A Southern Boy, Too Many Parisian Oysters, and the Stressors of a Good Life
Apparently making a good enough living typing at home about God and Man that his wife doesn't have to work, banking a near million dollar book advance and hectoring others about how to live while eating Parisian oysters on multiple elective vacation trips to Europe is far more stressful and unhealthful than anyone knew. I asked my invisible, anonymous friend Maria, the journalistic source of all my unverifiable anecdotes and a single mom of four who cleans bathrooms at the Greyhound station when her Walmart shift is over, what she thought of this:
So, I went to see the rheumatologist about my chronic mono. Tests were ordered, but his considered opinion is that my immune system has broken down because of persistent and serious stress. He will see me in three weeks to go over the test results, but predicts that the answer for me will be “trying to find inner peace.”
He said that, this physician, talking like a priest. He told me he sees this a lot in his practice these days: people’s immune systems being unable to cope with multiple stressors. Who knew?
Tears streaming down a face pallid and doughy from years of night work at two jobs and a diet of Big Macs and takeout tacos, Maria could only shriek in agony at the top of her lungs, "WHO KNEW!? WHO KNEW!?", and then she broke down completely, and then while trying to console her I started sobbing uncontrollably with her, and I'm sorry, folks, I'll try to finish this when I can finally compos
Sad part is that one could strike the first two paragraphs of the linked-to piece without missing anything of the movie review that follows (such as it is). There is not even a breath about the mono in the rest of it. At most, a little lead-in of his need to attain personal peace (if he must add something), would have been more than plenty. But of course, you can't let a crisis/illness go to waste.
ReplyDeletePerhaps one of y'all here can channel Ruthie's response to that Dreher piece.
Ruthie's response would be a slightly modifed TL-DR: Too Lame-- Didn't Read. If Ruthie refused to eat the tasty food Rod used to cook up, I doubt she'd ever read his quotidian physical/spiritual health reports.
DeletePik, this is a classic example of a Dreher post and instructive for that reason. While I can't know how Ruthie would respond, having known enough no-bullshit country girls I can pretty much guess.
ReplyDeleteThe classic Dreher narrative "story" post is composed of basicly two parts, the narrative candy coating wrapper and the real payload intended. In this case, the wrapper here is the religious commodity, a tried and true standby, while the payload is the only new information offered and thus the only reason for this post to actually exist, namely, "I'm sick and need your pity and prayers because I'm stressed." In this post you see two types of respondents, those who get stuck in the bait and debate the Jesus Prayer or Terrence Malick or why do pigs have wings, and those who go straight for the payload and immediately offer Dreher their pity and prayers as solicited. In this latter group you also see those helpful souls who pepper him with unsolicited sure cures and home remedies*: "Hais ye tried Blue Apple Butt Salve? Always works for me!" Other posts recently have offered Wrapper = "That Francic! Love him, hate him, you can't miss the next thing I'll say about him!" and Payload = "Take that, Church-which-failed-me, I'll show you by siphoning off your communicants".
Country girls, at least those who don't suffer the classic fate of being waylaid by traveling salesmen or their metaphorical equivalents, are usually pretty instinctively astute at immediately and directly seeing through the bullshit wrapper form to the real payload content which is intended, particularly the ones who are naturally guileless at heart, just because they are guileless at heart and they can smell the bullshit of guile from a mile away. In this way, they're just like the kid in the Emperor's New Clothes.
I can't prove, but everything gives me reason to think this was what was behind Ruthie's lifelong antipathy to Rod, although with her having been shut up by death and him always the only narrator, he naturally tells the tales very differently. I think Ruthie always held her brother in contempt for his whining, self-pitying, passive-aggressive ways of cloaking his personal compensatory superiority ego trips and resentments in wrappers which were superficially acceptable: Wrapper = "Look at the trouble we went to to make you this lovely bouillabaise, just because we love you so!."; Payload = "Be instructed: this is the kind of fish stew civilized, sophisticated people, people like me, not like you, eat out there beyond Hog Wallow." The main ongoing evidence for this is the natural way Ruthie was embraced by everyone around her who met her over her entire life, while mister community localist has never really developed any natural community acceptance anywhere he's lighted during his peripatetic life. Some of that effect may be due to the cause of relocation, but he was 7 years, I think, at that Dallas paper and never developed any real ties there; he plowed the ocean for 7 years and disappeared without a trace. Instead, like the proverbial child so ugly he has to tie a pork chop around his neck to get a dog to play with him, overwhelmingly Dreher has assembled his artificial community one by one over the internet, distilling them down to only those who adore and agree with him.
So, to wrap up my own tl;dr answer, Ruthie would have told him, "You know what's stressful? Terminal Stage IV lung cancer on a teacher-fireman's income and leaving 3 kids behind without a mother. Not your self-centered emotional hissy fits about you and 'culture'."
