This entire piece is great, but may I suggest that this might be one of my favorite paragraphs Pierce has ever written:
Ross Douthat is a very sincere young man who writes a column for the New York Times, and someone who, alas, usually makes David Brooks read like Richard Brautigan, albeit with one memorable exception. Like many people who were born too late to have lived through the sixties, young master Douthat pretty much blames that decade for fashioning the handbasket in which his beloved America is currently en route to Hell. This is usually an occasion for a screed about drugs, and Beatles music, and sexytime outside of clerically-approved limits, and long hair, and George McGovern, and bra-burning, and the New Black Panthers and the assorted other denizens of the unruly — and largely imaginary — menagerie that offend the modern conservative intellect. However, Ross has a new book in which he describes yet another American institution that went bad at about half-past Pet Sounds — the Christian religion.
I’m still chuckling at half-past Pet Sounds. Plus, a Brautigan reference!
At any rate, as they say, read the whole thing. The Lost in Space reference is also genius.
rlrr
How did Douthat get a gig at the NYT?
gaz
It sort of pisses me off that you guys haven’t put him in the blogroll, at least last time I checked – I don’t use your blogroll section, primarily because of that. I read pierce all the time. Clearly, the BJ FP’ers do, too. You should really really consider fixing that.
General Stuck
@rlrr:
He farted the sound track from Love Story. Like all the rest of them.
dr. bloor
One can only hope that Douchehat keeps his streak of failing upward alive, and lands a gig with a funny hat and Prada shoes in the Vatican. He and the ghost of Sixtus V can have long chats about how everything has gone to hell.
ricky
You do know that snarky pop culture references, while satisfying to those readers, viewers and listeners who get them, are often a tell tale indicator that the perpetrator is about to fall vitim to Dennis Miller Syndrome.
Hill Dweller
Pierce’s evisceration of Kathleen Parker(Fleischer, Bush and Perino also, too) this morning was just as entertaining.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@rlrr:
Harvard grad.
c u n d gulag
Taibbi is terrific, but Pierce is the best and funniest Liberal (or any other, for that matter) political writer since Hunter S. Thompson in his hey-day.
And I can think of no higher praise.
kindness
The referral Charles gives to the TNR review is great too.
mainmati
Trout Fishing in America, one of the classic books of American poetry. Ah, Richard, you left us way too early. Yes, a great piece and thanks for sharing.
Brachiator
@rlrr:
The faux meritocracy of a Harvard degree and crony insider friends.
The Other Chuck
@ricky: I thought Dennis Miller Syndrome was about “pop culture” references being pretentious academic historical references delivered in drawly grade-school sarcasm, while the audience hoots and laughs to cover its understandable ignorance on the subject
“Yeah it’s like the Tenebrists said about Caravaggio, we know Mike more than Mike, right? [LIGHT LAUGHTER SIGN]”
Martin
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: And Catholic. The NYT is still NYCs local paper – and you’ve got to represent the Catholics. Doubthat is the perfect blend for the NYT – they can check off the educated, Catholic, and so-called adult Republican checkboxes, and having been vetted at the very liberal Atlantic didn’t hurt.
JustMe
This totally applies to Rod Dreher, as well– a writer who blames the 60s for everything and at the same time fashions himself as a campus conservative where it’s forever 1990 and he’s fighting against “political correctness.”
WereBear
I actually saw Douthat on the Bill Maher show. Seems awfully young for a pundit gig; and then he opens his mouth, and you realize he is way too immature to be, well, let out.
Garbo
OT, but this made me LOL so hard:
Way to stick the shiv in, Jim-Bone.
Steve
I have no idea who Richard Brautigan is. Y’all are too highbrow for me.
dedc79
Did you all know that it was Christianity that brought african americans civil rights? Christianity had nothing to do, however, with enslaving them in the first place or denying them civil rights for a century afterwards. This is the gospel truth, according to Douthat.
satby
I LOL’d at this one. The entire thing is awesome, with a topping of awesome sauce.
