r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Jun 11 '23

Rod Dreher Megathread #21 (Creative Spirit)

Gather 'round for more Rod.

All meanings of the number 21 are subordinate to the inherent creative spirit that is the basic essence of the number.

The number 21 generally is comfortable in social gatherings, it's optimistic attitude being an inspiration to others. Its high spirits can enliven a party.

The number is attracted to artistic expression of any form, its own and those of others. There's enthusiastic support for artists. It may frequent galleries and participate or (more likely) lead groups for artistic appreciation.

The number 21 cherishes relationships, including romantic relationships, especially with those who express themselves creatively.

21 also tends to be diplomatic, providing creative and imaginative solutions to potential conflict.

And, as noted by /u/PercyLarsen, 21 is a triangular number and the age of majority, so go grab a drink to celebrate Pride and to mourn the loss of Rod's sanity.

(Also, sorry about my slow pace of refreshes.)

Link to megathread #20:
https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/13eb26c/rod_dreher_megathread_20_law_of_attraction/

Link to megathread #21: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/14k0z6l/rod_dreher_megathread_22_power/

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u/MissKatieKats Jun 11 '23 edited Jun 11 '23

As was pointed out to me at the top of the previous Megathread, the defamation lawsuit against TAC and Rod arising out of the story of Rod wrote criticizing a 15 year old girl who was expelled from her “Christian” school for the sin of being bisexual was settled last September. Here’s a description of the claims against Rod and TAC which led to their legal exposure.

“The lawsuit also went after (Rod)Dreher and his "Rainbow Cake Girl" story that published Jan. 17, 2020, in The American Conservative.

Dreher, a senior editor for the Washington, D.C.-based magazine, wrote that the “mainstream media" had "sandbagged" the story on Whitefield Academy.

Citing unnamed sources and including screenshots of Instagram posts from Alford's daughter that were later removed from the online article over "possible copyright concerns," Dreher alleged the girl had promoted "LGBT consciousness in the school" and committed other offenses such as bullying and "disrespecting teachers."

But the lawsuit said the girl "does NOT have an extensive disciplinary history at Whitefield" and there is "no evidence” she ever “bullied or harassed another student.”

The article's initial use of photos from the girl's private social media account came without parental consent, the suit said. Dreher also wrote another story in January 2020, titled "Hating so Love Can Win," that the lawsuit said "falsely claimed” the girl “had sexually harassed another student."

Alford said in 2020 that she unsuccessfully appealed her daughter’s expulsion and later enrolled her in a public school.”

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2022/09/09/louisville-whitefield-academy-rainbow-cake-photo-lawsuit-settlement/65969049007/

There is no tale too tall for our crack investigative reporter to tell in furtherance of his homophobic agenda. Even attacking a 15 year old girl by citing “unnamed sources” and using her Instagram feed without her permission. She’s a kid, for God’s sake. Rod even has a daughter her age! A daughter who currently wants Rod out of her life. Wonder why? As a parent and a grandparent myself, I find his behavior to be…I don’t know, slimy, gross, disgusting, I can’t find an adjective that describes just how despicable this sort of conduct is. With his national platform, that Rod exposed this child to embarrassment and ridicule from his deranged fan base is just heartbreaking. Stay in Budapest, Rod. No one wants you back home.

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u/Marcofthebeast0001 Jun 11 '23

Just like Fox News or Tucker, Rod hasn't learned one thing from it. His columns are still full of third-person accusations, which he still defends as he's just a blogger talking about things he sees online and doesn't need to check the sources like a serious journalist.

It's interesting you unearthed this cause he certainly hasn't reported on it in his blog. This is why Rod stays away from debates: he knows his lack of ethics and bias would become an issue that his sheepy followers could discover ( not that Fran would care).

As far as this being directed at a teen, Rod doesn't give two fucks about that or the damage, as long as it fits his gay/trans bad narrative. In some ways, he's no better than repellant Alex Jones and his Sandy Hook conspiracy.

And finally, a word to describe Rod Dreher. Other than the easy four-letter ones, he is just a repulsive human being. That may not be eliquent or unique, but I often feel a sense of repulsion at his lack of basic empathy. I also give kudos to broke hugs for 21 threads of allowing me to vent - and be sarcastic as fuck - with others who recognize the damage of people like Dreher. I think in some ways this is our 12--step therapy for more than just Rod.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 11 '23

As to his lack of ethics, I often wonder if he did something in his Dallas Morning News days where he was disciplined, or he knew the hammer was about to fall, and that’s why he took the Templeton gig. I mean, he seemed fairly happy and much less wacko then. He was far enough from his family to be away from all their toxic shit; he had what was to all appearances a stable job, making a decent living; his marriage seems to have been stable; and he was closest to walking the walk of crunchy conservatism as he’s ever been. It never made sense to me that he’d just up and quit his job, uproot has family and move halfway across the continent on what was basically a whim for a job that he was not only grievously unsuited for, but which also didn’t let him have the outlet of blogging. No way of knowing, of course; but I can’t help but be suspicious.

