Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Is there really any difference between Rod Dreher and Frank Luntz?

After reading Molly Ball's recent piece on Frank Luntz in the Atlantic and blithely skipping most of it for not "cohering as a sociopolitical diagnosis", Rod Dreher finally finds a soft underpart he can sink his prehensile lips into with a condescending pity:

When he’s at home in Los Angeles, The Newsroom is the high point of Luntz’s week. He turns off his phone and gets a plate of spaghetti bolognese and a Coke Zero and sits in front of his 85-inch television, alone in his 14,000-square-foot palace. “That’s as good as it gets for me,” he says.

Let's leave for another day the fact that, first, it wasn't all that hard at all for Luntz's comments throughout Ball's article to "cohere as a sociopolitical diagnosis" (duh: Obama is a ferocious demagogue, and we are lucky we don't yet have class riots in the streets) for anyone not indentured to Obamacons like Wick Allison for their daily bread, and, second, Luntz's tone throughout the article and especially at the ending was anything but Dreher's opportunistically projected and self-serving "despair":

But today, Luntz is late for his afternoon talk to a D.C. lobbying shop. "Am I whining?" he asks. "Just say it if I am." I tell him it sounds like he's going through something very real, very human. "I am nothing if not human," he says, breaking into a grin. "I'm super-human. I'm a human-and-one-fifth. My God, if I'm not careful, I'll have to go not to the big and tall but the big and bigger store!" And then he walks away toward the elevator, off to do his soft-shoe routine for another audience of the rich and powerful.

Throughout the article, far from despairing, Luntz appears to be, at worst, merely reflective, and, at his wickedest, having a bit of fun at Ball's expense seeing how far he can put her on about the "agony" she finally takes away for her typical reader.

Dreher, though, in typical fashion thinks he has found another now-lower-on-the-food chain prey item he can pounce on when it finally seems safely down, cloaking his rush for the underparts in his trademark unctuous concern trolling compassion.

But for whatever Luntz's current career and life transitions, he's not having to let his pipes drip and he's not dependent on drugs and meditative prayer simply to function as an organism because of his congenital anxiety.

So that may be one difference between Luntz and Dreher.

Aside from that, though, both are word mechanics for hire who have built careers using their understanding of the uses and effects of language on the easily gulled to manipulate and control the destinies of their respective religious, political and cultural allies and enemies to the best of their abilities.

Luntz, however, has made no effort to disguise what he does for a living as anything else.  So that may be another sharp difference from Dreher.

Apart from the minor factors of being less well known, less influential, less affluent, less honest and aboveboard about his career efforts and in poorer mental and physical health than Luntz, then, how is Rod Dreher really any different from Frank Luntz at all?

Simply because, within that carefully curated chamber Dreher has created to shelter his high anxiety, the rebounding echoes of his own voice and those of that select handful of sycophants who are admitted to the temple claim he is?

How do you see it?

11 comments:

  1. OK, Keith, I did my homework and read both pieces.

    It also struck me is how utterly wrong Dreher's piece is about the guy. Lonely and miserable? Hardly -- the piece mentions his friends among CEOs (more than once), how he enjoys going to NFL games for the camaraderie, his close rapport with the owner of the Panthers, and how he's not married because he travels so much. And the bit about him retreating to watch The Newsroom didn't sound like it was out of sad resignation, but because Luntz likes the show.

    But the most telling to me was Dreher's bit about Luntz being pathetic by complaining that Hollywood wasn't calling him back. The Atlantic piece made it sound as Luntz was simply wondering why that was. Dreher was 180 deg wrong on this, IMO.

    If I were coming up with a "diagnosis", I'd say that Dreher's take sounded like an author of a book with less-than-hoped-for sales numbers projecting his own disappointment in Hollywood not calling him back. But I'm not, so I won't.

    P.S. Luntz differs also by being successful in selling his services to those who are willing to pay for the value received.

