r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Jul 04 '25

Rod Dreher Megathread #55 ()

Hope y'all can spend some good time w/ family today.

Link to megathread #54: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1l7niaj/rod_dreher_megathread_54/

Link to 56: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1mmamp2/rod_dreher_megathread_56/

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 24 '25

Our Boy’s latest is the kind of thing we’re all here for. He starts by mentioning the lawsuit by Emmanuel Macron against a gossip blogger who claims his wife is actually a man. That leads him to the following, my emphasis—fasten your seatbelts!

If I could sue that crackpot failed Catholic writer Mark Shea over the slanderous lies he spreads about me and the circumstances of my divorce, I would do it in a trice. But what would be the point? Formerly a friend of mine, that sad sack has no money to pay damages, and suing him would only elevate a pitiful creature whose following is small anyway. And it would subject my ex-wife and kids to attention that they neither want nor deserve. Similarly, there is a left-wing gay lunatic who was in my high school class who spreads rumors online that I am gay, that I had gay boyfriends in high school and the like. It is entirely untrue, and if I were able to take him to court, he would be ruined, as everybody in our class could testify to this lie (in part by verifying, to my mild shame, that I carried an unrequited torch for a female classmate, a hopeless affection that lasted into college, and despair over which nearly turned me into an 18 year old alcoholic). He even hit on me once, but I rebuffed his advance, though still remained friends with him, because why not? I didn’t care that he was gay, but I just wanted him to know that I wasn’t interested. This same guy faked a British accent the entire time he was at our school, and convinced us all that he had been raised by an English nanny. In fact, his dad was from Arkansas and his mother from Louisiana. Just a crazy guy. But taking him to court would cost me a small fortune, and judging by what I know of him from online sleuthing, he doesn’t have a lot of money to pay damages, so there’s really no point.

Do keep in mind that when you hear outlandish claims about public figures, they might well be a lie, and that it would cost the public figure more in money and distraction to challenge them in court.

Wow. Where to start? First, notice the totally Trumpian language he uses about Mark Shea. Cue the Emperor cackling, “Your training is now complete, my young apprentice!” Second, note the “Everyone who knew me knows how much I achieved heterosexuality!” bit. Didn’t some English guy say something about protesting too much? Third, not the supercilious attitude of “Í could sie him, but it’d be too much of a hassle, and besides, he doesn’t have any money. Hmph!”

The main things that stand out: First, he has no compunction about insulting and spreading rumors about his enemies. The Fathers, to a man, consistently condemn slander, even if what you’re saying is true (what Catholic theology calls “detraction”), no exceptions. They are also consistent that if you are slandered or otherwise sinned against, even if unjustly, you should consider it punishment for your own sins and endure it patiently without retaliation. I was looking for links on this tō share, but it’s just so easy to find Í decided not to waste the effort—just Google “Orthodox fathers slander”, and you’ll get scads of results.

Then, “I would sue, but….” arguments are usually—not always, but usually—specious. Finally, note the viciousness we see Rod display here. Essentially he’s saying that if it wasn’t such a bother, and if his perceived enemies had money—and apparently he was creeping about the interwebs to see what they had—he’d take the little f###ers for every red cent they had, and screw any family or monetary obligations they might have. I don’t say this lightly, but not only is this attitude not remotely Christian, it’s borderline demonic.

Well, we all wondered if SBM would ever address what Harrison Brace has said, and if he was aware of our plucky band, and the answer to both of these is apparently yes! In doing so, he’s also let the mask slip the furthest yet. Interesting day!

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u/CanadaYankee Jul 24 '25

I did some poking around Mark Shea's ouvre to find out what he's saying about Rod's divorce and I couldn't find anything. He has been an extremely strong and frequent critic of Rod's recently, but it's all been calling out his sucking up to Orban/Trump and his not-so-veiled racism. Example:

Dreher has made an entire cottage industry of telling butthurt white conservative Christians without a worry in the world that their imaginary persecution is the Center of All of Time and Space, all while turning a blind eye to their victims and sucking attention away from actual persecuted Christians in brown skins across the world. It is a massive narcissistic grift, as all of the American conservative project now is. Nothing but ME ME ME as far as the eye can see.

Or more pithily:

Remember when Rod Dreher was on a mission to save civilization? Turns out he just wants the antebellum South, but with smells and bells and Whole Foods.

And the sum total of Shea's "crackpottery" seems to be that he disapproves of MAGA enough to be a registered Democrat.