*This would be great good fun: every time Dreher fields one of these ailment posts, flood him with quack remedy comments ("Have you tried rubbing 10W-30 on it?").
Keith
I was thinking of the bouillabaise episode (however it really happened) when I read this. I was having an easy time imagining Ray sticking a DVD of any Terrence Malick film into the homestead tube, calling Ruthie, Paw, and all and sundry over, imploring them "you have to watch this...it will be life-changing!." Ruthie would have pegged the film as pretentious horseshit within 5 minutes of hitting the 'play' button.
ReplyDelete-TMFKS
Keith: "…Too Many Parisian Oysters, …"
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the picture of I did of Rod eating oysters.
But seriously, I have to wonder. A person can be sickened by eating contaminated oysters. Has his chronic illness possibly been misdiagnosed? Maybe it is related to some pathogen he picked up from French oysters? For example, vibrio vulnificus is one of the worst, but I am sure there are others that can do all sorts of bad things.
Dreher has told us his doctor has positively diagnosed Epstein-Barr virus. Dreher has also told us these EB caused weak spells pre-date France as far back as Philadelphia or so.
DeleteWikipedia tells us this about EB (emphasis mine):
The Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), also called human herpesvirus 4 (HHV-4), is a virus of the herpes family, and is one of the most common viruses in humans.
It is best known as the cause of infectious mononucleosis (glandular fever). It is also associated with particular forms of cancer, such as Hodgkin's lymphoma, Burkitt's lymphoma, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and conditions associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) such as hairy leukoplakia and central nervous system lymphomas.[1][2] There is evidence that infection with the virus is associated with a higher risk of certain autoimmune diseases,[3] especially dermatomyositis, systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, Sjögren's syndrome,[4][5] and multiple sclerosis.[6]
Infection with EBV occurs by the oral transfer of saliva[7] and genital secretions.
Most people become infected with EBV and gain adaptive immunity. In the United States, about half of all five-year-old children and 90 to 95 percent of adults have evidence of previous infection.[8] Infants become susceptible to EBV as soon as maternal antibody protection disappears. Many children become infected with EBV, and these infections usually cause no symptoms or are indistinguishable from the other mild, brief illnesses of childhood. In the United States and other developed countries, many people are not infected with EBV in their childhood years. When infection with EBV occurs during adolescence or teenage years, it causes infectious mononucleosis 35 to 50 percent of the time.[9]
EBV infects B cells of the immune system and epithelial cells. Once the virus's initial lytic infection is brought under control, EBV latently persists in the individual's B cells for the rest of the individual's life.[7]
Most recently, Dreher has most recently told us that his stress-filled life is preventing his immune system from keeping the HHV-4 EB virus at bay, but in my latest comment I report the good news possibility of an imminent stress-busting Dreher pilgrimage to Mont-Saint-Michel.
Keith
Keith--try getting the bolded part past the moderator hurdle--I dare ya.
DeleteIt reminds me of a woman I knew who worked in Opposition Research in the 1996 Dole campaign. During the primaries against Pat Buchanan, one of their "nukes"--in case PJB got within striking distance--was disclosing that his Vietnam-era 4-F draft exemption (already known) was due to complications from VD (not known).
-TMFKS
TMFKS,
DeleteDoes it sound to you as it sounds to me as if Rod is offering one of his circuitous, implicit public confessions here, as when he explained to his flock that the reason that he only had 3 kids was because he dreamed of a nest with 3 eggs in it?
Keith
Keith: "I think Ruthie always held her brother in contempt for his whining, self-pitying, passive-aggressive ways of cloaking his personal compensatory superiority ego trips and resentments in wrappers which were superficially acceptable…"
ReplyDeleteKeith, if I go strictly by what I found in the book TLWoRL and on the blog, I would have to guess that this is probably close to the reason why the sister held a "bad opinion" about RD, which is the phrase I recall that was used by the niece during the dinner in France episode near the end of the book.
But we really don't know how deep the sister's antipathy was. It is entirely possible that RD has exaggerated it. And it is very possible her attitude was more along the lines of an abiding attitude of healthy but cool skepticism due to long familiarity with her brother's antics and words. I am guessing that she learned never to take him seriously, which was something that might have rankled him.
Now that she is gone, when it comes to the subject of his sister, RD's persistently goofy writing suggests to me that he needs some kind of "private counseling" about his hang up about his sister.
But it is always risky to try to remotely assess these sort of things.
Update - Good news! Rod Dreher discovers the cure for his terrible, enervating stress: a trip back to France, a pilgrimage to Mont-Saint-Michel. Will there be oysters available in coastal France? I will try to find out and report.
