Sully takes another shot at defending his decision to run McCaughey’s pack of lies on Clintoncare:
In my view, it had many interesting points and as an intellectual exercize in contemplating the full possible consequences of Hillary Clinton’s proposal, it was provocative and well worth running.
That is perfect summation of contemporary Slate/TNR journamalistic mores. Interesting points! Intellectual exercises! Who cares if it’s actually true or not? And who cares what impact this wonderful exercise has on the lives of millions of Americans?
Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest.
Mr Furious
Was it as abundantly clear back then how full of shit BMac was?
The fact that she gets an audience NOW is where the ire should be directed.
Ash
Shorter Sullivan: Not my fault, let me smoke my pot, dammit!
Mike G
Concept FAIL. Spelling FAIL.
Bingo. Nothing but shit-stirring for shock value.
Captain Haddock
Sullivan is double stuffed — he’s completely full of shit and himself.
geg6
I love how he ends the whole “it wasn’t MY fault” exercise, too. It was solely Hilary’s fault. Nothing else played into it. Just Hilary.
cervantes
Sullivan has lately also been getting all pompous and self-righteous about those hellbound Godless demon-spawn PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne. Just when I was starting to like the guy . . .
BTW his rationale for faith is quite repellent: watching all his friends die of AIDS made him love God all the more. Uh huh.
Svensker
Yes, but Sully “takes responsibility”. So everything he did, said, wrote, or talked about is A-OK. Also, other people are meaner and not as soulful as Sully so, um, so, well, whatever, mumble mumble.
The guy is occasionally entertaining and occasionally right, but his intellectual dial is set on childish. Always has been.
Hunter Gathers
Covering your own ass has become one of the great Lost Arts. Seems that everybody sucks at it now.
El Cid
What’s worst about this may be the blunt dishonesty of the explanation. I don’t think anyone reading that believes that Andrew Sullivan didn’t fetishize such bullshit arguments precisely because they were, in all their bullshit glory, a counter-attack on the Clintons and the liberals.
It wasn’t “interesting” intellectually, any more than Michael Kinsley’s excited defenses of El Salvadoran and Guatemalan death squads slaughtering civilians were intellectually “interesting”.
They were “interesting” in that they could effectively be employed for desired right wing / liberal hawk propaganda purposes, and that’s that.
Only a bullshit propagandist dismisses concerns about the truthfulness, accuracy, or logical consistency of an argument by saying that it’s “interesting” when it accidentally and totally not on purpose lines up perfectly with said hack propagandist’s goals.
Morbo
Interesting, I didn’t know Cokie Roberts was a guest writer of his.
DougJ
I don’t think is about Sully. It’s about the whole world he comes from. As former TNRers go, he’s one of the better ones (better than Krauthammer, Barnes, etc. not as good Hertzberg obviously, about the same as Kinsley).
ed
Charles Murray. Sully’s proud of publishing Charles Murray.
It’s about all you need to know about the asshole who never apologized for calling me a Fifth Columnist before the Iraq Invasion.
Fuck Sully.
MattM
@Hunter Gathers:
Heh.
DougJ
It wasn’t “interesting” intellectually, any more than Michael Kinsley’s excited defenses of El Salvadoran and Guatemalan death squads slaughtering civilians were intellectually “interesting”.
Have you got a link for this? I dimly recall it but I don’t remember where I saw it.
J.W. Hamner
Are you guys really saying it was “McCaughey’s pack of lies” that stopped healthcare reform in the 90’s? I mean c’mon, let’s get a grip here… it was just one article, and people seem to be fetishizing it… and ironically doing far more to make McCaughey famous then Sullivan’s editorial decisions.
Erika Froh
It’s the same guy who wrote he was proud of having published the Bell Curve, so this is not particularly surprising.
wasabi gasp
If Bush had been a better president, Sullivan would’ve found birtherism to be an interesting intellectual exercise.
Ash
@cervantes: His religion posts are always the most self-righteous hoity toity bullshit. Us “Darwinists” are just smug cretins who don’t understand that evil and suffering are totally necessary for some reason or other, a-yup.
SpotWeld
I wonder how long before Sully decries the current health care proposal’s lack of planning for possible giant squid invasion.
