Best Article on Palin-hatred so far
H/T to Susan B in a combox for linking to this incredibly insightful and brutally honest article by a former liberal. Excerpt from the setup material:
One clue: the miscreants who were brutalizing me didn't exactly look Reagan-esque. In middle and high schools, they were minority kids enraged about forced busing. On the streets of New York City and Berkeley, they were derelicts and hoodlums.
Another red flag: while liberal men did indeed hold up those picket signs, they didn't do anything else to protect me. In fact, their social programs enabled bad behavior and bred chaos in urban America. And when I was accosted by thugs, those leftist men were missing in action.
What else should have tipped me off? Perhaps the fact that so many men in ultra-left Berkeley are sleazebags. Rarely a week goes by that I don't hear stories from my young female clients about middle-aged men preying on them. With the rationale of moral relativism, these creeps feel they can do anything they please.
This part wonderfully sums up my own thoughts about the real abortion criminals:
My other epiphanies: those ponytailed guys were marching for abortion rights not because they cherished women's reproductive freedom, but to keep women available for free and easy sex.
Except the Kennedy's didn't wear ponytails, but that's okay. Then she connects it all to the insane hatred for Sarah Palin.
Then along came Sarah, and the attacks became particularly heinous. And I realized something even more chilling about the Left. Leftists not only sacrifice and disrespect women, but it's far worse: many are perpetuators.
The Left's behavior towards Palin is not politics as usual. By their laser-focus on her body and her sexuality, leftists are defiling her.
They are wilding her. And they do this with the full knowledge and complicity of the White House.
The Left has declared war on Palin because she threatens their existence. Liberals need women dependent and scared so that women, like blacks, will vote Democrat.
A strong, self-sufficient woman, Palin eschews liberal protection. Drop her off in the Alaskan bush and she'll survive just fine, thank you very much. Palin doesn't need or want anything from liberals -- not hate crimes legislation that coddles her, and not abortion, which she abhors.
You have got to read the entire thing. Robin owns the left in this piece, in which I believe every single word. She was sick and tired of getting fucked by these freaks.
Pauli,
ReplyDeleteThank you for linking this. A woman thinking a leftist man will protect her is like relying on a fox to guard the hen house. Leftists are notoriously soft on crime and leftist men are usually either sympathetic to criminals or *are* criminals. It's no accident that Obama would love to outlaw guns for self-defense and that guys like his friend Bill Ayers believe in *abolishing* (not reforming) prisons.
Can I just vent here for a minute? Anchoress has an entire post about how fab Michelle Obama's state dinner dress is. Reading this while recalling Anchoress clucking her tongue over Palin's defensiveness with Oprah really makes it hard to take Anchoress seriously anymore. Should she really be blogging on a site like First Things? Are there any serious conservative bloggers anymore? Why do so many bloggers want to emulate the very mainstream media they keep telling us is so passe'?
ReplyDeleteKathleen,
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about the same thing yesterday. There are so many formerly good bloggers who have either turned into complete asshats or (at best) have lost the plot. (I'm not saying the Anchoress has reached this point yet, but the things you mentioned are dismaying.)
Maybe the problem is that the Anchoress is merely an ordinary mortal without the psychic powers a conservative blogger needs these days to stay on top. When Rod Dreher makes up, sorry, reports a dream he has had showing how obviously dialed in he is to dimensions of mental power the rest of us could only hope for, it's awesome. Being an ordinary conservative in tune with traditional conservative thinking may not be enough in this brave new age. Ya gotta be cybernetic, noetic, and maybe even mimetic all rolled up into one mystical ball of fun.
ReplyDeleteKenny, that was one of the weirdest things I have ever read in all my puff. OY!
ReplyDeleteKenny, you own Rod's mom.
ReplyDeleteokay, I relished that post. the hidden girl was obviously girly-man Rod's id who morphs into Rod's mom when he's finally conscious (further evidence of Rod's overidentification with his mother comes in the comment box when he says he's like her). (and please don't ask me to elaborate on the "large lips" on the girl, just think a little bit about female anatomy).
ReplyDeletethe thug was Dreher's superego and/or his own masculinity, which he views as hostile to both himself and society.
finally, if you're thinking "closets" here, you're on the same track I am.
Was the gangster his dad?
ReplyDeleteyeah, the superego can be the internalized dad as well.
ReplyDeleteWhere is everyone? Still surfeited with turkey? ;)
ReplyDeletePeople are dumbstruck by my penetrating insight.
ReplyDeleteDiane, I think people worldwide are in a state of confusion and shock and don't know what to believe.
