The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

An Odd Sequel to the Bubba/‘Brittni’ Saga

Posted on | February 26, 2026 | No Comments

The late Fred ‘Bubba’ Copleand (left) as ‘Brittni Summerlin’ (right)

It’s been more than two years and most readers have probably forgotten the disturbing story of the late Fred “Bubba” Copeland:

Copeland was the mayor of Smiths Station, a town of less than 7,000 people in Lee County, Alabama. He was also a freakazoid, secretly pursuing transgender fantasies that he posted online using a persona he called “Brittini Blaire Summerlin.”

Habitually working in “file-it-and-forget-it” mode, the tragic tale of Bubba/“Brittini” hadn’t crossed my mind recently, but then Glenn Reynolds called attention to a campus controversy:

The TPUSA chapter at the University of Montevallo rescheduled the mid-February “Change My Mind”-style event after administrators postponed the original date, citing safety concerns.
Now scheduled for March 5, it will still feature conservative commentator and 1819 News founder Bryan Dawson and be a “pick up the mic” format encouraging open debate, according to TPUSA Montevallo’s Instagram page.
“Montevallo caved to the liberal mob on campus who staged a walkout as a protest for the university allowing me to speak,” Dawson posted on his Facebook page. “Montevallo cancelled the TPUSA event citing this and security concerns due to death threats towards me.”
Dawson’s planned appearance had prompted a walkout by several dozen students earlier in the month who said they felt unsafe with the speaker selection, citing his criminal past, the Vallo Vision News reported.

You might not be able to add the 2+2 connection there, so I will give you further information from the Montevallo student newspaper:

Organizers say they consider the [walkout] a success, with 20 to 30 students taking part.
Dawson is president and CEO of conservative news outlet 1819 [News], and student protesters are upset with his invitation to campus. . . .
Protest organizers, who asked to be identified only as A.O. and J.S., believe this decision will only bring harm to their already hurting university. A.O. says if they were an incoming freshman on a campus tour and “someone with that background was sitting in front of a place, one of two places to eat on campus, I probably wouldn’t have ended up here.”
“That background” referring to Dawson’s felony filled background of cocaine trafficking, serial car theft, attempted murder and the releasing of information that led to the suicide of Alabama mayor and pastor Fred “Bubba” Copeland.

A-ha! So now we know what it’s really about: The students regard Dawson as persona non grata because it was his site that exposed Bubba/“Brittini,” who committed suicide a few days after the first story about the mayor’s freakazoid life was published by 1819 News.

Let me now remind you, however, that in his/“her” online persona, Bubba/“Brittini” appears to have harmed real people that he/“she” knew in real life, using their names and photos:

Ansley Summerlin, who alleged Copeland used her identity, told WTVM her name and likeness appeared on multiple porn sites.
“I had some people start sending me photos that were posted of me on multiple porn sites, I guess you could say that also had pictures of ‘Brittini,’ as well,” she said. “And he proceeded to use my first and middle names on these sites. And I believe there are about nine sites now that have five or six photos of my face and my name across the net.”
The second alleged victim, identified as a “local hairstylist in Smiths Station,” also discussed her likeness being used in Copeland’s writings.
“It said my first and last name,” she said. “And it was basically describing the way that I look and intensified, I guess, as a porn star. And it went into very graphic detail. I didn’t get past the first page because I honestly couldn’t stomach it.”

Take my word for it when I tell you that this was arguably not even the worst thing that Bubba/“Brittini” did in his/“her” online fantasy persona. You can browse through the archives at 1819 News if you’re curious, or just trust me when I say that it was very, very bad.

Because of my file-it-and-forget-it habit, I hadn’t followed up on the story — like, the guy’s dead, what else is there to report? — which is why I didn’t realize that a tear-jerker sob story about Bubba/“Brittini” was published by a swanky magazine and it won a Pulitzer Prize!

The article in question omitted the most sordid aspects of what Bubba/“Brittini” did online — and I repeat, this was very, very bad stuff — and instead tried to paint the small-town mayor as a sympathetic figure victimized by an EVIL RIGHT-WING WEBSITE!

While ethical arguments about how 1819 News handled the story are worthy of discussion, I would like to point out that Taylor Lorenz has “doxxed” people who were a lot more innocent than Bubba Copeland.

The protest against Bryan Dawson was, in fact, an attempt to punish and silence 1819 News for publishing the truth about Bubba/“Brittini,” but the students also mentioned Dawson’s criminal record.

In 2007, when he was 22 years old, Bryan Dawson was a serious drug dealer in Colorado. If you know anything at all about drug dealers, you know that “serious” means capable of deadly violence. He very nearly killed a guy he suspected of being a snitch, and could have been sentenced to hundreds of years in prison. A plea bargain got him a 16-year sentence, and while in prison, Dawson became a Christian. He was later released to a halfway house:

After graduating from the program, he was able to transfer his parole to Alabama, where his wife was living.
A friend of Dawson’s helped him get an affiliate relations manager job with USA Radio Networks, which syndicated several big-name talk show hosts such as Steve Deace. Dawson helped market the network’s news segments to stations across the country.
“I was the new guy. I didn’t know the rules, and so you know, I was told that this would never work when I originally pitched it to the team, but I thought it would, and it did,” Dawson said.
His success led him to work for Lee Habeeb on expanding “Our American Stories,” which gave Dawson the experience and skills he would soon use to help launch 1819 News.
Dawson said after the 2020 election, he turned his focus away from national news to the local level. That’s when Caleb Crosby with the Alabama Policy Institute called him about starting a state-focused radio show.

This is an amazing story, and one that Dawson has told at length — his testimony on the saving power of Christ. Which may explain a couple of things. First, why did 1819 News make the decision to publish that story about Bubba/“Brittini”? It may have something to do with the fact that Bubba Copeland was a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” pastoring a Baptist church while engaging in heinous online behavior in his “Brittni Summerlin” persona. But surely Dawson would not have expected Copeland’s suicide, because how was Copeland’s situation worse than what Dawson himself had faced when he was sent to prison?

Christians are supposed to be courageous, able to withstand the worst through faith in Jesus, emulating the Savior who was willing to suffer death for our sake. However unfair we may consider our own suffering to be, it cannot be worse than what Jesus suffered. We ought never complain when we are chastised, because our sins give us no room to say our suffering is unjust. If we have any blessings in our life, how much more grateful to God should we be, knowing how unworthy we are?

How does God choose His servants? Those of us of Calvinist leanings ponder Romans 8:28-31, and then look at such an example as Bryan Dawson — plucked out of a prison cell and raised up for a duty that he surely never contemplated during his outlaw career in Colorado. If it pleased God to have such a servant, who are we to object, so long as Bryan is faithful to his calling and does the Lord’s work?

The decision to publish the Bubba/“Brittini” story must be considered in this light. What would I do if such a bombshell story just landed in my lap? How could any editor say no to such a story? Bryan Dawson has been widely condemned for that decision, but has repeatedly pointed out that his critics aren’t willing to reckon with the worst aspects of what Bubba Copeland did. Esquire magazine won a Pulitzer for soft-peddling the heinous nature of what Copeland was doing online, and where are the awards for the guys at 1819 News, including reporter Craig Monger, who broke the original story? Talk about an injustice . . .

Anyway, the students at the University of Montevallo who protested against Bryan Dawson’s appearance are idiots and cowards, and I’m glad they’ve failed to prevent him from speaking on campus.



 

Category: Alabama, Crime, Education, Journalism, The Transgender Cult

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