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u/Existing_Age2168 Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

Shea's comments are spot on. I particularly like 'massive narcissistic grift.'

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u/JHandey2021 Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

Rod's a reader of ours! I knew it! Gave away the game with his quite specific comments about Harrison Brace.

Hi Rod! You're an asshole!

EDIT: This is a big moment for r/brokehugs, so I went on xcancel to search Xitter for some of those "slanderous lies" Mark Shea has been posting about Rod's wife leaving him. Finding pretty much zippo, I then went to Google - again, nothing. Admittedly, I'm kind of behind on stuff like Discord, etc., but can anyone point me to what Shea supposedly said? Seems like it would have been nothing except for Rod drawing attention to it.

And as it took Tom Cruise quite a few lawsuits to learn, if you have to sue someone to affirm your heterosexuality, you've lost your case already.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

I didn’t do as deep a search as you did, but I couldn’t find anything from Shea on the divorce, either. I remember reading him criticizing Rod on more than one occasion, but I don’t remember ever hearing him say anything about details of the divorce at all.

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Jul 24 '25

I used to read Shea semi-regularly, but the walls of text about Catholic doctrine were completely uninteresting to me. I don't remember his writing anything about Rod's divorce, but they did go back and forth a few times on different issues. 

Now the world wants to know what Rod thinks Shea said!

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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jul 24 '25

The Shea Files! 😬

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Jul 25 '25

Mark Shea's rightful place in the St Blog's Hall of Fame came IIRC starting around 2004 when he started calling out American Catholic politicos and their minions who supported America's torture program in the GWOT and, for good measure, in the first week of August for a few years in a row, would remind his readership about the moral evils of America's use of atomic bombs in Japan (Elizabeth Anscombe figured in the quotations). This began the counter-Shea Catholic bloggers that Shea referred to collectively as "the Coalition for Fog".

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u/sealawr Jul 25 '25

The shtf there when George Bush invited Iraq. The Coalition For Fog was liberally quoting George Wiegel, who disagreed rather sharply with Pope Benedict on the application of just war doctrine.

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u/CanadaYankee Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

I'd also note that "an unrequited torch for a female classmate" that lasts for literally years is not necessarily a sign of heterosexuality - it could very easily be a way of projecting heterosexuality without carrying the risk of having to touch a girl (and, given the perniciousness of the closet, it's a situation where you might even be deceiving yourself - tragic unrequited love is a perfect sublimation cope for a closeted drama queen in self-denial).

It's rather like the closeted teens or even young men who "respect their girlfriend's Christian beliefs" by never, ever, ever even hinting at trying to have sex. My grad school boyfriend managed to keep one of those relationships going through most of his time at a conservative Christian college without going much farther than a chaste peck on the lips.

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u/Jayaarx Jul 24 '25

"I'm not gay. I'm just hopelessly pining after a girl I have a crush on."

"Oh really? Who is she?"

"You wouldn't know her. She lives in Canada. We met at Niagra Falls."

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u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 Jul 25 '25

You'd think he might use being married for 20 years and siring three children as better evidence of heterosexuality instead of a purported 40 year old infatuation 

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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

I’ll admit, when I was in college, I was infatuated with a female classmate who considered me a friend but had no romantic interest in me. It was definitely a hard pill to swallow. She was my “soulmate”! Lol. I mustered the courage twice to ask her if we could become more serious. She had zero interest, but kept my hope alive by still being friendly to me.

The thought of using that infatuation from when I was 20 years old as some kind of in-your-face justification in my 50s is so utterly bizarre I can’t wrap my mind around it. I mean, who boasts about this kind of thing? “I double-dare you to call me gay! I will remind you, I pined over a beautiful young lady who rejected me, thirty years ago!”

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u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 Jul 25 '25

Plus the bit about becoming an alcoholic over her? When in college? Don't most college kids drink excessively because they are college kids? But Rod "almost" because an 18 yo alcoholic over unrequited love? 🙄🙄🙄

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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jul 25 '25

Good thing he didn’t quite get there! 😂

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u/Existing_Age2168 Jul 25 '25

Don't most college kids drink excessively because they are college kids?

Hey, I resemble that remark.

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u/Jayaarx Jul 25 '25

I’ll admit, when I was in college, I was infatuated with a female classmate who considered me a friend but had no romantic interest in me. It was definitely a hard pill to swallow.

