And so I finally got a round tuit. Get it? A "round tuit", as in gretting around to it? Do you guys get it? Say it slowly if you need to. Do you get it now?
(smack, smack, smack...)
Well, that was kind of sad, seeing Pauli — who used to be funny at one time — stoop so low for a cheap laugh. Here's the old comment thread for reference.
Here is something we should talk about. In the 4th episode of the Netflix show "House of Cards" the Kevin Spacey character Frank Underwood found it necessary to spit on a crucifix and break it into pieces. Does anyone know why this is tolerated in our society? I think it is selective targeting. You will see Kevin Spacey do what he did all day long yet never see him criticize others. Jonathan Carpenter
ReplyDeleteJonathan, here's a smart article explaining why anti-Catholicism like you see on shows like NCIS doesn't even make sense. It relies on "faulty psychology". The implication is always that that more religious someone is, the more hate-filled and bigoted. But our experience is the opposite.
DeleteActually, I've now finally made it to that episode, Jonathan. And I have no problem with the scene you mention.
DeleteThe Francis Underwood character is a nihilistic Machiavellian who (spoiler alert) has murdered two people so far. In the crucifix scene, he is faced with the choice to love God and love his neighbors, or to deny Christ. He denies Christ, and the crucifix comes crashing down. So I see the scene as honest -- it shows that choosing to follow Christ is indeed a choice between good and evil. Underwood chooses evil, consistent with his character, and the audience gets it.
Better a scene like that, by a long shot, than the typical insidious lies in which Christians generally, and Catholics particularly, are shown as hypocritical, backward knuckle-draggers, Irish-nuns-who-murder-illegitimate-infants, etc.
In which Dreher uses an essay by another author to pimp his own Dante book. Under the pretext of a photo of his own dog.
ReplyDeleteBut there are some things missing from Dreher's regurgitation. One is a link to the quoted essay. Here's that link for your benefit. And from that linked piece, you'll see that another thing missing from Dreher's post is a mention that the "essay" is not really an essay, but is an adapted chapter from a book by that author that is coming out next week. The publisher describes that book as (emphasis added):
Manguel chooses as his guides a selection of writers who sparked his imagination. He dedicates each chapter to a single thinker, scientist, artist, or other figure who demonstrated in a fresh way how to ask “Why?” Leading us through a full gallery of inquisitives, among them Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Lewis Carroll, Rachel Carson, Socrates, and, most importantly, Dante, Manguel affirms how deeply connected our curiosity is to the readings that most astonish us, and how essential to the soaring of our own imaginations.
I'm not in the writing-for-publication biz, so I don't know what is OK and what isn't. But it seems a little shady to snip a good bit of another author's work to pimp one's own work, without a link to the quoted piece. Much less when the quoted piece is from a book that will be competing in the same space ("what Dante means today") for much the same readers.
"I can see that if I squint", which leaves me thinking, hey, maybe instead I should buy a competing book in the same genre whose clarity doesn't make me squint. Who might have one available for purchase, did you say?
DeleteDreher is simultaneously using Manguel to fluff the general market for Dante among those folks who at this very moment are sitting with tightly furrowed brow thinking, dang, should I be reading Dante, too? while simultaneously burying him with faint mocking praise and by withholding any other info, as you describe. In under a thousand words, he is this guy, the dishonest religious hustler ShamWow! prudently thought better of using.
Gimlet-eyed publishing madam Judith Regan exercised similar prudence when limiting her investment in Dreher's publishing budget. Those old enough to know betther than to throw in with this sleazy fraud coughowenwhitecough probably deserve what they get - as a chastening tonic to virtue, of course.
Maybe our own intrepid reporter Jonathan Carpenter will email Mr. Manguel and ask him how he likes the free press he gets here.
Dreher somethinged Father Neuhaus before he somethinged Father Neuhaus.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI posted a comment on Dreher as wet noodle on Patrick Deneen's Facebook page. (We are Facebook Friends). Dreher reposted and I let him have it. Deneen and I WERE Facebook friends.
I can respect Deneen. He doesn't maintain his page as a jousting list. Catholics set high store in civility. Still, this cringing away from necessary struggle is poor stuff. Check it out http://odysseusontherocks.blogspot.com
Also TAC now deletes all my comments. So, autopsies of TAC on my blog will proceed with gusto!
