Here we go again...

I was reading the Comment magazine post which is referenced by a link Pikkumatti included here when I noticed a little blurb on this page for their next issue. Here we go again, I remember thinking. Looks like more alternative "conservatism", the kind that won't make you unpopular, is completely non-threatening and won't do anything to change the prevailing cultural landscape. No wonder they booked Dreher to write something for the issue.

Here's my, uh, deconstruction of their advertisement:

The Winter 2014 issue of Comment is themed Redeeming Conservatism. Are we out of our minds?

You are out of your minds for publishing a print edition of your rag in 2014. As to your proposed content, you are probably just very confused, arrogant, or both.

If you can't imagine anything good coming out of conservatism, this issue is for you.

There is actually a word for people who "can't imagine anything good coming out of conservatism". That word is liberals. So our guess is that, based on how you are presenting this topic, that word describes most of your readership.

Our hope is you'll discover, first, that conservatism is not what you thought it was ("You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.").

Yes, we saw The Princess Bride many times, too. So y'all are going to explain what conservatism is supposed to be. This should be really instructive. But we could read the Wikipedia pages on it for free—just sayin'.

Second, we hope when you encounter this conservative disposition, you might have occasion to take stock and be surprised to find this names a sensibility you already share.

The disposition and sensibility of this new and improved conservatism you are describing will be so much better because you are going to throw out the views you don't like in mainstream conservatism, i.e., what most people call conservatism.

Our goal is to start a conversation that "redeems" conservatism precisely by deconstructing what we tend to identify with conservatism.

Knew it; told you.

Conservatism, as we mean it, is not a recovery project; it's a preservation project.

Whatever that means.

Yes, sir, you may have another

(or, as they say, an UPDATE to my post right below)

Well, the Plato of St. Francisville wasn't content with the episode of self-abuse I just posted about below, so he went for a double here.

In both posts there is a conspicuous commenter you may recall not only from my post about her here, particularly since many of you gallantly came to her support and defense.

Why is Erin significant here? Because what still hasn't happened to her shows us that our perception of Plato SF isn't just an aberration from having chased that egg salad and kosher dills with shots of a suspect tequila but is instead a real thing that continues to stink up the real world.

Many of you will remember that Erin has been with Dreher since back in the Beliefnet days, loyal as a dog. He even had her fill in for him there when he went on vacation and may or may not have covered her efforts with some babysitting pocket change. You know her most recently with respect to Dreher as one of the namesakes of his Evans-Manning award, a prize he awards, as far as I can tell, to keep commenters coming back in the hope that they may not only receive one but may also be so lucky as to have a new award named for them, too.

Well, as it turns out, Erin is a book writer in her own right, and even before she took issue with Plato's platitudes here and here, she had already self-published two young adult science fiction novels of her own, The Telmaj and her most recent A Smijj of Adventure.

Here she solicited honest reviews for her newest book from her friends (yo, Plato, flush the rest of the sammich down the toilet; that's you, dude) and family.

Now, what does the world know about Rod Dreher's family from his unbridled oversharing? That's right: they're young kids, all under 14, and geeky science fiction types - the ideal market for Erin's YA series. But no David Brooks generosity for Erin from Rod. Nope. Nada.

There are two types of people in the world: the self-annointed Platos and the hoi polloi, and, really, no one expects the former to consume the pathetic discharges of the latter, I mean, do they? There's a reason Dreher worships Downton Abbey the way he does: it reminds him never to dirty his hands by associating too closely with the help, so whatever Rod Dreher considers Erin, his blog bitch or his blog fluffer, it's unmistakeable from what he could easily do but has demonstrated now, twice, that he won't that the one thing he doesn't count her as is his friend.

We can see that even he recognizes what an exploitative little worm he is in all that he contritely doesn't say in the epic, Odyssey-length NFR he felt compelled to attach to Erin's comment here.

Now I don't have any kids and I don't read the sort of stuff Erin writes for them myself, but I bet some of you out there do have or know some kids who might like her stuff. So why don't you do Erin a solid, do what the Great Man, too busy stuffing buttered steak in his tum-tum, who only has the use for her a pimp would, won't do: spring for the $20 bucks or so to buy her books for your kids and review them for her. Even if you find something flawed in them, I'd bet she'll appreciate the feedback to help her improve in the future.

Given all the attention Dreher extorts from the world for himself, it's the least we could do for his unfortunate tool Erin: recognize her for the effort she's made and for whatever value she provides as a writer in her own right.