RUTHFULLY YOURS

1. David Stein to Pamela Geller:

Hey Pamela,This is David Stein (or, as you have dubbed me, “No-Name Asshat” – not the worst thing I’ve ever been called, but definitely the funniest!). I’d love to get some details regarding that “email from a Texas parent” that you posted on your site. If the parent emailed you anonymously, or under the condition that his name not be used, I absolutely understand your duty to keep your anonymous source anonymous. But, surely you understand MY desire to find out the name of the school in question, so that I may follow-up on my own, to get the details of the “curriculum” of which the parent spoke.

May I request that you provide me with the name of the school? That’s all I need! I don’t even need the teacher’s name. Just the school. If the “Texas parent” didn’t provide you with that detail, could you ask him to do so? Of course, I’m certain that you wouldn’t have run the email if the parent hadn’t provided you with specific info. After all – we ALL get random, unsubstantiated emails – even no-name blogs like mine! And if I get ‘em, I can only imagine how many thousands of impossible-to-substantiate emails YOU receive!

So, I respectfully request the name of the school that the “Texas parent” was referring to.

Much appreciated. I’m always the first one to admit when I’m wrong, and I give you my word that, once I check out the “Texas parent’s” claim, if I find out that I’ve been on the wrong side of this thing, I’ll issue a speedy and sincere apology, which I will publish on my site and CC to EVERY website that has carried my posts on this topic.

Thanks!

David Stein

2. Pamela Geller to David Stein:

He/she wasn’t random or anon. I vet what I run. I will ask.On the contrary, David, you have not admitted you were wrong in presenting one teacher’s lesson plan as the official curriculum, and denying that the official curriculum I presented was just that.

Instead, you have doubled down and increased your false accusations.

In light of that, why should I supply you with any information?

3. David Stein to Pamela Geller:

Wait…”He/she wasn’t random or anon.” “He/she?” Doesn’t the email-writer clearly mention “my wife and I?” I don’t believe Texas has legalized gay marriage, so wouldn’t that make the email’s author a “he?” And I’m asking for the name of the school so that I can verify what the parent wrote, and admit that I’m wrong! Hell, I’ll be happy to CC you on every email I exchange with anyone at the school, so that you can publish them yourself. So please — let me know the name of the school, and let me show everyone how very wrong I’ve been!

4. Pamela Geller to David Stein:

You were wrong and instead of owning up, you dug in your heels. I am not sure you will right your wrong. You have been unable to thus far. On the contrary, you have only gotten more vicious as the facts proved you wrong.Yes, it’s a he.

He has communicated to me that he is not comfortable releasing the particulars. The parent worries:

“I’d prefer not to because I still have a child attending high school. Both of my kids have felt repercussions in school because of my political activism. I will say this; Muslim studies is part of the high school curriculum in the school district we live in. My son that is still in school is fighting for a [REDACTED] and I cannot do anything to jeopardize that.

I hope you understand”

Of course, I understand. I have children.

You’ll have to follow your conscience, David, and do what you have been incapable of doing thus far, correcting the record. This parent is not going to do your work for you.

5. David Stein to Pamela Geller:

Let me make sure I understand this correctly…you were contacted by a Texas parent, who was not anonymous and who you fully vetted. The parent claimed that the material you presented on your blog – the abstracts that had been on the MHCP website – had been taught as part of the curriculum in the school that his children attend. Yet you are refusing to release the name of the school, thus preventing that claim from being independently verified and brought to the public’s attention.Do I have that right?

How about releasing the name of the school district? If you know the name of the school, it’s easy to find out what district it’s in. Can you at least release that much info?

6. Pamela Geller to David Stein:

Let me make sure I have this right. You published and are responsible for circulating all over the blogosphere one teacher’s lesson plan that you claimed was the official Harvard/UT-Austin curriculum for Texas schools drawn up under the auspices of the Aga Khan and Rick Perry. When it was demonstrated that this was not the case, and that it was absurd anyway for Harvard, UT-Austin, the Aga Khan and Rick Perry to have relied on the services of one retired San Antonio high school teacher to draw up their curriculum, you did not retract or apologize, but repeated your claims and your attacks on me.Then, despite this manifest and repeated dishonesty, you have the audacity to approach me like a prosecutor and demand my sources? Have you no decency, sir?

7. David Stein to Pamela Geller:

The point of the MHCP was to train teachers to create lesson plans for the classroom. It says so quite clearly on the MHCP site. We can argue endlessly about whether or not the training sessions are/were biased, “whitewashed,” etc. Until I hear from someone else who actually completed the sessions, I will take Ron Wiltse’s word that the sessions were not biased or “whitewashed.”But, in the end, the important thing is to find out what lesson plans resulted from the sessions. What actually reached the classrooms. I would think that you and I could agree on that. The Wiltse lesson plan was the only one presented on the MHCP site. If, as Spencer claims, there are others, it is important to find them, and examine them. I am awaiting Spencer’s proof that there are other lesson plans. When he presents it, I will publish his findings, and give him full credit.