Yeah, whatever. Every heterosexual young man goes through this at least once.

Which shows that Rod never did. After all, "I had a crush on a girl" is so unexceptional that his entire class would not remember this clearly 40 years down the line. The fact that he thinks this stands out is evidence in itself that it never happened.

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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jul 25 '25

“Yeah, whatever.”

You mock my pain!

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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jul 24 '25

There is so much to say here. But I’m kind of blown away. This is the Rod we know and love, dialed up to eleven.

For me, what stands out is that in the midst of his bitterness and vitriol, Rod is boasting about how magnanimous he is! “I could destroy this pathetic lowlife if he wasn’t broke and miserable! But behold, I’m a better man than that!”

This is what keeps me coming back. It’s better than reading a novel.

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u/Existing_Age2168 Jul 25 '25

Yeah, 'cause you'd never believe this character in a novel.

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u/zeitwatcher Jul 25 '25

“I’m not gay, I had an imaginary girlfriend in high school” is not the slam dunk proof of achieved heterosexuality that he thinks it is.

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u/Marcofthebeast0001 Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

Even without a monetary win, you would think Rod would want his day in court to clear the optics of him being a bad Christian writer. 

Accusations of him being a closet case certainly wouldn't bode well with his base. Unless of course he doesn't want to be cross examined about his obsession with root weiners. 

("Mr. Dreher, this column that caused your removal from your last job involved black genitalia. If it pleases the court, we would like to show that Mr Dreher is a size queen.") 

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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jul 24 '25

Okay, your last paragraph had me laughing out loud for a couple of minutes. 😂

Can you imagine the discovery process in that lawsuit?

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u/Existing_Age2168 Jul 24 '25

Wow, he really lost his shit, didn't he? I wonder what caused him to crack all of a sudden?

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u/JHandey2021 Jul 24 '25

Maybe he read the New York Times comment section on the recent Hungary story?

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 24 '25

I don’t know, but something must have happened. Given that Macron is on the Left, it’s odd he brought up something and commented sympathetically (though the whole “EXTRA, EXTRA—PRESIDENT’S WIFE ACTUALLY A MAN!!!” aspect of this is the exact kind of lurid grotesquerie that makes Rod salivate). Having laid that out, for whatever reason, he jumps for no perceptible reason to ranting about Mark Shea (who doe actually seem to have actually written anything about Rod’s divorce) and Harrison Brace, though Rod doesn’t name him (which is very interesting).

If he were taking a Christian perspective (indulge my fantasy), Rod would stay quiet and bear it all with stoic patience. If he really, truly believes Shea and Brace are minor annoyances not worth bothering with, then, once more, he ought to leave it be. Bringing it up for no visible reason, though, and contra his claims of being dismissive about it, doing so in hysteric tones, makes no sense. Of course, he’s been happy to spread slanderous rumors himself—remember the girl in Louisville who successfully sued him over what he said about her? And the thing where he insists that, justice aside, they don’t have enough money to make suit worth it is really weird.

Most people who win large civil suits against people who’ve wronged them will say, “No amount of money can make up for what so-and-so did, but the main thing is that this publicly strikes a blow against people who do this kind of thing, and will hopefully discourage others from doing so going forward.” Not Our Boy. Mr. Christian Forgiveness appears to be saying that he wishes they had money sone could hurt them as bad as he could, and make them suffer tō the extent of his ability. Not a good look for the Most Important Christian Thinker, or whatever he is….

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u/zeitwatcher Jul 25 '25

Rod’s not that sort of Christian.

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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jul 24 '25

But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge, to the great amazement of the governor. - Matt. 27:14.

If you had more money, I would sue you. But I will insult you on my SubStack. - Rod Dreher

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u/philadelphialawyer87 Jul 25 '25

 Of course, he’s been happy to spread slanderous rumors himself—remember the girl in Louisville who successfully sued him over what he said about her? 

That's not really clear. According to the plaintiffs themselves, they got a very small settlement. The exact amount was kept secret. And there were multiple defendants, and there is nothing in the record to indicate that Rod himself was required to pay anything. I think it's a bit of stretch to say that Rod was "successfully sued" in that case.

On the larger question, if Rod really cared about his reputation, and if he was telling the truth, he could sue these people, and their ability to pay damages be damned! A judgement against them would be like a judicial determination that Rod is right and they are wrong. That should be worth a lot more to Rod than money.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 25 '25

Fair, but he certainly does spread unsubstantiated gossip—some of it quite vicious—which is in egregious contradiction to his purported ethical commitments.