ReplyDeleteAfter learning that Crunchy anti-consumerist Dreher is shopping for a videogame system..."because they have a Wii Fit program, which strikes me as a good idea for kids stuck inside the house during the miserable Dallas summer", the world learns less than a day later that Rod is going to be selling the house and spending those miserable Dallas summers in Philadelphia.
But what about the kids? Without a house, where will they be spending their miserable Dallas summers? And where will they plug in their Wii Fits?
Oh, wait, I get it...the part about the kids and the Wii Fit and the miserable Dallas summers was only a little fib and a foolie for the marks milling outside the tent. Dreher already knew he was moving to Philadelphia and wouldn't be spending any miserable Dallas summers when he wrote it.
The videogames are probably really the Christmas payoff of a shakedown by the kids, who got tired of playing with their whittlin' sticks while Crunchy and Mrs. Crunchy were appin' each other, baby and threatened to go Perez Hilton if he didn't pay up.
Somehow I'm thinking the Church said something in Latin which translated as "Don't let the narthex doors hit your ass on your way out" when this fork-tongued lizard slithered out of the faith and on down the road.
Now Mr. pseudo-Crunchy will get to twist his pseudo-religion and his pseudo-science together into some pseudo-truthful editorial balloon animals in that thinking tank they'll be putting him in where he can't play carnival barker with the general public anymore.
And I bet the kids make out like bandits.
So Kenny, where do I send the case of beer I bought you?
ReplyDeleteThe guy sure moves a lot for someone who decries the lack of rootedness and community in modern America Why, it's almost as if he is an exemplar of mainstream conservatism itself.
ReplyDeleteAnd what a joke, Templeton foundation. This guy is a serious lightweight, even for a journalist.
Dude! Send it down the hatch of course. Prost!
ReplyDeleteWell, look on the bright side, Kathleen. This means Rod won't be bullying us all from his CrunchyCon bully pulpit. He'll fade into anonymous insignificance, like the rest of us hacks and hackettes.
ReplyDeleteActually, given the tenuousness of the future of dead-tree media, I think Rod made a pretty smart career move here. And, as it no doubt means he'll no longer be bloviating at Belief.net, it really is good news for everyone concerned. Or not concerned, as the case may be.
Huh.
ReplyDeleteWith the rebranding of the Crunchy Con blog, I take it Rod has abandoned the countercultural conservatives' plan "to save America (or at least the Republican Party)", but his becoming a director of publications for a small foundation in Philly hardly strikes me as a clear effort to pull the trigger on the "Benedict option."
It couldn't possibly be that the whole Crunchy Con thang was a gimmick that is being left behind because it got almost no traction whatsoever, right?
The rest is worth repeating, but it's very old news. For a guy who champions being rooted, he moves around alot -- not just physically, but philosophically. For a guy who loves localism, he sure does love his Euroweenie wines and shoes. For a guy who thinks "small is beautiful," he sure does relish the "populist" temptation of using the power of big government to rewrite the lives of millions of individuals.
Rod's announcement at least gives him the opportunity to back off from some of his worst habits. He writes that his writing will undergo significant changes: a focus on culture rather than politics or even the culture war, and religious commentary that will be "in a more philosophical vein," all while the blog may remain "for at least a while," under a new name. He could back off the bashing of Catholics and mainstream conservatives without having to apologize or even explain himself.
It probably is the case that this move is another step into obscurity, but (of course) not the sort of thing where he just farms (or whatever) and ceases to bless the larger world with his wit and wisdom.
I've never before heard of the Templeton Foundation, and a brief search for that phrase at NRO (minus its search engine) results in about three dozen pages, compared to 825 pages for "Heritage Foundation."
And, Rod writes that the webzine he'll create and edit will focus on "fundamental questions arising from science, religion, the free market and public ethics/morality."
Kathleen writes that Rod is a "serious lightweight," and he is: he's a lightweight who takes himself quite seriously. Maybe the role of editor is very different indeed, but nothing in his writing has ever suggested any real grasp on any of these subjects. He's a flake when it comes to religion, and he's an ignorant demagogue in his railing against the free market.
His writing is the late-night blather of a superficially smart (or at least articulate, if not witty) freshman in college, with none of the grounding or frank common sense that would make the content of his ideas worthwhile, and none of the precision in thought that would make the presentation of those ideas worth noticing.
I hope he makes more of a contribution in the arena of ideas editing this webzine, than he has promoting and defending the pile of locally grown horse shit that is Crunchy Cons. If he can't make a real contribution, I hope he still succeeds at providing for his family without continuing to serve as the useful tool of leftists like those who run NPR, who are always eager to find a self-described conservative to betray the movement.
