Monday, November 18, 2013

Mark Shea Uses JFK Assassination Anniversary to Judge Baby Boomers

by Keith

Actually, it's the comments which are more illuminating.

Hat tip to Erin "Amen" Manning, namesake half of Rod Dreher's Evans-Manning award for civil commentary.


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Posted by Keith at 11/18/2013 11:48:00 PM

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12 comments:

  1. PauliNovember 19, 2013 at 8:45 AM

    Well, McKinley was shot in 1901. An life expectancy was a lot lower in the first half of the century. So my guess is that 50 year anniversary reminiscences from people who were there and old enough to care weren't as plentiful in '51.

    I can see his point but... sheesh. He goes overboard as usual. It probably never crossed his mind that McKinley was a Republican and Kennedy was a Democrat. Because, you know, they are ALL the same.

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  2. pikkumattiNovember 19, 2013 at 9:32 AM

    Of course, there is no way to prove Shea's point wrong -- not very many left who can remember how many were talking about McKinley's assassination in 1951.

    Anyway, there were lots of big events that happened between McKinley's assassination and 1951 for those who could remember. For instance, my grandmother told me countless times about how the church bells rang in her town on November 11, 1919 (including "it was a warm day, and the wind was from the south . . . ").

    OTOH, there are some who might have narcissistically told some tales about more recent events, like . . . where they were on 9/11.

    P.S. Further to Shea's post, I was in my third grade class when the news came over the school intercom that Kennedy had been shot. Our teacher completely lost it, and sent us out as a class to go to the rest rooms. When we came back, I was the insufferable class show-off who volunteered that Johnson would now be president.

    A couple of days later, I was in front of the TV with my brother when we saw Oswald shot live on NBC. Freaky few days for an eight-year old like me.

    Take that, Mark Shea. Screw you.

    P.P.S. Of course, now I live in Dallas. It was of course strange to go to Dealey Plaza to see the sights for the first time. The basement of the old City Hall where Oswald was shot is much the same as it was back in the day, and it was also strange to see.

    P.P.P.S. My theory is that it was a mob hit.

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    1. PauliNovember 19, 2013 at 9:42 AM

      I was just reading about the McKinley assassination and it was in many ways entirely different. He didn't die right away, and it looked like he might pull through, then he succumbed to gangrene 8 days later.

      I know the McKinley contrast isn't his main point, but it is what really grates on me. It's an example of his tendency to compare apples to oranges and stack up moral equivalencies and assertions like a house of cards.

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    2. pikkumattiNovember 19, 2013 at 11:07 AM

      . . . November 11, 1918. . . of course.

      (insufferable class show-off, indeed)

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    3. pikkumattiNovember 19, 2013 at 11:13 AM

      On McKinley, I'd also say that the reach and power of the federal administrative state was much much much less than it was at the time of Kennedy. Wilson and FDR had not yet worked their transformative ways, nor had a large percentage of the populace served in the federal armed forces until WWI and WWII.

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  3. AnonymousNovember 19, 2013 at 10:58 AM

    It seems odd to me that an internet hustling shock jock like Mark Shea, who makes his living as a one-man cult of personality and who doesn't have any difficulty divining "an entire generation of narcissists" - An entire generation? Imagine that. - in order to drive hits to his blog to sell himself and his books to sympathetic and like-minded generational bigots, would nevertheless still be so obtuse as to miss the wholesale sea change in instantaneous mass media communication and its transformative effects on human culture itself between the 50 years following McKinley and the 50 years following Kennedy. Like, you know, the invention of television. And the internet.

    Oh, look: this must be Mark holding that "entire generation" of narcissists at bay lest they try to cut a slice of his own narcissism pie for themselves.

    I have to agree with Kathleen here. Given the big chunks of reality that seem to blow past Shea like small planets and elude him entirely (including the etiquette of pointing a gun at the rest of the human race itself), I might entrust him with walking a dog for a short distance if I didn't much care for the dog, but I think I'd be a little leery about taking his word on things more complicated, like history, or generations, or complex religions and the fate of one's immortal soul. For those I think I'd consult a grownup instead.

