Rod Dreher, Culture Warrior - against his family

As I mentioned in my Ace post, sometimes it behooves conservatives to look in the mirror and realize the phone call from the killer is actually coming from inside the house.

As Dreher blogs whatever alternative gets him the most culture war blog hits on any given day - Miraculé! In the wake of the pushback he's received from David French, Glenn Reynolds and others, today's entree du jour now offers fighting back - now "here’s what the Benedict Option is not":

1) a counsel to run for the hills and to build a fortress where the outside world cannot get in; or

2) advice to quit fighting entirely, and to abandon the battlefield

and

For all that, I do not blame ordinary people, people who are not as privileged as Robby George, Ryan Anderson, and I, for not wanting to rush out and volunteer to die on every hill,

let's review what our extra-ordinary, privileged warrior knight has used his place of privilege to attempt to publish for millions of ordinary culture warriors to read and take fighting heart from. Feel free to look up the links yourself; I'm not Dreher's publicist.

Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-Loving Organic Gardeners, Evangelical Free-Range Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-Wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (or At Least the Republican Party)

Okay, so maybe this whole culture war thing started some time after way back nine years ago in 2006 when granola-chomping Crunchy Cons was published. But as soon as it did, Rod strapped on culture war fighting sword and buckler and waded in full-tilt, right? With

The Little Way of Ruthie Leming

about his sister's death and how, returning to their home town, he was forced to confront their very different views of life and their very different ways of regarding each other. Our host Pauli reviewed the book here. His home town residents, those most familiar with him, continue to review Rod himself here.

Okay, so he took some up front R & R home before battle. But, then, immediately onward and into the fray, right? With

How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem

Oh, dear, maybe not yet.

It seems moving home and encountering how his family and friends really feel about him once again threw our culture warrior into a "dark wood" of depression, which in turn caused a debilitating flareup of what he claims to be a persistent mononucleosis infection.

Fortunately, his wife, completely exasperated at his interminable sleeping, finally forced him to seek a professional psychotherapist for his mental and subsequent physical problems. During that process he also discovered Dante.

From the post I quoted from at the outset, it seems he's on leave from the culture war once again today to promote that book and its issues as well as the general welfare of TAC, where he works.

But hope endures! Only yesterday our brave knight promised us

I am writing the book proposal this week. Things are moving very fast. People need to wake up. You can have St. Benedict, or you can have Dr. Berman. If you don’t choose, do not doubt for a second but that the choice will be made for you.

That was, of course, a full 24 hours ago, ages before today's call to arms quoted at the top of this post.Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe sprinkles!

The problem in producing the long talked about emperorographic next volume in question, of course, is that from the beginning his shapeshifting Benedict Option has depended entirely on what can only be described as "crowd-sourced principle": Rod can't finally decide what the Benedict Option principle actually is until he hears from what enough people who want to pay for him writing a book about something actually want it to be about.

Maybe, just maybe, although the next book will now inevitably reflect the eclectic composition of granola itself, it will actually have our knight waging culture war on our behalf on a battlefield larger than the urban chicken coop, his bed, or his therapist's couch and will engage foes more formidable than the family and neighbors who know him best.

Rod Dreher, Culture Warrior

In the meantime, dealing with the culture war on our own, without the helpful intelligence guidance of a Curveball, might actually be an asset, not a liability.

UPDATE (as they say): In contrast to Curveball and his "strategic withdrawal", above, here's what true culture warriors look like:

"We will not obey.".

Pat, I don't know what he's talking about.

Commenter Pat writes this on a St. Francisville Topix thread, referring to Rod Dreher's blog on "The" "American" "Conservative":

There's a lot of things still going on around Ruthie [Leming]. One recent post shows Rod [Dreher] picking up Hannah in NOLA as if he was the man of that family. Another, "The Little Way of LeBron James", has something to do with Rod's book about Ruthie having something to do with LeBron James returning to Cleveland. Pauli, I see you're from Cleveland. Is that so? Whatever, Rod seems to be all over the Leming family these days, but maybe only in the same way you'd want to shake your leg to get him off. How do the Lemings feel about all this? Normally I'd think this was a private matter, but Rod keeps making it so public it seems okay to ask about.

I've never fathomed the way the mind of Dreher works, nor really even been able to even follow his line of reasoning. I've admitted as much on several occasions, notably here and here. That applies doubly to the post to which Pat is referring.

Initially my reaction to Dreher's titling the book The Little Way of Ruthie Leming was confusion. Little Way is obviously a reference to St. Therese the Little Flower, a Saint and Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, the church which Dreher famously left. The only notable similarity between the two women seems to be that they both died young, Therese at 24 and Ruthie at 41 years of age. (I write more about the problematic "saint" moniker and comparison in my Amazon book review.)

Now he comes out with the post title The Little Way of LeBron James which fails further at coherence. After all, the way of Ruthie Leming was little precisely because she was the one who stayed in the hometown and didn't leave to seek her fortune elsewhere, let alone enshrine the choice in a television special with the grandiose title The Decision. Little Way? not so much.

I think what he really is attempting is a comparison between LeBron James and himself, even though he throws the name in for Ruthie's. He was the one who, like James, left and came back. But this seems to be projection and merely another failed metaphor. There are plenty of people who move back home after living somewhere else. My neighbors, for example, lived in Michigan (gasp!) for years before coming back to Cleveland and starting a business (husband) and getting elected to public office (wife). My parents moved back to the town we grew up in about 10 years ago. And I have friends whose kids moved away about 5 years ago but they're moving back now that John Kasich and Josh Mandel and have fixed the economy here in Ohio.

I mean really, the coming back home theme is so old and commonplace that the observation that James's reasons for coming home somewhat match his own at points seem to be the presentation of a truism as some type of cosmic revelation. Also, check this out: LeBron James was famous and a superstar before he left Cleveland and after he left, a number of people got irritated. Now he's come back even more famous and a bigger superstar and almost everybody is elated around here, even a nerd like me is experiencing second-hand joyfulness. Reading the Topix thread I referenced earlier will show you that this is not always to case when a famous person returns home.

