News from St. Francisville, Louisiana
Thanks to all them tubes and wires they gone an' hooked up to the internets, we can bring you some good ol' fashioned arguin' from St. Francisville, Louisiana.
First we here from Crazy:
Everyone in this hick town is a laughing joke! Please people find other things to do than sit and talk SH*T about everyone and everything.. It's a crying Shame how you people act! Get some lives and quit with the drama!
Shame with a capital "S"! Dang ol' Crazy! Later on, Coon Poon pipes up:
Nobody told you to get on this website and read everything...except for you guilty conscience that someone may be plastering your name like wet dog shit on here.
Wet dog shit is the best kind, least of all fer plasterin', I always said. But Crazy fires back:
"Coon poon" hahaha nice name.. HICK! Anyways, yes your right nobody told me to come on this website. I choose to bc I like to read about what's going on in the community, not drama, and people just going on and on about who does what. It's not only childish but it's just DUMB! Hate to break it to you boo but I have honestly never seen my name on here getting blasted! I simpily keep to myself and stay out if drama unless its something like this that is just outrageous!!! I'm done commenting to any of you people. I owe NOBODY in this town an explanation on my actions and I'm sure in the hell not giving the satisfaction to you hillbillys by fighting back... I've said my peace and that's it! Have a nice life you "da ville" hood rats/ rednecks :) :) :)
Well, Crazy said he's "done commenting to any of you people" an' he sounds like this time, doggone it, he really means it! But all y'all heard that one before.
FYI, I'm thinking Dreher is posing as "countrylad" on that forum (at this post that Pauli previously visited). Said "countrylad" just seems to know a little too much about the content of The American Conservative and about Rod's interviews.
ReplyDeleteDreher readily acknowledges that his hometown isn't perfect, but he does so (as he did recently) en route to making claims that I think are troubling precisely to the degree that they're meaningful. It's hard to tell exactly what he intends to say, as he could just be wrapping the mundane with the "sing-song bliss" that causes some readers to swoon and sway, and others to just retch.
ReplyDelete"What Ruthie’s cancer, and the town’s response, did was to transfigure this town and my family."
"It was as if I had been granted the grace to see into another dimension, and to glimpse how extraordinary this town and its people are, in their ordinariness."
"I saw that for me, history is now and Feliciana. The is is the was of what shall be." [sic]
"I will be writing about this place for the rest of my life. In a way, I always have been writing about this place, but now, thanks to my sister — my brave, ornery, generous, petty, big-hearted, narrow-minded, complicated, saintly, all-too-human sister — I do so in a new key."
Bubba, did he really write that stuff???? Ruthie's cancer **transfigured** the town? Its people are extraordinary in their ordinariness?
DeleteThe first sentiment is frankly crackpot. The second is so patronizing...well, words fail me.
I pegged "countrylad" as a Dreher sock puppet from the get go. He's way too erudite to have been the King of Star Hill that Ray has been building up as the "Rooster" Sedaris to his own David figure.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, to me it looks like the exit strategy is being floated this very week: my hometown is making me sick!
This is building up to a hand-wringing essay in a few months: "Shucky-darn if I don't love my dear St. Francisville and my people here, but...much as it pains me to say it, I've come to the conclusion that something in this environment is causing this recurring mono...and it's too damn hot and humid to let me recover. My wife is threatening to go back home to her folks in Texas if we don't make a major change, so I'm taking the big step of telling you all we'll be moving to Paris later this year. A big part of me will always be here in Louisiane, though, so expect me to write more about life here, even though I'll be parked in a left bank bistro most days come this time next year..."
-The Man From K Street
Bubba, you asked me -- I think in an email -- about what Paw Dreher's big epiphany was. This is kind of a minor spoiler... but here goes anyway.
ReplyDeleteRod and his dad were lamenting the fact that they didn't have some recordings of his sister talking about her life. So Rod asked Ray Dreher Sr. to do a recorded interview, and Paw accepted. Rod asks him if he had any regrets in his life. The first thing he says is that basically that he wished he'd left the damn town years before, his own dad being an idiot and a complete asshole and most of his relatives being a bunch of crooks ripping each other off at every turn.
I laughed my ass off when I read it. I just don't know how many "welcome to the world" moments it's going to take for Dreher to get a freaking grip.
