Rod Dreher's Benedict Option astroturf blog
Are you familiar with the political marketing technique known as astroturfing? It's
the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participant(s).
Anyway, this astroturf blog is called The Benedict Post*, and so far it is dedicated solely to promoting Rod Dreher's Benedict Option.
While I cannot say for certain who actually authors it - because the author so far remains anonymous - it already bears a remarkably convergent resemblance to two prior Dreher efforts, his covert "Muzhik" campaign and his self-launched, since-self-deleted Bonnie Blue Review. Here's an archived snapshot of the late, great BBR (scroll down the page for the hilarious "Defamation" post).
The Benedict Post is reminiscent of Dreher's earlier self-launched Bonnie Blue Review in several respects. First, the formal, artificial titling of the blog, replete with over-explanation the typical blog reader could care less about but which the professional blogger would find grandly self-resonant; and, second, that comments are not allowed but, like the Bonnie Blue Review, you can email "tips" in to the owner. You can also get TBP pushed into your email inbox, saving you the trouble of that daily hunt for your Benedict Option apologetics.
The Benedict Post is ostensibly written by a Catholic and sprinkled with Catholic material which is entirely beyond my pay grade. I would invite Catholics reading this to evaluate the nature and value of that Catholic-specific material and in particular its treatment. Rod Dreher is of course an apostastic ex-Catholic, but there are those, perhaps including the blog owner itself, who might maintain that, once a Catholic, always a Catholic, thus rendering the blog owner's faith claim true for any current or ex-Catholic identities.
Although, as I mentioned, TBP is festooned with Catholic references, even a cursory reading by a non-Catholic like myself is enough to determine that the blog is neither primarily about nor does it primarily promote Catholicism.
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| The green shoots of a manufactured idea |
What it is primarily about and what it does primarily promote - and so far the only thing - is Rod Dreher's Benedict Option - in a landscape so radioactive green and plastic I would be remiss if I didn't warn you about the possibility of getting a rug burn just from reading it.
*I've italicized the blog name to avoid confusion with posts about Benedicts.
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Hmm. Your theory is plausible. Interesting. It could be "Muzhik" working a new field, or he could have someone doing it for him. It sure reads like astroturf, even if it's honestly some follower of Rod up and doing it all on his own initiative. Which is to say, it's got that immature, wide-eyed, Rod-venerating tone to it. Is it Rod trying not to sound like himself? I guess we shall see. Chances are, if it's Rod, he'll get outed eventually. I'm hoping he wouldn't be so straight-up deceitful as to actually pretend to be a Catholic blogger addressing Catholics. Which is what makes me think it may be more likely that the blog is done by someone who volunteered, or whom Rod recruited.
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned, I'm a non-Catholic and really unqualified to vet the Catholic content there, which is why I would still urge a Catholic to do so.
DeleteBut the two most salient features to me were the identical iron control (no comment messiness) and distance from readers of the Bonnie Blue Review and its sense that the blog was doing a favor for readers who should be properly grateful for its doing so; and the distinctive odor of what I might call Catholic interior decorating.
As to this latter point, no doubt many of the Catholic topics raised there have genuine roots in and of themselves, but the overall feel to me was phony, as if the topics had been methodically inserted as props (crucifix over the bed, rosary beads carefully draped over carefully stacked books of Catholic reading) and the room sprayed with a patented Febreze Catholic freshener, incense, maybe.
All in all, the blog presents itself as the concerned Catholic's daily reader to guide wavering Catholics repeatedly and methodically through why and how the Benedict Option is the only way to mend their broken Church - a vista which is as much an interior mindscape of someone who feels the Church has failed him as it is any sort of objective, external program.
Hah! Keith, I think you're onto something. Muzhik strikes again.
Deletehttps://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/bd/5a/36/bd5a363887ba75c0deb57f4c4b5ca067.jpg
ReplyDeleteLOL!
DeleteWell, it would seem that the Twitterist behind the blog has spotted your "conspiracy theory post" already.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/thebenedictpost?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fthebenedictpost.wordpress.com%2Fabout%2F&profile_id=3275091564&tw_i=623847992454418433&tw_p=embeddedtimeline&tw_w=620001054726430720
I wonder if someone misplaced a red cardigan in this mess?
The Other Anonymous
The tweet reads "The Benedict Post is only 2 weeks old and we've already got conspiracy theorists thinking we're not Catholic".
