Was there any requirement for a "pato"? Was it sufficiently distinct from other forms (the prose poem, polo, "equestrian" fiction, etc.) to merit a
designation to set it apart, or was the patoist claim a cynical attempt to garner attention on the part of an increasingly desperate and sidelined fac-
tion within the ARU? This was the tenor of the conversation at the Pre-neoist conference, at which several bottles were emptied and toasts drunk
to "fallaciousness." A Century of Fallacy was proposed, accepted as an inevitable result of post-scarcity advertising, then hailed. ARU members
present (anti-patoists with the possible exception of Donahey, who was still romantically connected to Patton Jr.) reacted to the jollity with increa-







singly violent cries of "Sans canard!" and "No need for ducks!" Pre-neoist ring-follower and future leader Thompson described the scene to the
court as "embarrassing for all concerned, but absolutely shameful in the case of Donahey, who was the only one present who was aware of Patton
Jr.'s incarceration and was fully able to imagine the techniques she must be undergoing at the hands of the GR penal squads. Donahey, as perhaps
Your Honor will not know, was the child and niece of men who had been interrogated by the GR in their day. In the case of Donahey's uncle,
Scrave the poet, such damage had been done that the old man could not urinate without the use of a catheter, begging your pardon for the repel-
lent image. But these are the facts of our world." In a letter written by patoist sympathizer and sometime editor of the Daily Grover Benneline Kane,
she describes the political backdrop of this drinking party from which such various and in some cases fatal consequences would ensue. "Tofu
pheasants, among other animal-shaped Vegan dishes, were presented on a faux fur tablecloth which provided a witty reminder of the patoist-vs.-formic
furore ongoing at the time, to those who were aware of the comments made by Crewe in his now-notorious tract. There was also an ornithologist
engaged to address the assembled worthies -- so the invitation claimed -- but who was instead embroiled in a fistfight with an entomologist who
challenged him with a series of insults relating to the inferior flight capacities of birds versus the parallel evolution flight in insects. It was an obviously
staged fracas which made society columnists yawn in print the following day. It also had the flaw that it was unclear what relation, if any, the supposed
conflict had to the political impasse which the event was designed to address. As far as I could see, it was all another excuse to get drunk, which as you
know, I do not need, being drunk already at the dinner hour every day God sends." In her editorial in the Daily Grover, however, Kane congratulated
those present on their"charming ability to turn political dispute into jamboree," and noted that opposition to pato, and the "ugly tendency of ARUs and
others to collaborate with our unruly Penals when the sudden disappearance of a patoist is involved" might have been diminished as a result of certain
intimate conversations had by members in the upper floors of the Natural History Museum, nominally off-limits but actually accessible to those with
sufficient "pull." As Jennet's fine A History of Pato records, the mass arrests which followed are probably only tangentiallyconnected to the event, in
any case. The tragic irony of the proposed "Century of Fallacy" and its "Council of Fallibles" will of course not be lost on the historically conscious reader.