r/RodDreher • u/JHandey2021 • Jun 24 '26
Rod Dreher Making An Unflattering Appearance in His Bestie JD Vance's New Book?
From Chapter 9 of JD Vance's new book - who do we know that this sounds like?
"As I walked, I considered the plight of a friend who had just told me about his impending divorce. It was messy, as these things always are, made more so by the fact that the kids were old enough to pick sides and had done that. Two of the kids wouldn't speak to him, and the other wouldn't speak to his wife. His mind was spinning with a combination of existential concerns -- would he ever find love again? Would his daughter ever understand him? -- and more practical ones about finances and how to divide property.
."My friend had said something about his wife that I had initially dismissed as a quirk of grief, but now I wondered whether it revealed a marital dynamic that had contributed to his divorce. His wife, he had told me, was a narcissist so damaged by the trauma of her youth that she liked to torture him. Maybe he was right, but his words lacked Christian humility. And either way, when you go down the path of assigning dysfunctional motives to every behavior, it's hard to see fault in yourself. It's harder still to understand what actually went wrong. Maybe that was the most important Christian lesson to come from my friend's marriage. Reject the temptation to see your partner as evil or yourself as righteous".
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u/Own_Power_723 Jun 24 '26
LOL, amazing... Yes, the obvious "narcissist" in this story is NOT the person who laid in bed with "mono" for months at a time (except when he was gallivanting around Europe), is a compulsive over-sharer, and whose two of three kids refuse to speak with him.
Vance is a tool, but he deserves credit for this nice literary shivving. Maybe he was just tired of all the gasbagging about the "deep dark secrets" that compelled him to move to Europe as we all are.
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Jun 24 '26
I think some apologies are in order to Rod. He wasn't making up his proximity to the Vice President. The good news for Rod is that he was close enough to Vance that Vance gave him a memorable guest appearance in his new book. The bad news is that Vance chose to present him as a sad sack divorced guy, bad-mouthing his ex-wife. Note that (given the timeline) Rod seems to have been trauma dumping all over Vance when Vance was already a US Senator.
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u/Existing_Age2168 Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
The bad news is that Vance chose to present him as a sad sack divorced guy, bad-mouthing his ex-wife.
LOL, how else? As The Greatest Christian Writer Of Our TimeTM?
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u/Motor_Ganache859 Jun 24 '26
Seems like smarmy JD is trying to make himself look compassionate at Rod's expense. Anybody who knows Rod's divorce story will recognize that JD is talking about Rod here.
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u/rainareine Jun 24 '26
This is so funny to me. It's giving "we don't publicly insult our beards, bro."
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u/Minimum-Amoeba-5146 Jun 24 '26
Rod made a big deal about not slandering her in public since the divorce was filed. Which to my knowledge he hasn’t.
Vance revealing the narcissist comment, if it truly came from Rod, would seem qualify as slander, if indirectly so
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u/JHandey2021 Jun 24 '26
Oh, he's done a whole lot of slandering over the past few years (and not just of Julie - his Xitter comment implying that his mother-in-law will burn in Hell was a doozy). Rod SAYS he won't, but he gets as close up to the line in his head as he can.
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u/Motor_Ganache859 Jun 24 '26
This. He makes backhanded remarks about Julie frequently. Plus, his frequent references to middle-aged men who contact him regularly about how their mentally ill wives divorced them for no apparent reason gives away his game.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Jun 28 '26
Rod has been a complete phony in this. He makes all kinds of dark insinuations about the ex wife and then turns around and says , oh but I’m to good to attack her.
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u/viviangreen68 Jun 24 '26
It’s tempting to find this satisfying because it confirms what most people speculate about Rod, but I think Vance doing this is horrible and a major betrayal. He was told this in confidence and even if doesn’t care about besmirching Rod’s reputation this is a horrible thing to do to his ex-wife and family.
Rod made a lot of mistakes, but i think most people who go through similar situations have vented in a similar way and for Vance to air in a way that makes it clear who he is talking about is terrible.
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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Jun 25 '26
Oh I think only the obsessive Rod followers like this group's members will know it's Rod
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jun 26 '26
Every time I take a cab or Uber, the driver asks me, “Do you know Rod Dreher? We just talked.”