"Give a nod to Rod"

Because "Better Call Saul" was already taken, that's my offering to help fill the aching void that drives Rod Dreher's one true Holy Grail in life, being known for coining a popular internet meme or other type of catchy slogan.

The latest corpse once again in the sweaty hands of Reanimator Rod is his "Benedict Option" which, as best I can tell from Dylan Pahman's thoughtful analysis here, and a commenter named WorldWideProfessor's remarks here and here, has the same claim to religious or cultural gravitas that the "Danish-sounding" "Häagen-Dazs" does: it's nothing more than a brand name invented to flog a product to naive rubes.

Except that with Häagen-Dazs, you actually get something for your effort, not a vague Mosquito Coast or Jonestown that ends badly, and shouldn't be pursued in the first place for the very good reasons Erika Rudzis has already explained here.

With the so-called "Benedict Option", Rod Dreher gets cash-yielding blog meme hits that allow him to live the good, Paris-vacationing, wine-sipping, newest Apple products, non-Benedict Option life - and you get left holding the bag like a chump.

Remember "Crunchy Cons"? Yeah, me, too - barely.

But whatever was valid (if it ever was) about "Crunchy Cons" when that was all the Rod Dreher rage is certainly no less valid today. So what, if anything, changed? Why isn't Dreher still blogging heavily about "Crunchy Conservatism"? It certainly isn't as if that wouldn't fit in the garage sale of post-graduate thinking that fills his current home, TAC, today.

What happened to "Crunchy Cons"? At the end of the day it simply turned out to be - and first and foremost for its creator himself - nothing more than that other made-up ice cream name, "Bloggin Snotz", the one that never caught on and so vanished into the dustbin of failed brand names like a red-headed stepchild.

Bye-bye, Crunchy Cons...(but, hey, whoa...has anyone tried "Dante Dads" yet?)

So "give a nod to Rod" and help him try to come up with something, anything in the way of a catchy internet slogan he can become famous for so that he can finally stop perverting the saints of the Church into his own instantly forgettable version of a brand name dessert.

Another Little Review of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming

An Amazon reviewer, M. Heiss, recently read and reviewed the Little Way of Ruthie Leming. I was alerted to her review (I know she is female from reading her other reviews) through her positive comment on my review of the book. She states "Thanks for your brilliant review. Wish mine were half so lucid. If I had read your review, I would not have bothered writing my own." I responded assuring her that her review is as good as mine. In fact I think it is much better, and I'm glad she didn't read my review if that really would have suppressed the expression of her opinion. Here it is in its entirety:

A book that doesn't know what it wants to be.
by M. Heiss

Since when are we classifying cathartic musings as biography? This book is not a biography -- slap a "Self-Help" label on this thing.

The book is a mess. I'm sure the author was a mess, given the circumstances. And writing about a messy situation when you're an emotional mess results in, well... a book like this.

Rod Dreher gives you the obligatory 3 parts:

1) Introductions — get to know the family's personalities, the conflicts, the author's response to 9-11 (wait, what?), and the community norms in small-town Louisiana.
2) The diagnosis as a rallying cry — Everybody's personality shines in this section. LOTS and LOTS of spiritual awakening. And LOTS more. And then some MORE.
3) Resolution — no surprises. More catharsis. More spiritualism.

From the title and word of mouth, I thought this would be a book about Ruthie Leming's fight with cancer. Instead, this book was about the author's fight with/against his family and himself. Who wins? Not the reader.

A few things are obvious to me after reading this, and the evidence presented is heartening. The first is that this person probably would have been a "Contra-Crunchy" had she known and cared about the conversation back in 2006. It seems like she had been unfamiliar with Rod Dreher's other writings and his, um, unique stylistic idiosyncrasies before reading The Little Way of Ruthie Leming. She has a normal reaction to seeing bull crap proffered as filet mignon. Her remark "the author's response to 9-11 (wait, what?)" succinctly sums up Kathleen's and our own reactions to his ever-evolving 9/11 narratives.

The other encouraging aspect comes from her beginning sentence — "Since when are we classifying cathartic musings as biography?" This insight demonstrates that there is critical thinking going on in the world, and that at least some of those critical thinkers can and do express their thoughts with great precision. Another thing she pegs is the spiritualism present in the book. Dreher fans might object to this word since most traditional Christians shun attempts to contact the spirit world, and Rod Dreher has always touted his traditional Christian belief and practice in each new church he bounces into every few years. His apologists need to read Dreher's short story A Ghost in the Family if they don't have the time or desire to read The Little Way of Ruthie Leming. That should shut them up if they still don't want to admit that he's into spiritualism.

Speaking of A Ghost in the Family, I was thinking of doing a long form review of this gem of inadvertent comedy here on the blog back in June. But I was too busy at the time. I was planning to also include the background information of how Rod knew Father Termini and his Ghostbuster friends. Maybe another time.

If you think Ms. Heiss's review is helpful in any way, please go over and give it a YES vote. It's already got a down vote; I don't know who possibly could have down-dinged it within minutes of it being posted. But so far it's batting .500.

Defamation or Free Speech?

Here's the story so far. Rod Dreher started westfeliciana.blogspot.com, another blog, back in May to discuss local politics in West Feliciana, LA. There was a big controversy about something called the Home Rule Charter (HRC). Some people started discussing aspects of it on a Topix forum post. Topix is a very successful and popular forum for discussing local current news events, debating politics, making announcements, etc.

Rod became upset regarding reports of alleged bullying and he posted his reaction here. In this post he presents two conflicting opinions about the Topix forum post.

There's been some talk, in public meetings and on Facebook, that some people are afraid to speak out about the Home Rule Charter issue because they feel intimidated, and have been "bullied."