This is a flaw is certainly inherited from “Hilarycare”.
Of course giant squid attack is really a non-existant threat, but the fact that we can ponder the possible implications is certainly something worth of consideration by serious pundits.
Also, Obama hates America.
WyldPiratd
Sully is an insufferable asshole who should be serving as the prime example on slapping immigration quotas on Brits coming to the USA.
Ash
No, we’re not saying that. Since…no one said that.
Midnight Marauder
I was pretty incredulous while reading that nonsense, and then I got to his cockslap of a conclusion, which really pissed me off:
He’s got some brass ones, I’ll at least give him that.
Brick Oven Bill
Re: Ring, ring, ring. Hello, Barack.
“I am myself an empiric in natural philosophy, suffering my faith to go no further than my facts. I am pleased, however, to see the efforts of hypothetical speculation, because by the collisions of different hypotheses, truth may be elicited and science advanced in the end.” -Jefferson
Empiric, in this case, is defined as one who is guided by practical experience rather than precepts or theory.
Obama knows empirically (sight, touch, hearing, smell) the violence that plagues Chicago. He is the one who Organized it. Per Dr. Andrew Dennis, the local trauma surgeon (sight, touch, hearing, smell), there are 10-15 shooting or stabbing victims at one hospital alone in this Community each and every day.
For a President to be ‘chilled’ after someone videotapes a single incident of reality, not even involving a knife or a gun, and the imagery (sight, hearing) gets out to the public, is emblematic of the Administration’s less than candid nature. This is an Administration that is not based in empiric Facts.
This is why intellectual exercises with them are impossible. I empirically believe however that Holder’s trip to Chicago is not based in Obama’s being ‘chilled’ by the videotape, but instead to get federal money to his adopted father figure, Mayor Daley, after Obama’s failure in Copenhagen.
Bret
It would be an interesting intellectual exercise to debate whether or not gays are going to burn in hell. Why doesn’t Sully publish more discussions on that?
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
“This is an Administration that is not based in empiric Facts.”
As opposed to the Bush Administration, of course.
Midnight Marauder
@Brick Oven Bill:
It has been said a lot, but it bears constant repeating.
The shtick is getting really old, BOB.
Morbo
@Midnight Marauder: Hillary yesterday! Hillary today! Hillary forever!
schrodinger's cat
Does anybody else find Sullivan’s posts on religion yawn-inducing and interminably boring?
Ash Can
It appears BOB has misconstrued “intellectual exercises” to mean “psychotherapy” and figured it would be appropriate to post on his latest session here.
DougJ
Does anybody else find Sullivan’s posts on religion boring yawn-inducing and interminably boring?
Yes, they are by far the weakest part of the blog.
And why do the cons love Katha Pollit so much? She’s truly insufferable.
Ash
@schrodinger’s cat: What do you mean? Your brain isn’t stimulated by paragraphs upon paragraphs about how Oakeshott is relevant to Buddhism? Weaksauce.
schrodinger's cat
@DougJ:
OT: Could you recommend a good intermediate level text book for Statistics?
Comrade Jake
So I guess this is the “bash Sully” thread. No thanks.
I read the guy every day, and usually learn something. I don’t agree with half the stuff he writes but so what? If you can’t enjoy a blog if it means you have to apply a selective filter, then there’s something seriously wrong with you.
schrodinger's cat
@Ash:
I had never heard of Oakeshott before I read Daily Dish and I still don’t know much about him or care to.
DBrown
As
SullivanStalin said – the death of single person is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic. See, as long as millions died, hey, it is ok. Now, Sullivan had money and great health care for his HIV, so he is well cared for, and the millions can just die. These fuckers are monsters.DougJ
I read the guy every day, and usually learn something. I don’t agree with half the stuff he writes but so what? If you can’t enjoy a blog if it means you have to apply a selective filter, then there’s something seriously wrong with you.
I agree. But I think what he wrote here is stupid.
El Cid
@DougJ: Via a quick Google, I can give you this quickly:
New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, at the liberal extreme of mainstream commentary, argued that we should not be too quick to dismiss State Department justifications for terrorist attacks on farming cooperatives: a “sensible policy” must “meet the test of cost-benefit analysis,” an analysis of “the amount of blood and misery that will be poured in, and the likelihood that democracy will emerge at the other end.”
