A public note to Mark Shea.
Mark:
You don't have the moral high ground in criticizing this blog, as you not only continue to insult us, you are now consistently deleting from the comments at your blog even our most civil attempts to defend ourselves.
I'm mentioning this here because you seem unwilling even to note that you're doing this, to say nothing of an explanation why.
You do however bring up an argument that deserves a response:
As an aside, I would contend that much of the substance of John da Fiesole's critique can also be found here, if a little less obvious amidst the parodies and digressions. I would argue that one of his central points -- the incoherence of Rod's belief systems -- is one of our central themes. We also have other substantive criticisms about Rod's writing, particularly around the midterm elections; I posted a comment detailing those critiques at your blog, and you deleted it, but the comment was (thankfully) copied here.
Anyway, you seem to think that our rather frequent barbs at Mr. Dreher is making a substantive response less likley: "The only thing they succeed in doing, by their sheer nastiness, is making sure that he will never hear whatever good ideas they might have."
Thing is, I don't think I've ever seen Rod offer a substantive response to John da Fiesole and his "nice, clear critique." Or to Jonah Goldberg, Kevin Holtsberry, Gilbert Meilaender, anyone else who's raised substantive objections at Rod's blog, or even to you.
The most I've seen him do is point to other people's responses to the criticisms, as he did here, in citing Daniel Larison's response to Meilaender. If you know of a more substantive response than this, I welcome you to point it out.
But if no such response exists, what then? Is satire and ridicule really too terrible a response to a political writer and newspaper editor who apparently has a pretty nasty habit of deliberately avoiding the tough but necessary job of responding personally to substantive criticism even from his peers?
If you think so, I'd love to hear you say so.
Bubba
You don't have the moral high ground in criticizing this blog, as you not only continue to insult us, you are now consistently deleting from the comments at your blog even our most civil attempts to defend ourselves.
I'm mentioning this here because you seem unwilling even to note that you're doing this, to say nothing of an explanation why.
You do however bring up an argument that deserves a response:
The thing is, in cyberspace, the punches don't really land. So Dreher just goes on doing his thing. The only thing they succeed in doing, by their sheer nastiness, is making sure that he will never hear whatever good ideas they might have.
Compare them to, say, Disputations. Now *that's* a substantive critique. And yet nowhere does Kreitzberg feel the need to write stupid doggerel, nor to pore over Dreher's writings looking for damning details that prove him a liar, nor to make fun of his trauma on 9/11. Just a nice, clear critique of some of the problems with Dreher's presentation of CC ideas.
As an aside, I would contend that much of the substance of John da Fiesole's critique can also be found here, if a little less obvious amidst the parodies and digressions. I would argue that one of his central points -- the incoherence of Rod's belief systems -- is one of our central themes. We also have other substantive criticisms about Rod's writing, particularly around the midterm elections; I posted a comment detailing those critiques at your blog, and you deleted it, but the comment was (thankfully) copied here.
Anyway, you seem to think that our rather frequent barbs at Mr. Dreher is making a substantive response less likley: "The only thing they succeed in doing, by their sheer nastiness, is making sure that he will never hear whatever good ideas they might have."
Thing is, I don't think I've ever seen Rod offer a substantive response to John da Fiesole and his "nice, clear critique." Or to Jonah Goldberg, Kevin Holtsberry, Gilbert Meilaender, anyone else who's raised substantive objections at Rod's blog, or even to you.
The most I've seen him do is point to other people's responses to the criticisms, as he did here, in citing Daniel Larison's response to Meilaender. If you know of a more substantive response than this, I welcome you to point it out.
But if no such response exists, what then? Is satire and ridicule really too terrible a response to a political writer and newspaper editor who apparently has a pretty nasty habit of deliberately avoiding the tough but necessary job of responding personally to substantive criticism even from his peers?
If you think so, I'd love to hear you say so.
Bubba
posted by Anonymous at 7:08 PM
14 Comments:
let's not forget that in addition to selective deletion of comments, Shea also *bans* those whose writing he would rather his acolytes not compare and contrast to his own.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
hey, i just pulled a mark shea and deleted a comment of mine! it makes me feel very potent indeed.
one more thing, mr. shea. we've been doing this for a while. earlier in the year, we provided benedict with some substantial, pointed criticism, and we did so in a civilized manner. first the criticism was ignored, then it was ridiculed, then it was insulted. maybe it's time for *you* to do a little homework and read the stuff we wrote earlier in the year. the stuff that was ignored by dreher, utterly.
dreher and his friends, you among them, demonstrate repeatedly, ad nauseaum, a dishonest and cowardly way of dealing people. it's a way of being that *deserves* mockery and derision. so eat up.
I've said it before; if people actually come over to this site from the man's links they are going to really have a hard time finding the hatred or nastiness or whatever they were supposed to find. They'll find scorn and derision for certain ideas, granted. Maybe some disdain for snobbery; that's just American, isn't it? In the case of my posts they will no doubt rightly detect unabashed buffoonery and possibly congenital laziness, underachievement and drunkenness.
But hate? (hiccup)
Maybe they'll assume there was a bunch of hate stuff and we deleted it? Hey, what's this delete key do..........
Compare them to, say, Disputations. Now *that's* a substantive critique.
Yeah, that was a bit like being called up to the podium at a teetotallers convention just as you're knocking back a pint.
I would say that the inference of "hatred" is based on two things. First, some comments here really do cross a line of, call it civility; Cubeland Mystic is pretty good, I think, at gently pointing these out.