I don't want to say that it's never happened, only that it hasn't happened to me. If "bullying" means some anonymous jackass said slanderous things on Topix, then sorry, I don't count that. Those people are cowards, and should be completely discounted.

This is the first opinion, that anonymous Topix forum cowardly jackasses don't count. He doubles down on this opinion later:

But if people are only worried that some idiot on Topix is going to say mean things about them, sorry, but I can't take that seriously. I'm told they trash me all the time on that site. Big deal.

Then he makes this pronouncement:

By the way, you may not know this, but a Texas couple won $14 million last year in a defamation lawsuit against anonymous posters on Topix who libeled them. A Texas judge compelled Topix to release their IPs, which led the plaintiffs directly to those who had libeled them.

I am eager to talk to a lawyer who would be willing to file a libel suit on contingency against these anonymous Topix commentators, the identities of which Topix can be compelled to reveal (or at least their IPs). Sooner or later, the West Feliciana people who have been libeled anonymously on Topix are going to be able to find out the identities of those who have defamed them. And when they do, they are going to own those people, and their nice houses. If you know what I mean.

Do we have a lawyer in town who would be willing to sue Topix to compel them to release the IPs of our local slander trolls? Get in touch with me -- I'd love to be party to that lawsuit. I bet some others would too.

Now we originally laughed at this post, and it's still pretty funny on its own. It seemed like a serious overreaction, probably a Rod-got-up-on-wrong-side-of-bed kind of thing or Rod-ate-too-much-and-drank-to-much-last-night kind of thing. Here's why. The link about the Texas couple explains the nature of the actions of the defendants in the defamation suit.

Mark and Rhonda Lesher of Clarksville, Texas, filed a suit against anonymous commenters who accused them of being sexual deviants, molesters, and drug dealers on Topix, once self-described as "the country's largest local forum site."

"This vindicates us. This is vindication for all the scurrilous, vile, defamatory statements that caused us to be indicted, to be tried, that caused us to move out of town and my wife to lose her business," Mark Lesher said, the Texarkana Gazette reported. "You can't post anonymous lies on the Internet without suffering the consequences."

Furthermore, and this is what really blew me away:

Since reports of the rape allegations began to surface in 2008, more than 25,000 comments, on about 70 threads related to the trial, were posted on Topix message boards for anyone with a search engine to see.

I started this in 2007 and have posted — along with Pikkumatti and Kathleen — a total of 2,180 posts on this blog. Twenty-five thousand is a big number. I can't imagine going into the confessional and saying "Father, I bore false witness against my neighbor 25 thousand times since my last confession." There's no way the derogatory comments about Dreher amounted to anything close to this. There's no big payout here, chumps; keep playing the Louisiana Lottery.

As far as I could see after reading all the comments on the aforementioned Topix site, there is nothing accusing Rod Dreher or Ellen Kennon or Becky Hilliard or any of their friends in this whole political argument of felonious behavior, of raping and molesting people, of dealing drugs, grand theft, racketeering, eating at chain restaurants, shopping at Wal-mart — nothing like that. The strongest accusations I saw pretty much stated that Dreher didn't know what he was talking about and that he was stirring up racial tensions. That's just criticism, not libel or defamation. I seriously couldn't believe that he made the comparison of criticisms against him to people who had lost their business over false accusations of serious criminality. What makes it even harder to buy is that Dreher doesn't disclose the details of the supposed defamation; he doesn't even provide a hint. Was it a comment — possibly deleted — about dealing drugs or child molestation? Or was it something of the Justin Bieber eats poop variety? We don't know; he doesn't say.

"I'm told they trash me all the time on that site. Big deal." That attitude seems to change by the end of the post, and it most certainly changed a week later on July 16 when he put up a post about defamation charges filed by himself and Ellen Kennon titled Defamation.

Ellen Kennon and I met with detectives from the Sheriff's office this afternoon to discuss the possibility of pressing criminal defamation charges against anonymous Topix commenters. Filing charges would be the first step in unmasking them and holding them accountable for the defamatory things they've said in public under the cloak of anonymity.

In my case, there are lots of items trashing me, but given my job, I have the status of a "public person" in terms of libel law. People can say things about me that they couldn't get away saying about someone who was a "private person" in the eyes of the law. Still, I identified two or three specific posts involving me that, in my view, constitute criminal defamation, especially insofar as they make reputation-damaging assertions that are provably false, as well as malicious, and that hurt my professional and personal reputation. See the Louisiana statute below.

It is possible that the investigation will not find that there are sufficient grounds to determining criminal defamation (which is a misdemeanor), and either the DA will choose not to press charges, or the judge will not find sufficient grounds to subpoena Topix's records -- in which case our only recourse will be in civil court. We'll see where this goes. I can report, though, that there is a criminal investigation underway. I know there are lots of people in this parish who have been slandered on Topix, but who felt that they couldn't do anything about it. Well, maybe you can, if the anonymous trolls cross certain legal lines. Like I said, we'll see.

Rod Dreher has lamented his status as a "public person" before. But he has benefited from being a public person, so I don't see why he shouldn't suffer the slings and arrows of his outrageous fortune. My aunt died really young and my dad didn't even get a lousy t-shirt out of the tragedy, let alone a $1 million book advance. I'm not entirely sure his statement "People can say things about me that they couldn't get away saying about someone who was a 'private person'" is true. Over the years I've pointed out what I believe are inaccuracies, inconsistencies and absurdities in Dreher's viewpoints, especially in his anti-Catholic knee-jerks. None of this amounts to libel or any kind of defamation, and I don't see why it would if I accused my next door neighbor of the same thing. My neighbor does not publish a blog or do any writing so it would probably be considered bad form to criticize opinions he expressed to me in private ("I can't believe my neighbor, Jim ______, thinks Chevys are better than Fords; what planet is he from?"), but the idea that I couldn't get away with saying it because he is a "private person" is simply not true.

