Rod Dreher vs. "The Mongoloid Right"

Quoth the "Crunchy Con:"

Boy, this is getting awfully tiresome, and I'm sorry to see someone of Prof. Hanson's caliber descend into this kind of rhetoric. What is it supposed to mean to describe conservatives who have a beef with Limbaugh's views or rhetoric as "highbrow"? Are the opinions illegitimate or mistaken because they supposedly come from a vantage point of cultural sophistication? Even if that were true, which I doubt, since when do conservatives look down on sophistication itself? Since Joe the Plumber became the Whittaker Chambers of the Mongoloid* Right?

The Mongoloid Right? Well, talk about "a vantage point of cultural sophistication."

He then shows he's also dishonest when he claims no offense was meant to those with Downs syndrome -- he was merely using the word "Mongoloid" in the "Ignatian sense."

That refers to Ignatius J. Reilly, the obese geometry-and-theology enthusiast from A Confederacy of Dunces.

You know the "Ignatian sense" Ignatius uses the word "Mongoloid" in? Same way most people use it -- as a rough synonym for "retard."

Nice try, Rod. Or should I say -- Mr. Sophisticate.

I do enjoy the obvious delight Dreher takes in being called "highbrow" even as he feigns insult over the term. "Highbrow! (bats eyelids) Little old moi?"

Insult, incidentally, Hanson didn't intend, as the professor is obviously quite a bit more highbrow than the blogger Dreher. It is simply a descriptive term, intended to neither slander nor flatter. Dreher obviously considers himself among the cultural vanguard; Hanson is merely attempting to explain to Mr. Sophisticate what it is that his analysis misses; but Mr. Sophisticate needs no instruction on this whatsoever for, while lowbrows obviously need the guidance of highbrows, ultra-accomplished blogger elites like Dreher can learn nothing at all from the lowbrows. Their input unnecessary, as they're fucking retards anyway.

Fucking retards, I mean, in the Ignatian sense, meaning "brain damaged mental defectives."

If there's any insult here, it's to actual highbrows, chagrined to see their cachet diminished by the naming of Dreher as one of their cohort.

This is why he can't resist commenting about the dreaded insult "highbrow" -- he's actually not highbrow but considers himself to be and is really hot to persuade others. Pretty much his claim to being "highbrow" is that he masturbates every morning to Terry Gross.

Shut the fuck up already, Rod. You're a bad writer without anything interesting to say.

I stopped reading the Corner because of you, incidentally. You're tedious. You and you alone, pretty much, find the numbing repetition of your singleminded simplicity compelling.

Monty, Coming at Ya From a Vantage of Cultural Sophistication:

Dear Mr. Dreher:

Sophistication I have no problem with. Affectation I do, and you display much more of the latter than the former.

A dilettante of the intellect thinks that farting at a chou-chou Manhattan dinner party is sophisticated because it is so "unexpected". A true sophisticate like myself understands that you must physically wrestle the host down onto the floor and fart directly upon his head -- thus bringing the Kantian duality of upper-class and lower-class into the sharpest possible focus. You, Mister Dreher, are an amateur.

Now approach so that I may expel flatus upon your Sputnik-like noggin.

Don't be upset at the term "amateur," Dreher. He means it in the Ignatian sense of arriviste.

posted by Ace at 06:06 PM

| Access Comments