Mr. Glickman has recently posted on the subject of the Salinas crop circle (that wonderful piece of marketing gold from Team Satan and nvidia) and has still shown that despite his long involvement in the subject of crop circles, he still doesn’t get it. At least he had the good grace to admit he was fooled by it. Unlike many other researchers who still maintain it was paranormal in nature. Glickman has much vitriol for the human circle makers: “we see Irving and Lundberg proudly discussing their activity. Like [Matthew] Williams they appear cheerless, depressed and dead-eyed. It is pitiful that, at their age, this is all they have to show. They talk portentously of their role as “artists”. They are confidence tricksters, con-men, and con artists. In the real art world they would be forgers – a criminal activity. Irving speaks of “a creative partnership between us and our audience.” He is both pretentious and deluded.”

This is why I believe Glickman still doesn’t get it. Aside from the attack on their appearance, Glickman fails to grasp Irving’s astute observation on crop circles and their audience. Those who follow the phenomena now expect codes to be contained within the design, they expect a multi-layered message encoded within the design, they buy-in to the design more if there is some conspiracy element to the designs discovery. Irving knows this, he has seen it over the many years of his involvement in the phenomena, and has delivered what the wider audience wants and expects. This is the creative partnership in action.

As for Irving and Co. as con-men? Again, Glickman needs to be careful where he treads here (for a number of reasons). Irving and Co. created a piece of art and walked away from it. It wasn’t passed off as the work of someone else, it didn’t rip off someones design, and a space was left where “experts”, croppies and sceptics filled in this void with their own musings. How is this the work of con-artists? The real con-artists are surely those who know who make crop circles, but continue to point to a paranormal origin to maintain their revenue?

Glickman goes on to say: “This event marks the ultimate essence of the hoax endeavour. Limitless cash, maximum deceit, widespread lying and hollow, pompous ponouncements. Could anything more clearly expose the whole vile enterprise? Could anyone any longer be serious about man made circles.” The cynic within in me is tempted to change “man made” to “crop” in that last sentence and the quote still works perfectly. Glickman still doesn’t get that at the core, at the purest point of crop circles, is the art. Art is a portal, a doorway to limitless possibility of human discovery. Glickman still clings to the reductionist argument of “Paranormal Vs Man-Made”. The most amazing story is ultimately that peoples lives are altered by the power of the art contained in crop circles, and those artists help to create that space for life changing experiences. Surely that is more interesting than bitter grumblings about ‘who made what, and for how much?’