At the time (1987), Kinsley was rebutting arguments by Americas Watch’s recent human rights report, because apparently they didn’t understand that all the killing we were hiring to be done was really all being done for democracy, and Kinsley apparently had the sekrit calculayshun to prove it.
That’s not to mention TNR’s eagerness to publish propagandists celebrating Reagan’s war on Central American and Southern Africans via hired terrorists and death squads. Including our current valuable training partners in Honduras, and the former death squad leader now providing army domestic security under the latest Honduran coup.
I’m sure if people have access to back copies of TNR and WSJ etc of the time, you’ll find plenty of Kinsley lecturing us ultra-leftists on how we were keeping Central Americans from the democracy they wanted so bad.
DougJ
OT: Could you recommend a good intermediate level text book for Statistics?
The only book I really know is Friedman, Pisani, Purves which is an introductory book. It’s also the best introductory book of any kind I have ever encountered.
Warren Terra
Of late, the vast preponderance of Sully’s content has been unreadable religion posts, credulous and overblown marijuana posts (to be clear: I think marijuana should be treated similarly to alcohol, and that its usefulness should be studied – but I hate all the Anecdata and the religious fervor of many Marijuana advocates, even if they’re not nearly so awful as the destructive Drug Warriors), art, and funny videos. His blog has become quite awful.
He’s always been a lousy human being, in that he has always combined narcissism and a near-total lack of reflection (I thought narcissists liked reflection, or at least mirrors) together with fundamental unaccountability and dishonesty exceeded only by those of his bete noir Sarah Palin (are those parallels the reasons he finds her prominence so grating?). But at least he also used to be a talented blogger. It’s sad, really.
Maybe if he takes another month off, leaving his blog to smug glibertarian stunt bloggers, he’ll come back tanned, rested, and ready to blog something worth clicking to. I doubt it, though.
Napoleon
Of course the idea that the Clinton healtcare bill was Hillary’s has been totally demolished, but Sully never has let facts stand in the way of his opinions.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_hillarycare_mythology
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=10&year=2007&base_name=justifications
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_lessons_of_94
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/healthca/hcfallow.htm
handy
@Midnight Marauder:
I love me some BOB, especially when he types stuff like this:
Obama knows empirically (sight, touch, hearing, smell) the violence that plagues Chicago. He is the one who Organized it.
This is taking spoof trolling to a higher art. We are, IMHO, witnessing a master work here, folks. Where’s the love?
schrodinger's cat
@DougJ:
Thanks, I will give it a look, the notation, Bayesian Statistics and all the stuff about marginal, joint and conditional probabilities has me thoroughly confused.
Sorry for the interruption, now back to the regularly scheduled program of observing wingularity.
Comrade Jake
@DougJ:
My post wasn’t directed at you so much as some of the other comments here.
But it’s easy to pick on Sully by taking a line out of context. Based on what he’s been writing about this over the past month or so, it seems clear to me that he realizes that article shouldn’t have been run as it was. I mean, the very next sentence is:
Notorious P.A.T.
Okay Bob, Barack Obama is a gangster. He sends people out into the streets of Chicago to kill people. Alright. Whatever.
Upper West
Thank you for including Slate along with TNR in this cynical, corrupt “intellectual exercise” crap. Slate is chock full of these types, like Mickey Kaus, Kinsley, Saletan and even Weisberg.
And — they’re not even “intellectual” enough to even try to justify their crap as an “intellectual exercise.”
Napoleon
Again Sully doesn’t let facts get in the way of his opinions.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_hillarycare_mythology
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=10&year=2007&base_name=justifications
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
@Comrade Jake
To be fair, if Sully allowed comments on his blog, threads like these would be wholly unnecessary.
LD50
@Midnight Marauder: Translated “Okay, sure I was a wrongheaded asshole, but since I wasn’t powerful enough to affect policy, that means I must be forgiven!”
Will
Oh Lord. Has everyone else seen this today already?
