Now back to the original subject: If I read through the comments here and in other places it seems the consensus is that this whole thing was handled very poorly. It’s an example of bad PR. I suppose your attempts to do damage control for the publisher have failed. You have accomplished nothing except for maybe annoy / amuse a few people.

And it, again, is certainly an ad hominen attack when she blames where the argument’s origins are from rather than the argument itself, whether or not it is from the person, group, corporation, state, etc. It wasn’t originally stated in a separate thought but was being used to back up her claim against the original letter. It was an attack on the person and not the argument, hence an ad hominen.

I’m afraid your going to have to explain why the peanut butter argument doesn’t hold up given that it is a comparative example to counter your position and not Pam’s. Both are about someone being offended, being offered an apology, and rejecting an apology in a way that should be accepted but is not. Since the peanut butter example was to counter your claim that it is not for a third party to judge whether someone should accept an apology and not a counter to Pam’s claims of not feeling the apology was apropos. Since your claim was an absolute claim that a third party should never judge in this case, and I offered a counter example, claiming that it isn’t a fair comparison misses the point of the example.