All of Political Twitter at Rod Dreher today pic.twitter.com/MzXv8j3ojg
— Alex Muresianu (@ahardtospell) October 5, 2021
The opening to Dreher’s latest article is, indeed, being shared all over twitter — almost always without a link. I try, for fairness, to at least *skim* anything I post here, but as it turns out it’s not only Dreher, he got it past the censors at American Conservative, and frankly I do enough for you people without risking my hard drive along with my blood pressure. So, let it be known, there’s a reason well beyond the usual NSFW I’m putting this below the fold…
Why do people keep treating Rod Dreher as a serious intellectual? pic.twitter.com/C8jxu63Zin
— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) October 5, 2021
I saw the screen cap going around and I didn't believe it was real until I saw it on the American Conservative website.
— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) October 5, 2021
Because on the right this IS serious intellectualism.
— Barry Bonds juiced for our sins (@4to15character) October 5, 2021
Excited for Rod Dreher and Andrew Sullivan to start their new publication, the Caucasian Journal of Unsolicited Genital Appraisal
— Abbott and Costello Meet Sam Thielman (@samthielman) October 6, 2021
Maybe not being recognized by the Pope broke something in Dreher’s brain.
While everybody is talking about Rod Dreher, let’s remember the time he thought the Pope read his book and knew who he was until he got dunked on back to the Stone Age. pic.twitter.com/rnlJ7c7epe
— Mike Beauvais (@MikeBeauvais) October 5, 2021
Rod Dreher has been a Harvard University social experiment to see how long it takes exposure to takes to force left-of-centre readers to become the Joker. We thank you for your participation.
— Sharon Kuruvilla ? ✝️ ?️ (@Sharon_Kuruvila) October 5, 2021
opiejeanne
Still shaking my head over his wording and choice of subject. This man needs an editor, . And a good kicking.
scott (the other one)
What, and I truly mean this, the hell?
John Revolta
That boy ain’t right
oldster
Bad people just assume that everyone else has their character flaws. It’s why loss-prevention HR asks prospective employees to estimate how common pilferage is. If they say, “everybody takes something from work now and then,” well, it’s a flag .
And racists are just sure that the rest of us are stone-cold racist, too, if we’d just stop acting so hypocritical high and mighty for a change.
That’s why a bold truth-teller like Dreher is sure that he can lead off with, “everybody treated the black kid in class like a freak-show, amirite?” and the rest of us will be nodding along.
The sounds you hear are not murmurs of agreement, Mr Dreher, they are gag-reflexes.
montanareddog
@John Revolta: Ain’t that the truth.
How long before he claims someone must have hacked his TAC login? If I were Mrs Dreher (thankfully, I am not), I would be considering an intervention.
Looking forward to Suzanne’s opinion if she is around this late.
Chetan Murthy
@oldster: They used to keep this racist shit on the down-low. Now they’re happy to let their freak flag fly, eh ?
oldster
@Chetan Murthy:
The great disinhibition of 2016.
And the weird thing is that, at a neutral descriptive level, it turned out that the racists’ estimate of the prevalence of racism was more accurate than mine after all.
“What percentage of the electorate would vote for a visibly unqualified and grossly racist candidate, simply because his own horribleness gave them permission to be horrible?”
In 2015, my answer was, I dunno, 15%? Surely there cannot be more stone-cold racists among us than that? Then the primaries started rolling in, and I had to revise upwards. But surely, I thought, the number is way under 50%.
Then election night happened, and I had to revise upwards again.
I was a happier person, back when I gave my fellow-citizens too much credit.
HumboldtBlue
I thought the Twitter feed from Edroso was enough Dreher, and yet, here we are.
Here’s some Simon’s Cat to get us by
Chetan Murthy
@oldster: It’s a terrible thing, to learn just how devoid of any shred of decency our countrymen are, isn’t it? I agree with you 100%. And the GrOPer leadership are working hard, working hard to make them worse — to make them ever-more-ready for violence. It’s chilling.
LesGS
Folks interested in parents actually thinking about whether to circumcise their boys or not are probably tearing their hair out. Way to make this creepy and racist, Rod!
I have daughters so I never had to personally decide whether to circumcise or not. I would have said “No,” however. I’m trans, and have listened to intersex individuals fighting to restrain the medical establishment from messing with newborns’ genitals, asking them to wait and to seek informed consent as to whether they want any kind of surgery or not. Circumcision is not a risk-free surgical procedure. It’s cosmetic. And while it’s a small percentage, boys do die or are horribly mutilated because of the surgery.
Ascap_scab
Should I change my nym to ‘Third Grade Primitive Root Weiner’? It seems a little unwieldy. Maybe I should circumcise it to TGPRW. But then how would I impress the other third graders?