ReplyDeleteI will. I have to know. I am going à La Merveille, to the Wonder, and soon.
But until then, there will be so many commenters to ingratiatingly suck up to by name, so many opportunities to slip a copy of TLWORL into every crevice and bodily orifice available. And how many copies will Dreher be taking on his mission to give to the natives of Mont-Saint-Michel who may not yet have received the word?
Or could this be the real source of the problem?
Thinking about Mont-Saint-Michel as an enclosed garden, a sacred grove, I thought that all my life has been about trying to find my way back to the old aunts’ cabin, and their garden. It was where I was first touched by wonder, and where the world far beyond was enchanted by those two dear crones, and made for me a place of pilgrimage.
If he tries to leave the sacred garden to explore the world, he will regret it. Having left the sacred garden for the world only to try in vain to return, he will regret it. To live within the sacred garden or without the sacred garden - he will regret both. So to speak.
Keith
RD: "I was thinking yesterday about Mont-Saint-Michel as a hortus conclusus, and speculating as to whether that has anything to do with my preoccupation with the abbey since seeing the Malick film. Could deliverance from the storm and stress that has kept me sick since pretty much the time my late sister was diagnosed with cancer, and especially since I returned to my hometown, be found there, somehow? … And then it hit me: Mont-Saint-Michel is, symbolically, a sacred grove. It is a stand-in for the lost Eden that was my Aunt Lois and Aunt Hilda’s cabin and garden."
DeleteI have several reactions:
When RD tells us what his reasons are for doing something, I think we should take Pikkumatti's advice and not necessarily accept it at face value, because RD doesn't always tell the truth about his real motives for doing things.
Besides the above quote, much of it reminds me of what's called purple prose. And it looks like RD has launched himself into a spasm of purple prose. The term purple prose is derived from a Ars Poetica by the Roman poet Horace, which oddly enough include a reference to a "sacred grove":
Your opening shows great promise, and yet flashy purple patches; as when describing a sacred grove, or the altar of Diana, or a stream meandering through fields, or the river Rhine, or a rainbow; but this was not the place for them. If you can realistically render a cypress tree, would you include one when commissioned to paint a sailor in the midst of a shipwreck?
(Ars Poetica, lines 14-21)
If RD actually believes what he is writing — and that may not actually be the case — then I have to conclude, at the very least, that he is setting himself up for a very big disappointment once he arrives at his destination. He is looking in all the wrong places to fill the spiritual void in his life. He wants to find some ultimate and lasting aesthetic experience.
On the other hand, RD might actually be loony. In that case, my final reaction is that I feel sorry for his family. It is unfortunate that there is no one around, apparently, who can stage an intervention.
I followed the link and wow. He is becoming a complete self-satire. The "eden" of old-maid aunts, the rejection of the masculinity of his father, the dystopian alienation from his male persona, the close encounter like vision (his description) of Mont-Saint-Michel as a stand-in for his weird aunt's cabin.
ReplyDeleteDoes he read this stuff back or is this immersion in a world of his own creation driving him so nuts that he can't see how crazy it sounds? He is becoming one sick dude and I'm not talking about the Epstein Barr virus. He needs to take a regular job where he has to conform to how average people perceive him and start attending a normal church (not of his own creation) where he isn't indulged in his illusions. I don't know how his wife tolerates this, Mine wouldn't and I wouldn't tolerate it from her
I followed the link and wow. He is becoming a complete self-satire.
DeleteI know I've said it often, and I'll say it again. Who else is like this? Who else talks about this kind of stuff? Who?
There are all kinds of people with crazy ideas, I understand. But--as far as I know--they are not this famous, nor are they really religious as he purports to be. I mean, think of another Christian religion writer who overshares and is this weird.
Here's something I didn't realize until a few days. Dreher wrote an op-ed in the NY Times around the same time as his TIME article. I find it interesting that he explicitly mentions contraception in the article.
This is weird even for him. I had to read the comments and it is amazing that they all treat it as normal. It's like the guy is living in some kind of hazy dream. How can you be this self-obsessed with 3 kids to take care of?
DeleteMaybe he could write some kind of southern gothic horror story about the mad passions of auntie Hilda and the bloodshed in the grove witnessed by the little lord.
I do think we know the symbolism of the cover photo on TLWORL now. It's Rod's rocker and he's off it.
DeletePauli: "Who else is like this? Who else talks about this kind of stuff? Who?"
DeleteMy guess is that a narcissistic, dandified aesthete would possibly be the sort of person who would write stuff like this. The real question is why do people like this kind of writing? For me, it's obnoxious and boring, when it's not being unintentional self-parody. (Or maybe it really is intentional self-parody?) Except for an occasional interesting link, RD's blog has gotten to be "Too Lame — Don't Read" for me.
