Self-revelations or Lies?

If the anonymous author of the Benedict Post is actually Rod Dreher as we've assumed in the past, then I don't know what to do with this excerpt from a recent post.

Like Scalia, I am a former high school debater, a product of a Jesuit education, a traditionalist-minded Catholic, a conservative, and a lawyer. To see someone so similar, in that prominent of a position, not only saying it’s okay to think this way, but this is the way you should be thinking about the law was incredibly inspiring and motivating. As one of the many conservative legal minds who had (and will have) the privilege of learning the law from you: thank you, Justice Scalia.

Obviously Rod Dreher is none of these things, although an argument could be made that he is a conservative since many people think he is, including himself. But he is not any type of functional conservative, not any more than he is a functional ice cube. (Oh brother, Pauli, do you really want to bring up your support for that loser Romney who very losingly lost the 2016 Presidential election? Sure; if Donald Trump gets the GOP nod, I'll vote for his sinking ship over HRC.) So if this is Dreher's sock-puppet site, he is being extremely deceptive in claiming to be a Catholic lawyer with a Jesuit education. Of course, he has a history of doing this as we know.

This post goes on seemingly forever, quoting and commentating upon practically everybody's farewell tribute to Scalia. I don't know if anyone who reads here is bored enough to compare the quotes with Dreher's TAC tribute — I assume he wrote one — to check for matches, similar patterns, etc. The other angle might be to skim through the writings of His Crunchiness to identify traditionalist-minded, Jesuit produced, former debater, "conservative" friends for whom Dreher provides a name. I'm thinking of people like the rich guy who he drank beers with in Europe who is tired of fast-food joints and dumb-ass Republicans. He might be a lawyer who doesn't want to lose clients by admitting he actually buys into this Benedict Option balderdash.

The possibility exists that Dreher is the author and is simply lying about law degrees and Catholic cred to throw people off the trail. I wouldn't be naïve enough to rule that out. But there are so many nuts out there, like my font abuse friend whom I've written about (and more recent news about him later), that I don't doubt this person could be a separate individual from Rod Dreher. He could be just another self-righteous, politically-homeless dude with a blog, a permanent scowl and a desire for a Christian ghetto apart from all those pesky Christians.

The Benedict Option: update on Benny

The Benedict Post: still dead as a doornail, two full months now to the day.

Like General Francisco Franco, Benny is still dead (mostly)

Let's review.

At the peak of Rod Dreher's initial Benedict Option mania this past summer, Benny (a Lenny for Benedict Option-susceptible Catholics) launched as a fully-fledged anonymously published newsletter, supposedly to serve the Catholic community online, but curiously containing within each weekly edition a promotion for Dreher's Benedict Option as a solution for dissatisfied traditional Catholics, written in Dreher's same chatty New York Post-imprinted style in his signature real-payload-within-a-deceptively palatable-outer-wrapper technique of presentation.

Despite its anonymity - abnormally odd, to me at least, for an ostensibly devoutly believing Catholic promoting his singularly beloved religion - and creation out of nowhere and nothing, Benny was immediately picked up and celebrated by Rod Dreher's friends at The Federalist including Ben Domenech among others.

But maybe Ben just normally features whatever anonymously published newsletters happen to splash into the Web and Twittersphere on any given day.

After only a few issues, Benny decided he was working too hard and took a full week's "vacation", just after Rod himself went on vacation. When Rod Dreher's father went into terminal decline and died, requiring his undivided attention, Benny immediately ceased publication and died as well (so far).

I am of the opinion that my calling The Benedict Post out as a sock puppet effort designed and written by Rod Dreher himself to push his Benedict Option among dissatisfied traditional Catholics looking for an escape also contributed to Benny's sudden silence. Readers familiar with the short life of Dreher's Bonnie Blue Review blog launched when he first moved back to St. Francisville will recall a similarly ambitious, similarly styled attempt which Dreher was also quick to pull the plug on when criticized about it.

I will be more than happy to update this reporting as soon as the still anonymous celebrator of his Catholicism decides to breach his shame at being known for this work and attach his name to his efforts.