So when he speaks of the "lots of items trashing me", do any of these rise to the level of libelous or defamatory? I didn't see any on that post. And he admits that it's likely that there will not be "sufficient grounds to determining criminal defamation". So the announcement that there's a criminal investigation underway has one primary purpose as I see it: to put a chilling effect on free speech. Does this work? I think it might in some cases. People start to worry, thinking "Uh-oh, did I tick him off with my remarks? Will he make trouble for me? Will they release my IP address in the court case?" This is probably because they don't know what constitutes libel nor how difficult it is to prove.

But there is an off chance that people might be dragged into court over this matter. Maybe Angela Corey will be disbarred in Florida and become the DA of Baton Rouge, I don't know. That is why I have started the First Amendment Defense Fund (FADF). It's basically a PayPal account. This fund has the specific purpose of defending people who comment on Topix and are named in this frivolous lawsuit filed by Rod Dreher and Ellen Kennon. Hopefully we won't need to pay anything out, so if that's the case after 6 months or so I'll return all the contributions. I started out by contributing $25 to the fund.

I don't think I have anything more to say about this right now, except that I think Rod's anger mainly stems from the fact that he cannot delete comments on Topix like he can on his own blog. Here's one last comment on the HRC thread from commenter Billfr:

The biggest winners, though, will be all those other local SF-WFP residents who will be filing criminal complaints with the sheriff against the people they think wronged them here on Topix and launching criminal investigations through the sheriff's office too. Not only will they be able to smack around people they might have disliked for some time and even sue them for some money, with all the national stories being spun out of this, I wouldn't be surprised if a few other locals also got their 15 minutes of media fame, just like that Zimmerman witness Rachel Jeantel. I think that guy Pauli in Cleveland is already blogging about this, I don't doubt others have already picked it up too at least in BR [Baton Rouge], and Rod himself would be foolish not to tip off his colleagues everywhere he has them. There's no such thing as bad publicity, at least not for Rod.

Lol. Well, again, criticism does not equal defamation, and any smart person knows this.

Drag (inter) net

Quick Refresher Course on Crunchy Conservatism

I'm planning to post something soon about the libel flair-up which we've been discussing over here, but I've been too busy to do so, so I'm throwing this out there for now. Not apologizing—see number three here.

I came across this review in New Criterion while googling the phrase "platonic ideal of chickenness". It's seven years old, but I don't remember reading this review when the book Crunchy Conservatives first came out. I might have read it, but either way, I think it's good to read it again and note that Dreher's ideas, his tone and his manner haven't changed very much even though, from what I know, he doesn't use the adjective crunchy that much anymore unless he is referring to his earlier book. WSJ's Joseph Rago, the author, read the book and came to the same conclusions that we did. Here are some excerpts, but the entire thing doesn't take long to read.

The major thinkers, to be sure, may be reinterpreted to meet the conditions of contemporary life. New discoveries must be made. But Dreher’s findings are slight. The novel thing about a “Birkenstocked Burkean,” it seems to me, is not the Burke but the Birkenstocks. Dreher is preoccupied by lifestyle signifiers—the way people dress, the homes they live in, and, particularly, the food they eat. For reasons I can’t comprehend, he has a voracious obsession with the “right” kind of organic food. At one point, he tells a story about a really delicious free-range chicken he ate with his family: “It was … almost the Platonic ideal of chickenness.” Eating is for Dreher a fundamentally political act. “There are many mansions in the American conservative house,” he writes, “and some of them are old and funky and smell like a pot of organic mustard greens cooking down on the stove.” This gives you a taste of his ersatz cracker-barrel folksiness.

Style over substance—check. The phrase which jumped out at me was "Dreher’s findings are slight." This was something we were always noting back in the Contra-Crunchy days. Whenever Dreher said something we agreed with it seemed like others had said it already and usually better and less obnoxiously.

One thing he marginally adds in this is the notion that under our current political alignment, not all conservative ideas belong usufruct to the Republican Party, and indeed the GOP often does things that are not conservative. He further reminds us that not all ideas emanating from the left are bad ones, particularly in regards to the stewardship of the environment. True enough. The traits crunchy cons mainly borrow from the left, however, are sanctimony, condescension, and impermeable self-regard.

Sanctimony, condescension, and impermeable self-regard—check, check, check. Nothing to add to this observation. Crunchy snobbery deserves no more than this bulls-eye waiting room diagnosis.

This is most evident, and most insulting, when Dreher draws distinctions between crunchy cons and regular cons. If you’re not wearing the Birkenstocks, so to speak, you’re not getting Burke. Only those who have been inducted into the mystery cult of crunchy conservatism are leading rich, fulfilling lives. Dreher’s mainstream conservatives are “really” spiritually arid and “really” desire only filthy lucre. “[M]ost people who call themselves conservative today,” he summarizes with by-God certainty, “aren’t really conservative in a deep sense.”

These are severe charges. Regrettably, Dreher is not analytic but impressionistic in his writing. He relies heavily on interviews, which lend to his arraignment an air of sociology, but little evidence or argument. You could say that the crunchy cons believe they’ve cornered the market on virtue—but then, they don’t believe in markets.

Here the money clause is "little evidence or argument". Dreher was incensed at the time because Jonah Goldberg basically denied the existence of crunchy conservatism as a political reality, and challenged him to give evidence of its existence. But proving a theory is beneath the Believer who has unshakeable faith in the object of his Belief. Or maybe what seems like faith is merely disguised delusion based on "impermeable self-regard".

Now I'm a Bully

The Baton Rouge Business Report Topix forum post has heated up again and I have been dubbed "an out and out bully [who] is obviously eaten up with hatred and jealousy." Someone named Ellen Kennon weighs in with the following:

These posts are beyond rude! Why do you folks posting such hatred insist he wrote this book to make fun of you and the people in this town? I would imagine telling such an honest, raw story would have been very difficult for him. The book is getting rave reviews and help put this town in a good light with a true spirit of community. The person who writes that horrible blog about Rod is an out and out bully and is obviously eaten up with hatred and jealousy. What in the world ever happened to compassion? Surely, we can all agree to live by the golden rule? Good grief.

