i can’t stop thinking about this. imagine meeting the supreme pontiff of the world’s largest christian faith and being big sad because he doesn’t know your book. this is unbelievably sad hours here. this is a deeply broken human being. it rules. pic.twitter.com/rzEa5kygc4
— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) August 28, 2021
Blarts from the past — remember ‘Crunchy Con’ Dreher?
Convert to & then from Catholicism uses Pope as marketing tool for his book. https://t.co/kHm3fL3y9Z
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) August 28, 2021
The Benedict Option — Dreher argues for the formation of virtuous Christian communities in response to an increasingly secular culture — was influential enough to rate a Wikipedia stub before it faded like a sparkler. Dreher was so mad about the Pope’s refusal to embrace his theory of withdrawal from our fallen world (which: pretty much the opposite of everything Francis had endorsed) that he stomped off to join the Greek Orthodox Church. Unless he’s found an even more ‘rigorous’ faith since then…
Rod omitted the part where he ranted at the Holy Father about Oreos until the Swiss Guards tased him. pic.twitter.com/iP9DndQ2jy
— OneHitPopehat (@Popehat) August 28, 2021
oh jesus mary joseph pic.twitter.com/1YyI2WFKKa
— kilgore trout, horse paste suppository (@KT_So_It_Goes) August 28, 2021
I grew up ‘in The Church’, and IMO this is pretty much an adequate guidepost:
Dreher trending always reminds me of this absolute banger of a post https://t.co/1SyeRXXhWC
— The Mall Krampus (@cakotz) August 28, 2021
Timurid
Rigorous? I hear the Taliban is hiring…
CaseyL
Dreher’s descent into demented authoritarianism has been
saddeninghilarious to watch. It’s been interesting, in a slow-motion-car-crash sort of way, to see his obsession with policing other peoples’ sex lives lead him down the merry path to fascism, embracing the full-out racist and misogynistic accessory package that goes with it.West of the Rockies
A tempest in a cracked teapot.
polyorchnid octopunch
I’m just here for the human zoo. That shit sounds awesome. If only we could keep ’em there.
Poe Larity
Maybe Francis heard that Dreher’s Benedict enclaves are modelled after NASA’s child slaver base on Mars.
How about a gofundme for a SpaceX ride over so he can have his own private Hyperion.
Steeplejack
That Dreher saga was one of the highlights of the Twitter week, capped by the genius of “explaining to a cartoon rabbit.”
Open thread, so . . .
West of the Rockies
@Steeplejack:
Her voice is dreadful: Powell sounds like a vocal-frying goat from Alabama.
FredW
To be fair, he joined the Russian Orthodox Church (not Greek) and it was way before he wrote the Benedict Option.
I used to read his blog years ago — he could be interesting so long as you stayed away from marriage equality, then it was off to the funny farm.
Then it turned into non-stop “the libs are practicing soft totalitarianism to oppress us true believers” all the while turning a blind eye to the hard totalitarianism the R’s were trying to do.
Daniel Larison blogged at the same place at the time. I think it is important to read people who disagree with you — so long as they are sane and argue in good faith — something lacking in today Right.
NotMax
Trivia:
JoyceH
@Steeplejack:
My Twitter highlight of the week was the person who said of Ed Asner: “He had spunk. I like spunk.”
Steeplejack
@West of the Rockies:
And that’s one of her better qualities!
I hope she gets her ass handed to her in her legal problems.
NotMax
Have never heard of Dreher, have not the slightest idea who he might be, and most important why I might possibly have the remotest interest in knowing.
Steeplejack
@JoyceH:
? A great callback.
Steeplejack
Wrapping up Afghanistan . . .
The Onion: “Nation Stunned That 20-Year Catastrophe Could End So Catastrophically.”
danielx
@West of the Rockies:
Thanks, I’m going to hear that voice in my dreams.
prostratedragon
For some reason running through my mind this week:
“What happened to God?” — Foster (Will Patton), The Rapture.
@JoyceH: That’s cute. I like spunk too.
danielx
@NotMax:
I get that every morning when I touch the iPhone News icon: who the fuck are these people and why am I supposed to care what they think, eat, wear, where they vacation, or who they screw? Whatever the algorithm, its mojo just ain’t working on me or for me.
But I’m a weirdo, I don’t watch television to speak of so I’m way outside the normal curve right there.
ETA: somebody asked me once about tv as a conversation starter: I responded that he presupposed I would want to converse with somebody who thought television comedies were a worthy topic. He said I was becoming cranky.
NotMax
@JoyceH
In memory of Asner. And another.
;)
NotMax
@danielx
Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight. And another.
;)
Mary G
@FredW: Same here. I originally came to Balloon Juice to read a sane conservative, and in the same spirit read Larison for years – he ragged equally on Republican and Democrats for the forever wars and has been screaming into the void about starving children in Yemen since 2015.
I had to stop when I was unable to resist hate clicking on Dreher. He’s gone all the way down to kissing up to Orban in Hungary and hinting that America could use an authoritarian administration to keep liberals from changing children’s genitals at the age of four.
Larison’s gone to a substack, I think, and tweets every once in a while.
The Pale Scot
@West of the Rockies:
The look on her face reminds me of the Python skit with Cleese in drag offering her exclusive theory about Brontosauruses
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2oh8ia
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@NotMax: Dreher gets (or used to; I can’t be bothered to keep up) column space on the NYT editorial page as a regular; I think he was hired so he could expose us to a young, cutting-edge conservative thinker.
