Who will Rod Dreher's Benedict Option corrupt next?
It has already corrupted his employer, The American Conservative. Who or what will it corrupt next?
Just so you know, like Spain's Francisco Franco TAC blogger Noah Millman's "Three More Benedict Option Questions", thoughtfully critical of TAC star Rod Dreher's so-called "Benedict Option", is still dead. As I already wrote here, one can still read the Google cached version here, and Pauli has also archived it on EQE here.
What I want to recap for those innocents not fully up on the story, however, is how we got to this point, and what that journey implies for those choosing to involve themselves on anything Rod Dreher might consider the wrong side of his Benedict Option.
On July 7, while Rod Dreher was vacationing in Italy with his male comrades, his TAC colleague Noah Millman wrote and published "Three More Benedict Option Questions", in so doing linking several times to New York Times Catholic columnist Ross Douthat, a name Rod Dreher drops at every opportunity he gets. One might therefore think Douthat himself would be as interested in the twists and turns of this tale as anyone.
Shortly thereafter, Millman's piece vanished as if it had never been. The next day, July 8, Rod Dreher published in its place "Critics of the Benedict Option", a post in which, by interviewing himself, he and he alone picked the questions, the criticisms, and the answers. As recently as today, Dreher still describes himself as a professional journalist.
So what happened to Millman's piece?
Rod Dreher, professional journalist, first claimed no knowledge of how a post by a colleague critiquing the subject he hopes to write his next book about got spiked between the day it was written and the day Dreher himself wrote a post replacing it, then claimed he never realized that Millman's post had just been written, then pointed his readers to the same dead link.
As Pauli first posted here, commenter Virgil T. Morant alerted us to this statement from TAC implicitly referring to the missing Millman piece critical of Dreher's Benedict Option:
United Airlines, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Wall Street Journal aren’t the only organizations that have encountered technical turbulence lately: on Tuesday an item was incorrectly published on Noah Millman’s blog due to an error in our system. The problem has now been fixed, and we apologize to Noah and to our readers for the mix-up
You can find Noah’s latest posts here at: The Necessity of Greece’s Separation and Obergefell and the Pursuit of Happiness.
In the process of explaining why the Millman piece disappeared forever, TAC also deleted it from its own explanation. The Millman piece critical of Dreher's Benedict Option - did I mention you can read it here and here? - had officially been scrubbed from ever officially having existed at TAC at all.
Why?
TAC is run by long time publisher Wick Allison, someone who knows quite well what draws in readers' interest. A discussion of his star blogger Rod Dreher's current signature theme, the Benedict Option, between that star and another masthead blogger within the same organization would deliver all of the readers possibly interested in either person's opinions and arguments directly to the TAC bottom line.
There was no rational publishing reason, therefore, to spike the Millman piece in the first place and, even if the Millman piece had mysteriously become unpublished because of "technical turbulence", not to republish it as soon as possible, preferably with a response from Rod Dreher.
This is what The American Conservative does with the money it solicits on a tax-deductible basis from its contributors: it publishes interactive thought pieces between its masthead bloggers that engage thought.
Until now. Now it serves as Rod Dreher's personal publicist.
Why?
From the time Ron Unz was driven out of TAC, it has been common knowledge that Rod Dreher has been TAC's only real lifeline to the daily online views necessary to sustain it as a going concern. Now the power Dreher apparently wields at TAC has become great enough to get the views of anyone who disagrees with him peremptorily deleted.
This is neither American, nor Conservative. This is Hollywood-diva-throwing-a-fit journalism, Hillary Clinton journalism. True Politburo journalism or Mafia journalism would of course require a subject of more weight and substance than Rod Dreher's Benedict Option, but the thuggish reflex is identical to all, including Dreher himself.
Nevertheless, like a baker finding out the consequences of not baking a gay marriage cake, if you are a small enough religious blogger or outfit and you do not sufficiently suck up to Rod Dreher in your discussion of his Benedict Option, you have every right to be apprehensive that he or those he is able to influence, like TAC, will attempt to roll over you the way they rolled over Noah Millman in order to unilaterally control the Benedict Option narrative, the way Dreher himself just tightened the allowable narrative within his own blog at the end here.
If you are truly having trouble with our contemporary culture and the modern age and for some unfathomable reason cannot already find all the resources you need within your own faith and church, why would you ever think of yoking your trust and faith to the Christian blogosphere's version of Hillary Clinton?
Why?
Who will Rod Dreher's Benedict Option corrupt next? Probably a weirdo cult-leader or school shooter.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that other bloggers are beginning to smell what the Crock is cooking.