He could back off the bashing of Catholics and mainstream conservatives...
ReplyDeleteHey, as long as he does that, more power to him. ;)
I'm slightly disappointed. Rod is a man of very public exits, performed on the internet with a flourish -- first from catholicism, then from conservatism, now from "newspapering". I am sure there are many more exits to come in dreher's personal and professional life, and I admit I was hoping to witness at least a few more of them (if only to bolster my own self-conception as amateur prophet)
ReplyDeleteAh well, I'm sure Dreher won't be able to resist the lure of the internet siren, with its built-in audience of sycophants ready to lap up his every benedictine word.
New post.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the Dallas Morning News has a future after all, as they now shed Crunchy. One can only hope. At least there will be fewer Sunday op/ed sections thrown at the dog over at my house.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite paragraph of Dreher's announcement:
Readers may recall that I was a Templeton-Cambridge journalism fellow this past summer. . . . I'll never forget that afternoon session with Dame Gillian Beer, who spoke about how the Victorians interpreted Darwin's findings through the various lenses of popular culture. Similarly, John Gray's presentation of how the Enlightenment shapes the New Atheism . . . . I wrote to my friend Gary Rosen at Templeton telling him . . . .
He writes as tho we are supposed to care about this. I care more about the afternoon that Pauli will be spending with Sir Budweiser King of Beers or whatever the flavor of the case of beer is that he bought Kenny.
Shurely you know our smashing Dame Gillian? I say, old chap, that's just not cricket. What tosh.
ReplyDelete(and surely only parody begins with the phrase "I'll never forget that afternoon session with ..."?)
(and surely only parody begins with the phrase "I'll never forget that afternoon session with ..."?)
ReplyDeleteYes! That line reminds me of that Iowahawk parody with the faux conservative What's-his-guts the Third when he dad tells him that he's queer. I think Kenny originally linked to it.
LOL! Yep, pompous-assyness and self-parody are natural corollaries. Ain't they? ;)
ReplyDeleteP.S. Rod, if you're going to name-drop, you might pick a name someone has actually heard of.
ReplyDeleteLike, "I wrote to my friend Tiger Woods at the Orlando divorce court..."
Or something like that.
I for one think the Templeton gig sounds like a great opportunity for Rod. And his kids will get a chance to eat real cheesesteaks.
ReplyDeleteI don't even see it as a step toward greater obscurity. The Templeton Foundation has a certain cachet, if only for making people you've never heard of suddenly quite rich (or richer). A ready source from a well-funded foundation with the perceived mission of showing that religion isn't always harmful to science could be very handy to have in your Rolodex. And if that source were a self-described conservative who nevertheless dislikes a lot of the people you dislike, even better.
I have no doubt it's a great move for Rod. Rod usually has great moves for Rod foremost on his mind, just like your average soulless mainstream conservative automaton. This has been the point of my critique all along.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Tom: It's a great career move for Rod. I'm not sure about the "not so much obscurity" thing, though. I'm sure foundations differ from corporations in many respects, but (as a corporate slave) I'm willing to hazard that they have one thing in common: an aversion to controversy. If I were to start bloviating publicly (say, on a blog) about the apparel industry, with my employer's name appended to my blog byline, I would hear about it from HR. I guarantee.
ReplyDeleteSo, yes, this is a great thing for Rod--probably means a healthy pay increase, too. But I don't think it will thrust him more prominently into the public eye.
Diane
OTOH, nothing brings the Contrapauli Community out in force than a stupid Dreher piece. For this reason, we will miss him. Hopefully he will still be bubbling over with crunchy content in a place accessible to us rubes.
ReplyDeletePik:
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't hold my breath about that!
Pik -- LOL! Yes, what will we have to talk about if Rod fades into obscurity? For this reason alone, perhaps we should hope that he continues blogging.
ReplyDeleteJust kidding. I'm sure we can think of all kinds of other fun stuff to kibbitz about. Too bad we live all over the place -- it would be fun to get together over a beer!
P.S. -- just occurred to me: Somehow I doubt that Rod's new employer will allow him to pontificate on NPR about How Horrible Sarah Palin Is. Foundations are not supposed to be that obviously partisan; and IIRC Templeton has given its awards to a wide range of religious folks from all across the ideological spectrum.
ReplyDeleteSo, at least we'll be spared future "As a former Bad Conservative and now Good Conservative, I just want to say this" Rod-Rants. :)
Dittoes to what Diane said, plus I hope he gets paid tons of money. I think that will help to mature him. You give up the games of youth when you have a lot of dependents, you swallow your pride and ditch your arrogance and pomposity. If he doesn't do that, he may be in for a short stint.