Then later...

I write with a sense of the friendship I have to date with Rod and feel I am a very good judge of character. I am not interested in predictions of Rod's downfall, but as a resident of SF for 23 years, it's fair to say I claim a certain level of observation. Putting these posts on the Internet for the world to see only makes us look like the "little people" you claim he makes us out to be.

For the record, I have never predicted "Rod's downfall", only that he would move his family again away from St. Francisville. Many others on that post have done the same. If we are proven wrong about this, I'll just shrug and say "I was wrong, we were wrong". I think the man is restless and craves the stimulation of the new and novel.

UPDATE: If you just showed up here, you've got to check out the Bonnie Blue Bullying post. It's an instant Rod Dreher classic.

A Litany for the Little Way of Ruthie Leming

Whatever you do, just read this review.

If you left home for somewhere far away, read this book.

If you left home to "make it" in the world, read this book.

If you left home because you hated it there, read this book.

If you suffer, or ever have suffered, read this book.

If you've ever wondered whether there is any cosmic meaning in suffering, read this book.

If you need to forgive someone, or if you need forgiveness, read this book.

If you love a person or a place but struggle mightily with *liking* him, her or it . . . read this book.

If you wonder whether, indeed, you can go home again, read this book.

If you wonder how you can make where you are now "home," read this book.

Just read this book.

It's not a review really, but I love it. It's great for what it is. I can't help it; I have a soft spot in my heart for buck naked propaganda.

The reviewer, James Freeman, obviously sees the book as a literary Swiss Army Knife. I like how he imperiously adds, "Just read this book" at the end. For all the dummies reading it who haven't gotten the message yet. I thought the last line was sort or unnecessary since "If you suffer, or ever have suffered" is sort of a catch all for, you know, humanity.

My Little Review of the Little Way of Ruthie Leming is up at the Little Amazon.com website

Here it is. I just know that after reading this wonderful little three-star ("It's OK") review of tLWoRL many people will be led like little lemmings to fall over each other to get their little hands on this little book. Luckily big, mean, old Walmart isn't stocking it, so stampedes–big or little–probably won't happen.

Here are the first two paragraphs.

This is a complicated book, and not so much about death and bereavement as one would expect. There's a reason that William Young blurbed this book as a memoir. A memoir is understood to be autobiographical, and this book is mostly so. However there are several interesting passages, and even some laugh-out-loud funny parts made at the author's expense. If someone wishes to understand the continuing development of the author's patchwork political ideology this is a great book. Otherwise time is better spent elsewhere. Also there is a lot of religious discussion in the book which is only obliquely related to the death of the author's sister.

The first part of the book introduces Ruthie as the wildly popular, outgoing, tomboy sister of the author who, being the opposite was withdrawn, bookish and hung out with his spinster aunts and their cats. He was unpopular in school, and kids were mean to him. Reading between the lines, one can discern that he earned at least some of this mistreatment in the vein of "Harriet the Spy". Ruthie eventually became the homecoming queen and had a steady boyfriend pretty early on, getting married soon after school. The author couldn't wait to shake the dust of the town off his heels and move somewhere where people appreciated him more than his family and the benighted townsfolk.

I hope to write a more extended review on the blog here within the next few weeks. It will be longer, of course. But it will still be little, because littleness is my whole thing right now, and because it will be little compared to the big sigh of relief when I finally finished reading the book. I'm reading Sloth right now, which has me cracking up on every page, and not just a little.

Thanks for reading my blog. For current commentary and what-not, visit the Est Quod Est homepage

"Unpleasant and Boring"

Hey, we have two new reviews of The Little Way of Rod Dreher's Deceased Sister on Amazon. Make sure you go over there and throw them an up-vote.

M. Owens writes:

The voice of the narrator is pompous, condescending and pretentious. He uses his sister ...her life, her death, her family and friends, to show you what a good guy he is. I don't like him. I didn't like the book. It is reasonably well written and organized... It supposedly makes a case for community and hometown living which the author left in his teenage years and returns to as a family man with young children...but I doubt he'll last in Louisiana and I'm afraid I pity his neighbors.

M. Owens titles this review "unpleasant". Then Nature Lover has this to say:

This book shares the details, denial, desperation and death of a young mother. Her author brother uses it to justify why he left (bored, didn't fit in) a small town and why, curiosity satisfied and career secure, he returned. It is the story of many families, the details interesting only to those who are close. Fortunately, most families do not have an author with such a need to explain himself.

The title of Nature Lover's review is "Boring". I'm guessing that Nature Lover is female from other reviews of cook books and cutting boards. So these sentiments match those in the last review we posted by Audrey.

I hope to finish my Amazon review today. I have to do it while it's still fresh in my mind.

Some observations about blogs

I was reading through the old Contra Crunchy blog last night, especially focusing on the light bulb post, and I was struck by a whole bunch of thoughts at once. Firstly, just the spontaneous awesomeness of the whole venture, secondly the pure irritation of the crunchies who, lacking arguments, hurled invectives, calling us rodents and nematodes, and lastly but not leastly, all the great friends I made over there many of whom comment on my own blog to this day.

I always seem to see something new over there whenever I check it out from time to time. I found a link to this blog entry which I don't think I'd read back in '06. Basically Daily Duck came to the same conclusions as we did. He included a damning passage from Caleb Stegall:

It was not until later, when I moved into the wider world of business, high-stakes law, and Evangelicalism, that I discovered that all conservatives were not like this. That instead, there existed a kind of upwardly mobile coldblooded rationalizing self-serving conservative mind that struck me, still strikes me, as sterile and not quite human.

