Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Cheering Rod Dreher's Decreasing Interest in Clerical Homosexuality

Like the others I have to offer Rod sincere congratulations on a successful blog. I agree that Rod seems mellower these days, less angry--I think we've only had two or three posts on gay priests out of hundreds so far in the still-young 2008, whereas if you went back to the archives about this time in 2006 or last year, clerical homosexuality was to this blog what Hitler is to the History Channel.

I hope the election, as it unfolds today and till November, doesn't unhinge him--but I have my fears. In a way the failure of the Huckabee campaign to put up numbers has sort of called Rod's bluff: that he as a pundit can identify (if not claim to actually speak for) this vast electoral longing for socially conservative economic interventionism that is just aching for a leader to come claim the prize. If I had a dime for every time Rod used the phrase "sweet spot" to describe the Huckster's voting demographic, I'd owe millions to the IRS in additional taxes to pay for new middle-class subsidies. But fortunately that electorate is mostly in Rod's head. Even then, as a inner myth it pales next to other pundits' delusions, like Daniel "Americans crave to be more regimented into social hierarchies" Larison, or Frank "the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands if we only elect Obama" Schaeffer.

Context.