The great Charlie Pierce would demolish him occasionally in his online pieces for Esquire, between bouts of highlighting David Brooks’s grandiose follies (Pierce’s invention of Brooks’s photo op dog, an Irish Setter named Moral Panic, is one for the ages.)
Chetan Murthy
@a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio: Wait, wasn’t the dog’s name “Moral Hazard” ? Coulda sworn ….
Steeplejack
@a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio:
Are you perhaps thinking of Ross Douthat? He writes for the New York Times. I don’t think Dreher ever has.
Chetan Murthy
@Steeplejack: Doubthat? Do you mean the Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street ?
NotMax
@The Pale Scot
Cleese pulls off being in drag better than does Robert Mitchum.
:)
(And it was deucedly difficult to call up a decent still from the otherwise eminently forgettable movie that one comes from.)
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@Chetan Murthy: I may have misremembered. Your version does sound more like it.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@Steeplejack: There are two of these idiots? Dear heavens.
opiejeanne
@NotMax: What movie is that? I can hardly recognize Mitchum.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Steeplejack: the 2021 onion would hate the 2001 onion…
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@danielx: i already do… from my jim breuer’s goatboy reads li’l bo peep cd
frosty
@danielx: You are becoming cranky. But what the hell, just own it.
PS I haven’t watched too many comedies lately, it’s more like Travels By Narrowboat.
NotMax
@opiejeanne
Girl Rush. A vehicle for the never quite clicked comedy duo of Brown & Carney.
Ten Bears
Rod who … ? He wrote a book? Well, so did I, several. Nobody’s ever heard of me either.
Seriously, a gold lace dress … ?
opiejeanne
@a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio: They are legion.
opiejeanne
@NotMax: I loved this tidbit: Allen Carney died at the age of 63 in Van Nuys from the excitement of winning the Daily Double at Hollywood Racetrack.
Tony Jay
I used to hate-read Dreher too, until 2016 when that shit just wasn’t funny anymore.
He’s the guy who ‘proved’ that Liberals were the real racists because ‘Brown Sugar’ = Racist Stones = Long haired Lefties = Suck on that, Libtard.
A tiresome fart of a man sticky with the treacle of his own self-righteousness. I’m not sure if anyone ever pointed out to him how his calls for a parallel Christian Community living alongside but separate from mainstream society echo those of the founders of the Taliban, etc, but I am sure that if they have, he’s scuttled away offended before coming back the next day to post article after article after endless bloody article spiralling down the drill hole into crazy town as he ‘suddenly understands’ how this latest example of intolerance just shows how truly authoritarian the Left is.
The Pope was right to blank him.
Freemark
@frosty: Good I’m not the only one watching that. It’s deliciously boring.
Phylllis
@Freemark: Adds to watchlist. Labor day weekend plans set.
burnspbesq
Ugh. Dreher.
That is all.
ETA: IIRC, he used to occasionally get shredded in the pages of National Catholic Reporter. You have to be waaaaaayyyyyy out there for that to happen.
Freemark
Anyone know what happened to Joe Walsh? Since Trump became President he actually seems reasonable. Or is it just because the bar is so low for Republicans now?
mrmoshpotato
Who?
Tony Jay
@burnspbesq:
Its all – and I do mean all – about the dinero. Book sales drive everything that guy fulminates about. Being able to apend “Too salty for the Liberals’ favourite Pope” to the latest printing of his screed should be worth a few more sales, and that’s what’s important in the Kingdom of Mammon.
WereBear
I once read an account of a women whose family, with young children, became part of one of those Benedict colonies.
She bitterly regretted every moment. At least one estranged child. I don’t think the marriage lasted.
So much misery, while the Right Winger “thought leaders” raked in it. I no longer thing they are sincere and deluded.
They are, and long have been, pure con artist. And nothing more.
Gvg
@Freemark: Trump. Actually I never wondered till you asked because the surprising thing is that their weren’t millions more republicans who saw what Trump and the GOP leadership were. It is kind of interesting which ones revolted and which ones got worse. I guess it might be enlightening to know the specifics.
Joe Walsh is still the dick who didn’t pay child support and every once in awhile he still has opinions that are totally wrong but typical Republican, however he consistently speaks out against Trump. He has a way with words and the pithy put down.
Geminid
@Freemark: I think what happened to Joe Walsh is that he decided to stop trying to be elected. A lot of Republican politicians who know better have said stupid stuff trying to keep up with their party as the the tea party cranks and then trump dragged it over the edge.
Someone once said, “A politician is a sick man who gets well by being elected.”
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
The Aristocrats!
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@opiejeanne:
LOL That would have been a great alternate ending to “Guys and Dolls”
Ksmiami
@Mary G: for his heresy of being a compassionate human, Larison was fired from TAC.
FredW
@Mary G: Same here! I’m so old I remember when Cole was a conservative :)
Just Chuck
His next will be Latvian Orthodox. He thinks he has the Kavorka.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Freemark: he’s almost as good as denver riggleman, who also gets points for the sasquatchporn
bowtiejack
Dreher is a very silly person.
Of course, like any silly person, he doesn’t realize it.
opiejeanne
@WereBear: There are Benedict colonies? Is that like the town in Florida started by the owner of Domino’s Pizza, supposed to be open only to Catholics and birth control will not be sold in the pharmacy?