Shocking as it may be to some, traditional conservatism is not inherently immune from the sort of ingroup/outgroup social classism masquerading as civility practiced by any snobby tennis club in the Hamptons. One would logically think that conservative ideology and faith in God (good against Satan himself, right?) would prove to be a double layer of armor against the slings and arrows of words that can never hurt them. Since they are apparently not and both God and conservatism seem to need the crucial extra existential assistance blog banning and Facebook unfriending provide, that suggests to me that God and conservatism serve those needing such banning and unfriending, e.g., Dreher and Deneen, more as fashion statements poshly dressing the true underlying faith of both persons, that is, mutual tummy-rubbing in the service of mutually advantageous social mingling and climbing.
DeleteWhile not a Catholic and frankly at sea with respect to much of the ecclesiastical academics he covers, I have gained an enormous respect for Diane's pal Gabriel Sanchez, primarily (from my non-ecclesiastical standoint) for his utter fearlessness in entertaining and addressing dissent compared to the likes of poltroons such as Dreher and now apparently Deneen who, rather than embracing and embodying conservatism and Christianity, merely hide behind both for psychological safety.
Since they are apparently not and both God and conservatism seem to need the crucial extra existential assistance blog banning and Facebook unfriending provide, that suggests to me that God and conservatism serve those needing such banning and unfriending, e.g., Dreher and Deneen, more as fashion statements poshly dressing the true underlying faith of both persons, that is, mutual tummy-rubbing in the service of mutually advantageous social mingling and climbing.
DeleteAs I pointed out on T. O.'s blog, all you really need to do to get Deneen to Facebook friend you is to put a really good expensive meal in his tummy.
ABN: Always Be Networking
Raising the Devil:
ReplyDeleteA commenter at Dreher's blog, "Egypt Steve" points out the unintended consequences of Dreher's typical lazy and sloppy adolescent thinking in relying on the meme that secularism and other ideologies are just God-less religions:
If all ideologies are “religions,” then what is the grounds for offering special legal and constitutional privileges — I mean, tax breaks and special escape clauses from generally applicable laws — to those religions that happen to worship supernatural persons, as opposed to those that worship abstractions like “science”?
Oh, you betcha, Dreher's the one I want fighting for my religious liberty - by ultimately reducing it to just another ideological belief system.
From Dreher's post today bemoaning someone's diversity in books effort, he quotes some other guy:
ReplyDelete"Books can save lives, but they are not medicine. And attempts to administer them as such tend to be both unwelcome and unsuccessful."
O RLY, Mr. "Dante cured my mono"?
Yes, How Dante Can Save Your Life, the toy sensation that's sweeping the nation. Only $14.95 at particpating stores!
DeleteGet one Today!
Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to How Dante Can Save Your Life.
Caution: How Dante Can Save Your Life may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.
How Dante Can Save Your Life contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.
Do not use How Dante Can Save Your Life on concrete.
Discontinue use of How Dante Can Save Your Life if any of the following occurs:
-Itching
-Vertigo
-Dizziness
-Tingling in extremities
-Loss of balance or coordination
-Slurred speech
-Temporary blindness
-Profuse sweating
-Heart palpitations
If How Dante Can Save Your Life begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.
How Dante Can Save Your Life may stick to certain types of skin.
When not in use, How Dante Can Save Your Life should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration...
Failure to do so relieves the makers of How Dante Can Save Your Life, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability.
Ingredients of How Dante Can Save Your Life include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.
How Dante Can Save Your Life has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is also being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq.
Do not taunt How Dante Can Save Your Life.
How Dante Can Save Your Life comes with a lifetime guarantee.
"Accept no substitutes!!"
Lol. Jack Handey wrote that for SNL. It's at the end of his Martians book along with transcripts for Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer and Toonsis the Driving Cat.
DeleteShould I have sourced that? I assumed that "Happy Fun Ball" was as well known as "more cowbell".
DeleteDante for Baptists or Always Be Networking.
ReplyDeleteOkay, Rod, you lay down on your side facing Alan with your head in the direction of Alan's toes, and, Alan, you lay down facing Rod with your head in the direction of Rod's toes, and then the both of you proceed together to add to our oral history:
The next day, Alan sent me the review from his blog of my upcoming book How Dante Can Save Your Life. It’s a very generous assessment of the book. Here’s an excerpt...
