Over the last 12 years, Dreher... has built a cult following with some of the most bizarre diatribes in opinion journalism. He has warned that so-called sissy hypnosis porn is “profoundly evil;” detailed the “formal” Catholic exorcism of a friend’s suicidal wife; and recalled—in unsettling detail—the time he witnessed a Black classmate's uncircumcised penis....Howard Ahmanson Jr., the heir to a California banking fortune [was] the sole benefactor of Dreher’s six-figure salary.... This unique funding arrangement—a single donor choosing to cover one writer’s entire salary—was paired with an even more unusual editorial arrangement: Dreher was allowed to publish directly on TAC’s site without any revisions or legal oversight....
That is, I would say, Dreher was allowed to write a real blog. And he got real money for blogging the real way. It's appropriate that a writer be paid. But all the money came from one guy. How can you write like that?! I guess it depends on the guy. You'd have to think about whether this one guy is getting what he wants... or enough of what he wants... to keep the money flowing.
Ahmanson must have loved Dreher, so where did Dreher go wrong? Sources tell Vanity Fair it was that post about circumcision. Dreher wrote:
“All us boys wanted to stare at his primitive root wiener when we were at the urinal during recess, because it was monstrous. Nobody told us that wieners could look like that.”
I took a moment to look up Ahmanson. From his Wikipedia page, check out his "occupation":
"Heir, idle rich, financier." Oh, Wikipedia!
It wasn't just calling a black man's uncircumcised penis a "primitive root wiener."
Some of Dreher’s commentary on the gay and transgender communities also proved off-putting to Ahmanson, such as his lurid musings on anal sex, rectal bleeding, and the “partially rotted off” nose of a gay man who contracted monkeypox.
“At some point, he basically decided, 'This is too weird,’” the source, paraphrasing Ahmanson, explained to me. “‘I don’t want to read this or pay for this anymore.’”
The problem was either that or the fact that Dreher, who lives in Hungary, revealed that the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said NATO is "in a war with Russia" and he wants out of the European Union. That caused a stir.
In his final TAC post, Dreher closed by saying to his readers: “All you Mongoloids were the Primitive Root Wiener in my Lucky Dog, and I love you very much.” I'm sure his closest readers understood all the references. I only get "Primitive Root Wiener" and it's hard to fathom why he would write that... other than that to blog well you have to take chances and say some unusual things. I'm going to guess that Dreher will be better off on his own at Substack with the money coming from a multitude of readers and not from one man — who, of course, had to worry about having his own reputation wedded to the words of a blogger.
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56 comments:
I feel so sheltered. I didn't even know sissy hypnosis porn was a thing. A surprise thing.
I read Dreher regularly for a few years. Often disagreed with him, but he made his points well and intelligently. He does seem to have gone off the rails over the last year or two. His posts have gotten to be stranger and stranger, less about politics and more about religion and culture--a longtime subject for him, but increasingly an obsession and one that goes off on strange tangents.
He's going to be better off after losing a six figure salary? I guess blogging is more lucrative than I knew.
I read this blog everyday and I read Dreher's blog daily as well. The willingness to take risks and be unconventional in one's analysis of the world is a huge plus for readers. Sometimes that leads to missteps, but overall it is worth it to read unique and authentic takes on the world we live in. So much commentary is canned and predictable, writers like Althouse and Dreher are breaths of fresh air and I appreciate their work.
Primitive straw wiener from the RedSox subreddit
”This is either genius or perverted…”
Hint: safe for work (as far as I can determine)
I used to read his blog regularly. It was often just endless stream of consciousness about an idea that grabbed his attention, but he did seem to spend a lot of time on gay/transgender weirdness on the internet. I often wondered if he secretly enjoyed perusing all that kinky sexual stuff. At any rate, you can’t look at that stuff often without it affecting you, and he did end up posting weird stuff a lot. He sometimes comes off as a little unhinged. Can’t believe he got paid six figures!
It's written by chatgbt.
He points to the freakshow they are asking us to believe but hes the weird one, this erasure of biology of logic of science
This -- Althouse blogging about Rod Dreher's deeply weird blogging -- is some really good blogging.
