Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead
Aaand...despite Our Working Boy Reporter Rod's breathlessly gushing breaking news flash,
UPDATE: As several of you have pointed out (thanks), prostitution was already legal in Canada...
(Ooops)
This is an important distinction, obviously, but it doesn’t, to my way of thinking, invalidate the point that when someone like Generalissimo Francisco Franco becomes dead, it behooves us all to remind one another on a regular basis that he is still dead lest we inevitably sled down that slippery slope into the arms of a hooker from the Great White North whose conversation is interminably peppered with "Eh"s and "aboot"s.
However, this post of Dreher's immediately helped me to finally understand his recent surge to cover himself in all things Phil Robertson over the span of several recent news cycle-sensitive posts. As someone cursed with only a whip-like filament of cartilage himself, expedient for cultivating the Sullivansphere and critical for maintaining his own readership as Rod might find it, Robertson's sharply contrasting, unbending religious moral spine on display in the CG interview would be something a younger, equivocal male like Dreher might naturally be drawn to as he would to any instructive father figure.
But I believe an equally compelling though less obvious draw the post tends to confirm is Phil Robertson's educational and scholastic superiority over Dreher. As someone who holds a Masters Degree in education, Robertson would never make the foolish factual mistakes a J-school BA rookie like Dreher routinely embarrasses himself with in his haste to hit the "Post" key. There's also little doubt Phil Robertson knows exactly where he was and what he was doing on 9/11.
Ultimately, this is the crucial difference between a businessman who can build a $500 million dollar empire out of duck calls the hard way and someone who serendipitously scores a miraculous rebound from unemployment from the tragic death of a relative: first and foremost getting it straight, then telling it straight.
Keith: "…someone cursed with only a whip-like filament of cartilage…"
ReplyDeleteAs I have said elsewhere, in various ways and using different words, although I don't personally know the man, going by what he writes, I can come to the conclusion that RD does not really believe in anything — not in any manner that can be termed a lifelong, genuine, and deep down inside commitment from the heart.
So why look for any sincerity or reality where it never existed to begin with? Why take anything he writes seriously? It's all empty talk. It's all a big joke, only it's not even funny anymore.
Robertson has a spine and is very shrewd and is firmly set on following what he believes in. On the other hand, Dreher is all shtick all the time, an act, none of which is real, not even a bit. He never believed in anything called a "Benedict Option." That was nothing but just another shtick and put on. Crunchy Con and TLWORL were just more piled on shtick.
To take seriously anything RD writes or blogs is like chasing after ignis fatuus swamp gas, and tricksy lights.
I came to that conclusion almost from the start.
Agreed without qualification, Oengus.
DeleteEven in the sort time since you posted your comment Dreher, beneath whose husk beats the untuous rotary oil pump of a Max Quordlepleen, has already tried to milk the passing Robertson phenomenon several more times now.
Somehow I imagine Phil Robertson doesn't necessarily appreciate Dreher's tugging on him in that way in order to suggest that, really, Rod has always been the 5th Duck all along.
Keith
Man, read through some of the comments on some of these posts. His flunkies write even more embarrassingly crazy things.
ReplyDeleteLike this sort of hilariously oxymoronic offering?
DeleteMaybe we just need a reality show about Crunchy Con Christians living out the Benedict Option in the middle of the woods or something to get the ball rolling….
Keith
Keith, this comment comports with my experience of "Crunchy Con Christians". Their main feature is not living out in the woods but not being able to shut up about how great their lifestyle is. A reality show would be a much louder amplifier than a blog.
DeleteThe problem with Crunchy Con Christians living out in the woods is that it is hard to get the Beaujolais Nouveau way out there.
DeletePauli, Pik, I don't think commenter Irene realizes just what a self-contradictory fraud she reveals Dreher's BO to be: people who want to only very selectively separate themselves from modern culture.
DeleteNo NBC TV, but must have the Air Mac or iPad (and every bit of infrastructure behind them, including the liberal companies themselves) for the indispensably convenient Netflix downloads of the "good" movies. No shallow, stupid-making video games like those culturally nasty prole kids like - but they loves and must have their Minecraft. And, like Dreher, they literally cry for their must-have Ken Onion Shun chef's knives - Blacksmith Bob's Pretty Good Chef Knife made from the leaf spring of a wrecked F150 just so wouldn't do.
It's not only the snobbishness that Goldberg identified. At the heart of it is a hypocrisy unctuously masquerading as virtue that, as the comment automatically reveals, can't be corrected because they don't even perceive it. Essentially, the BO is the equivalent of a wholesome reality show about nuns - training to be Navy Seals - who just love their designer shoes - because how cool would that Christian message be?
Nuns stripping, cleaning, and trigger-tuning their HK416s in their Manolo Blahniks: that's the fatuous, self-contradictory conceit at the heart of the big BO.
Keith
If you want to read another example of him not telling it straight check this out.http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-msgr-lynn-case-a-reader-told-me-so/#post-comments
ReplyDeleteJonathan Carpenter