Steeplejack
Brautigan!
Okay, not exactly “Call me Ishmael” or “A screaming comes across the sky,” but still pretty cool in a retro-hippie way.
Need to put some Brautigan on the Nook. (Although I loved the hippie photographs on the covers of the old paperbacks.)
P.S. For first-timers I recommend Trout Fishing in America or A Confederate General from Big Sur.
Forum Transmitted Disease
I see the problem. The very things that give Douchebag a rash are all the necessary components of a really good party. Or a really fun life.
He’s just another Calvinist, just like they all are.
Uncle Cosmo
Pierce leaves the killshot for the ending:
I lived those days too–until I sat through one too many sermons shilling for cash for the new-school fund & dropped out about 6 weeks after confirmation.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
The only thing that Douchehat is remotely qualified for is asking people if they want fries with that.
General Stuck
@Steve:
Me neither. But have learned to fake it, I just stroke my chin and say, “Ah, Bach”
West of the Cascades
PLEASE add Pierce to the Blogroll!! This is my single source for snark (via the front pagers, comments, and links to other blogs), and half the time I’m too lazy to enter other URLs or click on other bookmarked sites. Also, Pierce links here (sort of – last I looked it was “Balloon Juiice” but it directed here).
Villago Delenda Est
@Uncle Cosmo:
And it is a brilliant killshot. Precisely on the money.
So to speak.
mainmati
@Steve: Sixties poet. Brautigan’s poetry was not highbrow, say, like T.S. Eliot. It was funny, earthy and sensual. You might want to try it sometime.
gaz
@West of the Cascades: co-fucking-signed.
cheers.
Steve
Here’s the latest evidence that the culture wars are not over.
gaz
@mainmati:
Wait, he wrote dirty limericks?
ETA: Anyone that can say with a straight face that any poetry is not by definition high-brow, is probably an effete elitist artsy snob. And a coastal liberal. /snark
Steeplejack
@Steve:
Quintessential hippie poet.
Sly
Funny how that happens.
Martin
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
As if you shouldn’t have already gleaned that from his Chunky Reese Witherspoon confession.
General Stuck
@Steve:
Yogurt can be a deadly weapon, sweetened with aspartame at very high velocity.
WereBear
My golly, I love this man’s writing:
Like I always say, if someone cannot expand their mind to encompass the divine; they shrink the divine until they can.
Martin
@Sly: In short, Douthat believes that television is the most accurate lens through which to view American history and politics – including those events that predate television.
Nylund
The Times has long been a punching bag for the right. I think they’re naive enough to think they can end this fact through appeasement and abdication by giving the Right access to their prime newspaper real estate. I’d wager that their criteria was something along these lines:
1. Politically Conservative
2. Highly Religious
3. Not crazy
4. Not racist
5. Ivy League Credentials
It’s probably pretty hard to find ANYONE who meets criteria 1 and 2 without violating 3 and 4. Throw in number 5 and it’s even tougher. Maybe the likes of Andrew Sullivan might meet them all, but his views on gay rights, Palin, etc. might violate number 1, and some may argue that his love of The Bell Curve presents problems with number 4.
My guess is that out of all the people who meet that list, Douthat was also likely the one they could pay the least.
gaz
@WereBear:
ZOMG I’m soooo mugging you and taking this now. =)
cheers
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Martin:
I can believe this. But Douchehat’s a convert, isn’t he?
As someone who was raised in the faith and was once quite religious(*), can I just say that I just don’t trust anyone who converts to Catholicism? I suppose that makes me a bigot, but I never claimed to be perfect.
(*) [Fun Fact: From the ages of 10-12 I was semi-seriously considering the priesthood. Puberty –and the computer that I got for xmas back in 1981– put the kibosh on that little notion pretty quickly].
gaz
@Nylund: no making me LOL while I’m still drinking coffee. You made a very astute observation about the NYT, and followed it with a beautiful punchline. Well Played, Sir. =) Cheers.
gaz
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
LOL.