Read the entire review. I learned a lot from it. Alan kindly left me with a copy of his own 2014 book, When Heaven And Earth Collide, which is about race, Evangelical Christianity, and the history and culture of the South.
Is Charles H. Feathersone an "investor" in the ongoing Dreher book enterprise? I say "investor" in the hope the term would be more accurate than an alternative, "pay for play", and I say "ongoing Dreher book enterprise" because he's already announcing he's working on the one on the Benedict Option.
ReplyDeleteThis question arises for me from something immediately odd to my eyes in Dreher's latest post, Finding Yourself in Dante.
Because the entire long post is really no more than more promotion for Dreher's book writing, there's really no need to read it, but there are two things I would draw your attention to.
First, fully half of the image topping the post is dedicated to promoting Featherstone's own book, a full 50% that could have and reasonably should have been dedicated to Dreher himself.. Why? Particularly because his name is never mentioned until the very end, here
Dante’s story is my story and Charles Featherstone’s story and my woebegone friend’s story.
That's all. That's all that Featherstone has to do with a long post prominently publicizing his book in half the post's imagery. So, frankly, that leads me to wonder what the real quid pro quo is here. Again, there's nothing about the Featherstone book prominently being publized in the TAC/Dreher post being utilized as a vehicle for that publicity. So maybe Featherstone's a heavy TAC donor, or maybe he's opened some doors for Dreher personally. Vanity publishing is testimony enough that enormous numbers of people seek publication for reasons other than book royalties, ie, for the satisfaction of seeing themselves in print.
Speaking of self-publishing, the other book(s) also irrelevant to the post but not prominently consuming prime TAC blog real estate are Erin Manning's young adult science fiction series. That's because one's relevance to Dreher is a function of current public utility, not human relationship.
And the current utility having replaced Erin seems to be this woman, Bernie, also a Catholic, albeit one some several decades older than Erin (a virtue Gustave H. would have immediately recognized) whose utility can't be more perfectly demonstrated than in this comment:
"Ampersand says:
“Obviously, you (meaning Rod) engage in this all the time, mocking certain types of nuns and other Christians that don’t subscribe to your interpretation of your religion.”
I think this is a grossly unfair depiction of Rod’s blog. “Mock” and “critique” are different things. Rod’s job is to cover and evaluate the current events in culture and religion; critiquing the scene is necessary to the purpose of his blog.
Dictionary definitions for “mock” and “critique” are:
MOCK – 1) to laugh at or make fun of (someone or something) especially by copying an action or a way of behaving or speaking, or 2) to criticize and laugh at (someone or something) for being bad, worthless, or unimportant
CRITIQUE – 1) to evaluate (a theory or practice) in a detailed and analytical way"
Just so there's no misunderstanding, I both mock and critique, but, then, I'm only a monkey, so both are improvements over my birth habit of simply throwing things.
Oh Bernie, gag me with the proverbial spoon. Bleccccccchhhhh!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete(Sorry, too many egregious typos in the first one.)
DeleteI don't know if I'm the only one noticing (or just imagining) it, but ever since Dreher's Sad Time following his return home he seems to be wading deeper and deeper into all sorts of endorsements and dis-endorsements frankly at odds with what I, at least, would imagine the posture of someone in Benedict Option spiritual retreat from the corrupting influences of contemporary culture would otherwise be.
Just above my comment about Featherstone there's another about another, Alan Cross, with whom he's trading book plugs, while today he's again waded hip deep into the big muddy of Louisiana politics with a "50 Shades of Grover" hit piece on Bobby Jindall and Grover Norquist. Lotta publishing horse-trading, lotta wheeling & dealing at Galatoire's in New Orleans, where long time local pols just drop by.
If I'm learning anything, it's that what Dante teaches is how to be a better hired keyboardist on the lookout for secular opportunities to whore out one's craft wherever they twinkle. I don't suppose it dawns on his commenters supposedly following him to their own respective Dante salvations to ask what the "50 Shades of"-memed political piece is doing smack there amidst their mutual God-finding any more than it dawns on a child to ask Mommy why there's a suppressor in the Legos box. It's all just "culture" being "critiqued". And what she was doing up on the pole was just more Pilates.
