Irony is dead

Papa Mark writes:

I mentioned *my* views, which were grossly falsified by McKenna.

In a combox off this post, which includes the following choice tidbits:

[McKenna says] I demonstrate an insufficiently insatiable hunger and thirst for death, death, death, and more death

[McKenna's] blog is more or less devoted to obsessing over how to execute as many people as humanly possible

[McKenna] is naturally orgasmic [where ARE the semen stains? VJM] at the idea of hanging Saddam. Failure to be thrilled at the death of a human being and a general agreement with Pope John Paul that it's better to forego executing people unless you really need to is, for McKenna the ultimate crime and the source of numberless [can't count that high? VJM] entries on his vengeful blog.

Comment superfluous.

ANOTHER THOUGHT: Later in the same Combox note, we get yet another classic moment of Shea's "intellectual" style. To that well-known John-Paul-hater Christopher Blosser:

What puzzles me even more is why you think it's no big deal to heap contempt on Evangelium Vitae.

This is so precisely in the form of a "have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife-yet" question that it's beyond parody. It's a pitch-perfect example of it. In fact, I will now recategorize that "assuming your own conclusion"-style of self-righteous posturing. It's now a "why do you think it's no big deal to heap contempt on Evangelium Vitae"-type question.


THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING: Noting Shea's intellectual crimes is like playing whack-a-mole. There's just too many to keep up. I mean -- does one laugh or cry at this note with that classically Shavian cocktail of clueless self-righteousness. Is he even capable any more of framing a disagreement in terms that don't always already presuppose that he is in the right (which is a very different thing from thinking one is in the right, which everybody does of course) or that don't do the intellectual equivalent of steal all four bases? Here is a Shavian Combox in 10-second form:

Shea: McKenna is spitting on the Church, and I am upholding Church teaching
Others: Don't be a jerk; McKenna is not spitting on the Church, and the teaching is more open than you say it is
Shea: Why is everyone concerned more about me being a jerk for upholding church teaching than about McKenna spitting on the Church

You can play this game for hours (or years) on end. I'm hereby trade-marking it as Shavian Combox™ -- Fun for the whole family. Recommended for those 12 or under (mentally).

As for the other point -- Shea not appreciating Jimmy Akin being cited at him. I'll say the rationale bluntly because, well ... I'm not that much of a diplomat. The reason others are citing Mr. Akin is not because he's some blogospheric magisterium. Nor is it to goad a war or pit the two -- "let's you and him fight" and all that. And it doesn't speak to the rights and wrongs of the issue at all.

No, Mr. Akin is being cited to demonstrate a very particular hypothesis, one that Torquemada and I developed months ago -- that Shea's behaves very differently toward different people, proving that he is a posturing bully without a shred of intellectual integrity. He will hurl every manner of rhetorical ugliness and personal nastiness against people who disagree with him vigorously but *who hold no power over him.* (No citations necessary on this point, I assume.) But when someone who does hold power over him, or at the very least has influence where it matters to Shea (like Mr. Akin does, citations adequately provided by Mr. Blosser -- and I have saved the Combox to guard against The Osheania Ministry of Truth's Delete-O-Meter™) -- well ... now ... that's a completely different matter. He can hold ideas. To be fair, the post by Mr. Akin that Mr. Blosser cites is more measured and less rhetorical than that of Mr. McKenna. But that slight gap in style in expressing essentially the same ideas does not spell the difference between a "good guy" and someone "orgasmic at the thought of death, death, death and more death."

Or as someone wrote to me earlier this evening:

At this point I'm going to dispense with charity and say that Mark is only willing to target people with opinions he doesn't like ... so long as they don't have clout within his little social circle. That isn't non-contradiction, it's both tribalism and hypocrisy, neither of which are particularly admiring traits for someone who is supposed to help evangelize and defend the Church to the general population. The fact that he demonizes McKenna while ignoring Akin despite the identical nature of their actual positions is nothing short of contemptible and further highlights Mark's sad decline.