Pauli: "But--as far as I know--they are not this famous…"
I think that earlier I raised the question of why narcissistic people acquire so much influence that is way out of proportion to the measure of talent they actually possess. I think everybody knows of cases where this happens. It's one of those Mysteries of Life.
Pauli: "…I mean, think of another Christian religion writer who overshares and is this weird."
I really don't think RD is an authentic "Christian religion writer". In fact, going by his track record as a writer, I don't think he is an authentic anything at all. He is whatever he is at the moment that he happens to think will sell himself.
This sacred garden piece is the logical progression of a writer who does not have an editor. I've thought that he's needed an editor for some time, just from his wordiness -- he seldom uses only one word when ten will work not qute as well. (Unless there's a French word or a name/initials to drop.)
DeleteBut what he's also missed by not having an effective editor is someone to tell him when he's oversharing for no purpose. Or, in this case, someone to simply tell him that he's full of shit.
P.S. We now see the purpose of the payload in the movie review linked above. This trip to France is for health reasons (physical and mental -- he's got to work out the Aunt Hilda issues). Trump card played, Mrs. Dreher. She needs to buck up and clobber him before he puts them deeper in the financial hole by traveling to a place that he's seen in a movie (hope the movie was actually shot there).
P.P.S. I read the comments above before reading the sacred garden piece. I thought SVS made up the part about Auntie Hilda's bloodshed -- until I read the piece. Oh my. Hope it was just a cat or something.
I too would like to find out whether the malicious Hilda murdered a child and stuffed it into a shallow grave in the sacred grove. You don't use a term like "bloodshed" in the ominous way Dreher does in that post unless you're trying to communicate that Hilda committed some major violence, or unless you're trying to lure a buyer into buying your book by teasing them into thinking that that's what they'll find when they do.
DeleteCouple or more points.
Shorter: Peter Pan woke up one morning and found he was living in Springfield instead of Neverland with a Wendy now all grown up and aging just like him.
Longer: Dreher Pan, in pursuit of his Narnia/Sacred Grove/Benedict Option, finally (now that it's safe, now that his mean little sister is dead and his Paw is old and feeble and powerless) moves back to what once upon a time when he was young was Neverland, a bucolic green place far from the ugly "culture" he rails against. But, darn, they don't carry his wines there, nor his organic food, and it turns out they really do have a nuclear plant there and that one of his family's best friends is the spitting image of Homer Simpson.
You think Snowden felt trapped and uncomfortable all those days wandering the Moscow terminal transit zone. Peter Pan just took the Benedict Option and found himself marooned in Springfield instead.
Wendy was 20-ish when the dreamy, many years older, impressively intellectuously-religiousy-cultury-talking Peter swept her away from Texas to the Big Apple. Now Wendy is no longer an impressionable young girl, she's a grown up woman heading toward middle age and the one with all the day to day responsibility for 3 growing kids, one or more with special needs. Now she too is marooned in Springfield with the remains of the Dreher family, Homer Simpson, the assorted colorful natives, and a much older Peter who now has an enervating disease he orally contracted from the transfer of someone's saliva or genital secretions.
Peter, however, continues to fly off in search of ever-new Neverlands, first to Paris for a month (it's all only to homeschool the kids, really), then to Amsterdam, now to Mont-Saint-Michel.
Is Peter talking to Wendy over the pillows now about relocating the family to France permanently, like Johnny Depp or Robert Crumb? If so, how then will Wendy visit her own family or adapt as an ex-pat in France? Or has Peter instead settled in to a closed, repeating circuit comprised only of his laptop-internet-Neverland portal, his personal Orthodox Church beautiful-liturgical-Neverland portal, his bed-EB sleep of the dead-Neverland portal, with periodic trips to his oyster stocked-France-Neverland portal?
I can see where stress invades a picture like this, through every window, and not just for Peter. If Peter the exhibitionist is telling the world he has a disease he contracted from the transfer of someone's saliva or genital secretions, the ladies in the Springfield hair salons and the natives in the Springfield grocery and hardware stores have long ago been whispering among themselves and others about Wendy and about how Peter got it.
Keith
Keith: "I can see where stress invades a picture like this"
DeleteIn your own inimitable way, Keith, I think you have shown us what a sad and pathetic story this all is turning into.
A kid who "never grows up" is okay in fairy tales I suppose, but in real life such a thing has bad consequences.
For sure, it is nothing to rejoice about.
Oengus,
DeleteThe Puer aeternus
The Peter Pan Syndrome
Gotta wonder how Dreher might have turned out if Paw had forced him to suck it up and finish the local public high school like Ruthie presumably did rather than hothousing him in that arts school he demanded being sent to.