In response, Duck concludes:

I find it hard to admire the moral compass of a man who can let his aesthetic values lead him to question the humanity of his fellows. This is what I meant by the dangers of moralizing aesthetics. Can he point to anything immoral that these one-time business acquaintances have engaged in, other than career ambitions? It is an extreme judgment of personal qualities that society as a whole finds admirable. If this is the face of crunchy conservatism, then it will be seen as no more than a scolding kind of snobbery and holier-than-thou elitism. . . .

Again, our thoughts exactly. I bring this all up because another observation I had was that all these links to small, local, particular blogs like ours are still good, whereas most of the links to big, global, abstract blogs like NRO Crunchy Con blog and the Beliefnet Crunchy Blog are pretty much dead. So we actually value The Permanent Things more, if by that term you mean "things that stay in one place", which is the obvious meaning.

I sort of wonder if this is not to some degree by design on the part of the big, global, abstract bloggers. Yes, Rod Dreher's famous Orthodoxy and Me post is still available via the Wayback Machine and Fisheaters post, but the original document which was widely read and reacted to has been crumpled up and tossed into the garbage, in a virtual sense. So when you read old posts commenting on it, the link to it doesn't point to the original Roman Catholic to Eastern Orthodox conversion story as penned by Rod Dreher. But like I say, this is a desirable feature if the piece as originally written has points that the the writer would rather bury than have people reading and continuing to comment on in the present. Another good example would be the aforementioned Caleb Stegall, who I think is on Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's legal staff currently. He also might not want his comments questioning the humanity of rich, successful Republicans to be brought up again, even if he didn't mention the nose size of those whose humanity was in question. So it's good news to him that NRO deep-sixed the Crunchy Con Blog.

The excuse of the publishers for ditching links is probably that the format needs to be updated from time to time. Remember the old Haloscan commenting host which so many bloggers were in love with? I wished I'd have archived more of those threads, both from the Beliefnet Crunchy Conservative blog and from Mark Shea's old blogspot blog; they were some of the most amazing examples of silliness I'd ever read. But the publishers' main concern is always hits and page-views—i.e., ratings for advertisers—and once the initial burst of popularity wears off, they care less about residual pennies. Hence the scrapping of Haloscan by Beliefnet, bringing all the copy into one page and providing many more page updates which keeps content "fresh". In fact, my hypothesis is that the big, gobal, abstract publishers like Patheos and Beliefnet would much rather have these old posts "disappear", especially from writers who generate popularity from controversy rather than insight or writing skill. Even those friendly with Rod used to wonder aloud why Rod would post on things like "Hanna Montana's slutty new pictures" or items of a gross or scatological nature. The answer is obviously hits and ratings. Things advertisers care about.

Of course if this were true, it is about as ironic as it could possibly get. The hue and cry of Crunchy Conservatism and all the other boutique ideologies labeled "conservative" by the amconmaggers and their ilk has been "Don't trade your birthright for porridge! Don't compromise important social principles for filthy lucre promised by the so-called free market! Don't sacrifice culture and the Permanent Things for material wealth!" And on and on, usually concluding that the damage is already done, the mainstream has caved, Rush Limbaugh is on commercial radio stations therefore we've all sold out and become libertarians posing as conservatives. The fact that Amconmag regularly advertises for Purina and Kitchenaid isn't seen as noteworthy, I'm sure ("We've all got to eat, you know!!"), but because Rush moves more product and is more successful, he is seen as the epitome of commercial crassness. If you doubt me on this, please link to a positive remark about Limbaugh or Hannity or Fred Barnes any successful "mainstream conservative" person over there. Then I'll partially apologize, even as I regale you with 5 or 10 negative comments from their site about the same persons.

A smaller irony is that people doing this for free are more respectful of the free-market economy, big internet advertising models included. And our words stay around until the apocalypse or until Google goes under, which feels sort of like an approximation of the apocalypse at this point. True, we are hobbyists and not wordsmith intellectual careerists, but that seems to be the healthier choice both culturally and for the interests of economic stability.

As usually, the operative principle for the content provision of the know-it-all class isn't any eternal principle at all, but merely a content provision industry with an advertising model. And the operative principle for their attitude toward those with a more successful venture is the ol' green-eyed monster.

News from St. Francisville, Louisiana

Thanks to all them tubes and wires they gone an' hooked up to the internets, we can bring you some good ol' fashioned arguin' from St. Francisville, Louisiana.

First we here from Crazy:

Everyone in this hick town is a laughing joke! Please people find other things to do than sit and talk SH*T about everyone and everything.. It's a crying Shame how you people act! Get some lives and quit with the drama!

Shame with a capital "S"! Dang ol' Crazy! Later on, Coon Poon pipes up:

Nobody told you to get on this website and read everything...except for you guilty conscience that someone may be plastering your name like wet dog shit on here.

Wet dog shit is the best kind, least of all fer plasterin', I always said. But Crazy fires back:

"Coon poon" hahaha nice name.. HICK! Anyways, yes your right nobody told me to come on this website. I choose to bc I like to read about what's going on in the community, not drama, and people just going on and on about who does what. It's not only childish but it's just DUMB! Hate to break it to you boo but I have honestly never seen my name on here getting blasted! I simpily keep to myself and stay out if drama unless its something like this that is just outrageous!!! I'm done commenting to any of you people. I owe NOBODY in this town an explanation on my actions and I'm sure in the hell not giving the satisfaction to you hillbillys by fighting back... I've said my peace and that's it! Have a nice life you "da ville" hood rats/ rednecks :) :) :)

Well, Crazy said he's "done commenting to any of you people" an' he sounds like this time, doggone it, he really means it! But all y'all heard that one before.

A little review of Little Way and some little remarks

I'm still not ready to write my full review of LWoRL. But I enjoyed this short review from Audrey.

I liked Ruthie but I was not crazy about her brother, the author. He brought too much of himself and his religion into his story.