Dreher has also been heavily promoting Kara Tippett's books about terminal cancer. Maybe there is a connection there because of Ruthie but it really doesn't seem like they are friends. It seems like standard boiler plate promotional content like something that he might be asked to do by a publisher or agent. The posts promoting Tippetts just have an obvious air of commercialism about them, it's hard to put my finger on but I think it's part of a contract or an agreement not that he actually liked the books and wants to share them.
DeleteOr, frankly, he could be fluffing the "death porn" market for both of them. For the same reason Amazon suggests "People who bought X also bought Y", advertising Tippett pokes a stick into and stirs the brains of those who get off on those sorts of books about people dying, the reactions of their loved ones, "Would I be as brave as Ruthie and Kara?", "Am I ready to meet my Maker?", thus re-stimulating the market for TLWORL.
DeleteWhatever it is though, and particularly considering he's announcing the Benedict Option book before the Dante book has even formally been published, this is the Year of Publishing Momentum for OWB. He seems to me like he's trying to get as many actual and potential plates spinning in the air as he can before the next one in line inevitably crashes to the floor. The days of a cushy National Review-Templeton Foundation sinecure are long behind him, so from here on out for Dreher it may literally be publish or perish.
What they called the Benedict Option in the Sixties: segregation.
ReplyDeleteDifferent sets of beliefs, different players, same goal.
Mr. Dreher is coming back to Dallas on April 30. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/private-reception-with-rod-dreher-and-the-american-conservatives-leadership-tickets-16146240841
ReplyDeleteJonathan Carpenter
More on that soiree here, and in which Dreher makes the event irresistible (for the right crowd):
DeleteI hope you will come. You know that when you get Larison and me in the same room with a bottle of Scotch and a piano, we’re all about singing Randy Newman classics in all eight Orthodox tones.
One of these days, we will have Uncle Chuckie materialize at one of these things, and it’ll be the best party since Truman Capote’s Black & White Ball.
Uh, I'll have to skip that one, thanks. And I'd rather not know about the goings-on at the Uncle Chuckie meetup ...
It's pretty clear from the way the invitation is laid out that at least a tacit change of the organization name to "The Dreher Conservative" is something that everyone, not least of all Rod himself, is anticipating sooner rather than later.
DeleteOn the up side, Dreher is Wick Allison's one and only strong horse there. On the down side, Dreher is Wick Allison's one and only strong horse there.
But the brightest note is that the caterers will get to hear Dreher for free.
Oh, dear, the market burps:
ReplyDeleteA book that needs another book to explain what it means doesn’t typically find its way onto my need to read list.
Fortunately, Silouan Green, who finds being able to continue to comment on a higher authority site useful to promoting his own, adds
"That being said, I imagine the most interesting part of your book will be your story and how the lessons of Dante helped you, and that alone is probably worth buying it for.
xoxo"
(Okay, I just imagined that last line.)
Did you notice how when a Pope be it Benedict or Francis starts out Dreher cant stop singing the praises of them? Later he goes into complete trashing of them. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/on-abuse-scandal-dark-clouds-pope-francis-chile/
ReplyDeleteI guess pumping the Dante book did not generate enough press. Jonathan Carpenter
Jonathan, I guess that only demonstrates to the thoughtful reader the ultimate disappointment religions with Popes deliver. You simply can't depend on them, particularly if they're horrible, child-molesting religions. The only recourse left to the thoughtful and moral believer, then, necessarily becomes switching to a religion without such ubiquitous, high profile child molesting and without such consistently disappointing popes. Also, one with cool Duck Dynasty beards that sanctions birth control.
DeleteYou should also work for a Magazine that has no position on Abortion. Jonathan Carpenter
ReplyDeleteFYI: Guess who is doing their 2015 Hunky Jesus Beauty Contest? That is right, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence out of San Francisco. I was thinking about a boycott of San Fran and California products due to the silence of people like Mrs. Pelosi, Gov. Brown and Sen Feinstein. Jonathan Carpenter
ReplyDeleteP.S.: WOULD ANYONE CARE TO GUESS THE ODDS THESE SISTERS WOULD HAVE A HUNKY MOHAMMED BEAUTY CONTEST DURING RAHMADAN?http://sf.funcheap.com/park-easter-celebration-hunky-jesus-contest-mission-dist/
Pauli, my little ghost story is up to 15 chapters now. Please go read it.
ReplyDelete