DeleteThe problem with the statement, though, is not only that it's patently untrue, it's reflexively, pathologically untrue in the peculiar Dreher manner of intellectual dishonesty, eg, falsifying a portion of a phenomenon - Catholicism is being manipulated as a utility in the service of other ends - then recasting that now-falsified nuance as a universal claim applicable to the whole: "conspiracy theorists thinking we're not Catholic". Dreher isn't merely pathologically intellectually dishonest, he's consistently pathologically intellectually dishonest in this specific, telltale way.
There are other aspects to the Twitter stream that would tend to confirm that this is Dreher and not Erin Manning. For one thing, although Erin is and will always be Rod's slavish handmaiden, she just doesn't have that breadth and depth of energy displayed across multiple internet platforms even in the brief time TBP has been in existence, nor the dedication to the BO specifically to spend the energy she does have on it to this degree. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, is Erin that familiar with Wordpress, while, if I'm not mistaken, TAC has been running on a WP Engine setup for years now; and of course Dreher, unlike Erin again, is also an accomplished Twitter user.
But the biggest tell from the Twitter feed is the early presence of Ben Domenech, a longtime and tight Dreher friend, helping spread the word. I don't know which would be worse, thinking that Domenech is clueless about TBP, or knowing that he is part of Neo-Muzhik's sockpuppetry.
If TBP isn't written word for word by Dreher himself, it's likely written under his supervision by someone from the TAC family equally familiar with Wordpress, Twitter, and who Dreher's friends and foes in the blogosphere are.
Take a full swan dive into the ugly here: what TBP represents is that Christianity can be rendered into just as useful a multi-internet-social-media commodity in the service of an individual's personal, venal ends - in this case, a paying book contract on the BO for Rod Dreher - as any other, pornography, celebrity gossip, social outrage, what have you and, moreover, there are others just as eager to go along in exchange for some reciprocal hand love.
Let me add this. "Muzhik" would have never been anything other another anonymous commenter had no one done any more than take his statements at face value, had Pauli not picked up on it, then McCain, etc.
DeleteAs the heavy handed response against Noah Millman shows, people like Dreher interested in milking Christianity for their own, venal ends on the internet are playing hardball and they're playing for keeps. They count on others being timid, unsure, not willing to take a second look or to look too closely the first time; after all, they've already wrapped themselves in the Shroud of Turin, and who are you, sinning conspiracy theorist, to have the gall to peel that Shroud back? Don't you know that phrases like "Thanks be to God, and glory to Him for all things!" fall from Dreher's lips with the same facileness that grass transits a goose?
There's an Edmund Burke quote about evil and good men that's probably just as applicable to the petite naughties of the Muzhik rodentry in the walls, so I'd like to hope that, if nothing else, this story gets spread and at least examined by a broader audience beyond that controlled by Rod Dreher.
There's a pretty fair argument to be made that the BOp as it is typically described is necessarily not-Catholic. (I'm thinking of the Great Commission and Evangelli Gaudium for starters.)
DeleteOf course the response will be something like: the strategic withdrawal of the BOp will be itself evangelizing, and even more effective than the usual ways.
Pik and Diane, as you both know, the question for the BO and its foot soldiers like TBP is not whether the BO is Catholic, it's whether Catholics can be induced into buying a book about it as a remedy for their social-religious angst: the cure for Planned Parenthood abominations is somehow the Benedict Option, but you'll never really know how to fully implement it unless you buy the book. Of course if you don't care about murdered baby parts being sold, don't buy the book, see if God cares.
DeleteIf the BO promised relief against joint pain, Chuck Woolery would be hawking it on TV as well.
Finally, is this the typical response of a genuine Catholic blogger, one focused only on itself and its blogging about Catholicism?
DeleteNo sooner than I put this post here on EQE up than within 24 hours boom!, boom!, boom!, a mortar barrage of b) defensive protesting-too-much after first a) having surveyed the internet to see how its own press is faring.
What genuine Catholic blog interested only in its own Catholic message - rather than marketing Rod Dreher's Benedict Option book contract - behaves like a California startup pushing a hot new iPhone app while monitoring its following across internet media?
Though to me more reminiscent of Beckett's absurdism, maybe this savvy, multi-internet-media-platform-aware behavior is what MacIntyre meant by "another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict": really! "If you think TBP's not Catholic, [false straw man claim, repeated] read it! You'll find tons of great Catholic news & commentary - that's all it is!"
Tons of great Catholic news & commentary - that's all it is!
Tons!
Pik, I have been saying this all along. The BenOp (at least for laypeople) is NOT Catholic or even recognizably Christian, because it dispenses with the Great Commission. And with Matthew 25: 31-46. And both the Great Commission and the Works of Mercy are not optional. They are a feature in Christianity, not a bug. Integral, not peripheral.