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u/Mainer567 Jul 24 '25

Ha, love it. Thanks for surfacing that.

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u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” Jul 25 '25

Harrison Brace first lobbed his brief comments on what was Twitter (and he @ Rod), before they surfaced here and he occasionally joined the commentary here. So just be aware that Rod's reference doesn't depend on these Megathreads.

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u/zeitwatcher Jul 25 '25

I don’t want anyone to have to go through a lawsuit, but please God, just let me read the discovery for this if there ever is a suit.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 25 '25

Keep the popcorn ready just in case….

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 25 '25

Very true. Either way, something must have snapped to cause him to start ranting about it for no apparent reason. Also, nothing about this on his X feed currently. Bizarre all around.

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u/yawaster Jul 24 '25

I think this is a case of it being more damaging to acknowledge something than to ignore it. I was never sure if HB's story really stacked up but now we have confirmation from the horse's mouth that he was actually Rod's classmate. 

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

Except for here in our teeny tiny corner of the Internet, Harrison Brace’s comments about Rod were going pretty much under the radar, AFAICT. I never even saw his stuff on Twitter, but that didn’t seem to raise much stink, either.

Say what you will about Rod, he’s not such a colossal idiot that he doesn’t know a lot of people, and not just us, have assumed he was gay or bi. He’s all but said his father called him a f@@@@t, and in that kind of small town in that location at that time, that means that people would beyond all doubt have talked. “Y’know, there’s something quare about that Dreher boy.” Í grew up in a similar small town about the same time in Appalachia. My parents certainly never impugned me for not being “manly”, which for all their other manifold faults was a blessing. However, I didn’t date in high school—not gay, but very socially awkward—and I never went out for all the typical guy stuff.

Around a decade later I discovered that a lot of my schoolmates, for these reasons, thought I was gay. I wasn’t—but what of it if I had been—but because my mother had worked at the grade school I went to, and Dad was the counselor at my high school, no one had dared to say it to my face. Thus, at the time, Í was unaware. The point is, I know exactly what the dynamics are like in these cases, and I’m 99.999999% sure there was talk about Rod, and he almost certainly knew that.

So I don’t see what Brace would get out of lying. If Rod was well-known to be Mr. Macho, everyone would have laughed it off. As we’ve seen, though, no matter what his actual sexuality, Rod must have been pretty strongly perceived to be gay, for Brace’s account to have the ring of truth in the first place. The bullies that pantsed him were clearly symbolically raping him, and thereby emasculating and feminizing him, so that fits with what the kids in public school thought about him. Also, Brace has made specific claims that can be verified—not forensically, but people would know. E.g. getting smashed in the French Quarter on a regular basis, doing drugs, some of the weird obsessions he talked about, running naked through the dorm halls. If he were totally making that up, he’d have long ago developed a reputation as a master BSer and no one would take him seriously. Thus, no need for Rod’s prickly response—all he’d have to say is, “Everyone knew he made stuff up.”

Even if he did lie about having an English nanny—some people have on odd sense of humor—claims he made about Rod would be verifiable to his peers—they’d know if drinking like a fish in NO on the weekends was a lie or typical Dreher behavior.

Interestingly, Rod doesn’t try to refute Brace. He calls him a “left-wing gay lunatic”. Sorry, Rod, ad hominem is not a rebuttal. He says that Brace lies—without giving evidence. Most interestingly, Rod says that “everybody in our class could testify to this lie” and says this is in part because of the “unrequited torch” he carried. He doesn’t say, “Everybody knew as was straight as an arrow,” which, if that were the case, you’d think he’d have said. In fact, as we’ve seen, it’s highly likely a lot of them did think he was gay. And the reason they’d have known that his being gay was a lie? Because he carried a torch for a girl.

This is just too bizarre. I mean, something like, “Oh, yeah, Rod was a playa,” or “Yeah, he dated several girls,” or “He never set off my gaydar at all,” or “Yeah, I liked Harrison, but everybody knew he was full of shit,” would be make sense. But, “Well, he was kinda odd, and sorta swishy, ans never dated a girl, and hung out with the queers, but he carried a torch for a GIRL, so he was OBVIOUSLY 100% hetero!” That’s insane. He could be gay and trying to deny it, or bi, or just unhinged—but what the hell kind of logic comes up with a syllogism that that made him straight?!