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-25466-DC-Independent-Examiner~y2009m10d6-Bill-Ayers-admits-writing-Dreams-to-conservative-blogger
I understand that Ayers was just f*cking with her (if he actually said this), but still: why does this man insist on feeding these people this kind of “ammo”? Surely he must know that he has just handed the crazies a valuable talking point: AYERS HIMSELF ADMITS HE WROTE IT!
Tell me I’m just paranoid.
matoko_chan
Do you think Peak Wingnut will arrive at the exact same moment that Sully simultaneously realises that the entire conservative base is uniformly composed of Low-IQ Mormon/Evangelical White Homophobes and he is a high IQ Catholic Homosexual?
When realities collide.
Midnight Marauder
@Comrade Jake:
I would say that a lot of the people here “bashing” Sully so far (myself included) probably read his blog on a daily basis; or if not daily, then they’re frequent readers of the Dish. And just because people are unloading on him (rightfully so, in this instance) doesn’t mean that they don’t enjoy his blog, or learn anything from it, or find it to be engaging in many ways.
I don’t think there’s a selective filter happening here, either, because the criticisms being echoed here are pretty standard criticisms of Sully. And to be perfectly honest, his downplaying of the impact of that article, coupled with his “I take responsibility, but stop blaming me because it wasn’t my fault; you should be blaming Hillary” is some of the weakest sauce I’ve ever seen on The Dish.
Besides, I would say that Sully’s readers jumping on him for his denseness and his general wankery makes a large percentage of the blog’s most interesting and entertaining content.
LD50
@Ash: My favorite still has to be the time he burbled on at great length about how Conservatism Is Like Water.
Ah, the classics…
Leelee for Obama
Yea, verily, it has been written that if intellectual dishonesty paid badly, the journalism we are gifted would, mayhap, be better. Sadly, that particular talent is rewarded far better than the simple publishing of facts-therefore, the polity must become ever more on their guard against this type of claptrap. We are charged to try our very best to distrust and mock all such attempts at excusing poor judgment, or worse, deliberate attempts to mislead.
Hi all-been reading but not posting, and will likely continue, but this Sully schlock demanded an unmerciful mocking.
DougJ
But its premise that these potential consequences were indisputably in the bill in that kind of detail was simply wrong; and I failed to correct that, although all I can say is that I tried.
Which isn’t that different from saying “who cares if it was wrong?”
I don’t think my quote was that out of context.
handy
@Will:
Not saying this is what motivates Ayers, but there seems to be an attitude prevalent in the “progressive” world that all the nasty attacks on Obama are so outlandish that we can safely ignore them or make light of them by playfully engaging them that they will just all magically go away, dear hearts.
Ash
@Will: I’m pretty sure Ayers just suffers from the same condition most of the rest of us do. Namely, believing that no one is really stupid enough to think that shit is true.
And somehow we always end up being proven wrong.
Comrade Jake
@Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions:
That seems largely irrelevant to me.
Napoleon
@Will:
Let them run with it. Everyone but the crazy 25% will see this for what it is, crazy.
Notorious P.A.T.
It’s okay to disagree on matters of opinion, not matters of fact. Why would I want to read someone argue that America’s health care system is better than England’s, or that black people are demonstrably less intelligent than white people? That isn’t disagreement, it’s bullshit. And I get enough of that in life already.
schrodinger's cat
@Upper West:
If they really want some intellectual exercise, they can take a graduate-level statistics class.
Howlin Wolfe
@Ash Can: Yes, BOB puts the “psycho” in psychotherapy.
Apologies to all psychotics everywhere.
scav
Still more evidence that the Kenyans have discovered time travel. Obama is responsible for Capone.
Comrade Jake
@DougJ:
C’mon Doug. I mean, he then goes on to write that maybe he should have quit over the issue. That’s much closer to saying “I fucked up” than it is to “who cares?” in my book.
jurassicpork
Acclowns of the Week #78: Nattering Nabobs of Negativism edition is just up and still steaming. On the spit this week:
Right wing stooge Dan Riehl
Birther Orly Taitz
John “Trog” Derbyshire
Armchair General John L. Perkins
American Private Police Force
and much, much more!
kid bitzer
“Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest.”
holy moly, dougj–that’s the first time i’ve ever seen bion of borysthenes quoted on a blog! props to you!