ReplyDeleteStupid Dreher post alert.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think someone who writes for a living would understand how readers interact with written works.
OTOH, maybe he does, and I've been limiting myself to the words and the ideas they conjure, instead of the paper they are printed on. That'll show me for getting my information from the Internets instead of from a piece of paper I buy from a box.
Here's my response to the post pointed out by Pik: "Me read and write on stone, log and wall of cave. No need fancy paper, ink or liquid crystal. Me say they sent by demons who live under volcano."
ReplyDeleteLOL!!!
ReplyDeleteOn a tangentially related note: I clicked this a.m. on a news story about the thousands of faithful Catholics who flocked yesterday to a downtown Dallas shrine-church for the celebration of the FD of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The story was from the Dallas Morning News. It was OK, except for the part where it offhandedly referred to the Guadalupe events as "legend."
In any event, I was reminded once again of how irrelevant in its crunchy teeniness Rod's religion is. Not that there's anything irrelevant or even teeny about world Orthodoxy, but Rod's particular brand (the OCA) has about 40,000 active members, I'm told. Which is probably fewer than the number of the faithful who thronged the Dallas Guadalupe shrine yesterday. (There were Masses all day, it seems.)
My point? I don't know. I suppose it's just that the world (even the religious world) is passing Rod by, and he does not seem to have figured that out yet. Or maybe he has figured it out, and that's why he is isolating himself more and more in his minuscule crunchy corner. Like that Calvinist dude -- Somebody Pike, I think -- who eventually concluded that no church was Truly Reformed enough for him, so he set up his own little enclave of Pure Undiluted Calvinism in his home, with only his immediate family as his congregants.
Just read the Dreher post. It is predictable and simplistic.
ReplyDeleteObviously there's no substitute for books. (Heck, I'm even a fan of the old-fashioned letter press...how crunchy is that?)
But I dare say folks who use the Kindle (what the heck is the Nook?) are using it for specific purposes for which it is better suited than books. This does not mean that they eschew books or that books will go the way of the dinosaur. It just means the electronic media are better for certain things. Everything has its purpose and its place.
Sounds to me as if Rod can't quite grasp the concept of "both/and." ;-)
Diane
P.S. Does not the production of printed books involve the killing of trees? How does that square with the crunchy environmentalist ethos? (My head hurts.)
Diane, the BOTH/AND deficit came to my mind also, great call. Also I think it's one of many examples he has given over the years of "straining for absolutes" where they don't exist.
ReplyDeleteThirdly, it's kind of a non-issue; no one out there is calling for the abolition of books. He's just surrounded by folks in an industry which is truly in trouble (newspapers) and there are many people out there with many books and ZERO newspapers in their houses (like me). I'm not tossing my books for anything, but I have kindle on my iPhone (thanks, Kathleen) with a few books I purchased including the Good Book; now I always have something to read.
I'm thinking about doing a whole post on this--it's such a perfect example of his particular derangement.
Cooool! Eagerly awaiting your post. :-)
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, elitist crunchy irrelevance apparently is making a comeback. Well, kinda-sorta:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703514404574588792834312898.html?mod=rss_opinion_main#articleTabs%3Dcomments
Pauli, you should definitely post a follow-up.
ReplyDeleteDiane, the Nook is Barnes & Noble's e-reader, just as the Kindle is from Amazon.
Myself, I'm reticent about buying either even if I did currently have the disposable income. I'd prefer that all the format issues get worked out -- to avoid, e.g., a product war similar to BluRay vs. HD-DVD -- and it troubles me that Amazon can apparently delete books on your Kindle at will.
More personally, I have enough clutter in my life and far too many books in my to-read stacks as it is, without adding another method for quickly acquiring more: what I would buy by Kindle wouldn't take up physical space, but it would add to mental clutter.
Since I'm trying to read what I already have and read more carefully rather than skimming, quick access to more books isn't a top priority.
If I limited a Kindle to a very specific use, like having a portable and durable resource for my Bible study (and maybe "disposable" news digests), that would be something else entirely, but since my primary study guide -- the excellent Bible Speaks Today series, by Intervarsity Press -- isn't in an eBook format yet, there's no real motive to get one, at least for now.
About Dreher...
Slate had a pretty decent essay about the Kindle, and the author is probably right that it won't replace physical books.
Jacob Weisberg asks, "why should a transition away from the printed page lessen our appreciation and love for printed books?"
