Selective Timidity
It is gratifying that David French decided to flick Dreher and his Bunker Option* off like flies. Just a quick requote of a couple paragraphs from his piece:
I’m sorry, but I have a real problem — in an era when Christians are getting their heads sawed off in the Middle East — with the idea that, say, an American sociology professor feels to scared to proclaim his real beliefs on a liberal campus. I have a real problem — in an era when young Americans have been dying by the thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq in defense of liberty — with the idea that Americans on campus are too timid to even attempt to exercise those blood-bought freedoms. I have a problem with Christians — despite the example of Christ and the Apostles — who are too fearful to share the reason for their eternal hope. No one’s asking you to be a street preacher or some kind of unthinking loudmouth, but you should be ashamed of your timidity.
Every single person who is a Christian who stays “in the closet” — who’s timid about his or her faith — provides fuel to the PC fire, contributing to the notion that there really is something to be ashamed of, that what he believes is somehow wrong.
David French is correct to call Dreher's behavior timidity. The TIME piece was plaintively timid, first explaining that non-Christians should understand that Christians don't see not baking a cake as equal to lynching blacks in the Jim Crow south, then going on to use the analogy of racism himself and include lines like "It is understandably offensive to have a baker refuse on religious grounds to make their wedding cake." This is pure concession and surrender. It should not be offensive to them. That's the real point here. It is no wonder that liberal TIME magazine hand-picked Dreher to write this weak-tea, weak-kneed response in their gay issue.
But here's the thing about Rod Dreher's timidity. It is very, very selective. Dreher is all for "standing up" if he is "stand[ing] up to people like Governor [Scott] Walker." Being outraged that someone doesn't share your high value for a liberal arts education is fine. But let's stay in our bunker over religious issues. Being outraged at your family, dead sister and all, so much that you tell the story over and over again is fine because they didn't like you enough, and they didn't run anyone out on a rail when you got a couple wedgies on the field trip and wouldn't eat your French fish soup. No turning the other cheek for those atrocities. But if some gays are upset about a baker or a pizza place or who knows what other humiliation, well... that's understandable, everybody. After all, we heterosexuals wrecked marriage by getting divorced. (We did? Oh, yeah, some of us did. That's the "Royal We", sorry.) Let's be wiser in choosing our battles, people.
Rod Dreher has a history of showing no timidity when he "stands up" to people like Rush Limbaugh, Ted Cruz, Olympian Michael Phelps (no, really), etc. And of course those horrible Catholic Bishops.
He has always had a softer touch for cases like Andrew Sullivan, Brian Williams, Dan Rather, etc. And, of course, Russian Orthodox pedophiliacs.
Certainly it is almost impossible at this point not to be able to predict how Rod Dreher will react to any event based on a small number of factors. He will come out of his Bunker Option to shake his fist when he perceives that conservatives have behaved badly. He will go back into the Bunker Option to read his Bible where it won't offend gays and atheists. And he will come back out again to take food selfies until it's time to cut the grass and he is taken back to the Bunker Option on a stretcher.
What an unreliable moral guide. Only a Judith Regan would look at this guy and see a Virgil.
----------
* - I refuse to take St. Benedict's name in vain on the Pope Emeritus's B-day.
Rod has that rare gift - because sociopaths almost completely sealed off from the real world hermetically, as he is, are relatively rare - of seeing his fears as the world's fears, his outrages as those of the world. Moreover, he has the even rarer gift of being able to write that topology onto other, easily impressionable minds, like a virus replicating itself.
