Yes Puck. A more appropriate metaphor would be “swept under the carpet”. It is vewy vewy important to use the right metaphor. This can be seen from the fact that this was the only issue in our three initial posts that Joshua considered important enough to address. 
Yes. I have previously noted that this forum is consistently heavy-handed in its defense of theist academics, as well as practicing “air-brushing by topic splitting” and/or topic-splitting due to moderator discomfort.
Given that the issues that we raised about WLC’s character and background (and I raised as to the relevance of the book’s topic) would appear relevant to the book’s suitability as a review-topic, and thus at least as on-topic as the more diffuse discussion of the book in the original thread, I am forced to conclude that if it is “off topic” it is not so under the consensual meaning of that phrase, but under some yet-to-be-defined meaning that in some way encompasses discomfort and/or embarrassment to this forum’s hierarchy. (In the same way that the idiosyncratic meaning of “sole” is yet-to-be-defined, and that we are forced to infer from the fact that “sole genetic primogenitor” allows interbreeding that it is not in fact the dictionary/consensual meaning that is meant.)
Of course this discussion of mine may mean that this thread gets further banished swept further under the carpet, into a ‘Private’ topic. But then I’ve always preferred clarity to tranquility. 