Keith
Oengus,
DeleteMoralistic Therapeutic Aestheticism:
[NFR: You're on to something. I find ugly churches make me feel alien to God. I don't know that one could make a case for God's existence based on Beauty, but I think it's fairly common to become more aware of the divine presence when contemplating Beauty, whether in nature or in the built environment. In our little Orthodox mission out in the country, you know when you walk into that church that you are in a place unlike any other you will be in all week, and that this place is reserved for God. You know this without having to be told, given the aesthetics of the place. And we are poor. Still, you know. -- RD]
Also, how Mr. Beautiful gets the hot chicks - or at least the pliant ones with obviously beautiful minds:
Alison says:
This is a great post with lots to ponder.
Keith
Quote: "This is a great post with lots to ponder."
DeleteYes, this is the oddest aspect of it all, the thing I find the strangest: There are people out there who actually take RD's dreck very seriously.
I don't know whether to laugh at them or weep for them. It guess it's the result of our degenerate educational system.
From the "great post":
DeleteJust as ... I need less thinking and more silent prayer, the world needs less Christian argument, and more Christian art. (typo edited out)
Rod Dreher may in fact be Peter Pan, but he thinks of himself as Everyman. He sees a movie a couple of weeks ago, and a doctor because he is oh-so-stressed, and that has now morphed into the needs of the world at large.
Like I said, no editor whatsoever.
P.S. IMO, the world could use more of both Christian argument and art.
IMO, the world could use more of both Christian argument and art.
DeleteIf by argument you mean critical thinking then I thoroughly agree.
Also reading this stuff makes me wonder if he regrets getting married and having a family. It's not easy, certainly no easier than being a celibate monk without dependents. Different challenges, obviously. The grass is always greener. All this pining from a devotee of the "discipline of place" and the Benedictine oath of stability.
DeleteIf you get that sense from reading it, imagine the sense that the Mrs. gets. Unless (hopefully) she doesn't read it herself anymore, to spare the agony, or because she gets enough of it over the dinner table or as pillow talk.
DeleteP.S. Yes, that is what I meant by "argument". Presumably that is also what he meant by it.
Oengus: "I don't think he is an authentic anything at all. He is whatever he is at the moment that he happens to think will sell himself."
DeletePikkumatti: "If you get that sense from reading it, imagine the sense that the Mrs. gets."
I was thinking about what I said earlier, quoted above, and it occurred to me today that there may be another possibility at work here. It might sound far-fetched but let me try to explain a possible alterative thesis:
Absolutely nothing that Rod Dreher writes is for real.
In other words, it's all a concocted put-on made up by Rod which bears little or no correspondence to anything that is actually happening behind the scenes in the Dreher home. Therefore, Mrs. Dreher isn't bothered in the least about what Rod writes because she is completely in on the scam, so to speak; she knows that it is all completely fake, and in fact, they are both laughing on their way to the bank about it.
Or to put it in the terms similar to what I said above, Rod writes whatever he thinks will sell, and not a bit of it can be considered sincere or authentic. But Rod has discovered that there is an audience for this stuff, he thinks he has a winning formula that he can exploit, and he has done a fairly good job of cultivating that audience for the stuff he writes. It doesn't matter to the Drehers in the least that it all is basically phony, because they both know that Rod is a worthsmith who makes a living cranking out whatever dreck that the fools will eat up.
Oengus, I'd agree with you 100%, but if true then that leaves a difficult question with respect to both Mr. and now Mrs. Dreher and their public displays of religious piety.
DeleteWe don't comfortably think of Christians in general and highly specialized Christians in particular as normally the sort of cynical scam artists you describe, although the Evangelical world has had its share of them. To the contrary, being deeply Christian implies just the opposite, being deeply, self-sacrificingly honest.
Sooner or later we and you are going to have to reconcile these 2 things: if both Dreher's are consciously cynical scam artists, then it's hard to see how their professions of deep, authentic religiosity escape that otherwise all-encompassing net.
For myself, I understand Dreher as purely psychological, an exhibitionist logomaniac. This requires nothing of him but submission to his innate urges and so leaves him no less honest than any other unconstrained addict.
Mrs. Dreher, though, must either be like him, or different in some meaningful way. She could be submissive, such that when in the past Dreher announced that as "spiritual leader of his family" (as if he were some Mormon patriarch) he had chosen Orthodoxy for them she dutifully became Orthodox. On this account we must presume that, had he chosen Santeria instead, she would just as dutifully now be lopping off chicken heads and pouring out offerings of rum.
Another explanation, of course, is that like any human she has been seduced by the good Dreher life of travel and fine food and wine and is loathe to rock that materialist boat, in which case she may very much not want to know how the money is made or where it comes from. Call this the Sopranos hypothesis.
But if she's all in on it as you hypothesize, then that pretty much necessarily makes her the Tammy Faye accomplice to his Jim.