ReplyDeleteIn his most recent post, on one of his cyclic manic highs after speaking about his Dante book, he praises the Archbishop of Philadelphia for recognizing his place as a true prophet of Christendom:
"And wouldn’t you know that the city’s Catholic Archbishop Charles J. Chaput gave me a very generous gift in his column out today. Excerpt:
Rod Dreher is one of the most insightful, compelling Christian authors working today. On April 14, Regan Arts released his latest book, How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem. Eric Metaxas, author of the New York Times bestseller Bonhoeffer describes Dreher’s book as “a brilliant, searingly honest account of one man’s path to real healing, and an invitation to the rest of us to join him.” He’s not wrong. Grappling with depression and multiple personal crises, Dreher began reading Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy – the greatest of all Catholic medieval poems, and one of the greatest works of human literature – and it transformed his life. Read Rod Dreher’s book, and then read Dante. They’re both worth every minute you invest."
before concluding
"Man. To have the most courageous and important Catholic leader in the country today praise my work like that humbles me. Thank you, Archbishop Chaput. I hope the Archbishop’s endorsement helps How Dante find its way into the hands of Catholic students and Catholic parishes, and into ordinary Catholic homes. The Divine Comedy is one of the great treasures of the Catholic Church, and indeed of all Christendom — but especially of the Catholic Church, in whose bosom it was born. If my book can introduce Catholics to the beauty, the profundity, and the life-changing power of Dante’s poem, I will be so, so grateful."
Just for fun: Google "incorrect use of humble" to see how one of the most insightful, compelling Christian authors working today stacks up as a writer. And if you are one of those uncultured Catholics ignorant of your own Western history, perhaps Rod, your guide to all thigs Catholic, can introduce you to beauty of it, before maybe even chipping in something for shoes and dental work, too.
Now, I have no doubt Archbishop Chaput is only being politic and diplomatic toward a visitor to his domain who showed up on the Christian intel radar, perhaps even tipped off by Dreher's agent himself. The paragraph quoted above reads like a warm, boilerplate press release, not necessarily even drafted by the Archbishop himself.
But nonetheless it raises a question just as important as the one David French does, in fact, one implicit in French's question itself.
What does it mean to really believe that "Rod Dreher is one of the most insightful, compelling Christian authors working today"?
If someone believes that sentence to be fundamentally true, not merely offered, as I would contend the Archbishop is offering it, as one of those everyday politenesses that lubricate society and make it possible, what sort of world are they living in and, more importantly, what sort of world are they trying to shape for others?
What do you do when you begin to grasp that the phone call might be coming from inside the house?
Here's a shortcut to incorrect use of humble for the lazy.
DeleteYou are right to call "boilerplate press release" on the Abp's statement. Why, for example, would Abp Chaput feel the need to mention that the publisher is Regan Arts? Does he realize what else they publish? It was obviously written for him to sign off on and he did without sitting down to examine it.
I wonder if our intrepid investigative reporter Jonathan is up to advising the Archbishop what other titles the diocese might obtain from ReganArts. But, to be honest, I saw this as a one and done courtesy on the part of the Abp which Dreher promptly translated for the seals into their being BFFs.
DeleteIronically, Chaput writes books like this which are anything but Bunker Option-compatible.
DeletePauli, the ironies we've now discussed just this far concerning Dreher and Chaput are worth a post of its own.
DeleteAs Pik mentions below, although the Archbishop very probably will not comment publicly on Dreher hopping on his name and galloping off into the sunset on it - e.g., creating the impression Dreher's Dante book is implicitly endorsed by the Catholic Church itself - it might be useful to diplomatically point out why such assumptions by readers would be patently ridiculous.
A complement from Archbishop Chaput isn't worth the paper on which it's written -- especially if the complement is verbal. This is the same cretin who equated Supreme Court Justice Scalia with Frances Kissling -- founder of the pro-abortion Catholics For A Free Choice -- as "cafeteria Catholics" when Scalia publicly questioned JPII arbitrary revisionism toward capital punishment for murder.
DeleteIf Chaput is one of the "leading lights" of the Catholic Church in the U.S., then that church is in far more serious trouble than anybody wants to admit.
Keith: "I wonder if our intrepid investigative reporter Jonathan is up to advising the Archbishop what other titles the diocese might obtain from ReganArts."
DeleteAfter going over and looking at their website, I can only say Regan Arts certainly promotes a very curious variety of books.
