HINT DROPPING

I'm tired,/Tired of playing the game!/Ain't it a crying shame?/I'm so tired! Lili Von Shtupp in "Blazing Saddles"

You've heard of "Fat-Shaming" haven't you?

You know...the use of public, social pressure as a catalyst to persuade the obese to lose weight.

Well, it looks as though Dannie's invented a new form of stigmatization -- Grub-Shaming -- to pressure the reluctant cultling-zombies to cook for and feed him. In last week's "Bishop's (?) Corner," His Dubiety really tried to lay a guilt trip on the cult's bleary-eyed womenfolk when he wrote about his week of relaxing in the Florida sun at Big Don's downmarket "seminary":

The retreat went well, in addition to the weather. It’s a nice treat, one for which I try to be suitably grateful, to sit down to a delicious home cooked meal, not just once, but—of the luxury of it!—three times a day, like in the old days. God bless Dorothy who does the cooking.

Oh, the humanity!

Distressed Li'l Dan has to go all the way to sun-drenched Florida in the middle of winter to get his three squares! The poor, wretched widdle ting is so deprived that daily homemade breakfast, lunch, and dinner seem an almost unimaginable luxury from an all-but-forgotten past. Why, the misery of the 2011 Horn-of-Africa famine pales in comparison to the Dirtbag's suffering, doesn't it?

Aren't you ashamed, you selfish Gertie gals?

Why can't you wait hand and foot on Wee Dan, too? Don't you want a blessing? Or are you too busy managing your own household? Shame on you for your heartless self-absorption! You know, it's not enough that your family has to support the cult masters' excesses*: You have to be their servants, too.  And you should be remorseful if you hesitate.

You've been set an example by the tireless and assuredly overworked Dorothy. Don't you know that you, too, have a high and mighty "bishop" (LOL) to pamper? (But wait! On second thought... maybe Dorothy gets paid for her troubles...)

While Dannie cannot fathom the cultlings' reticence to sacrifice even more than they do, we think we know the answer. Several weeks ago, we received a comment and a separate but almost identical email defending Dannie. The comment, a quotation from a blog,  read:

Bishop Dolan recently told me in an interview: 'If this were ordinary times, I wouldn’t be a bishop. I have no illusions about that.' He has grasped that because we are in extraordinary times, he doesn’t get to do what he would have wanted to do, which is be a simple parish priest – or even earlier – a simple Cistercian monk.  http://truerestoration.blogspot.fr/2009/04/restoration-i-dating.html

In our replies, we dismissed the self-effacement as bogus, since Dannie's outward behavior speaks otherwise. If he truly recognized his unworthiness for the episcopacy, he would never put on airs as a Catholic bishop, to wit, elaborate pontifical ceremonies and vestments, the expectation of  deferential treatment, self-referential remarks aimed at exciting reverence for his (doubtful) status etc. He would have comported himself in all ways -- including habiliment -- as a simple parish priest in order to signal both his yearning for simplicity and his awareness of his painfully obvious deficiencies.

 A fortiori, if Dubious Dan genuinely recognized his inadequacies, he would never have actively sought the miter. He would've refused it had it been offered (which, of course, it wasn't: it was coveted, to say the least.). There were many other men of his generation who were much more able, and he should have used whatever influence he possessed to make certain that a better educated, better formed priest be consecrated in his stead.

In our opinion, his heavy-handed hint about home-cooked meals is yet another proof that he expects to be considered a grand prelate deserving treatment reserved for the "Quality," as the English say. A humble man with adult organizational skills would be able to prepare his own meals at home. Millions of his betters do so every day. The Web is chock full of great-tasting, easy-to-prepare recipes. Since he doesn't live alone but has several doubtfully ordained "priests" as gofers, he could design a monthly schedule with a list of cooking/preparation/clean-up duties for each of the "lower clergy." (Better yet, he could ask one of the Gerties to do this for him in the event that the task prove too challenging for his limited resources.)

Naturally, if he and his associate, the Blunderer, hadn't been so set on defending the indefensible SGG principal and firing the truth-tellers in 2009, there may have been enough money in the budget to hire a full-time cook. Perhaps he had to defend the principal or risk certain catastrophe, whereas he gambled he could weather the firings. In the latter case, if he'd cut back on unnecessary and expensive foreign and domestic travel when half the cult left, there would probably be money to hire someone on at least a part-time basis. But since he's responsible for bringing the "old days" to an end, and since he won't give up traveling, he'll have to be content with grub-shaming the cult-crazed riffraff into cooking for him.

But it won't work. From what we hear, they're tired of all the begging and cajoling.

That means, as Lili so eloquently shouted, Dannie's "finished. Fertig! Verfallen! Verlumpt! Verblunget! Verkackt!"

* This might be the appropriate time to demand that "One Hand" reveal who paid the travel expenses to the retreat at the fetid Brooksville pesthouse. Dannie, you'll recall, gave the retreat for both the "seminarians" and the cult's "young fathers." Since the Blunderer was "the parish priest last week," it appears as though "Uneven-Steven" McFaker, Lurch, and the Forlorn Finn accompanied His Errancy. That makes four travelers. Did they fly? Did the "young fathers" pay their own way or was the excursion considered corporate inservice training and hence an SGG expense? Did the rector pay for His Verbosity to fly or be driven down as retreat master, or did Dannie cover the expenses himself in return for "a delicious home cooked meal...three times a day"?  If he paid, did he use his Christmas money and salary or did it come from SGG?