Sally Quinn's Daddy Issues -- TMI

Corrente has an interesting post about an xian public school teacher who was prostelytizing instead of teaching American History and who lied about it when a student complained. Luckily, the student had it on tape. Corrente notes that this story didn't exactly leap from the Newark Star-Ledger to AP to Pravda on the Potomac to Izvestia on the Hudson … (the way that it would have if the teacher had been recruiting students to join, oh, I don't know, Islam or Wicca) and then suggests that Maybe Sally Quinn can cover this one in her new “On Faith” blog.

Yes, it's true. Sally Quinn has a "blog" at the Washington Post and it's about religion. Literally thousands of intelligent people who've spent their entire lives studying and thinking about religion and the WaPo decides that the best person they can possibly find to blog about religion is a washed-up ex-Style reporter who married the boss and should have retired to suburban Chevy Chase ephemera, but who still imagines herself as having something worthwhile to say and, see above re: marrying boss, a platform from which to say it. Of course, it makes sense. The WaPo's coverage of religion has stunk for so long that one is only surprised on those rare occasions when it doesn't completely stink.

Digby's also noted WaPo's insult to its readers, explaining that Of course, gossip, backbiting and social ruin are sacred rites in all royal courts, so I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense for the Mother Superior of the Order of Bored Trophy Wives to exploit some of that olde time religion.

I made the mistake of following Corrente's link and found myself face to face with this piece of Peggy-Noonan-style crap. It's the kind of writing about religion that gives serious religious people a stomach ache and gives religion such a bad name.

In treacley prose, Quinn recounts how her father loved to say grace at meals and how she, wild rebellious daughter that she was (right) stopped saying grace and asked her father not to say it at her home until, until, until . . . well, let's let Ms. Quinn tell it in her own cotton-candy, Norman Rockwell, Prescious Moments words:

[T]hat Thanksgiving 13 years ago, I sat at the opposite end of the table and asked my father to say grace. There was stunned silence for a moment, and then without a word, we all held hands and my father began, “Lord, make us truly thankful......”

What was I feeling? Truly thankful. I had a wonderful loving family and many blessings. Why, I asked myself, had I been so against allowing my father to express those feelings in a way that was meaningful to him?

And the result of the prodigal daughter bowing her head to her father's authority? Well, it will come as a complete surprise to you, I'm sure, to learn that the results were amazing! Ms. Quinn luckily has a picture of the moment that she can look at and describe (taken, I guess by a domestic, as everyone else is in the picture):

My husband and son, my parents, my brother and sister and her family. We are all smiling. We are clearly having a wonderful time. We are sitting at the Thanksgiving table 13 years ago. The candles are glowing, the plates are empty, the wine glasses refilled. You can almost feel the joy emanating from the photograph. It was, my father said that day, “the happiest Thanksgiving our family has ever had. I’ve never felt so much love in my life.”

OK, don't throw up yet, because there's more. Right away, driven there, likely by her daughter's stupid self-importance, Ms. Quinn's mother suffers a series of strokes and, well, I'm too choked up. Let Sally continue:

We never had Thanksgiving at home again. My mother was the real cook in the family and it just wasn’t the same without her cornbread dressing and mashed turnips. We went, instead, to the Brome-Howard Inn in Southern Maryland. It’s very warm and cozy and welcoming. If I couldn’t be at home, there’s no place else I’d rather be; but it was never the same after that. For one thing, in the restaurant the atmosphere didn’t lend itself to saying grace. Damn those secular restaurants! But you know, you just know, that Quinn can't resist gilding the lilly on this story that is, I think we've all figured out by now, not at all about religion and all about Sally and her Daddy:

This year, though, I’m going to say grace. I haven’t become a believer, but I do feel overwhelmed with gratitude for all the wonders of my family and friends and the gifts I have been given. After all, what is grace anyway, what does it mean but gratitude?

Here’s what I’m going to say: “Let us be truly thankful for these blessings which we are about to receive. Amen.”

This one’s for you, Daddy.

That's right. A grown-up adult woman -- who married her much older boss lo these many years ago, so I think we're safe in assuming that there have always been some daddy issues -- a matron writing in a national newspaper just closed her article by writing: This one's for you, Daddy. Note to Sally: You are not now and never have been Stevie Nicks. Quit embarassing yourself like this.

And this, this, THIS kind of crap, the kind of crap that couldn't even get published anymore in the Ladies Home Journal or Woman's Day, the kind of crap that Norman Vincent Peale would have regarded as pablum, this is what the WaPo presents to its readers as a serious discussion of religion.

OK, you can throw up now.