Fun Fact: My wife studied CompSci in college before switching her major to religious studies. I still can’t wrap my head around that exactly, but she’s not Catholic, so there’s that =)
Omnes Omnibus
I read the title as “Piece of Douthat” which works quite well.
PWL
Frankly, since this is no longer a “Christian nation” (and never was), but also a Jewish,Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, etc, etc,and yes–atheist–nation, I’m tired of of schmucks like Douthat who proclaim all of America must abide by the tenets of Corporate Catholicism.
Besides, who would want to return to the Eisenhower era? One of the most boring, repressed periods in American history. Totally why the Sixties happened.
Persia
I knew I loved this guy.
danielx
To which I add, modern medicine, motor transport and the heliocentric theory. Douchehat’s only problems with the 1400s are the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the fact that the Gutenberg press as the sole medium for dissemination of his bullshit would be SO tiresome.
Persia
From the TNR review:
For fuck’s sake, Ross, people who didn’t give a shit about your God were here long before any ‘central stream’ showed up with guns and germs.
sublime33
Is Pet Sounds the most overrated album in Rock and Roll history? I am a huge music enthusiast and went to college in the mid 70’s. I must have scanned hundreds of people’s music collections and I think this album came up two times, because I purposefully looked for it. To be influential, shouldn’t people outside of the music critics inner circle have owned the album? It may have been innovative, but so was a lot of early Pink Floyd material and nobody bought that either.
WereBear
@gaz: You are welcome!
cckids
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Amen, from another raised in the church. Same goes for Mormonism–last year I met a woman who’d converted to the LDS as a 30-year old adult female. Now every time I’m around her I can’t help wondering FFS, WHY???
bootsy
@PWL: You believe that wicked Thomas Jefferson who said that America was not founded in any way on the Christian religion, over a true founding father like Ross Douthat? The mind reels.
(I don’t want to spread scurrilous rumours, but I heard somewhere that Jefferson was a scientist. Also.)
Persia
@sublime33: Sublime, you’re underestimating the impact it made on the producers who made the records you’d listen to for the next forty years plus. It sounds less groundbreaking to you because so many of the things they did (especially the levels of multitrack recording) are so familiar now.
Paul in KY
@sublime33: The ‘White Album’ is also overrated and ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ is a piece of crap. Anything done by Captain Beefheart is dreck.
Paul in KY
@cckids: Ask her if it was because of their strong stance on women’s issues.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Martin: I did. Reese with a few extra pounds? I’d have been on that like white on rice and ridden her til the dawn, bought her breakfast and given her a farewell slap on the backside.
He walked away.
Calvinist to the core. What a hellish, rotten existence.
Paul in KY
@Persia: That is a very good point about ‘Pet Sounds’.
sublime33
@Persia: Fair point, but the single “Good Vibrations” was recorded during the same Pet Sounds sessions and was a massive hit – and wasn’t included on the album. That single should get more of the glory than it does, and less should go to the album with the rest of the material recorded.
bago
Cheesus de kristos, as someone who is only in their mid thirties, this whole “references from the 60’s and 70’s” thing has jumped the shark.
sublime33
@Paul in KY: Agreed on all of the above. The White Album had some fine cuts, but Revolution #9 was one of the greatest wastes of vinyl in ecological history.
Trinity
Charlie Pierce is an american treasure.
Paul in KY
@sublime33: Going to see them at Bonnaroo. They damn well better play Good Vibrations & if they play that damned Kokomo song, I’m booing the crap out of them.
Paul in KY
@sublime33: I did listen to song backwards (something you can’t do with CDs) and there is some interesting sounds/words in there. Sort of spooky.
The song played the usual way is a waste of space, IMO.
Tommy D
@Steve: so do you also not know about Google?