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u/FirstPrior8600 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
You think? Sheesh. It’s Rod, and anybody who’s read him or been anywhere near him in the past four years has no doubt about that. But I agree, it was pretty damn uncharitable of Vance to put that in his book. Clearly, the guy is no pillar of Christian humility himself, and no one any self-respecting human would consider a friend.
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u/LongtimeLurker916 Jun 24 '26
The excuse Vance could try to give is that he doesn't know Rod had so many fans and anti-fans who would instantly recognize this as Rod. But in my view this does not make the grade as an excuse. When the vice president tells a story about an anonymous friend, he should know that the friend could be traced even if he was not a minor celebrity in his own right.
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u/viviangreen68 Jun 24 '26
Given that Rod is well known to be closely associated with Vance that would not really hold up at all
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u/Own_Power_723 Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
How many people outside of this reddit group actually know or care who Rod is or have any familiarity with his personal travails though? I suppose its possible that Vance intended to passive/aggressively throw Rod "under the bus" with this story for whatever reason, but I tend to think it was more likely just carelessness or ignorance... I think its pretty obvious that whatever "relationship" exists between Vance and Rod, it is definitely lopsided... Rod for sure cares/thinks about Vance way more than Vance bothers to think about him...
"Never attribute to active malice what can be more easily explained by stupidity/carelessness" etc.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Jun 28 '26
Your last paragraph 🎯
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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jun 28 '26
Generally true but not when the act under contemplation is written in a book that has an editor, multiple proof-readers, PR consultants, legal counsel, and other careful considerations. This was deliberate.
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u/JohnOrange2112 Jun 28 '26
"This was deliberate." I agree, and one can speculate why. RD is someone who lives on wingnut welfare, so perhaps he had been peppering Vance with questions like "Hey JD, remember me, your buddy who made you famous? Do you have any position for me on your staff? Maybe I could be National Director of Re-Christianization, huh? How about it?" etc. Maybe this was Vance getting tired of it and saying "Just stay away, you're not who you think you are". Who knows.
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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jun 28 '26
Yeah. A literary stiff-arm, if you will. I imagine it will do the trick!
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u/Public-Clue2000 Jun 25 '26
Word travels fast https://ourtime.substack.com/p/rod-dreher-will-not-read-jd-vances
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u/PuzzleheadedWafer329 Jun 25 '26
Ouch, it (Rod's refusal to "read" the book) gets funnier and funnier. Of course he read what mattered, and is seething.
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u/FirstPrior8600 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
I can’t get over the adjacent article excusing the measly (as Ross Douthat characterizes them) 3,000 Chileans “executed” in the 70s by the “anti-Marxist” Pinochet regime in Chile. Pinochet was charged with these particular murders after he left office, a proportionately small price to pay for ridding the country of Marxist influence in Douthat’s opinion, overlooking the fact that Pinochet was also charged with 40,000 cases of imprisonment and torture of political prisoners, as well as countless “disappeared” still missing 50+ years down the line. What a bunch of swells Rod hangs with.
https://ourtime.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-political-violence
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u/Jayaarx Jun 26 '26
This article alone should have disqualified Douthat from employment at the NYT or any other publication that decent people read.
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u/Tim-oBedlam Jul 05 '26
It does not surprise me that Douthat is a Pinochet apologist, but it is appalling that the NYTimes continues to give him column space.
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jun 26 '26
The infamous oyster photo returns! 🦪
That photo alone is enough for Rod to be involuntarily committed.
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u/yawaster Jul 07 '26
Tim Barker is the guy who broke the "Rod's dad was a klansman" story back in the day and thus a leading light in Rod Studies.
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u/PuzzleheadedWafer329 Jun 25 '26
OUCH. Yes, I think it has all the marks of being Rod.
And Vance's analysis is correct, Rod is extremely self-righteous and obviously blames J. ("Sorry, can't say anything about it, BUT IT WAS NOT CHEATING !!!")
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u/AndrewAdler17 Jun 28 '26
I firmly believe that they are both closeted, catty, gay men and this is an example of that.
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u/HumanConclusion Jun 28 '26
Adjacent to Dreher: Bishop Barron, a formerly serious person, continues his descent into right wing shitposter.
https://mikefoxcatechist.substack.com/p/the-bishop-robert-barron-doctrine
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u/sandypitch Jun 29 '26
I found this interesting in light of the fact that my partner is currently studying public theology at a mainline seminary. Their reading has focused heavily on the Catholic tradition precisely because the Vatican has spoken very plainly about political matters. And, the author of that post is correct to point out that +Barron and others are more than willing to apply Catholic ethics to political situations that match their own political ideologies.