Diane, Chaput is the arrogant one. To dismiss the legitimate concerns from Catholics about the morality of their priests is nothing but clericalist arrogance at its finest. Regardless of Dreher's character flaws, he was right when he said that only lawsuits would get the bishops to act. History has borne that out.
DeleteDiane, Catholicism will regain respect once Catholics value morality as much as blind group loyalty. Only that will defuse the judgement of a holy, righteous God Who will never allow His Name to be taken in vain by anyone in Christian leadership... let alone by those who claim to lead the "One True Church" that teaches "the fullness of the Gospel."
Joseph, please don't lecture Diane and please don't enclose the claims of the Catholic Church in scare-quotes on my site. Thanks.
DeleteBTW, happy birthday, Diane.
Birthday? Happy Birthday, Diane!
DeleteSo where's the cake?
Thanks, Pauli and Keith!
DeleteAs I always say: My birthday is on Earth Day 'cuz I'm older than dirt.
Of course, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Michael Phelps, and Rush Limbaugh aren't going to punch back at such a small fry as Rod Dreher. Nor are the bishops, and they're too charitable to do so anyway. And Ruthie is dead and Paw doesn't blog.
ReplyDeleteThe militant gays, on the other hand, can, will, and do blog mean things about his positions. And he can't abide that.
It's just plain cowardice, that's all.
Boilerplate, yep.
ReplyDeleteAmazingly (or not), Anton Chekhov anticipated Dreher (heck, maybe anticipated the whole internet) with his very short story, "Joy." You can "read the whole thing" in two minutes:
http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1103/
Perfect. Can there truly be a more ironically anti-traditional, McLuhanesque-Warholian modern creation than Rod Dreher? It's almost as if he had been designed in some MIT lab.
DeleteWasn't it Abp. Chaput, then of Denver, who called Rod to scold him for publicly criticizing Catholic bishops back a dozen or so years ago, an act Rod publicly and freely spoke of aggrievedly?
ReplyDeleteIf I'm not mistaken, the two have known each other for years.
If that's the case, that would go far in explaining the expansive personal review. Without knowing anything about him, it struck me as very odd and, as I mentioned, sounded more like throwaway boilerplate.
DeleteI was partly mistaken, in that it was in writing, not on the phone. In April 2004, Rod wrote the following on Amy Welborn's blog:
Delete"I well remember the archbishop writing me personally in the beginning of 2002, urging me to go easier on his brother bishops in my writing on the scandal. He and I had previously enjoyed a pleasant correspondence, and I thought maybe he didn't quite realize how bad things were. I sent him a sheaf of e-mails I'd received from Catholics around the country who had written to me to thank me for drawing critical attention, as an orthodox Catholic, to the scandal, and they told of how they and/or their families had suffered from clerical sexual abuse, and how cruelly they'd been treated by Church authorities when they'd sought redress. His Excellency had nothing to say about those cases. I told him that the bishops simply had to face this crisis squarely, but on evidence of their past behavior. I told him that I had little faith that this would happen, though, because it seemed clear to me from the evidence that the only thing that forces bishops to act against predator priests is the prospect of lawsuits.
"He replied that that conclusion was 'not just insulting, but unjust and wrong'" And he asked if I really believe that, 'why would you remain Catholic?'"
"I replied that I remain Catholic because I believe that the Catholic Church is what it claims to be, not because I have faith in the integrity of individual bishops. And that was the end of our correspondence. But his was a telling comment, one reminiscent of Donatism, and a comment I haven't forgotten.
"Frankly, I'm not at all sure how thrilled I want to get over a bishop who is all het up to whack bad Catholic politicians, but who finds it impossible to call oneself a Catholic if one cannot affirm the personal worthiness of Catholic bishops. Like I said, the Mote-Plank Factor here is galling."
"Let me put it more personally: it came as a real blow to me to learn that the one American bishop I had by far the most respect for not only thought the work I was doing on the scandal was wrong (which I must admit is a fair opinion, though obviously not one I agree with), but also that he effectively told me that my faith as a Catholic was null and void because I didn't trust the American bishops to handle the scandal with integrity. That hit me hard, let me tell you. I thought: if Chaput thinks this way, what hope is there for the rest of them?