Now; having congratulated Althouse for properly blogging the subject of "Rod Dreher," I just wanted to point out that there's a (w)hole lot more Rod Dreher-penetration where that came from. And instead of my ramming three dozen or so more critical hyperlinks up Rod's poop chute, here is just one hard, smooth link for Rod to suck on. From just last month. Where The Bulwark has made a cottage industry out of pounding Rod Dreher's nether regions with such ease and with little more than just the crazy excrement that Rod Dreher has been putting out under his own byline. One wonders after all of it, whether rectal bleeding has been a problem for Rod. You can find all the links you could hope for in a banger of a weekend, in just this one February '23 essay:
Lashing Out, Rod Dreher (Again) Reveals His Ignorance of Hungary
Howard Ahmanson, Sr. was a Creighton Law alum and the building is named for him.
Dreher will get no Substack fee from me. I won't even read his freebie posts.
Why any male in any non-sexual context circumstance would stare at another man's package is beyond my kin. Staring at unusually attractive sights of any kind is common but that likely would never include "who gives a shit" sightings.
But perhaps someone could ask Jolly Gym Jordan (R-Flop) about his coaching career observations.
@rhhardin said...
It's written by chatgbt.
ChatGPT perhaps? Good thought.
"Primitive root weiner" is hilarious and a perfect description of an uncircumcised cock.
It's "primitive" because uncircumcised is how all men used to store their cocks for most of human history. It's how God intended your cock to function. People who have been circumcised are missing part of themselves. If you're a girl, imagine you don't have a clit and someone cut it off. It's about like that.
It's "root" because uncircumcised is the "root" word. It's the original. Circumcised being the altered form of the word "weiner."
At some point in history, someone decided they knew better than God. And started cutting off little boy's penis tips. And I think that's where Rod's rod problem lies; that someone group of people don't like it that we noticed they think they know better than God.
“Now; having congratulated Althouse for properly blogging the…”
Eddie, is that you!
“ Progressives! They make a desert and call it peace. They carve a gash and call it a vagina. They make us all insane, and call the sane crazy.”
The trans person Dreher wrote about is earning an advanced degree at NYU and the sissy porn paper was an academic paper presented at Columbia.
Mary Beth,
Just search, or definitely do not search, for "Gooning" videos.
(Please do not search for those if you suffer from epilepsy or flashing light induced migraines. Or if you, ya know, do not want to watch graphic videos)
So Dreher likes to write about dick. To me, whatever.
But the ick factor for most readers is high on this topic. He a) must not care and b) can afford to forsake his sugar daddy.
gadfly said...
Why any male in any non-sexual context circumstance would stare at another man's package is beyond my kin.
He wasn't staring at it, he witnessed it.
Like Jehovah.
LLR-democratical Chuck: "This -- Althouse blogging about Rod Dreher's deeply weird blogging -- is some really good blogging.
Now; having congratulated Althouse for properly blogging the subject of "Rod Dreher,..."
Oh boy. Looks like cringey, creepy, stalkerish gin-and-tonic besotted Eddie-Haskell-like Chuck has greasily slithered his way back onto the blog.
Whatever Althouse is paid or compensated for this blog it ain't enough to cover that sort of sinister weirdness.
Recheck your locks Althouse.
This is as bad as LLR-democratical Chuck's truly menacing and bizarre fixation with Barron Trump over several years. And "fixation" is putting it mildly. Though I suspect Barron has by now probably aged out of Chuck's adolescent development..uh...compulsion(?)...inclinations(?)...predilection(?) "zone".
FYI: I didn't want to copy/paste the remainder of LLR-democratical Chuck's 8:27am post because, lets face it, what sane person would?
Pretty funny that VF portrays Dreher as a sex weirdo when, in fact, it is Progressives who are obsessed with sex.
One small substantive question; was Ahmanson really Rod Dreher's sole sponsor? Or is there also some Hungarian-national-"thinktank" funding for Dreher too? Say, "The Danube Institute"?
Can Chuck make it any more obvious that he's a closet case? Explains everything really.
I'm sure Professor Althouse is very grateful for his constructive criticism. He's an expert with his own extremely successful blog, right?
