It’s taken two solid weeks for Shepard Smith’s comments about his homosexuality at the University of Mississippi to get national pickup, but in a way, that’s fitting for a man who, for the last decade, never really saw himself as being in the closet.
Smith addressed the elephant in the Fox newsroom during an April 21 speech at Ole Miss’ Meek School of Journalism, where he was once a student. Sitting in the audience: his father, stepfather and his partner.
The Holly Springs, Miss., native said that for his college years and the first two decades of his career, he didn’t hide his sexuality so much as he just steered clear of the issue entirely. He poured himself into his work because he was unprepared to deal with the consequences.
“A. You’re going to hell for it,” he said, listing the reasons he avoided the subject. “B. You’ll never have any friends again. C. What are you going to tell your family? And by the way, you’re on television on the craziest conservative network on Earth,” he joked.”That will probably put you in front of a brick wall. Of course, none of that was true, but that’s how it felt.”
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