you requested.
So it is of no wonder at all that Merion, its administrators, those who know them all well and have acted with and for them as their architectural historians are pretty disenchanted with people like you. For "outsiders" your actions during this saga and charade has done more to turn that club off to outsiders than can possibly be imagined and why shouldn't it with the way you people have acted?
And that is why I think it is complete poetic justice that you have come to this pass---eg you have no credibility with that club and at this point they would frankly just prefer to forget about you and this entire nasty saga that was both perpetuated and promoted by you, MacWood and apparently Mucci as well.
Why did you do it? We offered to help you both and you constantly refused. We even heard from a couple of your supposed "friends" in California that you did it just to get us and try to embarrass us for some reason. What was that reason, David Moriarty? Was it some cultural reason that goes to some insecurity of yours about clubs like Merion and their friends?
So what really was the story, huh? Are you simply one of those people who is categorically incapable of ever admitting he is wrong? It seems pretty obvious that MacWood and Mucci shared that trait with you. If not, were is any example from all three of you that you have ever actually admitted you were wrong about anything?
Also I note you said on a recent post how wrong an early draft of the Nature Faker was. I checked with Wayne and he sent an early draft to MacWood for his review. He did not send one to you. So how did you get it if not from MacWood? And since you must have gotten it from him because he was the only one sent it by Wayne, what was his purpose in sending it to you?
This entire decade long charade with you, MacWood and Mucci was just a set-up----there is just no question about it now.
Merion would just as soon forget about the whole thing and so would I. Wayne sure would. None of us have any remaining interest in your opinions of the architectural history of Merion East because to date they have been wholly shown to lack credibility. As for Merion's most recent presentation of the East Course's architectural history, the very best example of it now is Jeff Silverman's really good book "A Centennial Celebration of the East Course." In that book anyone can see what the club thinks about your thesis compared to ours and the club's.
Dan Hermann asked you recently if you have read Jeff Silverman's Merion East's history book, and as usual you just avoided his question. Why is that? Are you afraid of something? Are you afraid what people may think about your previous opinions if you even attempted to answer that question honestly? I think it's pretty obvious you avoided it because with you it is just more of the same old avoidance and attempted deception that has pretty much turned everyone off. Did you even notice what the world's press, the club and the USGA said about the architectural history of Merion East at the recent US Open when the eyes of the golfing world turned to Merion and the East Course?
Apparently not. I knew it would come to this some day; I told you that many times, and it seems after five years it finally has, and thankfully so. You've done a lot of damage to others in the future interested in dealing intelligently with clubs like that who they don't know. Perhaps in some bizarre way you are actually proud of yourself for all this. You've had your fifteen minutes in the sun over it I guess. I can't speak for most others on this website on what they think about it but for me and those I know and respect here the conduct of you three has been despicable, particularly yours.