Obligatory Jim Jordan mention.
oldster
@Chetan Murthy:
GOP Leadership:
“Okay, so you know that Lincoln thing about the better angels of our nature and stuff? Well, how about if we promote the *worser* ones, instead, and see how that works for us?”
And, combined with Russian interference, Comey’s cowardice, and a dysfunctional media, it worked for them.
Chetan Murthy
@LesGS: Before I say anything else, I just wanna stress that male circumcision is nothing like FGM. Any comparison there is just a travesty. The latter is a brutal misogynist assault, an amputation that every decent person should condemn, and should be met with every kind of legal pushback: criminal sanction, etc.
But that said, I’m uncircumcised, and if somebody tried to circumcise me, I’d kill ’em before I let it happen. The foreskin is a very sensitive organ, and it covers and protects an even more sensitive organ: the glans. Circumcision doesn’t merely remove the foreskin; it also exposes the glans to constant stimulation, and that causes the glans to become insensitive. Without going into detail, this is an *amputation* [again, nothing like FGM, but still …] and it’s not just a minor procedure.
Boys should be able to decide for themselves whether they want this done. I doubt that any boy who has passed puberty, would choose circumcision.
There is of course the hygiene issue: boys should be taught to stay clean, quite simply. And then there is the issue of STD transmission. Again, that’s a matter of staying clean, and getting tested.
But jesus, circumcision is a big deal, an amputation of the most sensitive parts of the male sex organ, and it must not to be done without *consent*.
And frankly, I don’t care what some Great Sky Father said a few thousand years ago. I just don’t care: it should only be done with *consent*.
Chetan Murthy
@oldster: I was thinking of a different Lincoln thing — his Cooper Union speech: “Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.“
oldster
@Chetan Murthy:
“Rule or Ruin” is the title of Mitch McConnell’s autobiography.
With the clumsy subtitle, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”
But Mitch could not get away with it, if the press corps did not constantly go along. “Republicans filibustered the debt ceiling bill today, which means that Democrats are the murderers of America’s credit rating.”
I wish that Lincoln dude had not been so prescient, or that our future did not look so much like his present.
LesGS
@Chetan Murthy: Thank you for your forthright comment. I can do nothing but throw my total agreement behind it.
Not to diminish the human consequences, but in the last year I’ve started following some dog breeders on YouTube, some of whom breed dogs where cropped ears are their club standard. And they point out, correctly, that dogs with floppy ears have a lot more ear infections than dogs with cropped (or naturally erect) ears. So cropped ears are more hygienic. How many people who are outraged by ear cropping object to the circumcision of human babies? I’ve only recently been trying to wrap my thoughts around this.
Chetan Murthy
@LesGS: A lotta people [men] think their minor children are their property. Some of those people [again, *men*] think the same of adult female offspring and relatives.
Chetan Murthy
@LesGS: I thought I should add that I’m not a “activist” about this. If I were to become an activist, it would be about FGM. The most important red line in the culture wars is Roe v. Wade, and misogyny generally.
I only wrote what I wrote, b/c the subject came up, and I don’t feel like I should stay silent when I have such a strong opinion based on lived experience, is all.
Mo Salad
Oh, I wish I had a primitive root weiner,
That is how I’d truly like to pee-ee-ee.
‘Cause if I had a primitive root weiner,
Everyone would be in love with me.
LesGS
@LesGS: And to clarify a bit: I don’t think cropping a dog’s ears diminishes its ability to hear significantly, if at all. The removal of the foreskin does have a significant impact on male sexual response.
Chetan Murthy
@LesGS:
A-yup. And like I said: if somebody tried to snip mine off, I’d make sure they didn’t succeed, no matter what it took.
Brachiator
The opening paragraph of this article is beyond bizarre, but the rest of it is fairly conventional. I do wonder if Rod is implying that good white conservative Christian men need to make sure that their penises look different from the heathen Other. Would there be checkpoints where men could drop trousers?
I wondered for about half a second whether circumcision rates have changed in the US over the years. But I really don’t care that much.
But this Rod guy is strange in all kinds of ways, all of them unpleasant. And he is a senior editor at The American Conservative? And so a gatekeeper who determines what gets published? Yikes.
LesGS
@Chetan Murthy: I’m not an activist on this either. I’m just trans and want folks – young, old – to be able to manifest themselves as best they can.
FGM is an extremely more dire procedure than male circumcision. The latter is *far* more pedestrian in North America, and it would be great if parents thought about it a bit more.
Chetan Murthy
@Brachiator: Well, it is Uncle Pat Buchanan’s rag, after all. Can’t really expect decency from a place like that. They had Daniel Larison writing there, and he was often OK, showed real compassion for people not living in America, not white. But they fired him.
I’m sure you remember what Molly Ivins said about Uncle Pat’s speech at the 1992 RNC: “Sounded better in the original German”.