Keith
Is there that much money in what he does for TAC? I can't imagine, but people make all sorts of money these days in ways I don't figure.
DeleteAssuming not, it reminds me of the line from A Man for All Seasons:
Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?
Mrs. might be submissive, or maybe she just doesn't pay much attention to the pseudo-intellectual crap he posts. Or, to borrow another movie line, RD has told her:
Don't ask me about my business, Kay. . . . DON'T ask me about my business.
Is there that much money in what he does for TAC? I can't imagine, but people make all sorts of money these days in ways I don't figure.
DeletePik, according to Ron Unz's tell-all in NRO, Dreher brings in most of TAC's blog hits. That means that Wick Allison, who publicly begs for money in the sidebar to additionally subsidize his already taxpayer-subsidized non-profit, can't rely on the basic "conservative" content alone to support TAC. He needs a third subsidy in the form of Dreher as TAC's roper to bring the rubes into the tent.
The cost to Allison is "conservative" posts like this - "I have a mistress, and her name is Vindaloo" (see also ABC's The Chew) - where not-quite-Oprah demi-celebrity Okra warms his loyal audience of readers by using folksy terms like "goozlepipe" and "noggin", and "conservative" posts like this
, where a guy sits down in a coffeeshop next to Okra, tells him that his wife was just diagnosed with liver cancer, whereupon Dreher asks, "Have you tried TLWORL?" before foisting a copy off on him, thus turning him into an involuntary consumer-reviewer, before then making Wick, not TLWORL's publisher, carry the cost of Okra's latest book-promotion post. Got all that?
Bottom line, according to Unz, Okra currently only gets TAC scale, but because as narcissist celebrity Okra he brings in the necessary blog hits the other scale "conservative" bloggers can't, Wick pretty obviously lets Okra write his own Dreher-centric ticket so that the current TAC doesn't end up becoming the late TAC. Dreher thus gets TAC blogging scale, plus he alone uniquely gets the TAC online platform itself as his own personal, cost-free Okra.com for whatever person promotion strikes his ever-churning fancies.
A comparison might be a church where the altar girls are strippers, but the bishop maintains nevertheless that the pews are full only because of the quality of the homilies. And please give generously as well, because boob glitter of that quality is not cheap.
Keith
I agree with Keith that Ray's schtick bears some important indicia of "affinity scam", but I am curious...what is the ballpark range of 'blogging scale' for an outfit like TAC?
Delete-TMFKS
Beats me, TMFKS. There must be some formula that combines word rates with some other online metric, I'd imagine, but in the time it took to reply to this I couldn't find it.
DeleteAlan Jacobs, who used to blog there, makes it sound like payment even at TAC levels may be optional, depending.
And maybe for good reason.
Here's Okra's latest post on the theme "a sense of place", a subject almost as dense and difficult to tease apart as my own personal favorite, "I'm not unconscious", and here's what it's made of.
First 60%: a recycled free comment from a commenter.
Next 20%: an unverifiable anecdote from Okra hitting exactly the same points as in the first 60% free comment.
Last 20%: another unverifiable anecdote from Okra using the free commenter's particular point, "affordable housing", to slam a local St. Francisville, LA political candidate that, from the looks of Okra's local blog, is the opponent of the millionaire one Dreher is supporting.
Given the amount of recycling involved, I'd call this a "green job".
"How much would you pay? - But, wait, there's more!"
But, wait...no, there's not more. That's all there is. So what did TAC get for what it paid for this? Pretty much only the post's minimal click bait SEO value, seems to me. The commenter got a mention, the Long Island Herald got an article hit, Dreher got his narcisso-vigorish, and the millionaire local pol got a thumbs up. TAC got click bait and "a sense of place".
Keith
I decided to go mining for numbers on TAC. First I found this page on guidestar which gives you access to recent 990 forms for American Ideas Institute, the non-profit which publishes TAC.
DeleteBut then I googled American Ideas Institute and found this blog post from 2 months ago. Lots of good stuff in it.
I think you are pursuing an interesting direction by looking at TAC itself and why they have RD on the payroll. TAC may be the real culprit.
DeleteIn one sense, TAC is part of the "scam" as well, because RD has proven useful to them in drawing the web hits. Now I used the word "scam" because at the time I could not think of a better analogy. What I am trying to convey is that it accomplishes nothing to look for anything "sincere" or "authentic" where it doesn't really exist.
I look at it this way: RD is simply a very ambitious person who happens to be a writer with midling talent. Knowing that he can never make it on his talent alone, he has learned instead to project for himself a certain kind of "public persona" that he markets and which has attracted a category of people who are susceptible to thinking that RD is a great writer with profound insights. And he knows enough to write precisely what he thinks will cultivate that audience.
