To cut straight to the specimen’s theologia odiosica:
| She [2] believes in the power of prayer! Imagine that! What a Yahoo! What does it matter if prayer and its efficacy stand at the center of all religious practice and belief? Every Sabbath, in synagogues worldwide, a prayer for the sick is spoken. It’s called a “mishabeirach,” [3] and it is the custom either for congregants to stand up and speak the name of the ill person they wish to pray for or to speak the name in the rabbi’s ear and have him recite it. Do we do this because we don’t believe in the power of prayer? There should be nothing exceptional to anyone in this country at this date about a politician who is also a believing Christian and who therefore thinks she owes her ascension to office to the role of the divine. What Palin said wasn’t even notable; it was what might be called Christian boilerplate. |
To go about in the world rattlin’ other folks’ boiler plates for ’em is impeccably in accord with Amendment I, let us get that clear first, Mr. Bones. Politique d’abord!
Having established that much beyond cavil or contradiction, then, let us go on to note that although boilerplate rattlin’ cannot ordinarily lead to one’s arrest or prosecution, self-shame and self-idiocy are not to be ruled out automatically. The Podhóretz specimen seems to have run into a little nonlethal flak at that altitude:
| UPDATE: After a day’s consideration, I think many commenters were right; the Times piece was not really an act of aggression, more an embarrassingly earnest effort to “understand” Sarah Palin, as though she were a native of a strange new world it had only recently discovered. I’ve amended the two words where I think I went too far. The rest of the piece can stand without qualification. |
Accordin’ly, the señorito invites its customers to strike ‘aggression’ and read ‘condescension’ at one point, thus givin’ rise to the slightly peculiar title of this morning’s sermonette. [3] And in a second retraction/amelioration, it replaces ‘contempt’ with, once again, ‘condescension.’ [4] There’s a whole lot of condescendin’ goin’ on over chez Podhóretz, it sure looks like! Why, one might even speak of ‘NEOcondescension'!
Who are these poor elitists that get the Podhorétzian chamber-pot emptied out on their heads? If thee knoweth "Kirk Johnson and Kim Severson" from Adam and Eve, respectively, thee knoweth more about them than I do, O Bones! And probably thee knoweth more than Podhóretz Minor does itself, although personal acquaintance with the hæretici should never be allowed to interfere with one’s detestation of their hærêsis, neither to augment a just detestation nor to diminish it.
It is a bit "over my paygrade" to explain exactly why prayer is useful even though Providence is immutable. Fortunately that product is widely available elsewhere. (Rather too widely available, perhaps, but never mind that.) Let us try to confine ourselves to the Podhorétzian sophisms and self-betterin’s without leaping into the deep end of the theopool.
Particularly sophistical and in need of self-betterment is the señorito’s use of the words ‘notable’ and ‘exceptional’. In fact, it skates right over what is really exceptional and notable about Mme. Putin despite actually mentionin’ the point itself. Play it again, Sam, and let us have a touch of emphasis, please!
| There should be nothing exceptional to anyone in this country at this date about a politician who is also a believing Christian and WHO THEREFORE THINKS SHE OWES HER ASCENSION TO OFFICE TO THE ROLE OF THE DIVINE. What Palin said wasn’t even notable; it was what might be called Christian boilerplate. |
From the technical standpoint of the former Christojudæan divinity, the important question must be whether or not the Governess thinks her ascension to office is more, or less, or otherwise providential than, say, her safe arrival at the supermarket six years ago last Wednesday afternoon. What did Johnson and Severson actually write that Master Podhóretz paraphrases from?
| “Just be amazed at the umbrella of this church here, where God is going to send you from this church,” Ms. Palin told the gathering in June of young graduates of a ministry program at the Assembly of God Church, a video of which has been posted on YouTube. “Believe me,” she said, “I know what I am saying — where God has sent me, from underneath the umbrella of this church, throughout the state.” |
Sigh. That evidence is perfectly useless to determine the point. Her Excellency may have meant that the apprentice Torquemadas and Savonarolas are to be amazed by grace when they finally wash up at the Fishhook Foodmart [6]. That would be impeccably orthodox and edifyin’. On the other hand, she may have been insinuatin’ that Father Zeus will eventually furnish them with a plum job much like her own, which is by way of being mythologically heretical as well as factually improbable. J&S must want us to suppose the latter, but that is not the same thing as reporting what Mme. S. Putin was thinkin’ when she thus orated.
In strictly political discussion, the speaker’s subjective niyya can ordinarily be left unexplored. The present, though, is what Benedictus de Spinôsis would have called a discursus theologico-politicus to which slightly different rules and regulations appertain.
J&S appear not to know the difference, or not to care if they know, and a few points should therefore be subtracted from their score, no doubt about it. But let us not get carried away, Mr. Bones. Bilge and Big Party cries like "an article intended to frighten rather than enlighten its readership" are mere señorito fodder. [7] The customers of the New York Times Company are not so completely out of contact with their own holy Homeland as not to have a reasonably accurate idea of where Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City stand on the question of petitionary prayer. Had J&S taken it upon themselves to supply some unsolicited éclaircissement on that topic, your typical snotty Manhattanite or Manhattanoid elitist would have felt that her intelligence was getting insulted.
The gross cartoon of out-of-touchness that Signorino Giovanni degli Poddórezzi would like to fob off on the Big Party’s marks and dupes can actually be found if one searches in the right places, Mr. Bones. The right place is abroad, and especially in Old Europe. Of course those folks really are out of touch with the Heimatland Gottes. [8]
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[1] Cf. inter multis an e-scribble called "Pelosi and Augustine" .
[2] Mme. Sarah Putin (sp?), the militant extremist Republican Governess of Alaska.
[3] Mî sheb-bárak, "He (or she) who hath blessed . . . ." is the incipit of a petition in the liturgy of specifically Israëlite Christojudæanity.
[4] After in-flight political correction, the full sentence runs
| Today, the New York Times published an article that, should it receive wide circulation (and it might, on the web), will do a great deal to harden evangelical attitudes against the supposed leftward swing — because it is an act of secular aggression condescension against a believing Christian. |
[5] This other passage is the señorito’s peroration, its BottomLine™, as I believe our friends in the Harvard Victory School MBA class like to call such things:
| The point here is that by treating the views of such people as though they are exotically fascinating at best and terrifyingly Other at worst, and by highlighting the views of a prominent Christian in an article intended to frighten rather than enlighten its readership, the New York Times (and those organizations sure to follow it down this path) only makes it likely that any ideological journey evangelicals might take this year will not be to the left, but back into the bosom of the Right. After all, who wants to be friends with someone who treats you with such XXXXXXXX condescension? |
[6] "189 E Nelson Ave, Wasilla, AK - (907) 373-5450." Dixit Googlemaps.
[7] More exactly, that is the fodder that Master Podhóretz proposes to feed his good ol’ ideobuddies from amongst the Great Unwashed. I take for granted that he does not eat at Dunkin’ Donuts much, himself personally.
[8] To evaluate poor old Aunt Nitsy on the basis of how well she communicates the suchness of God’s Country to persons entirely without first-hand experience would be preposterous if set up as the sole criterion. If it is to be criterion 113 of 1424, however, we may once again subtract a couple of points from the score and move on.
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