Pimping out a child
Now what in the world kind of American Conservatism do we have here?
Could it be a release from the Tea Party looking for some kinder and gentler press from all sides?
Maybe it's an early draft of The Road to Serfdom scrawled by a toddling Friedrich Hayek after observing a servant doing what they do best.
Nah, as it turns out, this is what your tax-deductible dollars buy at The American Ideas Institute's The American Conservative blog by Rod Dreher: otherwise mommy blog-typical content filched from his unsuspecting 7-year-old daughter Nora, a frequent contributor of such child labor, and pimped out as his own cheap and easy post-filler. Not only your tax-deductible dollars, by the way, mine as well, because who do you think has to pay more now to cover your tax deductibility?
And yet not only does a child's stolen refrigerator art (it's highly unlikely Nora received a proportionate cut of Dreher's pay for this effort as an allowance bonus this month) qualify as a legitimate government tax expenditure these days, it apparently also qualifies as some sort of example of conservative "culture" - in some Downton Abbey conservative-cultury sort of way.
Yep, that's what conservatism has now been reduced and degraded to in some quarters: the government-subsidized pimping out of someone's 7-year-old daughter's labor in order to earn their own daily bread.
Yet another bit of narcissism from our working boy today in this article. Seems that he cannot bring himself to comment on the allegations being made and whether they might be accurate or fraudulent. No, there's something much more at stake here...how he and his wife homeschool.
ReplyDeleteWith him it truly is "all about me".
Oh my goodness, he is so far behind the curve. The BJU story is waaaay bigger, not to mention the Bill Gothard story; and yes, the Patrick Henry story has been out for a few days, too.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, Rod...SMPAC Report? Ring a bell? I mean, speaking of coverups....
I must say Nora shows promise. The kid definitely can draw.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteGreat minds, Anonymous.
ReplyDeleteThese two random craters in the Rodmindscape just now jumped out at me:
...I don't expect myself to fight hard against polygamy because in a nation that has constitutionalized the right to same-sex marriage, the logic of polygamy seems perfectly sound to me. -- RD]
and
UPDATE: Another great thing about homeschooling: it allows your kids to be as eccentric as they want to be. Nora just informed her mother, “There really needs to be a skip-counting song to the tune of ‘Psycho Killer’ by the Talking Heads.” Of course there does.
Alritey, then! Really? And a 7-year-old skipping and counting to a song entitled "Psycho Killer" ("Mom, what's a psycho killer? Can I be one?) while she's being homeschooled - because mixing with the sort of human spawn that populates ordinary public and parochial schools would culturally contaminate her beyond redemption, right?
Question: If Wulfgar and the rest of the Vandals were to ride hard south from Natchez, taking wives and slaves and and pillaging, horses chuffing and flinging snot, when they pulled up short at the Dreher household with its Psycho Killer-chanting little girl and her resistant-rubbery daddy, would they experience deja vu?
Keith
Ohhhhh, he missed the Doug Phillips / Vision Forum scandal, too, which has a lot to do with the seamy side of the homeschooling subculture. (And I say that as a homeschooling parent.)
ReplyDeleteRod is way, way, waaaay behind the curve.
OK, I get it...skimmed the Rod-blog. He objects because New Republic paints with a broad brush. Well, duhhh.
DeleteOf course homeschoolers are all different; people homeschool for many different reasons; and most homeschoolers are not part of the Christian Patriarchy movemrnt. However, there are a heck of a lot of homeschoolers who are, and they dominate certain large homeschool-support groups and regional conferences. It's a definite newsworthy phenomenon. Instead of taking umbrage, overreacting, and feeling offended, Rod needs to acquaint himself with this phenomenon. There are a jillion sources out there. I've been following some of them recently, in the wake of the Vision Forum scandal.
It's called journalism, Rod. Where's your nose for news?
Given his morning apologetic for Putin and Russia, I think we know where is nose is currently located.
DeleteDiane, you are exactly right. I'm one of them social conservatives, too, and a former homeschooling father and the Vision Forum catalog/publication creeped me out when we used to receive it. I didn't know it was part of a larger thing called "Christian Patriarchy", but you sent me that scandal stuff months ago and it didn't surprise me a bit.
DeleteYou can go too far with anything. Saying that, I'm always put in mind of the old guy at the back of a church chasing people down and practically strangling them with brown scapulars, shouting "This is your ETERNAL SALVATION!"
Seems that our working boy is finding out that his view of things Russian and Ukrainian may not be all that accurate.
ReplyDelete"Go out of your zone of comfort! Just recall the coddled ancient Romans who refused to do that in time. Cajoling Putin won’t bring you security. Letting him take control over Ukraine could make the world peace even more vulnerable. A Ukraine divided by force won’t bring the world peace, just as a Poland and Germany divided by force didn’t bring peace to the world."
Looks like someone is calling for our boy to get out of that new comfy corner his family made for him. It'll never happen, of course.
Roddy wants Russia to take over Ukraine????
DeleteThat jerk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If protesters who took over Times Square were armed and firing on police, Diane, what would you think?
DeleteExcept, as commenter after commenter point out, Rod, as usual, is blithely misstating the situation.
I understand now why Paw Dreher looks so terribly old and broken for his years. His sweet baby girl died way too young, and his only son, his namesake, his legacy, his heir, has somehow, horribly, horribly, mutated into a hissing possum.
Keith
You mean Roddy boy's commenter who calls the Ukrainian uprising a "fascist putsch"? Dreher, the ignorant putz, has the following he so richly deserves. And so does "The American Conservative".
Delete"I can't even begin to take sides, because I don't know enough. -- RD"
DeleteTruer words were never written.
Since when has knowing anything ever kept Rod from taking sides? He's been shown, numerous times, to be wrong about his opening salvo in this thread, and he lacks the courage to admit it.
DeleteActually he takes sides in an even more insidious way: he'll serially post pieces on one side of the question (e.g., defending Putin), but when there starts to be some heat, then he'll bail out by saying he's not taking sides (as kathleen noted), or that the blog is just his notebook that he hopes "inspires commentary" (in that same NFR that Keith links to), or some other crap.
DeleteSo yes, he takes sides, but indeed does lack the courage to admit it, much less stick up for his convictions. Easier to change towns, denominations, schools, etc.
Oh come on Diane, the Ukrainians just have a really bad case of Putinfreude.
ReplyDeleteIt must be fun to watch Rod's circuits fry when he sees Orthodox clerics blessing the "Jew hating" Ukrainian protestors.
ReplyDeleteThose mean anti-semitic ukrainian fascists drove out a man of exquisite taste with a spanish galleon in his backyard, which must have served as a crunchy celebration of green technology. Yanukovych also kept birds in his yard just like roddy boy ... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-22/look-what-was-found-yanukovychs-compound
ReplyDeleteHis indiference to what happens in the Ukraine does not surprise me. In November 28, 2003 the Dallas Morning News wrote an Editorial supporting the decision of the NYT keeping the Pulitzer of Walter Duranty. For those of you who do not know, Mr. Duranty was an Apologist for Joseph Stalin. His Pulitzer was given for writing pieces that made the Soviet Union seem like a Nirvana on earth. He also ignored the famine in the Ukraine perpetrated by Stalin. Mr. Dreher never condemned his paper's editorial.
ReplyDeleteJonathan Carpenter
Oh I think he's moving well beyond indifference to useful idiot. This recent post indicates as such to me. For example:
DeleteTell me that if the United States had this kind of economic stake in maintaining a friendly government on our border, that we wouldn’t be twisting arms in that country to maintain our standing and economic security. Putin may be a son of a bitch, but he’s also a rational actor.
He's still short of openly being a Putin cheerleader, only because that honesty might scare the horses.
I would rather live under liberal democracy than what Russia has. For now, anyway. -- RD
DeleteWhich can really be read only so generally, and not just "Have Localism, Will Travel".
What Dreher means is, if what he has to "suffer" under liberal democracy strays too far outside of his demands, he would rather live under what Russia has now.
Do his parents really know just how vile a POS their little butter steak-gobbling little plumper has turned into? Do his conservative neighbors there in St. Francisville know just what their "conservative " homeboy actually supports?
Keith