In the meantime, you are purposely preventing me (or anybody else) from bringing to light the “curriculum” that the “Texas parent” referred to in his email. If the “Texas parent” is to be believed, and if the “curriculum” that his children were exposed to is indeed pro-Sharia (or pro-Islam), by you withholding the information that would allow said curriculum to be exposed, you are essentially assisting the “Islamists” in their attempts to influence Texas schoolchildren.

So, I will ask again – will you at least release the name of the district in which the school described by “Texas parent” is located?

8. Pamela Geller to David Stein:

DavidThe curriculum material I presented clearly says that “the responsibilities of the participants are…to create lessons concerning Islamic topics with a ‘cultural lens’ approach tied to their grade level to share with other teachers.” The section of the curriculum labeled “Lesson Plans and Strategies” contained, before it was taken down (something else you have never addressed), not only Wiltse’s lesson plan but other lesson plans. That being the case, your insistence that Spencer or I produce other lesson plans is absurd for several reasons:

1. Why would you think that only Wiltse, among the 80 teachers who participated in this program, actually fulfilled the “responsibility” of creating a lesson plan?

2. Why do you think that Wiltse’s was the only one, when other lesson plans were on the site in that section of the curriculum, before it was taken down?

3. Why do you think that Wiltse’s lesson plan has some official status, when even he told you that he was just a participant in the program, not one of its organizers or developers?

4. Why do you take Wiltse’s word that the sessions were not biased or whitewashed when the session summaries and reading assignments were so obviously biased and whitewashed, as I showed here — http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/08/here-is-aga-khan-perry-curriculum-scrubbed-from-web-cached-scrubbed-from-google-today.html

How do you know that Wiltse would even recognize such bias if he saw it? Do you dispute on factual grounds the evidence of bias I showed session-by-session in that post?

Your continued refusal to acknowledge or address these obvious facts leads me to distrust you, and certainly not to trust you with my sources.

9. David Stein to Pamela Geller:

You wrote, “Your continued refusal to acknowledge or address these obvious facts leads me to distrust you, and certainly not to trust you with my sources.”Pamela, I am not asking you to trust me with any of your sources. I have not at any time asked for the name or contact info of the “Texas parent.” What I HAVE asked, and what I will ask again, is that you release enough details so that the goings-on at the school in question can be publicly exposed and halted. If you don’t want to released that info to me, FINE. I don’t care, as long as you release it somewhere. If the situation described by “Texas parent” is genuine, and it must be, as you’ve fully vetted him to your satisfaction, then it needs to be stopped. By withholding the information that would lead to the public exposure of what that school is doing, you are abetting the people who wish to propagandize our children. You are allowing a terrible situation to continue. The parents who send their children to that school deserve to know what’s going on. Why are you keeping the details to yourself?

As I stated in my first email to you, I fully understand your duty to protect your sources. But why can’t you at least provide the name of the school district? Just provide that info, and let people investigate on their own. Why is that so unreasonable a request?

Please, don’t keep the information to yourself. I don’t see how anyone except the Islamist propagandists benefit from you sitting on that information.

10. Pamela Geller to David Stein:

Why did you ignore my other points about Wiltse and the curriculum?The parent who wrote to me has rights. He has responsibilities. He has to protect his children, who are still in the school. I am not going to endanger them.

But meanwhile, your complete dismissal of my points regarding the curriculum demonstrates again that you have no answers to those questions, which are the most salient aspects of this entire matter.

Your deflection is obvious. Now it’s about school districts and not curriculum?

Intellectual cowardice.

11. David Stein to Pamela Geller:

Pam,Bafflingly, you are refusing to divulge any information that would allow the parents in “Texas parent’s” school district to fight back against the biased curriculum he described. Whatever disagreements you and I might have, I’d think we’d both want this matter to be brought to the attention of the parents in that district. I am not asking for “Texas parent’s” name, nor am I asking for the name of the school that his children attend. The parent quite clearly wrote that the biased curriculum is used throughout the entire district, so I just want to know the district.

In the next day or two, I will have a blogger with whom you have no pre-existing disagreements ask you for information regarding the school district that “Texas parent” lives in. If you refuse to provide that information, there will be only two conclusions that can be drawn: 1) “Texas parent” doesn’t exist – he’s a complete fabrication, or 2) “Texas parent” DOES exist, and you are purposely withholding information that would allow parents in an unnamed Texas school district to fight back against pro-Islamist propaganda in the classroom.

12. Pamela Geller to David Stein:

DavidWhy do you continue to ignore my questions regarding your misrepresentation of the contents of the curriculum and Wiltse’s contribution to it?

Whatever your threats may be, I am not going to subject my informant and his family to danger by divulging his name against his will. If, because of this, you charge publicly that he does not exist, you will be lying — but in light of the false information you’ve presented about the curriculum, it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?