ReplyDeleteOf course the response will be something like: the strategic withdrawal of the BOp will be itself evangelizing, and even more effective than the usual ways.
You nailed it. That is exacty what the response will be.
Supposedly Saint Seraphim of Sarov said something like, "Save yourself, and you will save a thousand around you." Um, that's nice. For monks. But, if Saint Paul and the other apostles had focused exclusively on saving themselves and just waiting for the ripple effect...well, Christianity would have remained an obscure Jewish sect, largely defunct before the end of the first century.
But do we really know what the Benedict Option is? Isn't that precisely the point of all this discussion? That Rod Dreher's account is incoherent? So perhaps it's premature to say it isn't for the laity. We'd have to know first what it really is. Frankly, I could care less. My wife and I, with our four children, are living a life that might conceivably fall under the BenOp label: but the impetus for that life came from sources far more deeply rooted, and with more intellectual integrity, than Dreher's bluster: one of them being lay Benedictinism (i.e. being oblates), another the Catholic Worker. My problem with Dreher is that he doesn't appear to live a life that would inspire anyone to adopt something llike a lay Benedictine life: if a Benedict option means anything, it must mean a life of physical labor (and probably agrarian labor). It's decidedly not a life of pure intellectual cogitation, with a little bit of liturgical prayer thrown in: I spent time at Clear Creek Abbey, where good, old-fashioned Benedictine life is to be seen, and it means getting up early to pray AND milk cows, repair fences, hoe beans, etc. I read Dreher's Crunchy Con book many moons ago, and he seems to be re-casting his vaguely countercultural Epicureanism in a new form: Dreher has no intention of learning to milk a cow, for instance. Not unlike Chesterton, he's a theorist. He likes the idea, but he is physically incapable of the practices that would constitute the reality. I can only imagine an agrarian BenOp, chiefly because that's what I know and what I practice. And this is its essence: pray a little, work at getting most of your own food, help your neighbors, particularly the elderly and indigent (of which there are many in rural America: it is far from the social idyll that some imagine). And doing that leaves very little, if any time, for a blog, or commenting on blogs for that matter. I'm writing in the lunchtime interlude between having gathered our herd of cattle and the afternoon branding. If I had the time or energy, I wouldn't mind putting together something for young people who are interested in doing something like what we're doing: there is a real hunger for a new Catholic agrarianism, and in the absence of good material, the theorists like Dreher will fill the vacuum. Perhaps the only sentiment I dislike in some of the Dreher-bashing is the suggestion that it is decidedly un-Catholic to want a life outside the mainstream of suburban American Catholicism. The hope of American Catholicism may not lie in the countryside, but it certainly lies outside of its current trajectory. The Church is in need of more, not less, radicalism. It will be messy (just look at some of the rather unsavory characters to be found among the desert fathers), but then a real St. Benedict will come along to provide the sane mean. To my mind, that happened for American Catholics: Dorothy Day is the radical lay American Catholic, par excellence.
DeletePerhaps the only sentiment I dislike in some of the Dreher-bashing is the suggestion that it is decidedly un-Catholic to want a life outside the mainstream of suburban American Catholicism.
DeleteUhh, I don't know anyone who has every suggested that. My belief is that the Catholic faith is for everyone, and that any occupation which is not intrinsically evil (e.g., drug-pusher, hit-man, etc.) is compatible with it. That's why I've permalinked to this treatment, and link to it often.
Dorothy Day is fine, and I'm sure imitating her has helped people to become holy. But St. Josemaria Escriva is also a great saint to imitate. He emphasized being in the world and loving all its aspects. Not just the city or country or suburbs but EVERY PART.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI wouldn't claim that it is somehow more Catholic to be a rancher or a farmer, etc: but I do believe it is more fulfilling than a great many other occupations.
DeleteYes, but that is your personal opinion, and some people would dislike that work. They'd rather work in publishing or insurance or finance. It takes all kinds -- always has.
I was in a terrible rush, deleted my comment, and didn't realize that you could still see it. I can't remember the content of my entire comment, so I hesitate to respond. This may get at the heart of my suspicion of the BenOp: it's the sort of thing that really ought to be discussed by friends sitting around a common table. Great movements, the Oxford Movement, for instance, or Methodism, started out among intimates, a point made by C.S. Lewis, as I recall. The internet probably isn't the appropriate forum.
DeleteThe internet probably isn't the appropriate forum.
DeleteAu contraire!
I honestly believe that wherever you stand on the Benedict Option — and I expect to make a detailed case for it in the book I intend to write — this concept will dominate discussion among Christian conservatives about what role we should play publicly and privately in the years to come.