(Oh, forgive me, I meant plus ça change moments....)
Well, NOW we know where Ray got his passive aggressive chops. "YOu want to interview ME, son? OK, i'll give you your interview for your book. This town sucks. The entire basis for your book is a crock of shit." oof.
DeleteSo this is the payoff in his homage to Starhill? Ya just can't make this stuff up.
DeleteThat's HILARIOUS. I can't often type it online and mean it, but LOL.
ReplyDeleteIf that sort of frank admission from his own father prior to the book's completion didn't make him question the entire premise of his project, what could?
Barring the miraculous, for which I do sincerely pray, it seems that the only reason he might change his mind on the "disclipine of stability in place" would be a self-serving reason, a mere preference in the face of changing circumstances rather than a careful and reasonable argument from Scripture or some other source of first principles.
Financial reality was the reason he moved to the suburbs he previously blasted, so who knows? It could be mono that makes him move again.
Whatever happens, I'm not holding out much hope that he would learn enough humility not to peddle his next great discovery as The Real Secret that everyone's missing.
And in the meantime, we're back to Dreher trying to save America and/or the Republican Party. Did you know "conservatives have lost the art of storytelling and its importance, and that its recovery is vital to a renascence of a vital conservatism"?
Did you know Dreher just happened to write a book that illustrates the power of narratives?
And did you know that he's writing a piece on the subject for the AmCon mag and needs our help?
He'll be moving alright, but it won't be to Paris. Too expensive even after million dollar advances. He'll have to concoct some grand reason for moving though, and health is a likely possibility.
ReplyDeleteActually Paris is quite a bit more affordable than you might think, even for a family. It's not London or Tokyo in terms of cost of living.
DeleteBut even though it's currently the only place he can think of now where he'll be happy (now that Mayberry came a cropper) he still needs a reason. And that reason will be the continued snobbery of the paleos who would like a correspondent there reinforcing their beliefs that those rooted Euros do it so much better than us.
--TMFKS
Of course, having married into a French medical family, the Man From K Street can predict exactly what Ray's new "free" Parisan docs are going to give him as their primary Rx: an endlessly refillable bottle of Suckitupcandyass, taken orally.
Delete--TMFKS
TMFKS, i watch House Hunters International. I am therefore an expert on Parisian real estate. It seems to me the apartments there are crap. Plus i doubt Dreher would settle for something too far from le 6eme. I foresee Dreher keeping his family in LA and he takes a little health break. if only there were a sanatorium for mono! run by ortho monks
DeleteHeyyyyyy... Speaking of that original CountryLad topix link, it's still alive, and I got a lot of hits from a link I posted there on the 15th. Here are some more comments:
ReplyDelete"I'm willing to bet that Rod the Wad will not be living in WF Parish this time next year. I think he may be beginning to understand that he will never be completely accepted by we redneck country bumpkins. Those who know him want nothing to do with him. I feel for his wife and children."
"Rod and I are 1 year apart in age. When he was in his teens he was considered an egotistical ass by his peers. It appears he remains the same today.... and Ruthie felt the same way about him."
But . . . but . . . but I thought he was the innocent victim of incessant bullying just because he was a weak, quiet, bookworm who couldn't throw a ball.
DeleteDon't tell me that he might have just been getting his "comeuppance".
P.S. Which reminds me of this great SNL skit: George F. Will's Sports Machine
Whoops, screwed up. This is the link.
DeleteGot some more hits and good recommendations from the people reading the thread.
FYI, Dreher has now started his own St. Francisville/West Feliciana blog.
ReplyDeleteSo far, no comments on any post, even from "Crazy" or "Coon Poon". Won't be long before "countrylad" weighs in, tho, I'm sure.
So far, the blog is focused on the form of government for the city. Lots of inside baseball of little interest to non-residents.
I like his latest selfie. It's sort of a thoughtful Bourbon-induced pose with the glasses off but still in the picture, tucked into his shirt.
DeleteYou nailed it. It's as soporific as...simile fails me...as local politics from 2000 miles away. At least I learned what a 'Police Jury' is.
DeleteOtherwise, this is like finding the Springfield Shopper on the seat next to you on an airplane.
-The Man From K Street