Chetan Murthy
@LesGS: Your framing is excellent. It’s not about some holy crusade to stop the practice. Just a bit-by-bit effort to get parents to think about why they’re putting their sons thru unnecessary surgery when they could wait until the sons could decide for themselves.
Brachiator
@Chetan Murthy:
When my friends and family were first having kids after growing up and getting married, the women pretty much decided that the boys would be circumcised.
BTW, even though it is an absolutely trivial procedure by comparison, I think that at a certain age, American girls get their ears pierced. It is just something that is done, and everyone understands that it is just part of life.
LesGS
@Brachiator: It is weird, huh? I’m really confused at to what his end goal is. Is he just trying to trigger “The Libs”? Maybe he’s just being upfront with his early psycho-sexual experiences. It’s not like I don’t have a few of my own. There’s always the Turkish soldiers, y’know?
Winston
When our first child was a boy we talked about this and my wife consulted with her mother and their consensus was that the boy would last longer at sex and give the girl more pleasure, sans foreskin. I didn’t have a say. But it sounded good and and since I was, I felt strong.
Brachiator
@Chetan Murthy:
The opening paragraph is so bizarre that it overwhelms the rest of the article, which is more humane and compassionate.
Bad writing. Worse editing.
mrmoshpotato
Hahaha, well played. Also, fuck Andrew Sullivan too.
Baud
My normie lessons are paying off. I truly don’t care about Dreher, not even as entertainment.
FWIW, IMHO, the whole purpose is to get laughed at by liberals, which is a badge of honor in the right wing world.
LesGS
@Brachiator: I don’t believe girls (or any kids) should have their ears pierced before they request it. While less impactful than circumcision, there can be unpleasant results. One of my daughters dealt with disfiguring keloids with her piercings. Given the kid, I was grateful she couldn’t blame her parents for putting that piercing upon her. She’s fierce.
The Thin Black Duke
I can’t believe we’re having this conversation at stupid o’clock in the a.m.
Benno
@Mo Salad: I think you win the thread.
OzarkHillbilly
@The Thin Black Duke: Some of us aren’t.
Chris Johnson
@Chetan Murthy: Don’t lose your mind TOO hard over it. I mean, on the one hand, there’s all that facebook-type brainwashing, but on the other hand they DID cheat as hard as they possibly could, every time.
You can’t really go by the vote when they cheat the vote as hard as they can. They’re puffing themselves up to try and look bigger than they are.
Winston
@Winston: The only thing is, if I were the last man with the last woman on the planet, I doubt I would be capable or repopulating the world, due to my insensitivity. Oh well.
Winston
@Winston: capable of
Morzer
So Rod Dreher has finally been driven mad by his letters to himself from reasonable bigots.
JR
Worst Def Comedy Jam routine ever.
Chief Oshkosh
@oldster:
Me, too. And it’s made me more pessimistic about everything.
Ah well. I guess all’s to be done is the best we can do.
lowtechcyclist
@LesGS:
Then I’m sure glad I was circumcised, because through my mid-40s, I wouldn’t have wanted my response amped up any more than it was.
It’s dialed back in the decades since then, but I expect that’s strictly a function of age, and likely would have happened regardless of circumcision status.
MomSense
@LesGS:
I think a lot conservatives are raised with extremely unhealthy beliefs and feelings about bodies, sexuality and morality and simultaneously with the expectation to be obedient to these beliefs. Rob is finally feeling a little free but he’s still saddled with racism and stunted development ( plus he’s an arrogant fuck) so his first questioning blurts out in this stupid fucking way. He reminds me of the boys I grew up with-annoying Alex P Keaton types.
Tony Jay
It’s Dreher, he’s a wannabe martyr to the cause of Xtreme Holier Than Thouness and a desperate click-whore who just wants everyone to know he’s written books about how bad they all are and how much God knows and respects his willingness to always be right about everything.
This is the guy who simply could not accept that ‘those people’ were right to drag TV chef Paula Dean for being a racist hag and went on and on and on and on about it in post after post after post until eventually announcing that the failure of Teh Left to burn all of their Rolling Stones albums over the racism inherent in ‘Brown Sugar’ meant they were hypocrites and therefore all of the accusations against Dean could be ignored.
I’m sure he’ll ‘prove’ how right he was to say what he said and pull a muscle patting himself on the back for his brave stand against Leftist cancel-culture, etc.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Who?
PST
I used to read Dreher from time to time just to try to understand what that particular kind of crazy was all about. I remember several columns devoted to the proposition that you could not be a good Christian if you reject a belief in poltergeist as mere superstition. I gave up after that.
prostratedragon
We all have moments when we should have left well enough alone, but only some of us should be condemned to eternity with no soundtrack other than our own greatest hits. Sounds like there might be such a case here.