Just like the question of whether toilet paper should leave the roll from the top or the bottom ultimately has no real bearing on the problem at hand, as Rod Dreher makes clear the Benedict Option Question is designed as an end in itself. It doesn't really matter whether the BO leads to success, confusion, failure, laughter, T-shirts, or a small, independent film, the only important thing is that from now on Christian thought and discussion should be re-oriented to orbit the BO as its gravitational center.
Tons!
I am going to try to post to this blog. If he deletes me in minutes then you will know it is Dreherbear. Jonathan Carpenter
ReplyDeleteDon't be surprised if there's a little delay.
DeleteWell there was a delay, but that just gave him time to reprise the staged photo one of our Anons noted last year to cook up a new one.
DeleteTo use that Anon's formulation:
- Top of frame: heavy duty reading glasses, for those Big Ideas (whether he actually gets them right or not)
Well, the reading glasses aren't there, but we do have sunglasses since we're on the beach. So check.
- Big Stack-O-Books: because only someone with a small intellectual penis needs to stage his reading for the public to "prove" it
Well, a short stack, anyway. Brothers Karamazov provide the gravitas (and some text for the post). On deck, for when Dreher finishes the remaining 90% of BK before the sun goes down (or sets it aside, since it has now served its purpose), it looks like we have Saul Bellow. Mrs. appears to be reading The Shoemaker's Wife, about which I know nothing so no credit on the pretentiousness scale. But Dreher's two qualify enough given the setting, so check.
- Religious prayer beads in what appears to be quality stone casually draped and descending because - did I mention it? Rod & God are like this, man, probably closer than you & God are, IJS.
Of course. Plus some text so we know that he said his "long prayer rule in the surf". Check+.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Pik, I'm just crestfallen to learn what a dismal time indoor kitty is having there in Orange Beach, AL (the Gulfport, MS area is too pedestrian, Destin, FL farther than he needs to drive to find a condo suitable to his station). Why, the only memorable meal he's had there was the shrimp salad he prepared himself; why he didn't offer that as a VFYT remains a mystery. It was probably a kindness of him not to shoot the upper portions of the other beachgoers in the background with their feedbags of hominy gruel hooked over their ears.
DeleteBut, really, after Sienna and Lyon, does anyone really expect the Savior of Christianity to soil his temple with a fried seafood platter?
I also noted his slumming in the reference to the Ore-Ida oven-baked french fries. Aren't we just so special...
DeleteThe chances of Dreher actually finishing The Brothers Karamazov are about as great the chances of him actually finishing Anna Karenina were, i.e. slim to none. Expect a post pretty soon in which he pivots from saying how soulful and Benedict-Optionish Russian fiction is to one say how much more soulful and Benedict-Optionish Medieval poetry is and therefore how much more suited to the soulfully mystical, pre-modern, anti-liberal, ultra-orthodox sensibility of Dreher himself. He will go to lunch at Roman Catholic colleges and Classical Christian schools forever on the basis of the one work of literature he's ever read cover to cover - The Divine Comedy - the book about which he wrote his own book about himself reading that book, though, of course, less about the book than his reading and less about his reading than his favorite subject, HIMSELF. Dreher is too much of a narcissist to read a novel. I doubt he's even read any of Walker Percy's novels all the way through, and the fact that he was talking at one point about writing a novel of his own is too ridiculous for words.
ReplyDeleteAnonymouse
The irony here is, roll south and east out of Covington, LA - Walker Percy's real home - and you hit the historic Hwy. 90 strip right out of several of Percy's novels. Historical, traditional, hurricane-battered, small local towns and good, God-fearing people. You can still buy fresh oysters right out of the dockside shucking sheds in Bayou La Batre of Forrest Gump fame. Alas, though, it's not romantic France, only blue collar white, black, Hispanic and Vietnamese America. But it's a virtual certainty that Rod traveled antiseptically east on I10 instead before hermetically preserving himself from Percy's humid world in a condo on tony Orange Beach. Because, in the idea of local community there are no mosquitos, while the internet let's you crowd-source your blood and monetary donations for your priest's wife so as not to disrupt your second vacation of the year.
DeleteBTW, you thought I was joking when I predicted Rod's next step would be to follow in the footsteps of Lena Dunham's Lenny? Nuh-huh. Meet the Benny I spoke of.
Tons!
I doubt he's even read any of Walker Percy's novels all the way through, and the fact that he was talking at one point about writing a novel of his own is too ridiculous for words.