Whether it is one-legged strippers or pilgrimages to France, it doesn't matter, as long as it draws and keeps his target audience reading his stuff. And as long as that happens, TAC is perfectly happy with the results.
On the other hand, for us it became readily apparent early on that most of what RD writes is thoroughly ridiculous rubbish. Whether it is rubbish or not doesn't matter doesn't matter to TAC. What matters is that it sells to his target audience and keeps the hits coming.
Now what I am saying is that the persona, and the tableaus he sets himself in, the hairdo, the blogs, the books, and all the rest, are very much contrived — it is all a show for the benefit of an audience. Little or none of it correspond to any kind of reality behind the scenes. That is why I was suggesting that the Mrs. is probably also in on the deal, and, for whatever reasons, is not in the least bothered by what RD writes, though for us it would seem very astonishing.
Just posted a video which might pertain to this. Even if not, it's a hilarious bit, one of my favorite Python sketches.
DeleteOengus, yes, put as you just did, I agree completely.
DeletePauli, Handle says
Collectively, writers are only getting about $100K a year – peanuts.
Can this be right? Then Dreher is only pulling in +/- $20K from TAC? No wonder he's stressed.
Fortunately, he has just recently thrown his political support behind this Georgetown Catholic, also just recently become his Parish President-elect.
This guy, now head county commissioner of tiny Springfield County and its road grading aspirations. What, oh what, will he do with his unused interests, time, and fortune after the disputes over cows and pigs are settled?
Could he, too, need a tax writeoff? An understanding, nationally known mouthpiece?
Watching Dreher navigate between these monied patrons and their waxing and waning interests will be like watching a French madam negotiate the court of the Sun King.
Keith
To add to the stress, I'd guess that the royalties from TLWORL haven't exceeded the $1M advance. Meaning that there haven't been any checks in the mailbox from that source, either, nor will there be.
DeleteMy anonymous invisible friend Maria helpfully suggests we set up a tip jar for Rod and his family so that they can afford their fine wines, organic foods, private tutors for the kids and regular trips to Europe without stress. She says she'll happily toss in any spare change she finds in the Greyhound station bathrooms.
DeleteKeith
Off-topic, but in the late seventies my uncle worked as a mechanic for Greyhound, and he used to find all kinds of stuff left on the buses.
DeleteWell I for one can't believe that he relocated to St Francisville and planned on supporting his family on 20K per year. But whenever he's getting paid, I'm sure he is exceeding his pay and feasting on the advance. It would be fun to know his income however so we could speculate on when the advance will run out and when he will have to file for chapter 7.
DeleteI think it's far north of 20K--the articles all said Ray was getting a bigger slice of the hundred grand pie than all the other bloggers combined. It's the ones further down the batting order, like "Three Comment Average" Larison, who are probably getting a pittance to choke the chicken a couple times a day.
DeleteEven so, I wish someone would find that original pledge of Ray's that the advance was all going into a trust for Ruthie's kids' education. On a moral level, that's capital he shouldn't be tapping into. Ray's own father admitted the clan is a fractious one--I sure hope her children have some good legal representation.
-YMFKS
He can't be getting that little. Granted, the cost of living is probably pretty low in his small town. I would suggest that TAC's 990 doesn't tell the whole story. Wick Allison could easily pay him out of other business ventures. It happens all the time. He's kissed Obama's ass publicly; he's not getting audited.
DeleteWick Allison could easily pay him out of other business ventures.
DeleteTo what end, tho? TAC must be a loser on its own. Does Allison think that it really is all that influential, or soon will be? It can't just be a vanity thing, can it?
I'd think that the meal ticket for Dreher would be to peddle his stuff to a newspaper syndicator. A nice weekly column in 30 or so newspapers would help relieve the stress -- and I'd think he'd have the resume as a "newspaper man" to get a couple of bites. Sure, his output sucks, but he could at least keep up with Froma Harrop (how she's able to sell a column to 150(!) rags a week is beyond me) and her ilk.
Of course, I guess there's not much money being thrown around in the newspaper biz these days either, but at least it would be something.
It can't just be a vanity thing, can it?
DeleteYes, it can. Jonathan and I have both emailed Allison and he always responds. Recently he wrote Jonathan a rather lengthy response. The guy is infatuated with his own ideas which are pretty close to Dreher's. It really is remarkable.
I have no doubt TMFKS has more and better sources than I do. My conclusions are based on this quote from the Unz article in NRO
DeleteHe also says that Rod Dreher generates close to half of the website’s traffic but is only paid “a very small fraction of TAC’s budget.”
and this one from the Handle post Pauli linked
Collectively, writers are only getting about $100K a year – peanuts.