For balance - lets get rid of one of the liars on the left.
Andrea Mitchell?
Rachel Maddow?
Joy Behar?
The list is long...
"The problem was either that or the fact that Dreher, who lives in Hungary, revealed that the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said NATO is "in a war with Russia" and he wants out of the European Union. That caused a stir."
Victor Orban is the primitive root weiner in the lucky dog that is the European Union. A giant Hungarian weiner with the balls to to speak the truth. We haven't seen European cocksmanship like this in so long, we had no idea it could look like that.
I sure will miss Dreher at TAC.
You know, rather than highlight his lowlights, I will just remain a huge admirer of the sometimes overlong musings and tangents that say way more about my attention span than his. He was/is an invaluable culture war chronicler. The things he presented were often things I would look away from, but important to demonstrate the depths of decadent Weimar which we inhabit— ie, the rotting nose of the monkey pox dude, who, it should be noted, posted that himself because “activism”.
He’s right about The Benedict Option, and he’s right about Live not by Lies. He sees the septicemic West’s organs shutting down.
I almost never read anything he wrote.
Dave Begley. thanks.
No wonder Chuck is losing his mind.
trans/social progressive
So you’re saying Rod is no longer uncut?
Damn, Dreher must have touched a sensitive portion of Chuck's rectum, or just didn't use enough lube. Which was it, Chuck?
But the ick factor for most readers is high on this topic.
What I hate are the ick dick pics
what a sick prick!
made me a vic
ha ha ha
one time when I was in college
I was in the front seat (thank God)
and in the back seat two of my buddies were sitting
with a Golden Retriever sitting between them
and for whatever, reason, he got a little excited
sexually
didn't try to hump anybody
just sitting there, happy
big grin on his face
"here comes the lipstick"
man, they were freaking out in the backseat
Anybody can contribute to Wikipedia, so maybe don't read too much into Ahmanson's entry other than the possibility that the moderators didn't see fit to delete the questionable matter.
Dreher got some positive attention a year or so back for writing about how he found out that his father had been a Klansman (also some negative attention for splitting from his wife). I didn't really like him. He wrote rambling, interminable articles and then he'd squat on the comments line and argue with people who criticized him. I guess that's allowable, but he got too involved. A writer ought to be able to let go at least a little.
I suppose he was a man on a quest. It took him from his childhood Methodism to Catholicism to Eastern Orthodoxy. Fair enough, but if you're on a quest that takes you different places over the course of your life, maybe you'd recognize that others are on their own quests and won't be in the same place at the same time as you are. Dreher was ready to take refuge the catacombs, in a desert hermitage or in a monastery, but instead he hung around, writing, writing, writing, urging the rest of the world to take the step he wasn't willing to take.
Also, the round glasses didn't suit him.
At any rate, you can’t look at that stuff often without it affecting you ...
Words to live by for all of us.
Writing about another man's "package" and writing about "ramming" things up his "poop chute" aren't so very different.
The comet that was Dreher flashed across the firmament and disappeared, and I barely noticed . . .
I saw his lugubrious mug on CSPAN from time to time. A conservative RC Eeyore.
I lost all respect for Dreher a couple of years back when he did a post on the murder of the Romanov family. The post included a photograph of two of the Grand Duchesses when they were very young, 5 and 6 years old, and Dreher spent the entirety of it weeping and gnashing his teeth over the Bolsheviks killing "little babies". Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Grand Duchesses ranged in age from 22 to 16 and the Tsesarevich Alexi was 13; a fact that makes the murder no less horrific. That Dreher, who normally has no problem stating the he's more righteous than his readers, would troll for clicks in such a manner was disgusting indeed.
Seems like medical science nowadays could restore foreskins to those who miss theirs. Fully subsidized by taxpayers, of course.
I can't say I miss mine.
of course nato is at war with russia, so far russia has not taken the bait
Rod has unique opinions from a Greek Orthodox perspective. And from an expat viewpoint. He is a bit off base on occasion but a relief from increasingly homogenized writings. He is one of the few writers I will pay to read.
Yeah he reads weird to people but I get him. He alerted me to some great reads that frankly are too deep to discuss casually though he tries and tries.
e.g. Master and his Emissary, and Disordered are the most recent.
