Thursday, March 14, 2013

The Little Way Goes BIG TIME

by kathleen

The place where I come from is a small town 
They think so small, they use small words 
But not me


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Posted by kathleen at 3/14/2013 03:55:00 PM

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27 comments:

  1. AnonymousMarch 15, 2013 at 10:23 AM

    As if the guy's creepy obsession with his dead sister growing more frenzied every day wasn't enough, he now has to go and post this portrait of Norman Bates as a young man

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/photo-1-2-1024x764.jpg

    Jeez, there's just something really scary going on here, like he wants to possess and merge with that woman so he'll absorb her qualities and then more people or his daddy will finally like him or something.

    Keith

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  2. DianeMarch 15, 2013 at 10:31 AM

    Color me dumb, but who is Norman Bates?

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  3. AnonymousMarch 15, 2013 at 10:56 AM

    http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7sswuviXE1rpdiiwo1_400.jpg

    He ran the Bates Motel and obsessed about a dead woman.

    Keith

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  4. kathleenMarch 15, 2013 at 3:17 PM

    interesting photo. he does call himself our working *boy*, after all

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  5. kathleenMarch 15, 2013 at 4:46 PM

    ew, dreher's facebook page ... it's getting maudlin over there. when can we expect the Lifetime movie?

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  6. AnonymousMarch 15, 2013 at 4:56 PM

    I'm betting on the Hallmark channel or maybe thge O network. The book is a natural for the Oprah book club.

    SiliconValleySteve

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  7. kathleenMarch 15, 2013 at 6:15 PM

    are the people in phantasmic Starhill LA really not having any issue with this drawn-out, immensely profitable "my sister diiiiiied" dance? Is everyone there so completely without guile they don't notice he's making this all about himself?

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  8. PauliMarch 16, 2013 at 9:55 PM

    Are the people in phantasmic Starhill LA really not having any issue with this drawn-out, immensely profitable "my sister diiiiiied" dance? Is everyone there so completely without guile they don't notice he's making this all about himself?

    To me, this is confirmation of everything we have been saying about Dreher for years. Some people didn't like it when K pointed out Rod's strange evolving story-telling about 9/11 because they thought it was heartless. But they ignored the fact that he condemned himself by his own words and revealed how narcissistic he was about a momentous national event. And no doubt some people will accuse us of being mean for DARING to say anything about this autobiographical biography.

    They should really ask themselves this: when has anyone written something quite like this before? Maybe that's a feature to some of the Dreher-heads, rather than a bug. What I find bizarre and awkward no doubt they find groundbreaking. If I was a writer and my brother died young and I did this to him, my sister-in-law would never talk to me again and would get a restraining order.

    I think this is Gerberization on steroids and that there is no doubt that problems will be caused by it. Pecuniary disbursements are keeping in-laws at bay for the time-being, but when that dries up we'll see the what withdrawal symptoms look like. My prediction? The Drehers will have a new address by mid-2014.

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  9. AnonymousMarch 21, 2013 at 9:16 AM

    Kathleen

    You mean this?

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/get-attachment-11.jpeg

    Keith

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  10. PauliMarch 21, 2013 at 11:13 AM

    Whoa... Heat Miser.

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  11. AnonymousMarch 21, 2013 at 5:12 PM

    He's a writer — not a Walker Percy-level writer, God knows, but a published writer all the same. What a privilege. What a challenge.

    That must be why, out of the blue, he put up a post about Walker Percy not to compare himself to by putting that sentence in it.

    Keith

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  12. kathleenMarch 22, 2013 at 2:35 PM

    apparently they sell plenty of hair gel in st francisville

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  13. kathleenMarch 22, 2013 at 2:36 PM

    OK, let's look at that picture again and think to ourselves "Buy this book I wrote about my sister's untimely death! buy it today!" HAVE HIS PARENTS SEEN THIS PICTURE? holy shit!

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  14. kathleenMarch 22, 2013 at 2:37 PM

    are you fucking kidding me?! THAT ANYONE THINKS THIS IS REMOTELY ACCEPTABLE IS INSANE!!!!

