Rod Dreher, the Dallas Morning News columnist and editorial board member and Old East Dallas resident, will be none of those things by the end of the year. He announced Monday on his Crunchy Con blog that he has accepted a job as director of publications for the John Templeton Foundation and is moving to the Philadelphia area.
You may remember Dreher caused quite a stir in April 2008 when he wrote a DMN column that began: "’Choose Woodrow’? Sure, if you like, and more power to you. But let’s not kid ourselves about what the campaign to persuade East Dallas parents to put their kids in DISD’s Woodrow Wilson High School is really saying. And that is: ‘Come on in, white people, it’s really OK.’"
That little pearl of wisdom led to quite a discussion here at the Advocate‘s Back Talk blog.
More after the jump.
Dreher, who relocated here from Brooklyn in 2003 to take the DMN job, has always seemed ambivalent about living in Dallas. Last year, after a vacation back east, he wrote on Crunchy Con: "I confess that I don’t love Dallas. I don’t love the heat, I don’t love the architecture, and I don’t love the flatness. I love the Washington area, and I love New York City, both places I’ve lived before. But I do love the people of Dallas, and I love my church, and I love that it’s possible to live here in Dallas in a normal house without going deeply into debt."
In a postscript in his blog’s comment section, Dreher says the move is inspired, in part, because of the newspaper industry’s struggles: "If I felt better about the security of my newspaper job in the long run, and/or my ability to find something else should I lose my job here at the paper, I’d be in a different boat."
He also mentions a little neighborhood trouble.
From that same postscript: "I should also tell you — as I have told some of you privately — that my family had to get police protection this summer from an irate reader of my column and this blog, a person who made particular threats based on his disapproval of my commentary. I have never backed down from writing exactly what I wanted to write and felt called to write, no matter what the threat — but I can tell you that my wife is not sorry for me to be leaving that garbage behind. My family has had to put up with enough crap from me having a newspaper job — including having to miss soccer games and suchlike because of changing deadlines — that I felt that I owed them better."
He ends his post with a classified ad: "By the way, anybody want to buy a great Arts & Crafts bungalow in historic Old East Dallas, with a fenced back yard, a big chicken run and coop, a small greenhouse and shed, and raised organic gardening beds. And a rainwater collection system? And a brand-new fireplace with a generous hearth? Because I’ll make you a deal."