Meanwhile, on a far, far easier row to hoe with a hectic Benedict Option tour still ongoing, Benny's Twitter feed is active once again - if Tweeting can even be counted as activity - eerily paralleling Dreher's current posting on the Synod and echoing his same sentiments from his TAC blog, while throwing a dependable big wet kiss to frequently-Dreher-quoted Ross Douthat of the New York Times, who surely, someday, will return the favor by recommending Dreher for a column there.

While viewing this feed, Twitter recommends I might also like some related feeds from - who would have guessed? - @BenedictOption, @PatrickDeneen, and other @s orbiting tightly within Dreher's regular commentary.

What a remarkable coincidence.

Again, as I mentioned above, in the same manner established as fully legitimate by Rod Dreher himself, I will be more than happy to update my reporting on the anonymous manipulator of the Catholic blogosphere, Benny, the moment they decide to attach their name to their peculiar efforts.

I'm not holding my breath.

Benny Watch

Rest in peace, Rod Benny. We hardly knew ye.

Still dead.

"Why so many Catholic laypeople are thinking about some form of the Benedict Option"

Really? How many? Rod Dreher doesn't say, nor does he need to, because "so many" means exactly the same thing as "Benedict Option" - anything and nothing. However many "so many" may be, Rod desperately needs every last one of them he can make you believe exists if he is to give his Benedict Option book proposal marketing angle any sort of meaningful religious grounding.

What may help that "so many" become a few more, though, is Rod Dreher's sock puppet blog The Benedict Post, designed to woo Catholics to his Benedict Option by posing it as a weekly staple of Catholic thinking. Benny, as I like to call Rod's Catholic-fishing alter-ego, has had some publishing gaps over the last several weeks because Rod has been preoccupied with the death of his father. Our condolences on their loss. I'm confident Benny will be back up and chirping out Dreher-pitch-perfect Benedict Option Catholicisms any day now.

Benny

With Jake Meador on his team, dutifully referring to Rod's Benedict Option by its inventor's preferred trade mark, the shibboleth "BenOp" (because, for a Christian concerned with thickening his religious faith, those full five syllables can be a burden far too heavy and distracting; and, of course, because Twitter) and with Rod invited to retreat with Evangelicals to make his pitch directly, so far Benny doesn't have a little Protestant sock puppet blogging brother.

The rebrand that "everybody" is talking about.

But stay tuned. It's still early in the campaign season, and a Protestant Benny may still pop up. Or, less likely, I may be proved wrong about Benny, an option statistically as likely as Rod posting a picture of Francis that just once invokes the Vicar of Christ instead of a sixth Marx brother.

If Rod Dreher doesn't write The Benedict Post, who does?

Another Monday, another anonymously written The Benedict Post pushing a raft of Web-scrounged Catholicism upon which sits, as it does every Monday, another recommendation for Rod Dreher's pet book project, his so-called Benedict Option. Rod Dreher's Benedict Option even holds that place of prominence in the blog's About page that would normally be filled by its author's name.

Like The Benedict Post and its anonymous author Muzhik, an animated anthropomorphic being, magically created entirely from inanimate matter

So these three questions naturally continue to intrigue me:

• Why would a Catholic newsletter - prominently touting Rod Dreher's Benedict Option on a regular basis - suddenly burst upon the scene - anonymously, out of nowhere - just as Dreher is working overtime everywhere else to promote interest in his landing a Benedict Option book deal?

• If ex-Catholic Rod Dreher himself isn't writing it, who is, and why are they ashamed to reveal who they are? Why is The Benedict Post - supposedly to serve fellow Catholics, not Rod Dreher - secretly authored?

• Why would you, as a Catholic, want to subscribe to a carefully orchestrated newsletter you don't even know is written by a Catholic?

For the sake of understanding what may very well be going on here in more detail, let's just step our way through this whole phenomenon.

Let's say that I, Keith, want to corral a large, fairly cohesive audience world wide for my Keith Project, installing big screen TVs in garage man caves.

Let's also say that I was a Catholic myself for a dozen years or so after which, for some reason - restrictive birth control policies, what I regarded as "ugly" churches, a complete faith meltdown - I repudiated my Catholic faith and took up another more amenable to my lifestyle.