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    1. Luntz is a really smart guy with a lot of insight. I might not agree with some of his ideas, but I think that people like Rush Limbaugh could probably take a lesson or 2 from him on messaging.

      And obviously Dreher could also.

      Everybody projects... but some people learn to catch themselves at it. Others decide that the unexamined life is not only worth living but that it's worth blogging as well.

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    2. When I proclaim pity for the guy who's not married and travels a lot, that's a great way to hide the fact that I resent the burden of family and want to travel a lot.

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    3. Yes, the truth is that men have a tendency to want to get away, or to retreat to a "cave" in their house. I have that tendency myself. It has to be confronted and resisted. You made babies with your wife, you help her raise them and take care of them. (Roughly quoting Dr. Laura with that last sentence.)

      If you are Catholic then you have heard this mantra over and over: husbands and wives sanctify each other by learning to put up with each other, or some variation. The older priests say "Your wife is your bus ticket to Heaven, and you are your wife's bus ticket to Heaven." Life isn't easy and love gets more and more difficult as you realize all the sacrifice it entails. I can't imagine that the denomination of Dreher's back yard church sees things differently.

      But recently there is a picture of Dreher eating a sausage in his driver's seat. Not a particularly convivial meal.

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    4. I recall a certain blogger who shall remain nameless rolling eyes at a poll of students who said a main goal in life was to travel. this blogger basically said "why is everyone so Fixated on traveling?", while rolling eyes. fast forward a couple of years later and travelling is all the blogger does or writes about now.

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    5. And it's sort of interesting to note that if he/she didn't live out loud about all his/her traveling we'd all be none the wiser.

      Instead we get the impression that when he/she initially rolled-eyes, the main reason was jealousy, not righteous indignation. Now that person has acquired means, motive, and opportunity to travel so stay out of her way. I mean his/her way.

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  2. Might I add that the trained seals commenting on Dreher's piece ran immediately to the perhaps-unintended payload of how evil and despicable Luntz is for crafting the Republican message over the past 20 yrs.

    Dreher's NFRs are off the hook, too -- he joins the chorus on the evil-GOP thing, but of course with a self-righteous condescending pity angle. To wit:

    [NFR: This is getting to be absurd. How many times do I have to tell you that I don't think Frank Luntz is an admirable figure?! He has done as much as anybody not named George W. Bush to wreck the Republican Party. Note well that I don't think Terry McAuliffe is either, or Bill Clinton. But if either of those Democratic men had the pathetic life that Frank Luntz has, despite his money and success and fame, I would pity them too.. . .

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    1. Pik, that NFR is almost worthy of its own celebratory post: fully three times the length of the comment it's humping with the tone of a dog breaking rabid and starting to bite itself.

      "Look, you fools, the ruse was to cloak my opportunistic anti-Republican superiority over Luntz the boss wants me to write in dripping globules of pious pity, not explicitly stake him out naked here for a group beating.

      Now you're forcing me to pity him as hard as I possibly can here while I lose focus and wander off into the weeds with babbling anecdotes from my past just to cleanse my own hands of your stink which my clumsy execution of this ruse of mine has brought down on my head. ArArgh! Froth! Bite! GrrrArrr! Snap! Foamydroole! Ayoooooooooooo! Yok! Yok! Yok!"

      Keith

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    2. Actually I meant for that ref to Ghost in the Family to go under Pik's comment.

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    3. The difference between Dreher's criticism of "hardline" conservatives like Mark Levin -- for example -- and Luntz's criticism is that Dreher uses words like "creep" and "cretin" to describe Levin whereas Luntz referred to Levin's rhetoric as "problematic".

      Dreher should probably hire Frank Luntz.

      I could go for a Coke Zero right now. I mean, "nobody hurts, nobody dies", right?

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  3. Obviously this is a reference to A Ghost in the Family, a must read for anyone interested in Dreher-ology.

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