Not surprisingly, various "Bigfoot experts" who attended or promoted the recent Jefferson conference have criticized Eric Spitznagel, the author of the Vanity Fair article.
My friend Wolftrax took the iniative to contact Spitznagel directly, to get his side of the controversy. Spitznagel allowed Wolftrax to publicize his e-mail, which Wolftrax posted here:
http://bigfootdiscussions.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3130&view=findpost&p=1400598
Here is Spitznagel's e-mail to Wolftrax:
"You should see what I left out. At one point. Farhenbach claimed that a Sasquatch was observed spying on a woman in the shower and "cried loudly" when she closed the blinds. He also described how Bigfoot likes to "shake the daylights" out of mobile homes. In one incident that he invesitgated in Oregon, a Bigfoot shook a mobile home "so hard that all the sheathing around the bottom fell off. It was just this guy inside who got scared out of his wits and threw white bread out of the window, hoping to soothe the Sasquatch outside." When Bigfoot doesn't get what he wants, he throws temper tantrums “just the same as a baby, throwing itself on the ground and screaming and rolling around." He shared the details of a case in California where a Bigfoot disrupted a construction site by repeatedly turning over a diesel tractor, ostensibly because he was "trying to stop progress."
I've got more. Do you want more? Here are some of my favorite quotes:
"Obviously when Bigfoot males are habituated, they start perceiving human women as sex objects."
"In Alaska , they pick up half-ton dead trees, rip them out of the ground and plant them upside down, with the roots sticking up in the air."
"I suspect generally speaking you can go on the assumption that the more annoyed they are, the more dangerous Sasquatch perceives the situation, the bigger the rocks are going to be."
And my personal favorite:
"In Alaska , a wet Sasquatch walked out of the ocean with a stick in one hand and several ducks in the other hand."
I'll admit, it sounds like the set-up to a terrific joke. But Farhenbach never got around to delivering the punchline.
At least during the first half of his lecture, I just assumed Farhenbach was making some tongue-in-cheek point. But he never broke character, never winked at the audience or said something telling like, "This is what the outside world thinks we talk about at these conferences." Maybe it was just an elaborate Andy Kaufman-style prank and I missed the irony, but I really don't think so."
QUOTE ( Eric Spitznagel)
The "out of context" argument confounds me. By definition, everything in a magazine story is going to be out of context. Unless I included every last sentence uttered by every speaker at the conference, the quotes can be considered taken out of context. The question is, are the quotes taken out of context with the intent to distort? Did I leave out something that altered a quote's entire meaning? Did, for instance, Farhenbach follow his remarks about Bigfoot tickle fights and gangbangs with a wink and a "Just kidding, folks"? The answer is no.
QUOTE ( Eric Spitznagel)
I understand their reasons for not wanting to make the DVD of Farhenbach available. But I'd still love to see it get released to the general public. I'll certainly help promote it. It could easily become a cult hit, as legendary as Andy Kaufman Plays Carnegie Hall.
Coincidentally, I'm still stunned by implications (made by certain people, not you) that I was intending to trash the conference from the beginning. Quite the opposite. I briefly considered reporting on the Bigfoot Days Celebration in Willow Creek, but writing about dudes dressed in gorilla costumes seemed too kitschy (and obvious). My original plan was to explore the climate of serious Bigfoot research in a post-Georgia hoax world. The Texas Conference seemed like the perfect place to do that. But then I showed up and watched somebody who appeared to be doing a bad Mel Brooks impersonation talk about Bigfoot's fondness for tickling. It's like they were double-dog daring me not to mock them in print.
If there was any doubt about Farhenbach's intentions, he cleared it up in the beginning of his lecture. Despite what the schedule indicated, he said, he wouldn't be talking about "possible" Sasquatch behavior. "That could include riding a Harley Davidson or something like that. I am talking about real Sasquatch behavior." Wow. That's a bold statement. So there's not even the tiniest possibility that he could be wrong? What he's about to share is 100% "real" Bigfoot behavior, no doubt about it? Well, mainstream science will be delighted to hear that. Mystery solved.
I've received a lot of angry, hysterical emails from people involved with the conference. And I've been telling them the same thing: I'm a journalist, not their personal publicist. It's not my job to put a positive spin on what happened in Jefferson. I just reported what I saw, as objectively as I could. It's not like I went undercover, trying to catch them with their pants down. I told them in advance that I'd be attending, and my media affiliation. But even knowing there was a journalist in the crowd, they gave Farhenbach the spotlight and let him go off the rails. Well, they can blame the messenger all they want, but they are fools of their own design."