"So yeah, maybe I'm tougher on him than I might otherwise be, but we have a history."
-- http://amywelborn.typepad.com/openbook/2004/04/archbishop_chap.html
What overweening arrogance -- to assert that one knew more about the Church's internal crisis than her bishops did! This might be excusable from a callow high school kid -- but from a supposedly mature adult?? Who the heck did he think he was?
DeleteAll of this puts his own coverups of Orthodox gay mafias and clerical abuse into even sharper relief. Mama Mia.
Look at the photo of his wife kissing him. He's looking into the camera - himself. She's kissing him.
DeleteIs there anything more revealing of this man's egomaniacal temperament?
And such a photo on a post ostensibly praising his wife as his "Beatrice", to boot. She should have been looking into the camera while he kissed her.
DeleteBut of course, that's not what the post is really about anyway. The Rod-centered photo matches the Rod-centered payload near the end:
OK, I’m about to board a plane at BWI, headed home for 12 hours, then off to South Bend. More later. Say, I just saw this great five-star review on the Amazon.com page for How Dante. Thank you, anonymous professor...
The narcissism is strong with this one. Seriously. I know that term gets thrown around a lot -- kind of the way college kids call each other "autistic" :p -- but, more and more, I do think this guy is a textbook case of NPD.
DeleteThat's partly why I simply cannot bring myself to read his dreck. I don't know how Keith stands it, slogging through the muck so we don't have to. Me, I just have an overly sensitive gag reflex, or something..
At the risk falling out of favor let me point out again the risk to Christians and conservatives of indiscriminately embracing (Dreher is resurging somewhat in chatty outlet circles recently) just anyone as our champions (Is that word topically familiar for a reason? Why, yes. Did she actually eat that famous Chipotle burrito?) just because they mouth a platitude du jour.
DeleteRemember, for example, the Benedict Option is just as much so Virgil and Beatrice's kids don't have to lower themselves to playing with yours or eating that crap you feed them.
Incidentally, if you're amazed, as I am, that Dreher has moved on to flogging his as yet even to be conceived BO book so heavily while the Dante one has just barely hit the shelves, I think I'd want the ink dry on a new binding contract, too, before too many Dante sales figures start rolling in.
DeleteShorter Benedict Option:
DeleteRod Dreher's Psychology (not to be confused with Rod Dreher's Theology, that is, where can safety from meanies ultimately be found?
+
Barack Obama's 2008 "blank screen" campaign for the White House.
If I can sell you that, you will follow me anywhere.
That's better, Dreher.
DeleteWe're glad to have helped.
Is there anything more revealing of this man's egomaniacal temperament?
ReplyDeleteNo. Well... arguably not.
Everything about Dreher is performance. The gelled hair, the kooky glasses, and last but certainly not least, the prominent photos of the product - himself.
ReplyDeleteBy the time he's finished blogging, there's gonna be more pictures of him on the net than Marilyn Monroe!
What, you may ask, can top a Dreher performance? Why, a Dreher performance in ongoing blog symbiosis with an equal performance queen: Charles "Uncle Chuckie" Cosimano.
DeleteWe've had this discussion before, and Pauli or Pik can probably find the link better than I, but here is a picture of Cosimano in his (some sort of humanities academic)-bad boy BDSM/"psionics" heyday; here, the link above, is his age today. Their contention is that he remains vaguely evil. Mine is that he exists as a warning against aging into that desperation beyond a no longer discernible life's purpose.
To command the same audience of attention providers he became comfortable with when the more youthful picture was taken, a Faustian bargain has become necessary, and that bargain has been to now perform daily as the safely contrarian yet ultimately fawning sidekick foil for the amusement of Dreher's blog readers. No doubt it somehow beats out donning a studded black leather motorcycle jacket and asking children to pull his finger.
