All posts tagged "Rod Dreher"

Republican critics of Trump are missing the mark by labeling the president the "Antichrist," Democratic political strategist James Carville said.

"I've called Trump the MF word, and I've called him worse than that. I've called him a sack of [expletive]," Carville said Tuesday on Politicon. "Rod [Dreher], who is Vance's spiritual mentor and Tucker Carlson, who is a person of some substance in the Republican Party, have both called Trump the Antichrist. Well, even I haven't gotten there."

Carville said that "even I haven't gotten there," but not because he thinks they're too soft. Rather, Carville thinks that Trump's right-wing critics are simply giving him too much credit by calling him the Antichrist....

As Benjamin Schwartz no doubt knew would happen when he wrote this screed of feeling superior to the writers of "Mad Men", conservatives would eat it up. It was pitch perfect for conservative viewers, in that it dismisses the racism and sexism of the era as something from the fever dreams of sanctimonious liberals, and it scapegoats the character of Betty Draper and even the actress who plays her in order to assuage conservative guilt about wanting to return to an era when women were expected to be servile sexbots. But it also praises the show, so that you don't feel guilty for watching it. Oh, I can't imagine what it must be like to be a social conservative invested in that show. You must flinch every time Betty walks onscreen, looking pained, bored, and miserable. That she herself is a petulant brat doesn't make up for that, because the show is making the point that oppression isn't suddenly right because the oppressed aren't perfect people. And the show implies that certain ugly character traits are the result of oppressive systems, that Betty Draper is a miserable person because she's been turned into one. How dare the show suggest that bitchy women might be more pleasant if they weren't treated like second class citizens? And so Schwartz gave you an out: Betty's character makes you uncomfortable because it's not realistic, and January Jones is a bad actress, and women in the 50s were never bored because being someone's sex-and-domestic appliance is what every woman really wants! It's not you, it's January Jones and the evils of feminism.

[rebelmouse-image 24748853 original_size="450x562" expand=1]It's always funny seeing right wingers struggle to explain why they're against pornography, even though they tend to agree with the basic premise of the most mean-spirited, sexist porn---that women are easily reduced to their sexual/reproductive functions, that sexual women are sluts that get what's coming to them, and that male sexuality is inherently disrespectful, aggressive, and even violent. Roy Edroso found a particularly comical example this week with Rod Dreher's pearl-clutching over a genre he openly admits having no direct experience with. As Roy notes, Rod starts off with a deceptively sensible-sounding assertion:

My guess? Overturning Marbury v. Madison. Ed Whelan spends a rather significant portion of his (limited) mental energy railing against the ideas that a.) times change (THEY DO NOT, he says on a five-pound laptop computer connected to the Internet) and b.) that judges talk funny.

Rod Dreher has stumbled upon the startling realization that old, failing malls usually become the "black mall" before going totally defunct. And it's a phenomenon, to his credit, he's interested in exploring. Decidedly not to his credit, he doesn't really want to know the actual reasons, but instead something else entirely: