Last week I called departing Dallas Morning News opinion columnist Rod Dreher an “accessory to murder” for his recent piece attacking the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, an organization designed to protect LGBT youth. Well apparently Dreher just couldn’t handle this at all, because yesterday he lashed out on his Crunchy Con blog by calling me “a neurotic teenage girl in the body of a grown man” and “a screaming meemee,” whatever that is. Ironically, Dreher’s childish, homophobic rant is tacked onto the end of a blog post that features recent comments by Clint Eastwood, who laments in talking about his new movie “Invictus” that we’ve seemingly become a nation of intolerant, juvenile extremists. So basically, Dreher proceeds to do exactly what Eastwood is railing against. In case you’re wondering, Eastwood is a libertarian and a supporter of full LGBT equality, and I’m pretty sure he’d say the only thing we shouldn’t tolerate is intolerance — or, in other words, people like Rod Dreher.
UPDATE: I just noticed that Dreher’s new boss was one of the largest individual donors to Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in California. Dreher is leaving The DMN to work for the John Templeton Foundation, which is headed by John M. Templeton Jr., who along with his wife gave about $1 million in support of Prop 8. Templeton was criticized for the donation since the John Templeton Foundation claims to be apolitical and is in fact barred from political activity because it’s a 501(c)(3). Shocking!!!
8 Comments
Looks like John Templeton Foundation needs to have their 501(c)(3) removed, just like The Family. And why not the Vatican?
Dreher is a douche, plain and simple. He can’t stop talking about the “lavender menace,” but gets all pissy-pants when someone steps out of his “yassah” choir to call him on his bullshit.
He’s so scared of sex in all expressions save the most controlled and controlling that it’s a wonder he can even key out the posts he does. Probably washes his hands until they bleed after every daily rant about how the gays should just shut up and die and stop making good, god-fearing bigots look bad in public. Seriously – that’s his argument: Legitimizing gayness is bad because when gayness is legitimized, people like him get called bigots.
In Dreher’s world, it’s only right that people like him treat people like us as if we were less than they are – much like his forebears treated “nigras” back in the day. We homos are too uppity for his taste, and if we keep it up, people like him will start to be treated the way people like him were treated when black folks were finally deemed human.
Thanks for telling the truth on Dreher and Templeton, John. I hope that you feel the support from all of us who appreciate what you do for the whole Dallas community. When Harry Truman heard a person yell, “Give ’em hell, Harry!” he replied, “I don’t give ’em hell…I just tell the truth on ’em, and they THINK it’s hell!” So, Give “Em Hell, John!
Although Rod Dreher’s writing is always like one of those bugs that glues onto itself strange bits of this and that from its environment to camouflage itself as something other than what it is, when you penetrate the obvious inconsistencies these sorts of misdirections can’t help but yield his output inevitably comes down to one of two things, superstitious backwoods terror of evil spirits who will “get him” in some way, hence his hated of children trick-or-treating on Halloween near his house, or loathing at his own sexual ambivalence and what it constantly tempts him to. The only way he can feel safe, the only way he can fall sleep at night without drugs or alcohol is by trying to destroy the sources of both.
So here he is once again (yawn) trying to paste the great Clint Eastwood onto his pathetic, insignificant self in a losing attempt to elevate his shrieking to some level of “cultural criticism”, but poor rube that he is he sabotages even that attempt by falling back into namecalling the evil homo (within) he hates so furiously a “teenage girl” and a “screaming meemee”. Just come out already, Rod, and spare your poor wife any more of her undeserved painful episodes of shingles. Maybe your new obscurity in Philadelphia will give you a fresh start to do so and to become what you really are.
geraldpembroke
I believe a “screaming mee-mie” was a German buzz bomb, a missile used at the end of the second World War in a last ditch effort to bring Britain to its knees. They were fired from the German coast and the sound they made as they “screamed” over London was particularly terrifying. They caused immense damage and it was never clear where they would hit. I think John Wright deserves a pat on the back for striking such fear and dread into the heart of Rod Dreher.
Ginger Beard
Christians believe every person is of infinite worth, created in the image and likeness of God. Christians believe with Jesus that we have an eternal destiny, that no matter what we may wish we cannot stop existing when we die. Christians really believe with Jesus that “whatsoever you do to these the least of my brothers and sisters you do to me”.
Do you believe that? Do you believe that to be a disciple of Jesus we must extinguish every last trace of hatred from our hearts? Do you believe Eve Tushnet and John Heard two same sex attracted Christians who think with Jesus and the Church about what sex is are haters and bigots?
I think Rod is right, no one really falls for those who spew those epithets out anymore. Its time to just start arguing and doing serious business with metaphysics, love, eros and the meaning of sex.
Rod affirms your intrinsic worth and believes he will have to give a terrifying account of himself when he meets Jesus – does your world view give you grounds to affirm his worth?
Don’t be consumed by hate. Happy Christmas.
Rod Dreher’s entire life is based on HATE. HATE for anyone who doesn’t see the world as he does.
He is a worthless non entity who deserves only shitty pity.