Even having walked away from Catholicism, however, what have I been able to take with me? That's right:

• a fairly deep working knowledge of the innards of Catholicism

• my skills as a professional writer to shape that resource to whatever ends I choose

Okey doke, first order of business, set up a platform theme that resonates with the billion-plus population of Catholics I want to market to. At this point I have to admit, playing off the very attractive term "Benedict" - Catholic saint, confirmation name of millions, even the Latin for "good" prominently up front - beats pushing big screen TVs in garages hands down.

So, for the sake of argument, let's just imagine at this juncture that I'm secretly pushing Rod Dreher's Benedict Option instead of big screen TVs.

In addition to the infinitely resonant common term Benedict as a feel-good brand, what else do I need?

Something that won't crimp my schedule; it's hard enough trying to get by as a writer. Got it:

• an only once-a-week newsletter

• that doesn't accept comments I'd have to spend time policing

• that my audience can also pull themselves by subscribing to

• that I can cross-promote on word-minimal Twitter

Call it an hour's worth of work a week to help promote my project; an extremely cost-effective trade-off.

Okay, that's the vehicle. What about the content?

Let's remember that, as the style of TBP clearly shows us, the blog author is a professional writer. Thus, if I'm them, I can take just about any subject you assign me and spin out something credible sounding about it. But if I'm Rod Dreher, I've also got twelve-plus years as a Catholic under my belt.

The time it would take me each week to knock out one or two longer length Catholic articles? Maybe 15 - 20 minutes.

The rest? My obligatory weekly Benedict Option self-promotion, of course.

And then a massive, around-the-Web farm of short Catholic links I can quickly and easily paste under my lead articles. That leaves me at least a good 20 minutes over the next week to tweet-promote my blog including effortless retweet filler.

That's it. On the surface, it may look like that one-stop-shopping Catholic newsletter the billion-plus Catholics world wide have been deprived of for too long, but a child's model airplane kit is complex and time-consuming by comparison.

So. For my hour-per-week self-Benedict Option-promotional investment, what have I got now?

The perfect Pavlovian vehicle to condition potentially a billion-plus Catholics to favorably consider my Benedict Option and, ideally, also buy the book I want to write about it: if they read The Benedict Post long enough, what will Catholics who love Catholicism come to subliminally associate Rod Dreher's Benedict Option with?

Right: the Catholicism they already love. The Benedict Post/Rod Dreher's Benedict Option = bell; Catholicism = food reward for favorably heeding bell.

Hey, I've already been called a crazy conspiracy theorist by Muzhik, the anonymous author of The Benedict Post.

Fine by me: prove me wrong. Prove that this slick but effortless new blog-cum-Twitter account is anything more than an attractive vehicle with Rod Dreher's Benedict Option as it's sole recurring passenger.

Prove me wrong, Muzhik. The only reason to keep being anonymous as the author of TBP is because you're ashamed that you're either Rod Dreher or a close enough crony indistinguishable from him using trusting Catholics as rubes to sell Rod Dreher's Benedict Option as fundamental to Catholicism.

Put up, Muzhik - tell us who you really are - or STFU when reasonable people conclude that only Rod Dreher could produce such an obviously artificial Golem as The Benedict Post.

Keith to launch Catholic newsletter to sell The Keith Project™

Readers of this blog have known from the beginning, possibly to the secret dismay of my co-bloggers, that I'm not Catholic, only a bad, frequently lapsed cradle Methodist. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of that fact, it just is what it is.

But I'm understandably excited to discover that, in this Internet age of quick cyber-linking, there's no reason at all I can't use a Catholic newsletter as a vehicle wrapper to sell my beloved Keith Project.

The model for my inspiration is the new The Benedict Post launched just this month by a secret blogger I'll call Muzhik from now on for want of a better name. Most of the time I'll also refer to that blog as Benny instead, for two reasons.

The main reason is obvious: when I or any of my co-bloggers or anyone else for that matter refers to a post by St. Benedict, none of us wants to be cannily roped into the trap of inadvertently shilling for Muzhik's blog (this is the same reason the people at Roget's Thesaurus gave me when I suggested the growing popularity of "keith" as a synonym for "good").