DeleteWell, many people think they can write fiction at some point in their life. Or screenplays. But man, it's hard. Really hard. And for someone like Dreher it is probably impossible. It requires imagination which I'm not sure he has too much of.
It would seem to me that it would also require thick skin as in the ability to get rejected A LOT before finding someone who thought your stuff worth publishing. Of course he might have an agent to shop his stuff around and shield him from any harsh truth-telling.
Keith it is not surprising to me at all that he is really not that much into going somewhere authentic with real smelliness, bugs or splinters. When you go to a place like that you run into a bunch of people who are eking out a living and not interested in your self-delusions. The literati would rather "flock together" and engage in group self-actualization.
The irony here is, roll south and east out of Covington, LA - Walker Percy's real home - and you hit the historic Hwy. 90 strip right out of several of Percy's novels. Historical, traditional, hurricane-battered, small local towns and good, God-fearing people. You can still buy fresh oysters right out of the dockside shucking sheds in Bayou La Batre of Forrest Gump fame. Alas, though, it's not romantic France, only blue collar white, black, Hispanic and Vietnamese America.
ReplyDeleteUltimately that's what defines Dreher's writing - his blog should be titled: Front Porch Poseur. Louisiana's oh so special in theory, but he ain't putting local muscadine jelly or fig jam on his toast when he can have his confiture shipped from his precious France.
It's like his pimping his favorite restaurant, Hot Tails, all the time after he moved back to St Francisville. It's across the river, opened by someone from out of town, overpriced, and the owner was just using a small town with cheap real estate as a stepping stone to build his name so he could open a "fine dining, James Beardesque, place in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. I guess folks on the make have to stick together.
My family's from the same area and this is the joint that screams authentic localism:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g40411-d3699259-Reviews-South_of_the_Border-Saint_Francisville_Louisiana.html
It's the platonic ideal of a southern roadhouse, and I'm sure his sister, parents and grandparents ate there. But that's the problem when what your selling is locaism in the same place the locals all made fun of you in Junior High. You can't hang out at the authentic local joints lest the stress from running into the quarterback who taped you butt cheeks together in the locker room sends you to bed for a week with the vapors.
The funny thing about my growing aversion to all things related to the Rod Dreher Benedict Option is, were it actually though out and expressed coherently (seriously every time he reminds his readers that he minored in philosophy I want to send him a tee-shirt that says "I minored in philosophy and all I got was this tee-shirt - oh yeah, and the condescending attitude of a pseudo-intellectual douchebag) I'd be the target audience for it. But it's all about the surface with no depth, same as his crunchy conservatism: "I wear sandals, recycle, and shop at the weekly farmers market, heck I'm just like Joel Salatin."
But, you know, it's all about community. And if the community you've chosen rejects you for the second time, then it's all about "intentional community". Build yourself a church (well not you specifically, that's manual labor you're talking about), hire your own personal Father-Confessor, and spend your line online with your own private community of other bullied kids from the AV Club who are also scared of bugs and snakes and peak oil and Yetis, etc.. That's so much easier than living an authentic small town localist life. Whether you agree with his politics or not, this guy got the whole "move back from the big city to the place you love" thing right:
"Despair is not only a sin, it’s also boring and soul-draining. What have I done over the last 48 hours? Listened to my old neighbor play a concert along the Erie Canal. Walked with my wife under twilit skies. Sat among my parents and friends and watched a minor-league baseball game in the park that has been my lair since I was eight years old. Drank, without apparent internal damage, a beer brewed by a friend. Read William Stafford. Laughed a hundred times. Sure, the empire is collapsing. Good riddance. Why, Tom, we’re the people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out. . . . We go on."
-A Conversation with Bill Kauffman
End of Rant
-The Other Anonymous Guy
Your Benny (like Lenny, but different) update for Monday, July 27:
ReplyDelete- the lede is recycled Dreher: those Catholics; can't even keep their own churches up.
- tons of additional Catholic diddling, navel-gazing, Popery and failure. Tons! Perhaps a different communion would solve this?
- and - you knew it would be there - your weekly Rod Dreher's Benedict Option reinforcement. Perhaps a different communion would be the best way to take that Benedict Option?
Jonathan Carpenter, call your office.
What a jerk. What a tool.
DeleteWhat on earth do traddy Catholics see in this creep?
Again, why does "repainting the Benedict post" require a secret blogger?
DeleteShouldn't the person - "I" (not persons) doing that be proud - from the blog's inception - of the good work he is doing for the Lord?
Is there something loathsome and shameful about overtly associating oneself with St. Benedict and Catholicism?
Is persecution an imminent possibility?
Why?