So somehow we are simpatico.
People don't seem to get how weird Rod's post was. Normal 9 year old boys don't care about other boys "Weiners", and they certainly don't remember a classmate's "weiner" from 45 years ago. Rod talks about how "We" were all obbessed with that black boy's Primitive Root Weiner, but by "WE" he really means "Rod". For example:
"All us boys wanted to stare at his primitive root wiener when we were at the urinal during recess, because it was monstrous. The kid didn’t know why his penis was so strange looking, and neither did we. Third grade, man."
All of us = Rod. And evidently, he was so obsessed with it, he talked to his Dad:
"I brought it up to my dad later, and he said this was a common thing for children in the country born at home."
Maybe it was MY family that was WERID, but I don't think me or my brother ever talked to my Father about another person's weiner. Or evn our own Weiners.
Another weird column is where Rod's talks about experience at all boys boarding HS school. And how all the boys envied the Gay boys for rooming together and presumably having non-stop Gay Sex. "We" boys would have done the same thing, said Rod, if the culture hadn't frowned on being Gay.
Having said all that, I think the REAL reason the Abramson pulled the plug is that he probably doesn't like Rod's living in Hungary and commenting endlessly on that country. Or his oppposing the USA proxy war against Russia. Or ROd's support for De Santis.
It was Ok when Rod was attacking Trump 24/7.or attacking other on the Right, or supporting the BLM riots or joining Liberal Lynch mobs against the Covington Kids, or George Zimmermann, but being "Pro=Orban" is bridge too far.
People don't seem to get how weird Rod's post was. Normal 9 year old boys don't care about other boys "Weiners", and they certainly don't remember a classmate's "weiner" from 45 years ago. Rod talks about how "We" were all obbessed with that black boy's Primitive Root Weiner, but by "WE" he really means "Rod". For example:
"All us boys wanted to stare at his primitive root wiener when we were at the urinal during recess, because it was monstrous. The kid didn’t know why his penis was so strange looking, and neither did we. Third grade, man."
All of us = Rod. And evidently, he was so obsessed with it, he talked to his Dad:
"I brought it up to my dad later, and he said this was a common thing for children in the country born at home."
Maybe it was MY family that was WERID, but I don't think me or my brother ever talked to my Father about another person's weiner. Or evn our own Weiners.
Another weird column is where Rod's talks about experience at all boys boarding HS school. And how all the boys envied the Gay boys for rooming together and presumably having non-stop Gay Sex. "We" boys would have done the same thing, said Rod, if the culture hadn't frowned on being Gay.
Having said all that, I think the REAL reason the Abramson pulled the plug is that he probably doesn't like Rod's living in Hungary and commenting endlessly on that country. Or his oppposing the USA proxy war against Russia. Or ROd's support for De Santis.
It was Ok when Rod was attacking Trump 24/7.or attacking other on the Right, or supporting the BLM riots or joining Liberal Lynch mobs against the Covington Kids, or George Zimmermann, but being "Pro=Orban" is bridge too far.
I read the Vanity Fair piece and the author seemed upset that Rod could NOT be edited. The implication is that Rod had an editor, his blog wouldn't have been so WEIRD and better.
Again, this leftwing love of censorship and gatekeeping. Maybe the editors would've cut out Rod's musings on Primitive root weiners, but they would've gutted the rest of the Blog posts, making it less Rod and more standard General Conservative Inc. dullness. You can imagine the editors tell Rod to cool it on the pro-orban talk or telling him write a piece attacking Tucker Carlson or Rush limbaugh.
I'm not defending Dreher's weirdness, but in defense of his talking about the subject matter (though not his idiotic anecdote) there is a huge push in the EU about equating male circumcision with the barbaric act of FGM and banning it, and this is not creating social cohesion, especially in Germany, where they imported a bunch of people who believe in mutilating little girls, and now this anti-male circumcision legislation is colliding with the government's desire to avoid the topic of FMG and also not appear anti-Semitic, as Jews obviously oppose the legislation on religious grounds. Add to that quagmire liberal society's demand that we vigorously support men cutting their entire penises off and young girls their breasts, and what we have is a void that nobody wants to stare into, but it's definitely looking hard back at us.