More obviously, though, the whole thrust of this website is, by design, antagonistic. The line about being Contra-Crunchy, not Contra-Roddy, doesn't really work, in large part because, as I've argued before, "Crunchy Conservatism" is little more than a set of Rod's current opinions.
The result is a website that is effectively directed at opposing the opinions of one man, and though that doesn't imply hatred it does strike the outside observer as peculiar, given the relative obscurity of the one man being opposed.
The natural question -- which, of course, folks here have been asking themselves for months -- is, "Why bother?" Several Contras have included in their answer something along the lines of, "He's got it coming." Again, that needn't amount to outright hatred, to wanting evil things for him, but I don't think anyone can reasonably deny that personal antipathy toward Rod is expressed on this website. (Even if it's nowhere near the only thing expressed.)
tom, As Cube has *also* pointed out, indisputably in favor of the contras, dreher cloaks his wannabe cult in the mantle of politics, namely conservatism. that opens the debate wide up, much to benedict's chagrin, maybe this is was an unintended consequence of his sloppy use of words (exquisite writer my foot), but too bad for him. he'll have to learn to be more careful.
" I don't think anyone can reasonably deny that personal antipathy toward Rod is expressed on this website."
so what? we're adults. shea and dreher express "personal antipathy" toward us continuously, often unprovoked, and we don't give a hoot.
(expressed personal antipathy is positively celebrated when directed at bush). the problem is its often unfunny and unpersuasive, whereas the contras are funny and are good at persuasion -- *that's* what bothers people, not the personal antipathy.
At this point Rod has moved on from the wine post, perhaps you have too. But I don’t think everyone has realized the extent of the wound that that exchange self-inflicted. Those of us who are trying to simplify our lives take these things very seriously. Over at the wine post Joining her voice to Bubba's Watsy asks, “Is it a Crunchy thing to drink cheap wine from France?”
It may seem trivial to you all, but to me it is not. To see a big pile of Duboeuf in the middle of the floor at the grocery store really makes me pause to consider if anyone really has a visceral lasting attachment to an imported French tradition? Like next year if a the crop is wiped out by terrorists in France is anyone here in the states going to tragically miss the Beaujolais Nouveau? It’s a big load of marketing crap.
Perhaps that wine exchanged caused a lot of folks to see that this book and blog is not really a serious effort in building a pro-life culture. If you are really really into lasting and local then Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé means nothing!
Why this is important? Culture aids in helping kids make the right choices. I was hopeful back in the spring because I see a role for simplicity to help a young couple say no to abortion or abstain in the first place. The pace at which the state runs little kids from the time they are five is horrible. For what? Explain to an obstinate five year old that if we are late one more time to school the government is going to come down hard on us. He's not going to get into the right schools if we don't drive him into the ground from age five.
It is important to address these topics because we change our life’s direction based on the culture. A boy may go to law school when he really should be a carpenter. Helping to change the culture of death to a culture of life is a goal of my blog.
I would not underestimate yesterday’s post and the effect it would have on people like me who take this stuff seriously. You may not see the power of simple things but we do. And when a major proponent of simplicity and tradition advocates for a phony contrived marketing gimmick people like me are going to notice. Then we begin to see that the book was really a cynical ploy to use us to make money. No answer yet to Watsy’s question.
"Gosh, Mark is friends with Rod; why do you suppose he's not mean to him?"
-- tom's comment on shea's blog
Uh tom, i'm not interested that mark is friends with rod. i'm interested in intellectual consistency, civility and maturity. i'm interested in healthy debate. the fact that they aren't -- that they are going to behave as a gang rather than as individual thinkers, sacrificing intelligent thinking and debating in the process -- means THEY are the ones setting the playground tone, not us.
maybe you should discuss your problems with us on our blog. discussing them on shea's blog is pretty inefficient, considering we're either banned or deleted at every turn.
Kathleen:
Actually, I have written maybe two or three comments here to the effect that I thought people were proposing "dark motives and designs, on the part of the crunchies and others," (to quote more from my comment at CAEI!) when more direct and pedestrian motives would explain their actions.
i see, so there's nothing dark about shea inventing weird, over the top insults like the "witch queen of angmar" and then linking to my personal blog profile. it's just "pedestrian" -- it's what good catholic/ex catholic friends do for each other. the dreher-shea relationship is a beacon for us all. would that i had friends like that. (actually i did have a friend like that in high school -- he wrote weird stories about me licking wine off my lips, kinda like what dreher wrote yesterday -- he ended up calling my house five times a day and i almost called the police)
yeah, and we ask ourselves daily whether we are foolish for doing so. no joke. here's the problem: benedict and his friends keep parading in front of us with "kick me, kick me, please!" signs taped to their backs, fronts, sides and foreheads. i mean ... OKAY. WE WILL.
hey, i was musing on the phenomenon that is mark shea (reading some early coalition for fog entires, which is pretty fun). i clicked shea's november 20 podcast -- wow! the man is expounding upon the improbability of extraterrestrial life. you see, he read a book about it, and he's catholic (though crucially not of the "tribal" variety, shea's pet name for cradles), so i guess he feels he has special insight into whether or not there is extraterrestrial life in the 400 billion stars of the milky way, our little galaxy, or for that matter the 80 billion galaxies detected by Hubble. man! I too would really "enjoy" being catholic on a whole 'nother level if it meant it gave me answers about every possible problem under the sun -- foreign policy, realpolitik, and now .... SPAAAACE.
seriously, this podcast sounds exactly like the sort of thing that's a knee slapper for audiences a hundred years later. those silly scientists behind SETI -- if only Shea had been blogging 20 years ago, he would have been able to set them straight.
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