Barbara
@General Stuck:
Richard Brautigan is the “essential” author for the 1960s, writing short, epigrammatic novels that “capture” the essence of the life of those who saw themselves as part of the emerging hippie ethos. I read “In Watermelon Sugar” and “The Abortion” when I was in high school. I didn’t get it, but apparently if I had been born 5-10 years earlier it all would have made sense.
He later committed suicide.
Steve
@Tommy D: Wouldn’t change the fact that I’ve never heard of him.
TooManyJens
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
::shrug:: My mom converted, not long after my dad’s quadruple-bypass scare (my Dad is a lifelong Catholic, and my siblings and I were raised that way). Didn’t seem to change her much, at least outwardly.
jake the snake
@Steeplejack:
Trout Fishing in America is oustanding. A friend of mine called it a series of essays on freedom.
Watermelon Sugar and Confederate General are readable, most everything else of his I’ve read is crap.
Felinious Wench
I would love to see Douthat and Elaine Pagels in a discussion of early Christianity and the relevance of the historical texts. Her books are what led me down the path of historical study of my faith, and I will forever be indebted to her for that. Opened my eyes to the many problems with current church dogma. Was a relief I wasn’t the only one.
handsmile
@Felinious Wench:
Myself, I would hope that Elaine Pagels would never agree to appear with Douthat to discuss this topic. Her own brilliant and path-braking scholarship would only be demeaned by association with his journalistic gruel.
Also, having attended several events at which Pagels was the sole speaker or panelist, she is far too measured and circumspect to treat charlatans like Douthat with the contempt and derision that a political satirist like Charles Pierce can so devastatingly wield.
However, in the grubby world of book publishing, their respective recent books may be deemed as a providential opportunity for such a pairing.
joel hanes
The Memoirs of Jesse James
I remember all those thousands of hours
that I spent in grade school watching the clock,
waiting for recess or lunch or to go home.
Waiting: for anything but school.
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
for all the time they stole from me.
Richard Brautigan
LanceThruster
@WereBear: The saddest thing about that episode was that panelist Thomas Frank (author “What’s Wrong With Kansas?” & “Pity The Billionaire”) was woefully quiet. I saw him on C-SPAN Book Talk masterfully deconstructing Reich Wing economic policies throughout recent US history. I was hoping for a little taste of that on Maher.
Instead, we got the smug blather of Boehner-colored Todd Bucholz. Never heard of this smarmy unfunny douche before and hope to never encounter him again.
John M. Burt
@West of the Cascades: Yeah, if you’re not up for a Richard Brautigan reference, you can at least make a M*A*S*H reference.
gelfling545
@gaz: I, too have tucked it away in my little velvet bag of snappy remarks.
Randy P
I was just reading about Elaine Pagels, so this commentary piqued my interest. The New Yorker reviewed a new book of hers in which she argues that the Book of Revelation, far from being prophecy, is actually political satire about the 1st Centruy church. And furthermore, that it’s anti-Christian, espousing the point of view that the Jesus movement should remain within Judaism.
I imagine this viewpoint doesn’t go over with “Left Behind” fans.
LanceThruster
@WereBear:
I like that phrasing. As an atheist, I find this in a somewhat similar vein.
“If your god hates the same things you hate, it’s probably not real.”
The Golux
@West of the Cascades: Using Firefox, if I type “Pie” in the address bar, Charlie Pierce’s blog is the first thing in the dropdown list. You hardly need links (or bookmarks) anymore.
General Stuck
@Barbara:
Back in the day, I used to read leaves of grass, the Mary Jane edition.
tones
Charles Pierce’s piece was magnificent, but only served to remind me of how frustrating it was to see this idiot on Bill Moyers’ show.
It seemed like even Bill was getting flustered with doubt-hat’s reflexive instinct to avoid answering questions with anything other than : “but both sides do it the exact same”.
Blarg!
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
Or, as Anne Lamott put it, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
LanceThruster
@Mnemosyne: I like it!
Chet
@General Stuck: I would consider that horse-and-buggy thinking.