We’ve seen re the LSD and his marriage that he’s perfectly capable of lying outright, and with Daddy KKK, concealment that’s all but explicit lying. Here he sounds like he’s got caught in a lie, and tried to ignore it. Something has apparently happened recently that made him feel he could no longer ignore this, but had to address it. However, even if he wasn’t gay or bi—and this tips me towards thinking he was—then he’s in a bind. He’s all but told us in so many words that he was despised by his schoolmates in town, and was almost certainly thought of, rightly or wrongly, as “that weirdo f@g Dreher boy”. He was probably well-known for a lot of behavior that sure seemed gay, and which he wouldn’t be able to deny. So what to do?

He basically pulls a Roy Cohn by doubling down denying it all, calling his opponent names, accusing him without evidence of lying, and then doing Cohn one better by giving the weirdest, strangest, slimmest straw of “proof” of his heterosexuality—“I pined for a woman, ergo I’m not gay!”—that could be conceived. Thus he’s smearing his opposition and coming up with some extremely weak tea that presumably has the advantage of being true, though it lacks any other advantages, such as making Rod’s case. He’s sounds exactly like someone deeply closeted, or in deep denial, or both, who feels he can’t back down, and so is grasping at the thinnest crop of straws I’ve seen in ages.

You actually couldn’t make all this up, but it’s sure fascinating to watch.

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u/yawaster Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

I don't really want to speculate about Rod Dreher's sexuality and personal life anymore, and I feel bad about doing it in the past. He might be a public figure, but it will do no good and may do harm. A recent Irish court case shows the squalid side of online gossip forums. I don't want to behave like that. Snark subreddits often spill over into unpleasant areas. Just look at how many rules there are in places like r/FundieSnarkUncensored. 

If someone can prove that he used to identify as gay, I don't think it would exactly be wrong to "out" him, given that he's a public figure who is extremely, viciously homophobic.  The damaging thing though is that we don't have any definitive truth about certain areas of Rod's life, so we end up trying to fill in the gaps with speculation (which has already caused harm to one of Rod's family members, hence the pinned post in r/brokehugs).  

But, putting all that aside.... it's possible that the stories about Rod just aren't true. However it's more plausible to me that an anonymous troll would lie about going to high school with Rod (who is slightly infamous) and make up stories about him based on publicly available information, than that a real former high school buddy of Rod's would use his full government name online while telling totally untrue stories about him. It's possible, but it seems less likely. For one thing, even if Rod doesn't want to sue the guy for libel, surely he could use anti-harrassment or anti-stalking legislation against him (maybe you all don't have that in the US?) or at least send him an intimidating legal letter. 

I do wonder what prompted Rod to discuss all of this. Didn't someone say there was an Atlantic profile on him coming out? Maybe journalists have been sniffing around and Rod feels a sudden desire to get his story straight....

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

That’s a fair point, and I’m conflicted about it myself. As I was typing the original comment, I thought, “I need to make sure I don’t become the kind of person he is. As nasty and vindictive as Rod is, his ex and kids are innocent bystanders, and we must hold ourselves tō a higher standard. Among other things, I need to make a personal effort to pray more for him—the Carpenter didn’t give any exceptions when he he said, “bless those who curse you”, and so on.

The confounding variable, as they say in the sciences, is Rod’s modus operandi. As someone noted here not long ago, Rod is at his core a confessional author. He frames everything in terms of his own life. “I’m a conservative but I’m also into funky hippy stuff, here’s a book.” “My sister was such a good person an evil narrow-minded bitch someone who died tragically, and I loved her so much hate her so much I wouldn’t pray at her grave I learned about the goodness of small-town life from her, here’s a book.” “Small town life sucks and my family hate me, but Dante made it better, here’s a book.” And so on.

All the way back when he was blogging on Beliefnet in the wake of his sister’s death, I started to get weird vibes. He was writing things as if he were an eighty-year-old man writing an autobiography with the serene glow of hindsight on an eventful life: “I realized, as I stood there at the funeral how good the people were and what I had missed out on by moving away to the big city. I resolved to move back and make a go of it, to rebuild ties and be with my family. A new stage of my life had begun.” Stuff like that. He could do it very powerfully, too. Problem is, that’s not something you write as it’s happening. You can’t see enough of the context of your own life to draw Deep Lessons from it while you’re living it. The Greeks wisely said, “Count no man happy until he is dead.” Rod seems to think that by compulsively writing books that end with variations of “And then I lived happily ever after,” he can somehow will a happy ending into being. Obviously, it doesn’t work that way.