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  15. kathleenMarch 22, 2013 at 2:39 PM

    someone explain to me how this picture doesn't scream "my sister dying is one of the best things that ever happened to me." Unseemly doesn't even begin to cover it. it is PSYCHO

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  16. AnonymousMarch 22, 2013 at 7:54 PM

    Kathleen

    If you understand people you understand what this whole project has been about in one word.

    Revenge.

    Revenge on the little sister who thought he was a fruity little snob. Revenge on her husband and his oh-so-manly-man's life as a firefighter and soldier.

    Revenge on his parents who thought the same thing.

    Revenge on his little town that wouldn't accept that he liked women's lifestyles and work more than men's.

    Now he'll show them. Not by being Dr. Evil and destroying the world but by being the sole gateway that defines all of them for the rest of the world, but only on his revisionist terms. Hipster terms. Foodie terms. Crunchy Con terms. Treacly Oprah Book Club terms. Oddball small town comedy terms. His superior Orthodox vs. what those quaint MTD Catholic & Protestant small town rubes will settle for terms.

    He's back, but now he's dancing on graves while packing literary heat, suckas. And this time no one's getting out unscathed.

    Keith

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  17. kathleenMarch 22, 2013 at 8:52 PM

    One seriously has to wonder, is he satirizing them to their face? and if so, does he even know he's doing it?

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  18. AnonymousMarch 22, 2013 at 9:08 PM

    Revenge on the mean boys (and the mean girls who watched and laughed) as he got teased in the hotel room--only wearing his tighty whiteys--on that 9th grade field trip...

    Seriously, revealing that episode was a major mistake on Ray's part. It's hard not to imagine that scene in one's mind any time he gets in high dudgeon about anything.

    -The Man From K Street

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  19. DianeMarch 24, 2013 at 3:15 AM

    That is one seriously creepy photo. Lord have mercy.

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  20. PauliMarch 24, 2013 at 3:09 PM

    I started to post a comment yesterday, but I turned into something longer which could be a whole post. Suffice to say for now that, while I don't have a problem with theories proposed here about WHY a person would write a book like this, I'm more concerned about WHAT he is doing in writing a book like this. He is exploiting a person's demise not only for monetary profit, but also to be a vehicle for his own ideas.

    I've felt like one of the sensible children in the Emperor's New Clothes fable many times in the last seven years, but now I feel like it is almost a calling in the face of the great degree of willful ignorance being displayed by all his cheerleaders. That calling is to shine a bright light and focus on the grotesque reality of Dreher's pantomiming rather than to use dim rays and gauzy lenses to advance the travesty by nonconfrontation.

    I hope people follow this; I know that it is in the nature of some to always be very polite when someone is speaking of a deceased relative, and anyone who dares interrupt is deigned to be uncouth. Dreher exploits this protocol. My stance is that when someone is cashing in on an event or piggybacking their own agenda into a extensive exhumation then politeness takes a backseat to accuracy and calling someone out for his gross imposition at the expense of a deceased relative.

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  21. pikkumattiMarch 26, 2013 at 6:25 PM

    Keith nails it with this point:

    Now he'll show them. Not by being Dr. Evil and destroying the world but by being the sole gateway that defines all of them for the rest of the world, but only on his revisionist terms. Hipster terms. Foodie terms. Crunchy Con terms. Treacly Oprah Book Club terms. Oddball small town comedy terms. His superior Orthodox vs. what those quaint MTD Catholic & Protestant small town rubes will settle for terms.


    Having grown up in a small town in west-central MN, I have a sensitive nerve about those that go off to live in the Big City Out East, and then come back (literally or figuratively) to condescendingly describe small-town life to the rest of us -- on the unstated (but understood by the right people) premise that the illiterate rubes who live there can't themselves string a sentence together.

    I guess Garrison Keillor rubbed that nerve raw first, and now the inconsequential Dreher tweaks it again.