"Hardbacks these days are disposable vessels, printed on ever crappier paper with bindings that skew and crack. In a world where we do most of our serious reading on screens, books may again thrive as expressions of craft and design. Their decline as useful objects may allow them to flourish as design objects."
It's not an either/or situation, and his analogy of TV's compared to physical art should be a big enough hint for him: over a half-century since TV's became ubiquitous, most households have more than one but STILL have more works of art, be they prints of classic works or originals from a local arts & craft show.
We know that Rod doesn't eschew portable electronic entertainment, so this is just more of the same from him: just another attempt at declaring his personal tastes to be uniquely moral, no matter how inconsistent those tastes happen to be.
Not only does Rod not seem to grasp the chutzpah about displaying his neo-luddite tendencies ON HIS BLOG, but -- to tie things back to his earlier announcement -- his new job entails creating and editing a webzine focusing on "fundamental questions arising from science, religion, the free market and public ethics/morality."
Never mind that his railing against the Kindle shows him less than uniquely qualified to weigh in on such questions. His next job will be to produce a WEBZINE, a work that will be COMPLETELY inaccessible to those who value hardcopy -- "the way they look, the way they feel in my hands, the way they smell" -- to the exclusion of digital media.
"Hardbacks these days are disposable vessels, printed on ever crappier paper with bindings that skew and crack. In a world where we do most of our serious reading on screens, books may again thrive as expressions of craft and design. Their decline as useful objects may allow them to flourish as design objects."
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh, that is so insightful. I was kinda-sorta thinlking along the same lines: It's not as if we've all got first-edition rare books from Houghton Library. As the author notes, even hardbacks are crap these days, and paperbacks are printed on toilet paper. (Then there's that whole tree-killing aspect, LOL.)
And yes, you're right -- Dreher is seriously irony-challenged. But we knew that already, didn't we?
Bubba, thanks for your usual insight on the matter.
ReplyDeleteThere are 2 main reasons I haven't posted a followup. One, I feel that it would be a re-statement of the "lay of the land" with which we are all so familiar. As you said, the "my tastes are moreally superior to yours".
The other reason is that my wife is going to have our fifth child any day now.
But I think once things settle down I will post something on it. It serves as sort of a blatant microcosm of Crunchy Conservatism, complete with bad analogies, loud pitchfork anathemas and imaginary windmills.
Obviously it should be morally. But I liked that misspelling -- sort of a germanesque compound word: more/really.
ReplyDelete"Straining for absolutes", as Pauli mentioned, about boils Crunchiness down.
ReplyDeleteI'd mention also, tho, that Dreher's confusion of matters of truth with matters of taste goes the other way, too. E.g.: favoring Senate candidate Webb because his opponent allegedly trashed Webb's fine literary output. A matter of literary taste trumping a matter of pro-life truth.
Congratulations, Pauli!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYeah, Pauli, congrats! And here's hoping everything goes fine.
ReplyDeleteI'd forgotten (or never noticed the first time around) Dreher's virulent and extremely hypocritical reaction to Allen because of his dredging up Webb's questionable literary focus.
"I've thought this fall how incredible -- and incredibly stupid -- it was that with the US mired in a foreign war it's losing, to say nothing of the other huge challenges facing America, that voters in Virginia were being asked to decide on the fitness of Republican George Allen to continue to serve in the US Senate based on his use of the word 'macaca,' and whether or not he said the N-word 20 or 30 years ago.
"Now comes Allen with what I guess counts as an "October Surprise": highlighting passages from one of opponent Jim Webb's novels in which child molestation is depicted. This despicable demagoguery from Allen is pure, uncut boob bait...
"I hope Jim Webb beats this clabberhead like a drum."
The opening graph about how America's in too much trouble to focus on silly side issues? Ignore it: Allen attacked Webb's fiction and thus deserves a resounding defeat.
Dreher's simply not serious: he's not a remotely serious person. He probably attacked Allen because his own tastes run a little weird, what with the creepy adoration of A Confederacy of Dunces.
On the subject of faux conservatives with, um, less-than-conventional tastes, it appears that Andrew Sullivan's blog is largely ghost-written.
ReplyDeleteAt the link above, Ace writes that "like a lot of people who never had any particular talent, Sullivan was endlessly promoted far beyond his abilities, and now that he is a 'name,' he intends to sell the only thing of any value he has -- that name -- and simply pay some hacks intern-level wages to ghost-blog for him while he conducts in-depth examinations of Sarah Palin's upper fallopian tubes."
How much you wanna bet that there are other "enlightened" conservatives who wish they had a name worth marketing and the budget to outsource the writing?