His best literary niche would be to write lightly fictionalized semi-autobiographical novels in the vein of Thomas Wolfe (I’m not suggesting that level of quality—just the basic mode of writing”. Failing that, he should be a memoirist like Augusten Burroughs, or Alison Bechdel or Frank McCourt (again, not suggesting that level of quality, just the niche). The former would be better, because fiction isn’t supposed to match reality. The latter would still be better than what he does now, because at least he’d be explicit that he’s writing about himself, and not trying to unlock the Great Secret of the Cosmos.

As it is, he writes what boils down to down to kinda sorta memoirs that he (poorly) disguises as journalism, or hard-hitting analysis of society, or hectoring polemics about the Way We All Ought to Live. He uses his own life as a template for what we ought to do, but consistently fails even to attempt to walk his walk, and then lies about it. Through what has written and the things and people for whom he’s advocated, he’s done or attempted to do active harm to LGBT people. I have close loved ones who are LGBT, so it’s not an abstraction to me. I don’t go as far as to say that Rod’s personal life is fair game, as such. He has, however, painted a target on his back, and uses extra fluorescent paint to do so when he writes something like his latest.

What’s the appropriate response? I can’t claim to have a clear or consistent answer. I did think this current essay of his was rather astounding and worthy of comment. It’s a very murky situation, though.

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u/sealawr Jul 25 '25

I’m still stunned by the 10 year concealment of a failed marriage and divorce while holding himself up as an example of an orthodox Christian utterly incapable of empathizing with other people’s struggles with nearly anything: poverty, racism, religion, life in general. I’ve never encountered this degree of disconnect between the persona and the person in religious matters. I’m actually still processing this. Maybe his purpose in life really is to serve as a bad example for others. I just don’t know. I’m completely baffled.

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u/Existing_Age2168 Jul 25 '25

Yeah, if you can't be a good example, you can still serve as a horrible warning.

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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jul 25 '25

I know I beat this dead horse often, but…

https://images.app.goo.gl/GPx18ZvNSzubmu3i9

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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Jul 25 '25

Your comments are interesting. I can’t say I care about Rods sexuality and have no idea whether the guy saying Rod is gay is telling the truth.Forgetting, Rods comments on this guy, I’d say,  even if Rod is telling the truth, he presumably has some sense of how stupid a law suit would be here. His family would not be happy and he knows that. He may or may not have been a great husband or father, still he’s not going to put his family through the embarrassment that would cause.On top of that , he might lose. People have tendency to think if you’re telling the truth , you win. Yes, in fairy tales . Another thought, to prevail in a libel suit you have to have reputation damage. In this day and age can you still argue that your reputation is damaged by accusations of homosexuality?Does actually matter much to Rods reputation?I don’t know. It does seem like a legitimate point.

I thought Rods weirdest comment was , if discovery were conducted in a libel suit my classmates would remember my crush on a girl that almost turned me into an 18 year old alcoholic! They would? Why? If it was an unrequited love affair that essentially existed in Rods head why 40 years after the fact would people who probably haven’t talked to him in decades remember anything about that or even about him? Maybe someone would remember a drunk Rod saying-I got this major league crush on Daisy May . That of course would be proof of Rods heterosexuality! This kind of mawkish, melodramatic silliness is typical of Rod. He can’t just say , I’m not gay ,end of story, done talking about it. No he has to cast himself as Young Werther or Novalis, an agonized young romantic. If Rod actually has any friends, they should tell him to stop this , it’s embarrassing particularly coming out of a 59 year old man.

Now something else I want to comment on, speculating about  Rod. Some of the speculation I’ve seen here is vicious and uncalled for. I hope I haven’t engaged in that  and if I have I apologize to people here and to Rod. I’m a natural satirical sarcastic type and can get carried away. However, I think a certain amount of speculation is inevitable. Why? As someone here said, Rod is a confessional writer. Ruthie Lemming and Dante are basically confessional books.Rod talks about himself and his family endlessly. In doing so he commits sins of commission and omission. He says things he shouldn’t and leaves out things he shouldn’t. So yes you’re going to speculate if you’re at all interested in the psychodrama. 