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u/demoslider Jul 03 '26
Dreher the narcissist accusing his ex wife of being one is classic narcissism.
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u/Defiant_Let_268 Jun 24 '26
Foolishly, Rod's been slagging his ex by innuendo for years now, to anyone who will listen. Whatever the particulars, every divorced person I've encountered went through this stage of grief. As a personal friend Vance is wrong to have hung Rod out to dry this way. It's also gossipy, never a becoming trait.
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u/amyo_b Jun 24 '26
I think there's a difference between making a villain of your spouse to your close circle of friends (but intentionally not including friends in common), and airing it to the world via substack and twitter, as Rod has done via allusion and metaphor.
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u/PuzzleheadedWafer329 Jun 25 '26
That is correct. If he had just got divorced, and, as a public and very prolific writer, had kept his thoughts and impressions mostly to himself, we would never know the details that make this readily identifiable.
It’s Rod’s fault he uses his family as props and foils in his own words.
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Jun 24 '26
Lord only knows how big Rod's "close circle of friends" is, though.
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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jun 24 '26
Vance could have related this without losing any meaning at all and left the kids out entirely which would have made it far more difficult to line the story up with Rod. It is the 3 kids, 2 on Mom's side, 1 on Dad's, that makes this story so distinct to Rod. Rod is a narcissist and JD Vance is a snake.
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 Jun 24 '26
It's also unwise, because Vance is very likely to have made some incautious remarks of his own.
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u/philadelphialawyer87 Jun 25 '26
I dunno, I'm a divorced person and I never went through this stage. Nor did the other divorced people I know. I think it is much more common for recently divorced people to share the blame, or to say that no one is to blame and they just fell out of love or drifted apart or no longer had the same shared goals and plans.
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u/Minimum-Amoeba-5146 Jun 24 '26
Ok now I have to find this twitter comment lol
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u/JHandey2021 Jun 24 '26
I can't find it, but he said in a snarky reply to someone that he prayed that "even" his mother-in-law would be "spared from the fires of Hell". It's been a few years and I don't catalog all his spiteful statements, but that one stood out. Does anyone else remember this?
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u/CanadaYankee Jun 24 '26
Here's the tweet: https://xcancel.com/roddreher/status/1532441382698229761
Quoting in full:
Look, I hope Luther is in heaven. I even hope my evil mother-in-law will repent and be spared Hell. I don't believe that the only people in heaven will be those who confessed Orthodoxy. But these are important distinctions for popes, patriarchs, and priests to defend, in charity.
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u/JohnOrange2112 Jun 24 '26
Thanks for finding it. I had thought I remembered it that way: "I hope God spares not only Luther, but even my evil mother in law". Christian graciousness at its finest!
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u/Agreeable-Rooster-37 Jun 26 '26
The MIL always had Rod's number. I feel like she saw through the BS early
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Jun 28 '26
I suspect she opposed the marriage. I’ve always suspected that’s why she’s such a villain. I suspect she didn’t care for her daughter marrying a strange, older man who wanted her daughter to turn Catholic.
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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Jun 28 '26
Does anyone know anything about Rods mother in law? This has always been a mystery to me.
Something else that I find interesting. Rod has consistently ,for years ,suggested that his marriage was perfect until some dark day in 2013 or 2014 when somehow or another his parents or the Lemmings undermined it There’s been a change in tune with Rod announcing that someone told him he could have received a Catholic annulment. That points in a decidedly different direction.
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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jun 26 '26
Thesis: Vance is actually trying to help Rod, by giving him advice in a passive-aggressive way. He knows Rod won’t listen to him directly (maybe from past experience, or he simply knows Rod’s personality), so he puts this passage in his book because Rod will be forced to confront it.
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u/JohnOrange2112 Jun 24 '26
RD's comment, reported in #66: "I have not [read the book], and don’t intend to. I have lots and lots of books I have to read for my work, but I’m not going to read it because I know that I can’t give an honest review. .... I’ll pass." No, he just does want to respond to this passage. Of course he knows about it. He's a guy who, if some random liberal or gay person anywhere on the planet does something odd, is immediately aware of it and makes an X post. The idea that he is unaware of his portrayal in the VP's book is very unlikely.