The other reason is that the effusive, profane peppy tone of Benny reminds me of nothing so much as Lena Dunham's very similar new newsletter, Lenny.

Our latest edition includes a fantastic @CrisisMag piece by Anthony Esolen on living the #BenedictOption http://t.co/w3uOTpECYZ @roddreher

— The Benedict Post (@thebenedictpost) July 28, 2015

But Keith, you ask, how can you, a non-Catholic, possibly launch a Catholic newsletter? And what is The Keith Project?

First things first: nothing to it.

Like, well, sort of like a cowbird laying its eggs in another bird's nest to be raised as its own, in the age of the Internet it will be nothing for me to scrounge together enough Catholic-related links to create the sort of Big Lots of Catholicism Muzhik has just launched.

And even better, as the one controlling that artificial compendium, I get to choose what gets emphatically placed as some kind of regular feature, in this case my beloved Keith Project which everyone is talking about, in a way that it draws prestige and gravitas from the Catholicism surrounding it.

But, Keith, you persist, what about those who would accuse you of not being Catholic?

Who says I'm not Catholic? Oh, right; I did. Okay, then, maybe I'll need to get a secret Muzhik of my own, Catholic, Jehovah's Witness, vegetarian, whatever. Wait a minute. No, I won't. I'll just do this and this instead:

The Benedict Post is only 2 weeks old and we've already got conspiracy theorists thinking we're not Catholic! http://t.co/VjvliLFTb6

— The Benedict Post (@thebenedictpost) July 22, 2015

"cursory reading by a non-Catholic like myself is enough to determine [it's] neither primarily about nor...primarily promote[s] Catholicism"

— The Benedict Post (@thebenedictpost) July 22, 2015

Just look at The Keith Post and what will you see? Wall to wall Catholicism, as far as the eye can see, and at deep, deep discounted prices! So much for "conspiracy theorists" saying "we", The Keith Post, isn't Catholic!

But I'm not there yet. I'm still going to have to master hurling breathless, exclamatory tweets like an M2 spitting rounds down range. Like these:

"The latest edition of The Benedict Post is out!"

"For the evening crowd, here's the new edition of The Benedict Post"

"If you missed this week's edition yesterday, here it is"

"If you enjoy our newsletter, you can subscribe via email"

Christ and the saints would be jazzed, don't you think? Especially because, unlike the money changers in the temple, it's free!

But once I master that ShamWow tweeting style, I can then seamlessly blend in my own promotions and explainers (see cowbird eggs, above) whenever I want. Here's how Muzhik does it:

People think #BenedictOption is about retreat, especially from political life. No. Ensuring orthodoxy in politics is part and parcel of it.

— The Benedict Post (@thebenedictpost) July 21, 2015

My version: sure, #KeithProject calls for talking your wife into letting you install a Sony XBR-85X950B 4K TV in your garage man cave. But a TV carries many channels. Think about it.

Okay, Keith, you continue to whine, irritatingly, but why a Catholic newsletter? Why not a Hollywood gossip newsletter or a model airplane newsletter?

What do you have against Catholics? Are you anti-Catholic? (Again, see cowbird, above.) How dare you question The Keith Post, effusively overflowing with Catholicism and only regular, periodic promotions and explainers about my beloved Keith Project! How dare you!

See how that works? Can't do that with a Hollywood gossip or a model airplane newsletter, nopers.Well, maybe a cowbird could.

But, finally, I'm going to have to line up some cronies to help me shill this thing

Thanks to @bdomenech & @TheTransom for featuring this week's edition! For more on @TheTransom, check it out here: http://t.co/Q2RuqCfE5F

— The Benedict Post (@thebenedictpost) July 22, 2015

Another edifying installment of The Benedict Post (@thebenedictpost): https://t.co/yyBZTPsBkX

— C. H. McCants (@Ponticianus) July 27, 2015

Anyone? Beuller?

Remember, in The Keith Project there are many channels.

And, you know, if you're moved to donate, too, I can set up a tax-deductible thingy like, snap!

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.

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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