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  22. DianeMarch 27, 2013 at 1:27 PM

    You know, I kind of have a soft spot for people who were bullied in junior / high school, because I've been there, and I know what it's like. I had the Seventh Grade from Hell.

    But it seems to me there are several ways to deal with an emotionally painful past (e.g., memories of high school bullying).

    (1) You can ask for the grace to forgive your former tormentors. You can even pray for them, which, in my experience, is VERY healing. You can also recognize that they are very different people now. (It's amazing but true: When you run into one of these people decades later, you can't believe you were ever cowed or intimidated. Heck, you often end up feeling sorry for and even liking the former tormentor, who [more often than not] has since been transformed into a Really Nice Person whom you hardly recognize from back in the day.)

    (2) You can harbor the resentment, brood on it, nurse it, inflame it, and finally take revenge, bwahahahaha. You can lash out -- that is, you can compensate for your own hurts by hurting others. You can assuage your wounds by inflicting wounds on others. And, as Keith says, you can show those jerks! You can become so much cooler than they are and then go back and shove their faces in your superior coolness. You can achieve success your tormentors never dreamed of...and rub their faces in that, too. You can get even!

    Dreher seems to have taken the latter path.

    Here's what I think about jerky people who hurt other people: OK, I can understand why they're doing this. I can see that they were hurt / wounded / abused / whatever / at a vulnerable age, and this is why they are the way they are today. That's all well and good. But the fact remains that the person who has been hurt is now hurting others, and this could have a seriously adverse effect on those others. And that's not excusable. It's not acceptable. Period. No amount of past pain justifies someone in inflicting pain on others.

    Yes, the jerky person has been hurt in the past, but he doesn't have to respond by hurting others. He has free will. Lashing out is not the only way of coping with past hurts. There are other ways.

    Therefore, ultimately, I cannot sympathize with the person who assuages his own hurts by hurting other people. The moment he turns his pain outward and starts inflicting pain on others, he loses m,y sympathy.

    And that's why I have a hard time feeling sorry for Dreher. I mean, I look at that creepy photo, and my first instinct is to feel sorry for him, but then I think about how he treats other people, and my sympathy fades.

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  23. pikkumattiMarch 27, 2013 at 4:59 PM

    OK, you made me do it. I went to Amazon and did the "Look Inside!" thing -- looking at the first few pages.

    My first reaction: Diane cheated with her comment immediately above.

    The book leads off with a story about Rod Dreher bullying Ruthie, concluding with Ruthie asking to be punished in place of Dreher. Dreher says he wondered then what happened, and "Forty years later, I still do".

    Given Diane's insight above, he's more right about that than he thinks.

    Second reaction: If the first few pages are any indication, the creepy photo is also an unintentional window into the truth -- namely that the book is more about Rod Dreher than it is about Ruthie. After the leadoff anecdote involving Our Hero, we get to two short paragraphs initially describing Ruthie at the bottom of page 5. Which is followed with five or so more pages of autobiography.

    That's enough for me, thanks. I see where this is going.

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  24. PauliMarch 27, 2013 at 5:07 PM

    That's why I call it an autobiographical biography. Taking into account everything we know about Dreher it could not be otherwise.

    I'm buying the book, so I'll report on what record he sets, i.e., how many pages he can go without mentioning himself.

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  25. AnonymousMarch 29, 2013 at 11:44 AM

    Rod Dreher, unlike you, you sybaritic libertine whoever you are, is a penitential Lenten ascetic, spiritually disciplined to the marrow of his soul:

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/view-from-your-table-194/

    Keith

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  26. AnonymousApril 1, 2013 at 2:15 PM

    I like how AMZN includes a laudatory note from a review by Elizabeth Gilbert. That Ray's book resonates so much for the woman who wrote what has to be the most self-indulgent book so far in this century tells me a lot about it before I even pick it up.

    Eat, Pray, Patronize.

    -The Man From K Street

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  27. AnonymousApril 3, 2013 at 1:30 PM

    Pauli,

    Acutally buying and reading it. You go where I dare not.

    SVS

    ReplyDelete

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