Self-Absorbed and Self-Indulgent

When Simon Cowell was one of the judges on American Idol, he would sometimes characterize an egregiously bad performance as “self-indulgent”. The first time I heard him describe a performance that way, it surprised me a bit. It wasn’t a characterization that would have occurred to me. But as time went on, and the more he continued to characterize performances that way, I began to see what he meant. There were just some performances in which the singer came across as performing for themselves more than for the audience or the enjoyment of the music itself.

I thought of Simon’s critique as I watched this woman, Mariann Budde, hijack the Inauguration National Prayer Service and put it in service to her own progressive hobby horses.

This is going to be a short post; I’m not going to spend much time critiquing the silly and platitudinous substance of her remarks. For now, I’ll just say that affirming any child involved in the kind of self-harm inherent in transgenderism and homosexuality is not “showing mercy”. What she is calling “mercy” seems more akin to yelling “Jump!” to a suicidal person who is standing on the ledge of a tall building. Likewise, ignoring immigration laws that were enacted by duly elected representatives breaks faith with your neighbors. Betraying your neighbor is a lot of things, but “merciful” isn’t one of them.

What Ms. Budde was doing (besides reaffirming in the public mind the descent into base absurdity that characterizes the leadership of the Episcopal church) was hijacking a service that was presented as being for a noble purpose, and turning it into a vehicle for her own self-expression.

Many years ago, some acquaintances invited my wife and I over for dinner. We were surprised but mildly flattered by the invitation since we didn’t know this couple all that well. The dinner was fine, but after dinner, they surprised us by setting up a marker board and making a prepared, formal pitch about signing us up to sell Amway as part of their multi-level marketing team. They had represented the occasion to us as a social gathering, but in reality, they had always intended to promote their own hobby horse. This is another way of saying our acquaintances had been manipulative and dishonest when they invited us to dinner. The invitation had never really been about a friendship, per se. It was a classic exercise in bait-and-switch.

In a similar way, the National Prayer Service was represented as a time to pray for our leaders and our country. But once everyone arrived, what they got instead was a kind of smarmy, self-righteous exhibitionist lecture by the so-called bishop. She might as well have gotten out her marker board and made a pitch for Amway.

After all of this occurred at the National Cathedral, I was left with a nagging sense that there was even another place where I had seen this kind of thing before. And then it hit me that what the “bishop” employed was essentially the same tactic used by the Westboro Baptist Church when it used to show up uninvited at military funerals to disrupt the proceedings by calling attention away from the funeral and toward themselves. The ostensible reason for their actions was the prevalence of homosexuality in American culture. Westboro’s message was, essentially, “I know you’re here to bury your dead, but we’d rather get everyone talking about us and our objection to homosexuality.” It was very hard not to perceive that there was some narcissistic self-absorption going on. Not every event is a forum for riding your own hobby horse.

If there was a narcissistic and self-congratulatory core animating Westboro’s actions, Ms. Budde’s behavior at the prayer service came across in a remarkably similar way. Someone in her orbit would be doing her a great service by reminding her that, however highly she thinks of herself and her own opinions, it is very unlikely that the National Prayer Service is ever going to be about her.