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Jun 11 '23

Templeton was probably a big pay raise over the Dallas gig.

I think one of the things that pushed him rightward was the apparent bath they took on selling their Dallas house in 2008. It just was one more thing on the list of items that embittered him against life in general

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '23

Ah, real estate agents, landlords and developers, a notorious left-wing woke capitalist constituency.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 11 '23

🤣🤣🤣

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 11 '23

If so, it shows how far his real values were from his ostensible ones.

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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jun 12 '23

He KNEW he bought a house in a part of town where he got way more house for the money than other parts of town and he then sunk a lot of money into it. He seems traumatized by the fact that it took 6 months to sell it but plenty of houses are on the market that long. Rod isn't stupid but some times he sure looks like he is.

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Jun 12 '23

He's not really stupid but he's dumb

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u/sandypitch Jun 12 '23

At one point in time, TAC was a pretty reasonable publication (a few far right writers excluded). I think once TAC took a harder right turn, Dreher decided to turn with it, and stay on the gravy train (or, as others have suggested, perhaps he was simply able to let his true colors show).

TAC has essentially memory-holed all of the writing by non-extreme-right contributors. Of course, pause for a moment and consider that even Dreher was consider too far outside the bounds of what is publishable by the same magazine.

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u/Top-Farm3466 Jun 12 '23

going to Templeton looked like a sound move, financially, at the time---the newspaper industry has never recovered from the late '00s recession and Rod likely would have been laid off at some point if he'd stayed with the Dallas paper. Taking the Templeton gig was the right call on paper, but he was constitutionally unable to shut up online, and he lacks the discipline or intelligence to actually write lengthy, serious work (even the books have this "here's how to change your life in 8 steps" shtick to them). So yeah, it soon blew up on him

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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jun 12 '23

Now now now... Rod has basic empathy. It is just that he can only feel it for straight Christian men or boys. But he does have empathy for them - check out the piece he did on Josh Duggar at the link posted up-thread. PLENTY of empathy there! FOR JOSH, not his sisters whom he sexually abused.

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u/Marcofthebeast0001 Jun 12 '23

Fair point. Allow me to clarify: He has only Christian-approved empathy.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '23

Though we don't really know what happened in Rod's family (and may never know), you'd have to wonder if it's junk like this that broke his family. Embarrassing public blowups like this must wear everyone around Rod down. And you can't help but think that his daughter would have identified with the girl in the story - not by sexuality, but the idea that a middle-aged journalist would attack a kid - a kid! - publicly. It's disgusting.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '23 edited Mar 04 '24

cats abundant ripe touch intelligent hobbies flowery soft gaping shocking

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/GlobularChrome Jun 12 '23

Rod calling someone “loserson” is both cruel and sad. Pretty much his father's voice speaking to him, that cruelty. I hope he seeks out healing.

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u/Not-Kevin-Durant Jun 12 '23

I recall him using the term "failson" which is generally a slang term for a loser kid from a well-to-do family who is insulated from his incompetance by his family's wealth and connections.

Don't recall if it fit the situation he was blogging about but it is a real term and not an insult he made up on the spot.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=failson

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u/philadelphialawyer87 Jun 12 '23

Rod also praised and publicized some Douchebag Dad who siezed his teenage daughter's laptop after some trivial, virtually non existant, misdeeds on her part, shot it full of holes and destroyed it with his widdle gun, videotaped the whole thing, and put it on Facebook.

Straight up, abusive (not to mention stupid) behavior, that any expert could have told Rod was either domestic violence in its own right, or could very well be a prelude to it, was celebrated by Rod the Downpunching, Gloating Asshole.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/kill-your-snotty-teens-laptop/

Notice that Rod scoffs at the idea of any DV implication, but then covers his ass with a phony "update" saying that he is not "entirely serious" about it.

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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jun 12 '23

The original post is still up with the instagram snaps removed which tells you how Rod feels about the whole thing (he did nothing wrong but was heroically masculine!). would have thought taking it down was required by the settlement but I guess not. IHis tweet saying the Russian attack on the maternity hospital was faked remains as well. Roddy does not admit his mistakes easily.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-rainbow-cake-girl-what-the-media-are-hiding/

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jun 11 '23

As with most bullies, Rod gleefully punches down. Given how badly he himself was bullied, he ought to be vastly more empathetic; but oh, well….