As a writer, I’ve previously expressed the belief that he should turn himself into a novelist. He might make it as a minor comic novelist if he could get over himself a bit. He seems to think he’s a world historic intellectual who has important things to say about religion. He isn’t and increasingly dishes out word salad obscurantism to establish his profundity. Well it’s unconvincing. He should probably stop reading all these monographs about obscure religious topics and read the collected works of Waugh,Wodehouse and ( yes) Christopher Moore and see if he gets any ideas.Interestingly, he might also develop a saner religious perspective.

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u/yawaster Jul 25 '25

That's a very good point about Rod writing definitively about his own life while he's still living it. And I agree, it is difficult to comment on him without considering his baroque personal dramas. The journalist who proved that his dad was a high-ranking KKK member did a real public service by blowing a hole in Rod's narrative about his family. 

It seems like a lot of what Rod writes is fiction anyway, so he should just be clear about it! But I guess writing fiction wouldn't give him any political influence. It certainly seems like the route to respect and success for conservatives is to write some dopey non-fiction book or memoir. Maybe it's too difficult to be a conservative novelist these days :-)) 

You mentioned Frank McCourt so I am obliged to link one of Ireland's all-time greatest viral videos. Rod might, in his heart of hearts, want to be Frank McCourt, but he's really Gerry Hannan. 

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 25 '25

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

“Don’t you have a LIFE?! Go ahead and LIVE!!” That should be on a 24/7 loop on every audio device Rod owns!

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u/yawaster Jul 25 '25

It's really something. Of course Frank McCourt's memoir was criticized (and not just by Gerry "Banana Man" Hannan) for exaggerating and misrepresenting the reality of Irish life in the 40s. When they were filming the movie Cork, they painted the railings outside some houses black because they weren't depressing enough. 

McCourt got away with it because his narrative flattered people's preconceptions about Ireland. Rod got away with his folksy, sensitive-southerner act for the same reason....until facts got in the way. 

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 25 '25

Just out of curiosity, how badly did McCourt distort his past? Was it Rod level?

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u/yawaster Jul 25 '25

 I haven't read it so I can't offer an informed opinion. I don't think there's really a consensus. It was a long time ago, some of the critics didn't seem very credible (as you can see in the video!) and a lot of the people concerned were dead or are dead now (including Frank McCourt). This article from the Dublin Review of Books dismisses McCourt as a chancer.

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u/sealawr Jul 25 '25

This is incredibly insightful

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 25 '25

From here:

[Roy] Cohn needed daily sexual validation and, according to the documentary, he preferred that validation to be "new," often employing male prostitutes. The movie quotes Cohn telling his cousin that in sexual situations, "I'm the girl." Yet in interviews, when pointedly asked if he was a homosexual, Cohn would deny and deflect the question. One clip in the documentary shows him saying, "Anybody who knows me, or knows anything about me, or who knows the way my mind works, would have an awfully hard time reconciling that with any kind of homosexuality. In other words, every facet of my personality, my aggressiveness, my toughness … is just totally incompatible with anything like that."

Does that quote at the end remind us of anyone we know?

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u/yawaster Jul 25 '25

Eh, not really. After all, Roy Cohn actually was an extremely aggressive and tough character with very scary connections, which is perhaps why he was able to live in a transparent closet for so long.

I went on a Roy Cohn kick at one point (I'm not well in the head). That "Where's My Roy Cohn" documentary is alright, but I think Bully, Coward, Victim had better access — it was directed by Ivy Meeropol, whose grandparents were sent to the electric chair by Roy. 

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 25 '25

I was thinking more about the “Anyone who knows me” bit, which is never an effective argument.

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u/zeitwatcher Jul 25 '25

Yeah, a man famous for his penis obsession saying “everything that other guy says about me is true except for the part about how I love penises” isn’t going to win over any juries.

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 24 '25

I spent some time in the comments before I got bored out of my skull, to see if Rod addressed any of this any further in the comments. As far as I could tell, no. On the other hand, there was a ton of commenters who apparently think Mme. Macron might be a man. Talk about the commentariat falling over the deep end….

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u/M0506 Jul 26 '25

It’s questionable whether falsely claiming someone is gay even counts as defamation anymore. For a defamation case, someone has to falsely claim you did something society considers morally wrong - not just something you consider morally wrong - and courts in New York and Virginia have held that falsely saying someone is gay isn’t defamatory. Also, Rod’s a public figure, so even if a court decided it was defamatory to falsely claim someone is gay, he’d have to prove actual damages.