I commented on this review positively. There was a negative reaction stating "Why would you criticize an author for bringing in his spirituality when it is very obvious, from reading the description of the book or the jacket/back cover, that this is going to be a major topic within the book?" So my reaction was to clarify why someone might be nonplussed with the manner in which religion is brought into the story.

This is the reaction most people I know have to the book. The story of Ruthie is basically used a delivery system for the author's own political ideologies and religious experiences. And while I don't doubt the possibility of real supernatural phenomena occurring to some people, all the people I know who feel compelled to trumpet them come off as pretty arrogant. That's my assessment when reading about his personal visitation by the Virgin Mary and the postmortem vision he has of his sister. The former doesn't add one thing to the story, the latter feels entirely contrived.

So Audrey agrees with one of my two main thoughts about how the book is flawed—it's too much about the author. This is my other main thought: I still don't think Rod Dreher understands his sister, Ruthie, and mischaracterizes her motives by superimposing his own belief system on hers. Maybe this will help explain what I mean....



Here's Dreher on Andrew Sullivan's Vimeo Channel. Try to ignore the weird visuals here, stifle your guffaws, and concentrate on what he is saying.

He starts off by saying that Ruthie had a bad attitude about Rod having left the old homestead to go live elsewhere. I think this misses the main point; I think Ruthie was irritated with her brother because of his endless vocal contrarianism. He told his father that he was a socialist, he sat inside watching VH1 instead of going out hunting craw-daddies, he read books and hung out with the town "liberals", and all evidence points toward his having no unspoken thought on any topic. This habit would unfortunately inexorably link his plans to bolt from his hometown with his hating everything about it, not a reasonable pursuit of his fortune or his education or whatever. After that, each call back home would probably be an announcement of some new, big-city experience—discovering some new food or restaurant, seeing someone famous, etc. This is commonly known as bragging which, when coupled with contrarianism, is not a good formula for winning friends and influencing people. Numerous examples in the book bear this out, believe me.

And we know what happened when he got the big jobs in the city. He went all contrarian at National Review and flipped out because people teased him about shopping at the farm market. He started all these arguments about how small towns were great and authentic and all the stuff that ended up in his first book. That's why it rings hollow when he claims he learned all these things from his dying sister; he had been going on about all this stuff for years.

It's ironic to me that one of Rod's oft-touted proofs for the greatness of his sister's "little way" is the big line at her wake. When discussing the topic of the many friends the Lemings had who helped them through Ruthie's illness with his wife, she points out to him that they have a lot of friends, too. But he retorts that they don't have a "deep bench". This struck me as a strange remark until I realized that it is a sports analogy. Could Rod's use of this analogy—probably subconscious—demonstrate that his relationship to his sister is still primarily a competitive one? Well, now that he's moved back, the line at his funeral better be at least as long as his sister's, dammit! (This is the point Kathleen is trying to make here, by the way.)

Like I said, I'm still not ready for a full review. For now I'll let Keith, Pik, Diane, Kathleen, SVS et al state more reactions to my thoughts below.

Natives React To Rod Dreher's Ruthie Leming Book

Kudos to Keith for this valuable link. Kathleen predicted this last year, maybe even a year ago, that not all was going to be hunky dory with the natives of Starhill and St. Francisville once the book came out. Here are some highlights:

I don't think people in Starhill & SF realize how Rod is painting them to the rest of the country on his AmConMag blog. Basically as quaint, eccentric goobers from Hooterville, or Honey Boo-boos in the making, or the next Buck Wild. Rod's pals all over the north and easy coast eat this stuff up & he's feeding them all they can chow down. Nothing like the ever changing adventures of the little wogs in their native environment. Reading about SH & SF is like visiting the zoo. Heck, maybe others can get a swamp people reality show and make some big bucks clowning for the nation like Rod has.

Woah! Feel the love there. Then the commenter, billfr, is pressed for a link to support his claim and he posts this one, which I guess is supposed to be a picture of countrylad, one of Rod's cheerleaders and the original poster of the Topix thread. Billfr goes on:

I just kind of feel bad for the people. I grew up in a parish not far east of you but I've spent many a happy day fishing False River and Old River and camping out up over Thompson's before they put all those houses out there & been through SF a bunch of times. It's just too bad the people there don't get portrayed as the good solid people they are rather than having some carpetbagging blogger paint them as one-legged strippers and goofballs just to score Ripley's believe it or not points with the east coast university crowd.

It's your town CL you do what you want with it. Maybe you can make some money off of Ruthie Leming too.

Then we have Openyoureyes:

And making so much money by portraying the community to look like a bunch of backwoods rednecks. Says something about a person who exploits the death of a loved one for a pocket full of money.

Ten pockets full, more like. I'm telling you, this is the way all normal people view this book, especially those who know a little about Rod Dreher. Ruthie's death is a vehicle to transport the standard Dreher sermons and get a big paycheck in the process. Commenter readthebook concurs:

I too thought the book was a little "preachy". It seems he took his sisters death and his popularity with the right people and made a book deal. People lose loved ones everyday but books aren't made about it. She wasn't gone long and he had already had a book ready to be published.

Figure it out chimes in:

I have been seeing Rod Dreher in various print and just this morning I heard a story about "him" on National Public Radio (83.9 FM). It appears to me that Rod is more interested in promoting himself than he is in eulogizing his sister or trying to promote his little book. He has always had a high opinion of himself. I just didn't realize that it has reached stratospheric proportions.

You realize that this following comment from beenthere is accurate if you read the book. There is a lot of tattling of this sort under the guise of "showing the human side" or whatever.

Yeah, everything he's blogging now is about how he was so misunderstood by his daddy and sister. Now he gets to try her in the court of public opinion without having to worry about her talking back. A few faint praise compliments. A lot of how human and not a saint. Backhanding her with sweet faint praise.

Of course we know this isn't the first time that tendency has been exposed by Dreher. Finally...