LesGS
@lowtechcyclist: I’m glad that the state of being circumcised worked out to your advantage. I’m assuming from your comment that you didn’t choose whether you’d be circumcised or not. Like, you were a newborn baby when it was done to you. Your parents decided for you and circumcision was standard for that place and time. It was essentially a thoughtless decision.
As a thought experiment, do you think if you hadn’t been circumcised as a newborn, would you have had it done at 18, when you were old enough to make your own choice legally? Yes is a perfectly acceptable answer.
LesGS
@MomSense: I’m a trained sex educator for the 5 to 18+yo age range. Holy heck, Rod needs therapy.
oldster
@LesGS:
I can’t speak for lowtechcyclist, but like him I would say that I never thought to myself, “I wish my genitals were more sensitive!” Their endless excitability gave me plenty of trouble for my first six or seven decades, and I am glad that they have finally calmed the fuck down, a bit.
As to your other question: I was circumcised as an infant, and never in a million years would have chosen to do it, at any age.
More than that: I made a point of forbidding the hospitals to circumcise our sons.
But I did that because I am deeply opposed to mutilating bodies, and I did not want my boys to suffer that trauma. Not because I thought, “these kids are going to need more genital sensitivity when they are teen-agers!” Oh, god no. Again, my mutilated dick has given me ample sensitivity throughout it’s ill-fated life, and more would not have been better. I just wanted to protect my little guys from needless assault.
And of course my children have thanked me for my courageous and ha ha ha who am I kidding. They don’t think I did anything special, they just think circumcision is crazy and gross and who would do that.
(Religious stuff aside, which is a separate conversation.)
Barbara
@LesGS: When my firstborn daughter was in the NICU, I witnessed the circumcision of another baby. It was so upsetting that I swore I would never allow it if I had a son, and I didn’t.
Ken
I just checked, and PopeHat hasn’t changed his. Then again, it’s not exactly the most important news of the day, or even really news — we knew “Dreher is weird” some time ago, didn’t we?
Suzanne
@PST:
Yeah, me too. I still read him on occasion. But he’s boring now, they’re all the same post, and he does absolutely zero meaningful self-analysis.
Like, I have read a few of his posts about how it’s so sad that the younger generations aren’t going to church, and he just cannot figure out that people are going to church less because they don’t want to be around people like Rod Dreher. He just cannot make that jump.
Ken
Did he convert to Christianity? I’ve noticed that converts often take the peripheral doctrinal points a lot more seriously than people who grew up in a denomination. Not that I’ve heard of any denomination that believes in poltergeists.
Starfish
@The Thin Black Duke: The level of sobriety needed for this particular conversation is less than what is available to us in the morning.
apocalipstick
@Ascap_scab:
“Third Grade Primitive Root Weiner” is the best jam band name evah.
superdestroyer
@opiejeanne: Every writer at the American Conservative needs an editor. Dreher never seems to be able to develop any ideas except that his religious beliefs trump everything else.
Don K
American right wingers obsess about gay sex and male genitalia even more than gay men do.
In my neck of the woods (South Jersey) in the mid-50s, circumcision was absolutely universal. Literally every boy in the junior-high locker room was circumcised (and believe me, I checked – gay-male obsession with male genitalia and all of that). I was well into my 20s before I saw an uncircumcised wiener in person. If I had a choice in the matter, would I have had it done? No; I just think uncut willies look way cooler.
Gin & Tonic
Everyone in favor of routine circumcision should read Gary Shteyngart’s piece in this week’s New Yorker. Why this bizarre and barbaric practice is still legal in the US escapes me.
superdestroyer
@Suzanne: You should read his Orban posts. His entire schtick is that if the U.S. has an intelligent, discipline, knowledge Trump-like president then all of the court rulings on gay marriage, diversity, equity, inclusion, non-binary could be rolled back and the U.S. would be a better place.
Dreher is insane enough to demand that homosexual high school students be bullied by administration and denied counselling while claiming it is for the homosexual students own protection and safety.
Gretchen
@superdestroyer: he’s very upset about gay people being accepted. He has a long angry piece today about a German Catholic bishop saying gay marriage is ok.
Gretchen
@Ken: he started Protestant, then converted to Catholicism. That wasn’t strict enough, so now he’s Orthodox. He is convinced that racism is over, and talking about race, diversity, homosexuality is the real problem, and companies trying for a diverse workforce are just overlooking superior white men. Why can’t we go back to the 50s, when all the women and black people were happy and the gays were quiet about it? And yes, he needs an editor to cut every column by about 2/3.
J R in WV
@Gretchen:
Does Orthodoxy believe in ghosts that move crap around? I think not… but I’m pretty ignorant of Orthodoxy.