Two sides of the same coin

The hatchety goodness continues on Friends of Bishop Seán Manchester. Every so often, its anonymous author likes sprucing up (i.e. revising) his blog entry, 'Anthony Hogg'.

The latest version features a colourised image of me wearing a vampire mask—the background texta-ed out—except, this time, it's captioned: 'Anthony Hogg wearing his mask that reveals his own demonic eyes.'

This echoes the Manchesterian habit of comparing enemies and/or critics to demons. Manchester, himself, dubs his adversary—David Farrant—'The Devil's Fool', also literally painting him as a demon. 

When describing former friend, Kevin Chesham, he adds, 'If you live by the Buddhist philosophy you would obviously want to avoid bad karma as depicted in my portrait of a Buddhist I once knew for many years before he inexplicably turned to treachery and allied himself with the Devil's own.' The 'Devil's own' segment of that sentence links to one of the FoBSM's blog entry on Farrant.

The FoBSM's blog entry on myself goes onto note, 'Anthony Hogg is not just pathologically obsessed with Bishop Manchester and the bishop's adversary, but is also too stupid to resist Mr Farrant's machinations despite being the subject of ridicule in comics distributed by the latter.' The comic in question, is The adventures of Bishop Bonky—with an updated version called The new adventures of Bishop Bonky. 

It features a character—'Cousin Hoggy'—who is 'The bishop's Australian cousin. He leaves his pet kangaroo Skippy at his Billabong home to travel to England. His aim? To 'avenge' the bishop, and verbally defeat the infamous David Farrant.' It was created by a rather 'eccentric' fellow who thinks I am Seán Manchester in disguise.¹

However, despite the character sharing a similar name and Australian background—albeit, a stereotyped version—it's clear 'Cousin Hoggy' isn't a representation of myself, as the comic's disclaimer warns, 'None of the depictions, characters or stories herein are real, nor are they intended to harm living persons. Fictional names are used, except in cases where public figures are satirised. Any use of real names is accidental or coincidental.' Phew, that's a relief.

Therefore, the FoBSM's criticism of the comic is somewhat odd, considering the entry's accompanied by a picture of a pig's head grafted onto the body of an Iraqi woman who wanted to be a suicide bomber for al Qaeda. She was murdered by her father before she had the chance.

Google

The blog entry's author labelled his doctored picture 'StalkerHogg'. The same entry claims I am a stalker. Why would the entry's anonymous author criticise a cartoon pig, yet publish something of such poor taste? Despite these antics, the FoBSM is still endorsed by Bishop Seán Manchester.

On a not-unrelated note, the porcine representations—and, one could argue, the demonic ones—reflect a political attack called zoomorphism, 'a very common theme throughout the world. To abuse one's adversaries, one dehumanizes them by turning them into animals.'

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^{1. The author of the article gives his name as 'Joe', but was actually a member of the James Randi Educational Foundation Forum named 'CLD' aka 'Cecil Lamont-Dwiggins'.↩}

I'm Checking In

Right, now it's time to check up on the state of the proposed Great Highgate Tea Party, which was last covered here.

After my last comment on JBC's blog, he wrote this:

You know, I just don't understand this "he who makes the first offer is entitled to have all of his conditions accepted" rubbish, Anthony.

I mean, historically speaking, we don't even know if the Bishop's recent offer of a meeting was even the first. What if 3 years ago Farrant proposed a meeting in Scotland suggesting that they both wear pink kilts and lipstick. What then? Wouldn't the Bishop be bound to agree to it? And if he didn't, or wanted to change the locale to England and lose the costumes, would he be "putting up roadblocks?"

This is a reference to Manchester's invitation to David, to pop by for a chat. David requested that Dennis Crawford also be present, which Manchester agreed to ask. Manchester also requested that no media be present and the event kept quiet. He made the public offer via his blog.

After David's request were met...he decided to switch things around. He went on to insist that Manchester contact him or post a comment on his blog.

JBC thinks Manchester's original terms are too disagreeable. For some reason.

This was after I was pointing out that David was putting up obvious tit-for-tat roadblocks to prevent the meeting going ahead. You know, a step towards ending this bloody feud.

That didn't surprise me in the least. After all, the feud is something that feeds the other party. What else would they have to write about after nearly 30 years?

Other than that, the feud's been relatively quiet of late, as Lone Stranger points out.

There've also been some attempts to make the feud more...lucrative.

The person behind this is a dodgy chap named "Cecil Lamont-Dwiggins" (an obvious pseudonym), who wrote on the JREF Forum under the username "CLD". He engaged me in correspondence, asking for my views on the Highgate Vampire Case and then proceeded to write an article in which he said that I was Sean Manchester himself.

He also created a comic which portrayed me as a Manchester supporter because I had the gall to question David on his claims.

So, in this light, it shouldn't surprise you that the comic was published by the British Psychic & Occult Society - which just so happens to be David Farrant's publishing firm.

Talk about being in cahoots.