I had begun to wonder about Rod Dreher's morbid, "death porn" fascination with the terminally ill and dying in the wake of his sister Ruthie's death several years ago, particularly his giving such events unseemly rock star status on his blog, but now the reason for this long setup becomes clearer: Dreher wants to claim the same object-of-pity, martyr-to-illness status of terminal cancer patient Kara Tippetts for his own superficial depressive grumpies, grumpies acquired only because his family sees him for the shallow, manipulative asshole he is and doesn't like what they see.
Because, like the little engine that could, he, too, writes while sick:
(Picture caption: Behold, a writer ["Just like meee!!!"])
I have mentioned in the past that my chronic mononucleosis went into remission for a year after reading Dante and experiencing a spiritual and physical healing, but that — irony of ironies! — the intense stress of having to write the book late last fall and winter under a radically truncated schedule (from zero to complete in three months, which is all but unheard of) triggered a relapse. I’ve still not been able to get on top of that. It feels like my immune system’s wheels are spinning on ice, and can’t get traction. And I’m not sure why. The certain thing is that I experienced real healing, but I tried to do too much intense writing — I have never before written under that kind of deadline — before my immune system was strong enough. It was like trying to run a marathon on legs that had only recently healed from being broken. No wonder I fell...
And yet, she writes. That is what writers ["Just like meee!!!"] do.
And, just like Johnny Carson's Ed McMahon or Jimmy Kimmel's Guillermo Rodriguez, Dreher blog sidekick and audience warm-up
Charles "Uncle Chuckie" Cosimano sees his opening to cue the pre-scripted audience response:
Rod, don’t beat up on yourself. The only yardstick you need to measure your own work by is you. This condition will not last forever and after it great writing may come. In fact I am willing to bet that it will come.
Take care of your health. You’re doing fine. And when you feel down, think of all your friends here, daily remembering you in their thoughts, prayers and electropsychotronic healing machines that are never mentioned because they are bad for the public image.
That's right, Rod. We understand. We understand the "dark wood" of unhappiness that your family and local townspeople put you in for not buying into your bullshit is just like Kara Tippetts' terminal cancer, which is why it is so important for us to hear everything about her, and, after she's gone, about the next one just like her, because only by understanding their stories can we truly understand the gauntlet of pain and suffering you are to this day still bravely soldiering through.
And yet, amazingly, you still write. Because that is what writers do.
UPDATE (as they say): Kara Tippetts died later today. So did everyone else who will show up tomorrow in your local obituary page, the stupid teenager who took that curve too fast, the little girl screaming in terror, suffocated as she was being raped, that funny homeless guy under the Interstate, the cousin of the person who works two cubicles down; they never did find out what was wrong with him. That is what we humans do - die - even the ones who don't prove useful for blog posts valorizing Rod Dreher as a suffering writer. Let us pray for all of them, indiscriminately.