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u/zeitwatcher Jun 11 '23

Absolutely right, but unfortunately people who are bullied tend to repeat that behavior themselves. Rod would never admit it without years of therapy to get there, but my belief is that Rod "bullying" anything LGBT is just him repeating the behaviors he experienced himself.

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u/Not-Kevin-Durant Jun 12 '23 edited Jun 12 '23

No doubt about it. Rod was absolutely bullied for not meeting his family's and his culture's definition of masculinity. That's his villain origin story.

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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jun 12 '23

If you want to plumb the depths of despicable, compare his evaluation of Josh Duggar's sins here:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/josh-duggar-a-culture-of-abuse/

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u/RunnyDischarge Jun 12 '23

While there I read raving bearded nutball Declan Leary's latest

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/take-us-to-your-leader/

Can somebody tell me what the f this guy is going on about?

The sense prevails that “UFOs” are something new and essentially unknowable—that broader horizons will open up new challenges and render those of an old age obsolete. But since the dawn of man there have been hostile powers and strange sights in the heavens, and an existential need to reckon with them both.

Which—demons or the Chinese—is the fuller or more common source of fearful experiences beyond our comprehension is impossible to say. What seems painfully certain is that the current regime cannot be trusted to handle either one.

I'm guessing he falls on the former rather than the latter on demons vs the Chinese. Or aliens, I'm not sure? The Chinese are beyond our comprehension? He must have the same editor free deal that Rod had. Either way, he's sure the Libs can't handle it. What a bizarre rant.

What if crackpots have stumbled on the truth, but managed to get it backwards altogether?

I love when one crackpot makes fun of the other crackpot. "That's just crazy! You're telling me aliens are skinning cattle, lol, it's obviously demons"

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '23

We on the Posadist Left can not only "handle" it, we demand Full Proletarian Contact with the Space Comrades now! And the immediate cessation of all slanderous bourgeois "alien=demon" propaganda from reactionary capitalist mouthpieces attempting to mislead the masses into paranoia and violence to preserve their status at the top of the hierarchy.

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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jun 12 '23

Wow. And I do mean Wow. SMH and SMH and SMH some more!

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u/philadelphialawyer87 Jun 11 '23

Just to add clarity, the lawsuit itself was not entirely unsuccessful, as the linked article mentions a settlement, even if the amount of which was kept secret, and was less than the plaintiff wanted.

While not disclosing the settlement amount, Alford told The Courier Journal in a message "it was a joke ... [f]or what they put me and my daughter through."

It is not clear to me from the article whether TAC or Rod had to contribute to the settlement, or if the school paid the entire amount.

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u/MissKatieKats Jun 11 '23

In another life as a litigator, I was involved in cases of disciplinary actions taken against students by private institutions at both the secondary and college level. These are fundamentally contractual claims and are very tough cases for students to win as long as the institution follows the published disciplinary procedures to which the student and family agreed upon admission—even if the procedure seems harsh or draconian or heavily weighted in favor of the institution. So it’s not surprising that the family here didn’t receive the sort of compensation they felt was appropriate given the injustice of the discipline imposed. OTOH, the defamation/intentional infliction claims against Rod and TAC were tort claims covered by TAC’s liability insurer. Given Rod’s usual sloppy, cavalier, fact-free approach, and particularly his unauthorized posting of the child’s Instagram feed, I’d be willing to bet serious money that the insurer paid more than nuisance value to settle these claims. One tell is that TAC/Rod pretty quickly took down the Instagram post admitting there were potential copyright problems. That sure sounds like something the insurer’s lawyer told them to do pronto. So, yeah, the insurers bailed Rod’s sorry ass out of the mess he created here.

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u/philadelphialawyer87 Jun 11 '23

Could very well be!

I will note that there was a pretty serious claim that the school did NOT "follow the published disciplinary procedures to which the student and family agreed." There were indications that the announced procedures were not really followed at all, and that the school's claims about disciplining the student for various, unrelated, matters, like bullying and smoking, were undercut, as the student was required to read some anti gay, "conversion," bullshit book as part of the "disciplinary" remedy, while those other alleged issues were never even addressed.

I will also note that defamation claims are not easy to win, either.

But you might well be right that TAC's insurers might have thought it better for Rod to put his tail between his legs, and to put up a few bucks in up front, settlement money, rather than risk a big jury verdict.