ReplyDeletehttp://opuspublicum.com/2015/07/08/the-benedict-option-clarified/
"A large project of sorts has been keeping me away from web-logging, but I did want to call attention to Rod Dreher’s latest American Conservative entry, “Critics of the Benedict Option.” Why? Because despite my deep misgivings about the “options” fad (see, e.g., here, here, here and here), I want to believe that the so-called Benedict Option (or any other “option”) can be something more than a marketing ploy. This is not to say that I believe Dreher is acting in bad faith, only that the realities of publishing often demand tag lines, catch phrases, clever wordplays, and so forth. Moreover, there is a more fundamental question to consider that Dreher still seems to struggle with, namely, “What is the Benedict Option?” He rejects narrowing it down to a formula, a move that is incredibly unhelpful. Granted, perhaps the Benedict Option could or would manifest itself in different ways in different concrete circumstances, but surely it needs at least some minimal unifying elements, yes? I pray that we don’t have to simply “wait for the book” to discover what they are."
Yeah, Diane's friend Gabriel Sanchez likes to tweak Dreher from time to time, but now as a fellow communicant of Dreher's and thereby now a subordinate in the hierarchy of the Orthodox blogosphere he understandably must be more deferential to his superiors. Still, I find any deviation from the blind acquiescence Dreher seems to command among Christians overall encouraging. Sooner or later I suspect Millman himself will have to break his silence, though perhaps not while he's still under roof at TAC.
DeleteThe irony I can't stress strongly enough is that Dreher depends upon and actively utilizes the same blind complacency that has led Christians to suddenly discover we are frogs in a boiling pot of cultural challenges in order to weave his successive self-promotional spells as effectively as he does. From his writing style, he's just a sweet, innocent little boy that people have hurt too many times to count now, isn't he? And he's only looking to save us all. Which is why he must quietly and ruthlessly suppress all questions, criticisms and dissent. And properly docile and irenic Christians will surely understand how such omelets are made.
And he's only looking to save us all. Which is why he must quietly and ruthlessly suppress all questions, criticisms and dissent.
ReplyDeleteNailed it.
There is no one more vicious than the bullied kid who turns around and becomes a bully himself. Dreher is seriously poisonous. He must be opposed.
roll eyes. you've been bitching about him for going on ten years. TEN YEARS. TEN. YEARS. newsflash: if you ignore him, he will ignore you back. or will you call that "bullying" too? ay caramba.
DeleteDreher's behavior using his TAC publicist is no different from The New York Times "standing by its decision to omit Ted Cruz's new memoir from its best-seller list on the grounds that sales were driven by "strategic bulk purchases," despite the fact that both HarperCollins and Amazon say there is no evidence for that argument."
ReplyDeleteDreher's shrewdly named "Benedict Option" is no traditional Christian response to a decadent and corrupt culture, it's impresario and his thuggishly self-protective marketing is an example of that decadent and corrupt culture.
What Keith said.
DeleteWe should write a book titled "Swampgas: A Rod Dreher Reader." Jonathan Carpenter
ReplyDeleteWell today he's pimping The Brethren of the Common Life and the proto-reformation Devotio Moderna movement as predecessors of the Rod Dreher's Benedict Option (accept no substitutes, membership comes with a certificate of authenticity signed by Rod himself and a Stones box set). Of course that's because it's what he read before bed last night. If he got up at 2:00 AM and read the Pottery Barn catalogue on the can, he's be waxing poetic on how throw pillows fit into the Rod Dreher Benedict Option.
ReplyDeletePerhaps this portion of the Wikipedia entry for Geert Groote appeals to him on a subconscious level "Young men especially flocked to him in great numbers"
He ends todays rambling with "There’s reason to hope! But the churches aren’t going to fix themselves. #BenedictOption". Should I my faith in Rod Dreher's Benedict Option fixing the Church or trust the Bride of Christ take care of itself...decisions, decisions.
waxing poetic on how throw pillows fit into the Rod Dreher Benedict Option
DeleteLOL. Good thing I didn't have a mouthful of coffee just now.
Should I my faith in Rod Dreher's Benedict Option fixing the Church or trust the Bride of Christ take care of itself...decisions, decisions.
DeleteIMHO when people appoint themselves to "fix the Church," it always ends badly.
