An Ineppt Reply

I have only a little to add to Professor Schaff's reply to Todd Epp.  I have generally admired Todd's blog as visually colorful and full of good humor.  Along with Mr. Heppler, I recently praised a post of his.  So I am a little shocked at his recent hissy fit.   It appears as if the strain of  working for the Billion campaign has gotten to him.  As Professor Schaff indicates, I was trying to be funny with these lines:

So our "Harrisburg Lawyer, political consultant and writer" now deems himself a professor, qualified to comment on literature.  Welcome to the profession, Professor Epp, Doctor of Thinkology.

It would be quite absurd to argue that one needs a Ph.D. to comment on Orwell's 1984.  Books are written for whoever can read them.  Nor did I mean to seriously question his intellectual credentials, or expect that he would be as touchy about them as he obviously is.  I think being a lawyer implies a high level of learning, and have no interest in a contest of  intellectual manhood. 

I wrote the above lines because  Epp has been calling  Dr. Seeber and myself "the NSU  Hardy boys," and "super sleuths, all year long because we dared to write about a police investigation of a death.  It certainly seemed to me that he was implying that we were writing outside our field of expertise, and that there was something pretentious and illegitimate about that.  My point was that Professor Seeber and I have as much authority to express an opinion on that matter as he does on Orwell.  But Todd didn't get it, and replied as if the words above were meant seriously.  Now he dispenses with Professor Schaff and myself by this method:

My wife has a very effective tool to deal with people who are [f]ools: She says they no long exist.  Life is too short to suffer fools of such magnitude.  . . . Blanchard, Schaff, the Ayn Rand quote is my last gift to you.  You both officially do not exist in Eppland.

So Todd's answer to criticism is to clap both hands over his eyes and ignore the critic.  Apparently his wife is content to suffer fools of little magnitude.