David French Suffers An Obvious Mind Damage Over James Talarico
James Talarico’s fake tent show preacher act has been a joke since the moment he began it, and every living animal with a central nervous system is aware of this. For that matter, the geranium on your front porch may be aware of it. Pro-abortion, pro-trans, pro-trans-abortion for all six genders, Talarico’s much-derided sermonizing on the far-left Jesus he made up somewhere inside his cotton candy mind is ludicrous, appalling, embarrassing, and give me a minute while I load up all the pejoratives I can fit on this forklift. See, if you haven’t already, this discussion at First Things: “James Talarico’s Backward Christianity.” No one is dumb enough to buy this stuff.
Okay, almost no one.
In a moment we should have seen coming, New York Times columnist David French has just gushed out a shameless celebration of Talarico’s insane nonsense, every word of which should qualify the worst op-ed prostitute in America for urgent psychiatric intervention. Here’s a whole paragraph: “Or, to put it another way, Talarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian, and by acting like a Christian he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of the MAGA Christian movement that’s dominated American political life for 10 years.”
A challenge: Find the evidence French offers for the claim that Talarico “acts like a Christian.” He cites some speeches, but speeches aren’t actions. How, in David French’s conception, does James Talarico live like a Christian, by his actions, and what does he think that means? Hang onto this point, because we’ll be coming back to it.
But then go on to the characterization of MAGA as a Christian movement, full stop, as if no one would argue. Quick: Name the top three speeches Donald Trump has made in which he used the Bible as an argument for his political program. Discuss, in detail, the specific policy influence of Trump’s pastor, who you should be able to name if we’re talking about a Christian nationalist ideologue. Or, as a shortcut, just show the evidence French has ever presented to prove that MAGA is primarily theological, and that Trump’s first instinct is to steer by religious faith. French doesn’t argue this, because he can’t. He just says it. It’s a noise he makes, endlessly. It has no meaning of any kind.
David French invented the Christian nationalist MAGA argument into being, like Christopher Steele with a pee tape, and now he acts like his strawman is real. Donald Trump is a secular real estate developer who became a secular television figure who became a secular politician who treats Christians like he doesn’t hate them. This is supposed to be “Christian nationalism.”
Pointing at Talarico’s supposed decency, French writes approvingly that the Texas politician “criticized the evangelical focus on abortion and homosexuality in politics,” which Talarico describes as “two issues that Jesus never talked about.” See, true Christians like Talarico know that Jesus wants you to have a lot of gay sex and abortions, because he never mentioned it, and Christianity has no substance except for being nice and not judging people for their personal choices. You can do whatever you want, as long as you’re nice.
Then French, having celebrated Talarico for the argument that Jesus wants you to be nice and have a lot of gay sex and abortions, approvingly offers up this quote from Talarico: “I am tired of being pitted against my neighbor. I’m tired of being told to hate my neighbor. It’s been more than 10 years of this kind of politics. Politics as blood sport, politics as trolling and owning, politics as total war. It tears families apart. It ends friendships, and it leaves us all feeling terrible all the time.”
Don’t judge, don’t hate, don’t troll, don’t be engaged in politics as blood sport. Be kind, decent, restrained, hesitant to judge. This, French says, is the mark of decency in politics. Speak well of others. Watch your tongue.
And then, very next step, he savages Ken Paxton. With a tone-deafness you can’t exaggerate, having set up Talarico’s decency and true expression of Christianity as niceness and a steadfast refusal to judge or be pitted against your neighbor, French contrasts nice Christian James Talarico to mean right-winger Ken Paxton by writing that Paxton “is an admitted adulterer, which is something that used to matter to conservative Christians.”
If you’re keeping score of the David French game at home, this means that gay sex is biblical, abortion is a huge favorite of Jesus Christ himself, you should never judge or question another person’s choices, and also no Christian could possibly ever vote for filthy heathen sinner Ken Paxton, who committed adultery, the vile creature, which Christians should know is unforgivable. If you buy what French and Talarico are selling, you could only forgive Paxton for cheating on his wife if he had sex with a bunch of other men, which is totally okay with God and you can’t be judgmental. See, Jesus never mentioned it, like Talarico says, so it has to be good.
This is the theology of a head injury. Gay sex is good, adultery is bad, don’t ever judge, but adulterers are condemned. It’s grab bag faith-noise, picking positions at random and saying that God says so. If you remember in Anchorman when Brick says he loves lamp, and Ron Burgundy asks him if he’s just calling out the names of things he sees in the office and saying that he loves them, then you understand what French and Talarico are doing with religion. All things I personally wish to forgive at this moment are forgiven, and all things I wish to condemn are unforgivable sin. God agrees with me.
Count, on your own, the number of paragraphs that elapse between French gushing about Talarico for talking about refusing to hate and to do politics as blood sport and French’s subsequent paragraphs piling condemnation on Paxton.
David French, 17th paragraph: “If you were to crack open Scripture today and start reading, one of the first things you should notice is that the Bible contains remarkably few political mandates.”
Then he goes on, 13 paragraphs later, to explain why Christians should vote against Ken Paxton. The Bible is silent on politics, but the Bible says to vote a hard no on Paxton.
And then, pivoting yet again, and yet again not noticing that he’s pivoting, French turns from praising Talarico’s decency so that he can begin to praise John Cornyn’s decency. Are you keeping up with this? David French says that God says to vote Talarico or Cornyn, but not to vote Paxton, and also the Bible can’t guide you on politics, because there’s no political stuff in there.
His political insight is as sharp as his theology. Voters, French says, are turning toward personal decency as a campaign issue. “That’s what I see in Cornyn’s surprising plurality over Paxton.” John Cornyn has been in the Senate for 24 years, after serving as the attorney general of Texas, but just won only 42 percent of his own party’s vote. A longtime Texas officeholder couldn’t cleanly win his primary election, which proves that voters admire him deeply and are giving him a decisive … plurality.
You can’t track the logic of anything French writes from paragraph to paragraph, because it isn’t there. He’s like an amnesiac who wakes up every few sentences and starts over, but forgets to erase what he said before. X is true and that’s why Not-X is so obviously correct and that’s why you should say Y instead of X which I don’t believe. He’s achieved a complete state of rhetorical randomness. There are sentences, and they appear in the shape of a column, but don’t make the mistake of assigning meaning to this accident.
Now, go back to the thing I asked you to remember: French says that Christians can’t vote for Paxton because of the way Paxton treats his wife. And he says that Talarico is “one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian.” Accept French’s framing for the sake of argument. If the way Ken Paxton treats his wife is the critical issue that should guide a Christian’s vote, how does James Talarico treat his wife?
Yes, that’s a trick question. What personal behaviors does French cite to show that Talarico “acts like a Christian,” and how does it compare to the way he handles his discussion of Paxton’s character? In a column that describes Paxton as indecent and Talarico as decent, how does French discuss Paxton’s personal behavior, and how does he discuss Talarico’s personal behavior?
Once you see the answer to that question, you’ll understand the invariable structure of a David French column. And I’m laughing out loud at that thought.