Think of it a book where Pauli, Diane, Kieth etc. cut through the Swampgas that is "The Benedict Option," "TLWORL," and "HDCSYL." Jonathan Carpenter
ReplyDeleteQ: If we follow Rod Dreher into exile (from which his book blurb claims Dante was supposed to have rescued him), into a strategic retreat from the soul-leaching effects of secular liberal culture, where will we end up?
ReplyDeleteA: Why, promoting ourselves on NPR, naturally.
If you keep reading about Rod Dreher's Benedict Option and don't end up feeling like the targets being crooned to in this song, you're not doing it right.
And now, little wogs, you have your very own version:
In the Option, you'll get to retreat
Won't have to deal with the rat race, everything will be neat
You just talk about Rod and drink wine all day
It's great to be in the Option
Sail away, sail away
We will follow Rod Dreher all the way to Judgement Day
Sail away, sail away
We will follow Rod Dreher all the way to Judgement Day
In the Option, there's good food to eat
Won't have to mess with the grocery and its suspect meat
You just talk about Rod and drink wine all day
It's great to be in the Option
Ain't no liberals, no homos, ain't no Jenner flake
Just the fresh French oyster and the sweet crepe cake
Everybody is as happy as a man can be
Climb aboard little wog, sail away with me
Sail away, sail away
We will follow Rod Dreher all the way to Judgement Day
Sail away, sail away
We will follow Rod Dreher all the way to Judgement Day
In the Option, every man is free
To be whatever Rod tells him to be
Be as happy as a monkey in a monkey tree
You all gonna be in the Option
Sail away, sail away
We will follow Rod Dreher all the way to Judgement Day
Sail away, sail away
We will follow Rod Dreher all the way to Judgement Day
"A: Why, promoting ourselves on NPR, naturally."
ReplyDeleteRod is the liberal media's house (rhymes with trigger)
You might find this interesting: http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/4027/would_alasdair_macintyre_live_in_a_benedict_option_community.aspx
ReplyDeleteNow THAT is choice. I'll post on it tomorrow.
DeleteThanks for this, Other Anon. This article is excellent. A grown-up response to Rod's adolescent, ill-prepared, sub-scholarly obsession with hawking a book.
DeleteIt doesn't necessarily take a scholarly article like DeVille's to expose fraud like Dreher's, by no means novel or unique, fraud which will always be lurking to prey on peoples' latent hopes and fears, but, as with the clear-eyed child in the Emperor's New Clothes, it does take Christians having instinctive confidence in their native powers of perception and reason. That and the integrity not to sell out their fellow Christians for the apologists' pottage of being able to bask in the penumbral light of the fraudster's transient glow as his notoriety briefly arcs across the sky.
DeleteWhile I am grateful for whatever additional authority DeVille, like Zmirak, adds to the growing chorus of such clear-eyed children, I will always remain proudest of EQE for not safely waiting to see what the prevailing consensus was first, for not first wetting its finger to the wind of prevailing opinion, but rather for boldly declaring the obvious from the outset: that, like the Emperor's new clothes, Rod Dreher's Benedict Option was conceived from the outset as a predatory, venal fraud, that it has all along been perpetrated as a predatory, venal fraud, and that, as with the case of the suppressed Millman piece, when it found itself threatened, like any other cornered rat it took unethical, anti-Christian measures to try to protect itself.
Again, thanks John Zmirak and Adam DeVille, from the bottom of my heart, and welcome aboard the view from the children's corner here at EQE - where you heard it here first.
Amen, preach it, brother!
DeleteRod Dreher's logical sequel to his current Benedict Option efforts: in the footsteps of Lenny, Benny.
DeleteExcellent analysis by Dr. DeVille.
DeleteI think that most long-time readers of Dreher's blog will immediately intuit that this "Benedict Option" is merely his talent for seizing upon a sound bite and then opening the torrential sluice gates of his logorrhea.
But in reality, this book will be but the third volume of his whinging autobiography; the nature of that genre, Dr. DeVille has well characterized.
In short, Dreher will merely co-opt a Catholic saint, as he had already co-opted a Catholic poet, to cloak his own bathetic prose with a semblance of gravity.
Let us cease the calumny against poor Saint Benedict. Call it the "Dreher Option": it is whatever Dreher says it is.
We can glean the outlines already: the inquisitorial tone and indeed invective in his plethoric NFR's; the excommunication and anathematizing of commenters who "bore" him (i.e. those who don't write the damn book for him); the auto de fe of Noah Millman for his heretical article (that merely raised questions about the "option").