    Keith

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    1. kathleenNovember 20, 2013 at 11:03 AM

      One of my favorite Shea blog moments is from when he was riding his anti-torture hobbyhorse. When pressed for a definition of torture (which he never did give), one of his sycophants defined torture as "doing something to someone that I would not like to happen to me." Shea let this pass without comment, so I'll assume he agreed, especially since he offered no alternative definition. So in Shea-world, serving me white wine that isn't chilled would fall under the definition of TORTURE.

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  4. AnonymousNovember 19, 2013 at 6:27 PM

    It's too bad that Erin got hysterical and shut off comments to her post after only 3 very civil comments disagreed with her, or else somebody could have pointed out to her that any "wall to wall" coverage out there right now is over the anniversary of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

    Except of course in that haunted little cavern deep in Shea's skull where Baby Boomers, Facebook readers and other demons scream and drive him to armed, google-eyed madness. And on whatever NPR station Thad Manning listens to, I guess.

    Keith

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    1. PauliNovember 19, 2013 at 9:14 PM

      At least she published my comment. But she definitely knew she was going to lose the argument about the boomas. That's the only reason to shut a comment thread down if no one is dropping language bombs or threatening to skin other people's expensive pets alive.

      Another booma, Rush Limbaugh, is very critical of the fallacies that arose in his own generation, but he uses constructive language rather than hysterical hyperbole. E.g., what does "America... endured the ... spectre of nuclear annihilation" even refer to? His little AMEN corner obviously "gets it", unlike me.

      There is nothing remotely Catholic about a post like that.

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    2. pikkumattiNovember 20, 2013 at 10:59 AM

      I see now that Erin Manning is from Fort Worth. So I'll come partly to her defense for the "amen" (not for flipping the comment switch), as we are buried down here with news story after news story about the assassination. And there are still a good number of people who were along the parade route, so of course they all have to be interviewed.

      Here in Dallas, we also have all of the navel-gazing about being the City of Hate, which many both here and away revel in yet. Of course, on Friday, we'll have all of the so-called dignitaries (including the ironically-named Castro brothers from San Antonio trying to pick up JFK's torch) blathering on about the legacy of JFK from the site, which will also be amply covered. (Hey, the JFK Lancer Conference is in town, too!)

      So, yeah, it is a bit much, as Erin Manning reacted. But I'm afraid it comes with the territory.

      For Mark Shea, OTOH, there is no excuse. And Keith, surely there is some psychological hay to be made from Shea's disturbing reference to "watching Howdy Doody in suburbia" -- at least a little self-hate, anyway.

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    3. AnonymousNovember 20, 2013 at 11:29 AM

      Pik, here's the thing. Erin didn't write her own post saying there was too much JFK coverage because her husband had complained about it to her, she just obediently amened Shea's crazed mashup of opinions about narcissists, Baby Boomers and JFK, a claim that barely holds together long enough to make it to the page. And having bet on that nag, the only thing she had remaining that was less embarrassing was to close comments, humiliatingly without any apparent reason at all.

      This has really diverted my interest now, to tell the truth. Shea is pretty obviously an opportunistic internet hustler who has only found reasonably good pickings in Catholicism because there are followers who are simultaneously both more needy and not yet bright enough to grasp the the whole world after JFK was an entirely different one than the one after McKinley (DUHHH...that's how history works; it's not an eternal present).

      But what's the deal with Manning? What in her own life or her own relationship to Catholicism has failed her to the point that she's become the willing tool and handmaiden of both of those charlatans, Dreher and Shea? Low self-esteem? Daddy issues?

      Keith

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    4. pikkumattiNovember 20, 2013 at 12:54 PM

      Looking back over my experience, I think the issue is that she wants to agree with those guys for some larger reason. Certainly that was my experience when I began reading Dreher -- I wanted for conservatives, and Catholics, to begin to reclaim some of the "crunchy" space from the radical secular left, and was hoping that Dreher was on to something. So when you want to believe, you're able to let some things slide along the way (and to sift through the pile of crap hoping to find the pony under all of it).

      You'll even find me saying in these very pages, not all that long ago, that I though Dreher had something to say if only he'd change the subject.

      I don't say that anymore. After enough blows to the head in the form of insults from the writer, and enough comments from the likes of you guys, I finally caught on.

      So I'll give her the benefit of the doubt for now, and I'll assume that she is still in the want-to-believe stage, until proven otherwise.

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