My casual searches haven't turned up anything biographical on him of significance, which suggests his verbal academic references predate search engine record keeping. Dreher's blog has become the old folks' home where he can still wow 'em and cause the innocents to blush. In return, as resident Nosferatu, Dreher harvests his tribute .
There are many ironies vis-a-vis "uncle Chuckie", but one to note cursorily is that he does a long youtube rant about how there is no such thing as karma, no good recompense for doing good, or evil for evil. What is the Divine Comedy except the most famous explanation of destiny, fate, karma -- whatever you want to call it?
DeleteHere's the key from Uncle Chuckie: "You will not find everything to your liking. You will find things that you cannot accept. But that is ok. Take what is given as you find use for it and discard what you cannot." That, my friends, is the tie in with Dreher's mind. Utilitarianism applied to everything including religion and psychosis.
That's the spirit, Chuckie. It takes a special kind of moral relativism to give a review of a book about The Divine Comedy, every page of which (Divine Comedy, that is) is about eternal reward or eternal damnation, and arrive at a bottom line of "[t]ake what is given as you find use for it and discard what you cannot".
DeleteThat's the spirit, Chuckie. It takes a special kind of moral relativism to give a review of a book about The Divine Comedy, every page of which (Divine Comedy, that is) is about eternal reward or eternal damnation, and arrive at a bottom line of "[t]ake what is given as you find use for it and discard what you cannot".
DeleteAnd who is still so grateful for that review that he celebrates it with a tandem head shot? "Buy my book for any reason. Tear out half of it and throw it away, I don't care. I don't care whether it helps you or not. Use it to level up your card table. I honestly need the sales that bad."
Speaking of the ironies Pauli just mentioned, here is one that has probably escaped those Dreher Kool-Aid sippers out there still celebrating him as their champion. Warning: two long consecutive comments.
DeleteThere's been a lot of well-deserved press of late about the "special snowflakes" on college campuses, particularly among feminists, and their need for "trigger warnings" so as not to be blindsided by debilitating feelings of being "unsafe" which could leave them traumatized and depressed - you can already see where this is going, can't you.
Well, finally, we no longer have to feel left out. Religious conservatives not only now have our own Special Snowflake, Rod Dreher, we have a brand new book celebrating his Snowfall.
Because, make no mistake about it, the Dante in this narrative, whether or not it legitimately holds a primary place in the book written to be marketed after the fact of it, holds the superficial place of an ennobling fig leaf added as an after-market flavor additive with respect to the development of the narrative itself.
Here's how we know.
To recap, Rod comes home after sister's death and, surprise and debilitating chagrin, isn't welcomed as the conquering prodigal hero. Thirteen years a Catholic? Several years as Orthodox? Completely useless to Snowflake, who falls as snow into a "dark wood". This stress and depression supposedly triggers his mono, which forces him to take to his bed for hours at a stretch.
But one of the primary symptoms of clinical depression is the inability to get out of bed. So why is Rod sleeping? Mono? Depression? Both?
Let's rank them socially according to their social stigma. "Stress", of course, is universally understood to be an external environmental hazard. Mono is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus, another external agent. So, unlike depression, stress-induced mono would be all someone else's fault, not an internal breakdown of functioning.
Here, though, we leave blog narrative and go to testimony directly from the Dante book itself:
After the rheumatologist’s report, our family doctor and my wife told me that it was time to start seeing a therapist. I did not want to do this. I intellectualized my fear by telling myself that therapy was nothing more than navel-gazing and narcissism.
Delete“You need help with this situation,” Julie said. “You are letting your pride keep you from getting it.”
“Am not,” i said petulance rising in my voice. “I just don’t see the point in sitting around talking to a stranger for an hour every week about my problems. I know why things are messed up. I don’t need somebody to explain that to me.”
She wasn’t letting me get away with that.
“You know what? You don’t know everything,” she sassed. “What you need is someone outside of the family system to take an objective look at it and help you figure out what to do. And you are going to do it because the kids and I are tired of you being absent from our lives because you’re always sleeping.”