Why would this fraudulent Dreherian figment attract a Catholic? What can an apostate (who bolted to the schismatics at the first pang to his supersensitive soul) offer a Catholic that, to name but a few, Opus Dei, the third orders, Comunione e Liberazione, and many others cannot? Even the Neocatechumenal Way offers a more orthodox formation than anything the "option" can.
It's not the "Benedict Option"; it's the Benedict Scam.
Oysters and Chablis. Live unnoticed. Welcome to the Starhill Stavropegial Garden. This is not Catholicism. It is homosexuality-obsessed Dreherism. It is anti-social, anti-intellectual, anti-religious Epicureanism.
In short, Dreher will merely co-opt a Catholic saint, as he had already co-opted a Catholic poet, to cloak his own bathetic prose with a semblance of gravity.
DeleteOh man, can you ever WRITE!!!!
BTW, when I called it a scam on FB, I was chided for going too far. LOL.
He already co-opted a Catholic Saint for a book title, Saint Therese -- "Little Way". Actually St. Benedict is also an Orthodox Saint because he was around before the schism. But yeah, I agree he is still co-opting because he has nothing to do with the BO.
Delete@Diane - oops - sorry about that, I don't have FB so I didn't see that you called it a scam. But you hit the nail on the head. Can I edit the post to put in an acknowledgement? (And thanks for the compliment).
Delete@Pauli - yes! I forgot that about "Little Way". Good catch.
I agree that St. Benedict was also an Orthodox saint - just as St. Basil is a Catholic Saint. I have a great love for Orthodoxy, particularly the liturgies, as I became very familiar with them when I studied Russian in college. But you can get all of that in the Eastern Catholic Churches and more besides, as the Maronites do not have an Orthodox analog. Too bad Roddy never thought of that.
As Your Working Snowflake enthused in Siena, "I love me a Catholic country". The guilt over his apostasy is his dark wood. And he languishes in it still. Ed Peters has his number.
The guilt over his apostasy is his dark wood.
DeleteI agree. If he does come back I'm not even going to mention it. Why not? Well... Owen White, Gabriel Sanchez, etc. You get the idea.
Sure do. Another one is the former traditional Catholic David Werlilng whose blog arsorandi.blogspot.com dealt with the "art and beauty of traditional Catholicism". A lot of devout effort went into that blog.
DeleteI used to enjoy it though I rarely read every post. Mostly the collect of the day and some excerpt of Dom Guéranger. Then he suddenly flipped out. Mundabor reposted Werling's "salve atque vale" on his own blog, for he (Werling) deleted his entire blog stretching back years. Part of it is recoverable from the wayback machine.
Nothing to excess, saith the Oracle of Apollo. Including religion.
As far as what type of religious excess appears to infect Dreher, it would seem that he has a fixation on all things sensational. I think his personality is the exact opposite of everything embodied in a Greek Icon of Christ with it's peacefulness and silent virtue. So it doesn't surprise me that when he attempts to wax eloquent about his Orthodox faith it irritates the hell out of other Orthodox believers. When he talks about running across a field to kiss the hand of a prelate it amuses Catholics, or makes them roll their eyes. He quotes his niece as saying "Uncle Rod, you're too intense!" because he thinks it's a feature about him, not a bug. He doesn't just say the Rosary, he says the Rosary and a miracle occurs so that everything starts smelling like roses. He becomes enamored of an old eccentric Eastern Archbishop so much that he ignores the fact that later comes out that the guy had a problem with Mexican sexual tourism. He was even in to some total shyster, fake miracle conman who later ended up in trouble with the law.
DeleteHe has a long track record of falling in with crazies, being drawn toward iffy ideas and fake miracles. But the crown of it all was the claim --implicit or explicit -- that HE ALONE was upset about the sex scandals in the Catholic Church. This is because he was drawn toward it and enjoyed thinking about it. Because... (drum roll...) it was OUTRAGE PORN. (Thank you, Noah Millman.) It was sensational, and the bishops didn't freak out in public over it like he did. Hence he used this as a huge excuse to leave the Church, weaving it into a narrative which really sounds sensationalistic if you read it and think to yourself "Who else talks this way?"
Yes, quite. The prophet of the Benedict Option, Rod Dreher, seeking to strategically retreat from the effects of secular liberal culture, nevertheless cannot help but going full Don Jon in inventing this imaginatve question:
DeleteWhat if people were buying aborted fetal body parts for use in gourmet cooking?
What sort of self-abuse is going on in the mind of a creature who conceives and formulates such a question?
There's simply nothing in the knowable universe, no matter how horrible, that Rod Dreher cannot ultimately find a way to induct into his alimentary communion with the world.