On second reading, that last quote doesn't really say the $100K is split evenly. Dreher could be getting 40% or more of it rather than an even per capita split, while still being underpaid compared to the amount of pop traffic he garners for TAC for his Oprah/View blog hits about everything but conservatism. But besides Allison, who's really reading TAC? I just read Dreher for the freak show of deformed ideas. He's effectively become not much more than Allison's personal organ grinder monkey.
Remember also that Dreher's not under exclusive contract. He's also scrounging income from a variety of other sources, the contentious Time article, the recent talk to the 2 goobers and a room full of empty rent-a-chairs up Milwaukee way, the NYT, etc.
Still, I'm thinking his regular guaranteed income has had to have been on a steady glide path toward the Hudson ever since he ran away from that cushy berth at the Texas paper. Although they cut and cut their regular staff, the editorial crew was noticeably never touched, maybe at most a secretary, and the editor gal was the one who kept putting him up for the "Pulitzer nomination" he stuffed his resume with until Templton made him take it out. From there to Templeton from which he was almost certainly fired for cause. Allison probably picked him up as leftovers for a song. And contrary to all his crap about "place", I'll bet dollars to donuts Dreher headed home to have at least some sort of secure support system for the family if the whole enterprise ended on the skids. Middle-aged boomerang kid. The book deal was a windfall fluke, never a destined thing, as sales have shown.
Apart from whatever's left of his advance, Dreher's been reduced from a one-time dinner guest of Buckley to a word-peddling hunter-gatherer, a verbose raccoon. A verbose raccoon with a lifetime of expensive lifestyle and prescription pharmaceutical habits. That still sounds like a recipe for stress to me.
Keith
Allison pulls the plug on yet another venture
DeleteLast month, the late parrot du jour was DTV.
He must really love his TAC, for now.
Keith
I think the Templeton gig did end with a firing, but it wasn't for his output per se. I strongly suspect it was on account of their finding out about his moonlighting hobby of playing OCA/ROCOR politics under pseudonyms, attacking certain bishops, defending others, or (in one spectacular case, defending then attacking a Metropolitan. Templeton is supposed to be all "all religions are peachy" so I don't think they appreciated it one bit.
DeleteThe irony of course was that he had been bloviating for years how great it was to switch out Constantinople (or Moscow) for Rome because he finally could leave all that ecclesiastical politics behind...
-TMFKS
TMFKS,
DeleteYes, my understanding was that the only reason Dreher was bounced from Templeton was because of his escapades as "Muzhik". In retrospect it's not the "collapse of newspapers" or some other existential puffery that's accounted for the Dreher family's repeated migration and loss of "place" like the von Trapp's, only one bad personal decision after another by their great leader, first voluntarily abandoning a solid and secure job in Texas prematurely, then blowing its successor by cavalierly behaving as if the firm's clearly stated policies somehow didn't apply to him.
Not my place to write about this at any length, but here's your Dreher bait quote of the day from Mr. Fecundity himself:
I say this as the father of three children who would have had more if that had been possible. Huh. Why, I'm exactly the same way. I'd love to have more children, but the fact both that I'm male and use contraception scrupulously somehow keeps getting in the way. Not to mention that adoption was never even a consideration.
After having milked the teat of family size dry at that point after so many successive posts on it, though, I can fully understand why Dreher then no longer wants to pass any judgement in those matters.
Keith
SiliconValleySteve: "It's Rod's rocker and he's off it."
ReplyDeleteI actually tracked down in Google Maps the street level view of RD's house. As I recollect, the rocking chair was there on the porch. The chair was empty.
The house was a nice house. He should invite me over for bouillabaisse and Agenaise ice cream. however, I very much insist that any oysters be thoroughly cooked.
Does any of this explain why he keeps trying to look like Sonic the Hedge Hog ?
ReplyDeleteWhy, to prove that, like some super duper detergent of civilization itself, Rod Dreher is both Ancient and Deep, like Knowledge, Truth, Beauty, and whatever Church he feels most comfortable in at the moment, yet at the same time Young and Hip, at least what Young and Hip was if frozen in 1987, give or take 6 months. Plus to prove that no way, nuh-huh, no how is he a Baby Boomer (even though he could be considered a tail end one), because, you see, Baby Boomers made those awful teenage sluts that jump out at him like Halloween spooks everywhere he turns, threatening to infect him with their lubricious bodily fluids. Not to mention having spoiled everything else that's wrong with the world outside the sacred grove.
DeleteHere's what that collision of pretensions looks like.
I love this picture. It's like watching a Road Runner cartoon, over and over.
Keith
threatening to infect him with their lubricious bodily fluids.
DeleteOr their "saliva and genital secretions...
-TMFKS
TMFKS,
ReplyDeleteI can see this sort of thing repeating itself as easily as I can say "Louisiana".
Keith