From Pine View Farm

On Little Ricky and Fanaticism 2

Meghan Daum sees parallels between the Haredim of Israel, who have lately been in the news for tormenting school girls for not meeting their dress code, and Little Ricky. She muses about why the punditocracy continues to take Little Ricky seriously, then ascribes it to the mythic power in Republican circles of our own ultra-orthodox Christian sects.

Why does Santorum persist with his rhetoric? Well, in fairness, he’s a conservative (and an intensely literal-minded) Catholic, and he seems to believe most of it personally, even if hardly anyone else does. But zealots in Israel believe it’s OK to spit at schoolgirls, even if hardly anyone else does. In both cases, the problem is what happens to democratic principles when such personal beliefs intersect public policy.

In the U.S., we too often grant the noisiest, most threatening zealots too much power to set the agenda. We’re complicit in creating the illusion that religious fundamentalism is so rabid and so monolithic that we must appease it in order to keep it from turning against us.

Sincerity is not ipso facto a virtue, though some would have it so.

A sincere whack job is still a whack job.

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2 comments

  1. George

    January 15, 2012 at 8:07 pm

    “We’re complicit in creating the illusion that religious fundamentalism is so rabid and so monolithic that we must appease it in order to keep it from turning against us.” I don’t think that’s right at all. Santorum — look what’s been done to his name. Certainly no appeasing, there, and it wasn’t just the gay community who helped make it that way although Dan Savage was the driver. I think Santorum stays alive because he’s adept at the practiced GOP use of a mainstream media which, in practicing its cherished objectivism and he said/she said norms, simply can’t and won’t say the psychopath is, indeed, a psychopath, one in need of banishment. Instead we have a situation in which wearing a sweater vest, smiling a lot, occasionally emitting a sentence that is not insane, and seeming polite and sincere on camera to the swells even when spouting hateful trash are ameliorating factors. Which seems to jive with your view that sincerity is not automatically a virtue.

     
  2. Frank

    January 16, 2012 at 9:25 am

    I find it interesting that, in covering Little Ricky, most reporters seem to take the “family values” bait that he preaches and emphasize that (probably because it allows them to say things sexual that otherwise they couldn’t say in the media).  

    A few, such as Will Bunch, persistently bring out his history as another corrupt Republican insider wheeler-dealer .

    In other words, I think you and Daum both have pieces of the truth.  You, about Santorum and his career; her, about much of the press coverage.

     

     
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