The doctor texted me the name of a licensed Baton rouge therapist he trusted, a guy named Mike Holmes, who happened to be an ordained Southern Baptist minister as well.
“I don’t know about this guy,” I said to my wife. “Do I really want a preacher doing my therapy? It seems weird to me.”
Standing next to my leather armchair, Julie crossed her arms and fired a don’t-mess-with-me look my way.
“Humble yourself and call him,” she said, with buckshot in her voice.
(Incidentally, no Southerner says "she sassed". We say, "Don't sass me" or "Don't give me any of your sass", but it's never used in the third person past tense. If you found that usage genuine and heartfelt, you have been deceived and swindled by a thesaurus wielder.)
Dante, oh Dante, where are you? Absent. Julie is not demanding he read Dante to save his life, she's telling Special Snowflake to get off his ass and seek psychological help because he's run crying to his bed and hiding away from the mental pain and suffering. But perhaps I am too cruel. Perhaps he could do nothing else but sleep. Mono, you know. These hours in bed, not those hours in bed, only Rod knows for sure; another unverifiable/unfalsifiable claim.
But where would that leave the very public Rod with respect to the world: a Special Snowflake who crumbled at the disrespect of his family who was ultimately shamed into seeing a psychological therapist by his wife for his unmanliness.
Not the material a great book is made of. Until
Enter Dante.
Now we can finally turn this lemon into some career-profitable, not career-liability, lemonade.
Don't ask why whatever was really behind his years of trumpeting his Christian faith as both Catholic and Orthodox failed him. Don't peer behind that curtain.
And, in the end, the "mono" returned. But buy his book anyway.
She sassed? With buckshot in her voice?
ReplyDeleteI-yi-yi. And Dave Barry thought the 50 Shades prose was bad.
No kidding. Now that you mention it, this one struck me:
DeleteStanding next to my leather armchair, Julie crossed her arms and fired a don’t-mess-with-me look my way.
That's the only bit of environmental description in that whole long passage. With a better writer, there would be some significance to the leather chair, and to her standing next to it. With Dreher, you know it's just a response to the editor saying "this needs more descriptive flavor".
Like items 7 and 6 in this takedown, "the ring of utter ineptitude".
I think he just wants us to know he can afford leather. Not vinyl, like those plebes out there in the trailer park on the Starhill bayou. LOL.
Delete"Garsh," I replied with genuine country incredulity as the carbon fiber in my Aeron whispered ergonomically, "you two may be right!"
DeleteLOL, that Dan Brown take-down is hilarious.
DeleteElmore Leonard's Rules of Good Writing, #3: "Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue."
DeleteYou can't be a writer, or an editor, and not know that rule, which means you can't be a writer, or an editor, and break that rule by accident.
"Shut up," he explained.
"Hello," he lied.
These are the sort of non-accidents that allow a writer to break that rule without writing badly.
Yup.
DeleteMeanwhile buckshot makes me think of: "They can't build you houses with buckshot in their trousers."
Irving Berlin could write. :)
I don't know that I agree w/Leonard.
Delete"Shut up," he spat.
"Hello," she hissed.
What's wrong with that?
The problem with Rod, in addition to the fact that he's a liar, is that he's a blabbermouth.
"'Hello,' she hissed" reminds me of Wodehouse, who would always follow that up with, "It is not easy to hiss something that has no 'S' in it, but she managed to do it."
DeleteIt's a question of style, obviously, and not every successful, or even good writer would agree with Leonard, who summed up his rules with, "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."
I suspect the "only use said" rule is chiefly aimed at the sort of person who would write "he menaced" or "she enthused."
Great points. And yes, I thought of Wodehouse too. What a stylist! What a guy!
Delete""'Hello,' she hissed" reminds me of Wodehouse, who would always follow that up with, "It is not easy to hiss something that has no 'S' in it, but she managed to do it.""
ReplyDelete1. Thank you.
2. Hilarious!!