When a tree falls in a forest

The Frank LaRose story shows The Rooster's limits. But it's not over yet.

The Rooster published an excerpt from Frank LaRose’s suburban high school yearbook that showed Ohio’s Secretary of State willed a friend “some rope and a tree” while another Copley High School student willed Frank and two other friends a Confederate flag.

In its own right, it’s nothing that will prevent LaRose from defeating Senator Sherrod Brown in the 2024 election cycle. That kind of language would endear him to many Republican voters.

But it’s something he clearly didn’t wan to be made public. We know just how much, too, since The Rooster also obtained screenshots from LaRose’s team outlining their defense should a publication publish the goods. The documents, like from 2018-2019, even reveal that LaRose’s team weighed breaking the story themselves by planting the story with a cooperative reporter.

As it turns out, people notice when you expose a state election official for making an obvious lynching joke in high school.

We have some new followers in our mists this week. Venerable political reporters. My old State Senator from when I lived in Miami County. The legislative director from the Attorney General’s office. Former LaRose campaign officials. They all followed The Rooster after the exposé, though I forgive them for not following before.

I said Tuesday morning that if LaRose were smart, he would ignore the post and hope traditional outlets were too scared to touch the work of somebody who doesn’t hide his agenda in visiting misfortune upon the clown cartel that controls this state.

That’s exactly what has happened.

I know where these documents came from, but the legacy publications don’t. For all they or their lawyers know, I’m just some asshole who could have forged everything.

The Patriots Caucus knows I would rather die than pull a stunt like that. But a lot of these old-timers are just hearing about these sordid pages for the first time. Oh well. Not my problem.

Unfortunately for LaRose, he is my problem, and I’m not the average journalist. I won’t shrug my shoulders and walk away. He’s going to comment on my reporting one way or another. I’ve already started with emails. I’ll soon move to calls. Eventually, I’ll just bike to his office and work from his lobby until I befriend one of his underlings into giving me a statement.

LaRose is in a tough place. He can’t outright deny it because it’s the truth. The statement would be newsworthy in its own right, and who knows how many of his classmates kept those yearbooks? I know of at least one! His team wont’ want to prolong the scandal, either. It won’t hurt his ambitions in its own right.

But we also know his carefully laid battle plan. We know that he wants to claim “some rope and a tree” were an inside joke with a friend who drove with an unmounted tire in his car and was thus only “some rope and a tree” short of a tire swing. We know he will use everybody from his high school girlfriend (if he can remember he name) to an “African-American” Special Forces teammate to vouch for his character.

In a way, a denial like that would prove my reporting.

LaRose is just going to try to ignore the story. Call it the Mary Kay Cabot defense. He knows to speak on the story gives it credence, and that’s the last thing his team wants.

Because at the end of the day, my reach is only so far as one man. If no other media outlets cover my reporting—even as “allegations”—then it’s as if it never happened. He can keep disenfranchising Black voters and setting the stage for his inevitable Senate run without ever having to atone for past racist behavior.

Knowing that group of unfuckable cretins had to deal with a Rooster Special Dispatch on Election Eve makes me smile. Giving them even a minor unexpected headache is basically the only legal recourse I have against these freaks at this point.

I enjoyed the timing, but it’s not something I planned. Lord knows I can’t sit on juicy information like that for hours, let alone weeks. But you never know when God decides to smile upon you.

I won’t let LaRose ignore this story. I have nothing but time, and he wants to run for Senate. I’ll gladly wait a year to ask him these questions in some random church in Western Ohio after he completely forgot any of this happened in the first place.

Black voters in Ohio deserve to hear LaRose speak on this incident, no matter how preposterous his explanation may be.

THOSE WMDs. Rebuilding Black Panther… Stressed out? Grab a shovel and dig a hole… What it’s like to be the target of right-wing harassment… The Arts Industrial Complex… Secrets and wives.