A Study in Hypocrisy

We've got her, ladies and gentlemen.

Looking in the archives, I found the Chief Diary Defender, Caroline Anne Morris-Brown, saying in 2004: "if I had an 'unshakeable' belief in something, I would see very little point in joining in a debate about it."

Naturally I have the receipt, being this Casebook post dated on 4 July 2004:

"That's fine Harry, but if I had an 'unshakeable' belief in something, I would see very little point in joining in a debate about it. But each to his own I guess."

That's when Harry was saying that he believed that the initials on the watch weren't there when Albert Johnson purchased it (as to which date that was, there remains some uncertainty).

Her natural and only response, of course, was to attack the person who held such a belief, telling him, basically, that, if he believed this so strongly about the watch, what on earth was he doing posting about it?

It's a curious thing to say, and, to many normal people, might be regarded as bizarre, but these are her standards. If she believes something so strongly that such belief cannot be shaken, she wouldn't bother to engage in debate about it.

That's what she said anyway.

It's a real funny thing, though, because she's told us of her unshakeable belief that the diary was found under the floorboards of Battlecrease.

Hence, on 8 January 2018 (#325 of the Acquiring thread) she wrote:

'I have never been more sure, despite what David Orsam thinks he is bringing to the party, that the diary was found when the floorboards were lifted on March 9th 1992'. 

This followed on from her telling us on 7 August 2013 that she had 'absolutely no doubt' that the diary came out of Battlecrease House.  That sounds like 100% certainty to me!

Then, on 30 April 2015, we were expressly told by her:

 'I am 100% certain that Mike got involved by pure chance, and long after the diary had been written and placed in Battlecrease'.

So she has never been more sure of the diary having been found under the floorboards, something about which she has absolutely no doubt, with 100% certainty to boot.

How odd then that since then she has repeatedly engaged in debate about whether the diary was found under the floorboards of Battlecrease, something which, by her own standards, she would not have done.

In addition, she is on record as having told us of her unshakeable belief that Mike Barrett did not write the diary. Here are two examples from a two day period in 2005:

So please tell me: why does she constantly debate the issue of whether Mike wrote the diary?

Is it one rule for the Chief Diary Defender and another rule for anyone who disagrees with her?

She is allowed to debate the diary, despite her unshakeable beliefs, while others who are certain that the diary is a modern Barrett-created forgery are not. Is that where we are?

Surely not, for that would be shocking hypocrisy, wouldn't it?

LORD ORSAM 20 July 2024