Amway's critics' critic gets a knot in his underwear

I guess Insider, pictured to the left,  over at thetruthaboutamway.com got a knot in his underwear and worked his magical spin spell and now comes up with his "fact" that I was "falsely defaming yet another Amway diamond".   I usually choose to ignore Mr. spInsider's rambling and his curiously patched together logic in his criticism of me, but I decided to state my case this time.  

Spinsider takes the leap of faith and implies that I was somehow defaming Mr. Bradley and that I might guilty of libel, of all things.  

The anonymous spInsider sensationalizes the title of his page:  "Amway/Quixtar critic Scott Larsen caught falsely defaming yet another Amway Diamond' yet immediately tempers his accusation in the text with  "if the allegations are untrue, Larsen is guilty of libel - directly and publicly accusing Dave Bradley of lying about his association with Manchester United."  No doubt the "if " in spInsiders statement is a desperate attempt to provide legal defense if he is wrong. 

I simply wrote a spoof about the fact that Dave Bradley's name never showed up in the Manchester United official history books.  Check the player roll call roster from the "The Full Story and Complete Record 1878 - 2007" for yourself.   The scan of page 326 is linked to the left (players with last names starting in A to B).      A site visitor from England saw spInsider's article and sent me the latest book about the team.    You can see Dave Bradley is not in the list of players between 1878 and 2007.   That Dave Bradley's name did not show up in the publication, is still fact. 

spInsider generously links to the Doncaster Rovers, a lowly ranked English soccer team, for which Bradley later played.    The website mentioned a relationship Bradley had with the Manchester United soccer club.  The link details Dave Bradley's short, uneventful soccer career, stating that he never played in any games for the first team of Manchester United.  As it turns out, the link says Bradley played for the club's Central League side, which I assume is some sort of a minor league team for Manchester United.  Bradley's "profile of success" however states "Dave Bradley played professional ball for one of Britain’s best soccer teams, the Manchester United."  One could question if the Central League team of the Manchester United club is one of Britain's best teams.    Site visitors can decide for themselves if that is an exaggeration or not.   Perhaps a more straight forward statement for his profile would be "he played ball for the central league team of the Manchester United club."

SpInsider wants to discredit me with his "proof" that Dave Bradley was a professional with the Manchester United club, and saying that I directly and publicly said he was not.   The spoof never challenged that Bradley was not associated with the Manchester club, but pointed out the very strange fact that a professional ball player from the renouned Manchester United team was curiously missing from the history books.  There is usually a hidden side to any story.  spInsider was good enough to provide it for us.  Bradley certainly could have been a player with the club, which might have had numerous minor league teams, but it is seems fairly obvious from Insider's link that Bradley never played in any games in the premier league or to say "never played ball for one of the best teams in Britain".    That would confirm to me why he is totally absent from the Team's history books.  One might be able to say he played ball for one of the best clubs in Britain and still be accurate.

Any casual reader will readily see that the profile of success was written in the third person; most likely by some editor at Internet Services, which published the book.  It is anybody's guess if Dave Bradley himself actually wrote the piece, albeit in the third person.   To say I was accusing Dave Bradley of lying is quite a leap of faith for spInsider since we cannot be sure who authored the piece and if the facts was misinterpreted by the author of the piece.  Technically, I could only accuse the author of the piece of having the wrong information or exaggerating.  I could never say the author was "lying" since I do not know if the author knew the actual truth or not. 

spInsider alleges that I was accusing Dave Bradley of lying about his relationship with the Manchester United club.  Well that is spInsider's interpretation, he is entitled to it.  Maybe the author of the article had misinterpreted the facts, substituting team for club, for instance,   but spInsider does not even give this as a possible explanation.  He just wants to make quick sensationalized head lines with words like "lie" and "defame".   After all he is the official "critic watcher", right?   When will there be a "spInsider Watch" web page?

I have found spInsider has an affinity to the word "lie" anyway.     I just pointed out the fact that Bradley was never mentioned in the team's official history books, and he jumps to the conclusion that I say Bradley is lying.  The spoof was just pointing out that there was some part of the story that was missing.    That seems to be cleared up now.   In my opinion, Bradley's relationship with Manchester United is not as glorious as what one would assume from reading in the profile of success. 

It is interesting and hypocritical of spInsider, since he employs the same sensationalistic techniques in his pages about me, which he accuses me of employing. He and I disagree on what is considered an illegal pyramid, and for that reason he claims he has caught me "lying".       It is ridiculous.   I don't know how one can be "caught lying" about an opinion and an interpretation of a hotly debated subject.  If a person unknowingly gives incorrect information, Insider seems to classify that as a lie, and not a falsehood.   I always thought a lie was was when someone said something, knowing it to be false.  I guess he is entitled to his opinion of what a lie is as well.  It is unfortunate that he must sensationalize everything and add the word "lie" to juice up his headlines.   Maybe he should change his handle to InsLIEder since lie seems to be one of his favorite words.

To quote InsLIEder himself:  "Yet every day, thousands of potential Amway distributorss around the world google Amway, come across his website, and believe what he is saying. He is a disgrace."

Maybe when InsLIEder gets some time, he can work on the Samir Attalah spoof and accuse me of lying there too.