William Murchison Is Scared of the World
Frontburner's Tim Rogers skewers William Murchison for his op-ed piece in The Dallas Morning News reacting to the attack on a woman on the Katy Trail.
Murchison warns that civilization's "circle of sunlight" is shrinking. Murchison sees no churches, priests, pastors, youth leaders setting a moral example anymore. He bemoans that "the iPod generation" rejects "the old guy in the sky" - God.
Tim Rogers wonders whether Murchison is putting us on, whether his piece is really a "satirical send-up of something that an out-of-touch, scared old fuddy-duddy would write," something that might have been written for The Onion. A commenter suggests that Murchison's time has come and gone, unless he wants to cross the picket line and work for Colbert.
Murchison doesn't appear in the pages of the News much anymore ( the News does get some things right, after all), but you can enjoy him regularly in Dallas' own right wing tabloid, Dallas Blog. If you enjoy unintentional satire, that is.
Rod Dreher is Afraid of Malls
Even though Murchison is gone from the pages of the News, his place has been taken by a younger disciple of the philosophy that the country is going to hell in a handbasket, that life was better in an earlier era. It's Rod Dreher and he calls his philosophy Crunchy Conservatism, but it's mostly tired old William Murchison dressed up in modern language. Take today's lament, "Shopocalypse Now" (clever, no?). Dreher has just discovered that Christmas decorations go up in stores before Thanksgiving. He points out the real enemy of Christmas, ... no, not atheists, but the shopping mall. He plaintively preaches to his readers that "it really is possible to enjoy the season without giving oneself over to the frenzy and anxiety of the shopping ritual." Other than a reference to relieving himself in the mall bathroom, which Murchison is too old fashioned and decorous to ever write, Dreher's essay contains all the trite pet peeves one can imagine bothering Murchison, too. Murchison's decline and Dreher's rise at the News proves them both wrong. Contrary to their belief in the decline of civilization, in truth, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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