Dreher's arrangement with a single donor, however, was far from weird. Every political publication is getting most of its cash from wealthy donors, very often just one, or a few who share a monolithic view. That's the way it has been in Washington for a long time. That even included the NYTimes (taking cash and immigration advice from Carlos Slim).
If I had Ahmanson's millions, I'd keep paying Rod under the condition that he only write in Hungarian.
From Rod's final opus:
After my sister's death from cancer that September, my wife and I moved home to Louisiana to live close to family and put the kinds of things I believed in into practice. I wrote a big book about it all. It became a New York Times bestseller. Everything in it was true, and is true. But not, as I discovered, the whole truth. I've lost almost everything, and now live in a foreign country with my older son. I'll say this for Hungary: it's good to be in a place where people close to me are happy to have me. It's been a while since that was the case.
Almost makes you feel sorry for the guy.
Almost makes you wonder what he did that was so wrong.
Lord, this is starting to sound like an Oscar speech. Sorry. I have never been good at concision and brevity on this blog.
No kidding, Rod.
Better to be a blogger than a drunk or a drug addict, I think. I could be wrong. Depending on who you ask, I certainly am.
Certainly wrong or certainly better than a drunk or a drug addict?
Anyway, "Better to be a blogger than a drunk or a drug addict" would look good on a headstone.
Howard Ahmanson was an interesting guy in the 1950s when I was in college. He did a lot of sailing and his Home Saving and Loan was big in California real estate. Like Barry Goldwater, his second wife was mostly interested in spending his money on dubious causes.
"It was Ok when Rod was attacking Trump 24/7.or attacking other on the Right, or supporting the BLM riots or joining Liberal Lynch mobs against the Covington Kids, or George Zimmermann..."
The first two things--criticism of Trump and attacking Trump supporting people on the right--is true. The rest is not even remotely accurate. Dreher was highly critical of many aspects of BLM, especially its overt Marxism, and equally so of the reporting of the Covington incident and George Zimmerman's case. These things are easily checked by googling Dreher's columns on those subjects. The press coverage of the Covington incident, for example, was for Dreher a prime example of anti-Christian bias by the press.
If you haven't read Dreher, don't comment.
Here's my random comments on other comments. Nine year-old boys most certainly do notice who has a helmet and who has an anteater penis. Although FGM is referred to as female circumcision, it is not equivalent. An equivalent procedure would be to trim the clitoral hood so that the glans is more readily exposed to stimulation. The clit hood is the female equivalent of the male foreskin. BTW, the female partners of circumcised men have reduced incidence of cervical cancer.
"All you Mongoloids" is a reference to "A Confederacy of Dunces," one of Dreher's favorite books.
The Bulwark writer flunky that Chuck references also has ties to Hungarian Fascists. Somehow that is ok with the "true conservatives" who hate Trump.
Well if "A Confederacy Of Dunces" is one of his favorite books, that speaks well of him!
I followed Dreher's blog for years. I appreciate(d) much of what he writes. Especially because he regularly offers a perspective that is radically different from the dreck that is fed to Americans on a regularly basis. I especially appreciate his fierce criticism of our mainstream new media and intelligentsia. On occasion his posts struck me as a bit much. His books The Benedict Option and Live Not by Lies are significant contributions to the public discourse. He reads the times through which we live better than most. In many ways he is a voice crying in the wilderness.
I followed his blog much less when it The American Conservative switched from "comment for free" to "only subscribers can comment".
I know Dreher personally. We're not drinking buddies but when I saw him at church (Great Vespers on Saturday evening) we sometimes shook hands and said hello. He offered supportive words when I was suffering at the crazy dysfunctional Baptist church where I served for 18 years. Saw him at the airport and we caught up for several minutes. Know his family. I respect him and his work.
Divorce is hell and Dreher is now in Hungary trying to rebuild his life after a rough couple of years.
In my experience much of the criticism against Dreher is motivated by revulsion against the views he expresses in his writing.
I read Dreher for years and have some of his books. Over the past year or so, I didn't read as much of his blog as I often felt like I needed a shower afterwards.
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