He is making money off of a terrible situation. He didn't have a relationship with his sister and anyone else as I recall. He always thought he was better than anyone else in school. I am in awe that he is being promoted with this book about a wonderful and loving person. Ruthie was a piece of St Francisville and a piece of our school. Rod would never know that. He left because he was BETTER than the hicks here. Everyone loved Ruthie and Mike. They are Good people and represented what a REAL family looks like. It absolutely disgusts me and makes me sick in my stomach to think one would use a family members passing to make money. I guess old relationships don't change.

We're in awe, too, selfishRod.

When life imitates the funny papers

I don't know how many of you read the comic strips these days, but for some reason I still read a few of them.  Some that I read are fun (Pearls Before Swine, and Pickles to name a couple), some are old habits that die hard (Prince Valiant), but others must be some type of penance or masochism (Sally Forth).

One of my self-inflicted wounds is Funky Winkerbean.  For those unaware of it, it is a long-running strip that began when the characters were in high school.  In Doonesbury-style (no, I'm not so self-destructive that I read that one), the characters have aged over the years, so that the main characters are now adults.

One thing that distinguishes Funky Winkerbean from many is its crushingly depressing subject matter.  A summary of the fun topics can be found here.  Suicide, land mines, alcoholism, date rape, to name a few.  A real morning pick-me-up.  Worst of all, the story is set in Ohio.  ;-)

The more pertinent topic to this blog, however, is about the character Les Moore (the guy on the left in the strip below.)

Over the years, readers of this fine comic strip enjoyed following Les's (first) wife, Lisa, as she struggled with breast cancer and eventually died in the comic strip in 2007. But Les is an English teacher who was also a frustrated author. Sure enough, empowered by the death of a loved one, Les wrote a book entitled Lisa's Story, chronicling his brave wife's battle. 

Hmm, that resembles a current topic for readers of this blog.  Let's see if there are any other similarities between author Les Moore of Funky and Our Hero:

- hipster goatee (check)
- glasses (not as trendy, but OK)
- pretentious (see the above comic strip -- I'd say yes)
- bullied in high school (oh yeah, mercilessly -- see the Wikipedia entry)
- book tour!  (Bingo!  In Texas, no less)
-

But Les is a bit ahead of Dreher in the promotional department.  He's already got a movie deal!! 

Straight-to-cable movie, but one can't be too fussy.  The creator then tries to get a couple of chuckles from the situation:

As one astute reviewer of comic strips says about that installment:

Ha ha, Les got a big check because his sad book about his dead wife is going to be turned into a movie on basic cable, and then he got a boner! This plot is already so much more traumatizing than I could have possibly imagined.

Sounds like something you'd read around here!

Anyhoo, if y'all will keep me posted on Dreher's hijinks (so I don't have to), I'll warn you of any more premonitions from the frames of Funky Winkerbean.

The Little Way Goes BIG TIME

The place where I come from is a small town 
They think so small, they use small words 
But not me

David Ryan to Working Boy: Shut Up

Here's a recent post near the top of the Google search for Rod Dreher by a serious boat captain guy named David Ryan. We'll do our part here to help keep it near the top. He has titled the post simply Rod Dreher needs to shut up.

He quotes Rod's musings about how he seems to be so distracted and has to blog about everything. My initial reaction to reading the first quote was thinking that there's a pretty fine line between laziness and lack of discipline; it's a distinction without much of a difference. Trust me; I know about all forms of laziness and lack of focus first-hand.

Here's Ryan's conclusion:

Rod, with as much love and charity as I can muster: You’ve identified the problem. Now stop talking and start doing.

No more trips to Paris. No more sportfishing. No more blogging. Travelocity now. Iona. Monastery.

Sit.

Be quiet.

You’re welcome.

All I can add to this is "Aye, Captain."

The Little Way to Big Money

Wow, lots of news today! As I was copying the link for the famous book, Crunchy Conservatism earlier, I noticed that the new offering of the famed author, Rod Dreher, is now available for pre-order. Yes: The Little Way of Ruthie Leming is coming out in April 2013, almost 7 years and 2 months after Dreher's ground-breaking debut.

We knew this was coming and discussed it excitedly earlier here and here. And, of course, our parody song was required reading and meditation material.

Now—guess what I'm going to do for all of you? I, humble Pauli, am going to purchase (most likely on Kindle), read and excerpt this million dollar biography right here on Est Quod Est when Little Way makes its big debut in April. We'll praise and condemn, share the joys and sorrows, analyze and critique this monumental writing. We'll laugh, we'll cry, we'll dream... etc. Also we'll post times for promotional media appearances, especially on call-in shows so we can band together to ask the famous author really good questions which, if you think of any, please post below. ("Baba-Booey! Baba-Booey!")

And... don't forget to check this link from time to time.

Anyone play the banjo?

Here's a little bit of humorous verse collaboratively written by Kathleen and myself. Naturally it is to be sung—with a slight lisp—to the tune of the Beverly Hillbilles theme song, which is also known as "The Ballad of Jed Clampett".

The Ballad of Rod Dreher

Come listen to a story 'bout a man named Rod
A poor crunchy blogger, used to write about God
Then one day when his sister bought the farm
His bigwig agent didn't have to twist his arm.

Money, that is. Greenbacks, college edumacations...

Well the first thing you know ol' Rod's a millionaire,
The kinfolk said "Ray's a-movin' back here!"
Said Ray, "Loweeziana is the place I ought to be!"
So they loaded up the truck and moved a-southerly.

His hometown's a buzzin'...
"Money, you say?
Don't we all get some?"

Well now it's time to read about Ray-rod and all his kin.
And heap big thanks to Davey Brooks for getting him an in.
Did ya hear there's fancy dancers in this here locality?
A mighty fine example of Southern hospitality.

Here's a dollar, honey.
Set a spell...
...keep your leg on.

Y'all buy the book now, y'hear?