Midnight Marauder
@Comrade Jake:
I think that argument loses some bite when he writes nonsense like this:
He’s trying to having it both ways in terms of apologizing for running such a horrendously flawed article that did a lot of damage to the HCR efforts of the 1990s, while also trying to shrug it off and say:
“But seriously, guys? Who really cares? It’s not like this has some kind of direct impact on the way things are now and the kind of tactics being deployed by obstructionist assholes trying to stop HCR today…right? Right?”
And then he goes on to play Hillary at the end of the post. Yeah, way to take the blame, Sully.
linda
uh, this can’t be good as an indicator:
Because of unprecedented demand for American Eagle Gold and Silver Bullion Coins, the United States Mint suspended production of 2009 proof and uncirculated versions of these coins.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/us-mint-suspends-production-american-eagle-gold-and-silver-bullion-coins-due-unprecedented-d
Comrade Jake
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Right, because that’s what you’ll find at Sully’s blog every day. Clearly that’s what I go there for, what Cole goes there for, and a bunch of the rest of us.
BSR
“I enjoyed driving many liberals a little crazy in the untraditional, experimental – and often conservative and libertarian – pieces I commissioned.”
This is really what Sully is all about, being the contrarian, smarmy guy who straddles all issues and can always claim he was correct in retrospect.
He also tries to weasel out by claiming it was just a single article in the end, but remember Sully also battled in favor of The Bell Curve. Sully will always take the contrarian view, it allows him to feel smarter than he is.
MobiusKlein
@Ash:
As with most Sully statements, I agree with about half of what he says, in this case the last half.
Ash
@linda: I have no idea what that means, but I bet it has to do with that stupid commercial I see every day from that guy who goes on and on and how buying gold coins is the only way to save you from MASSIVE GOVERNMENT SPENDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Notorious P.A.T.
Oh, he says “maybe” he should have resigned over it. How courageous. This changes eeeeeeverything.
Will
@handy:
Right. Ugh. This is going to go viral again. And it will get into a press conference with Gibbs somehow. And some Villager will claim Ayers’ statement “legitimizes” investigating this deranged nonsense further. They’ll make the debate not about crazy-crazies vs Obama, but Ayers vs Obama. Once guy says he wrote the book, the other guy says, no, he wrote the book. Blah blah blah.
Ash
@Will: The only people who still care are the people who are crazy to begin with. It doesn’t even matter anymore.
asiangrrlMN
@Comrade Jake: And then ends by saying it was all Hillary’s fault. Yup, that’s taking responsibility all right.
I don’t have a selective filter when it comes to Sully. To me, he’s a typical privileged white conservative male who only changes his mind on issues that affect him personally. I did read him daily for a time until I couldn’t stomach his willful obtuseness any longer. He is a brilliant writer, which makes it even sadder that he has such tunnel vision. You may call it bashing if you like, but I just don’t like the man or his arguments.
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Yes, this, too. One of Sully’s mistakes is that he thinks his opinion is fact, even when his opinion has been debunked time and time again. For me, the last straw was his appearance on KO on the shooting of Dr. Tiller. He can keep his theoretical musings out of my body, thank you very much.
@Svensker:
This, too. That’s what I mean by intellectually obtuse, or stunted, as it were. He has to learn the same lesson again and again and again. I’m not interested in watching his mental masturbation.
Notorious P.A.T.
@Comrade Jake:
All I was saying was, there’s a difference between “I disagree with that because I have a different opinion” and “I disagree with that because it is total idiocy”. Sure, that isn’t the only thing Sullivan publishes, but why bother looking at a blog if it’s even a modest percentage? I don’t agree with everything that is written here at BJ but I wouldn’t classify it as “nonsense”.
Comrade Jake
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Because it simply isn’t even “a modest percentage”. I don’t know why I bother though, it’s clear your mind is made up. Besides, I’m not trying to convince anyone here that they should suddenly start reading Sullivan’s blog.
Will
@Ash:
I know. I just don’t want to see a further percentage of media hours spent “investigating” this crap over discussing the health care debate in earnest. Or other serious policy matters. I know that the discussions of serious policy matters are pretty pathetic in the MSM, but they’re better than discussions of American Thinker Ayers porno fantasies.
The Grand Panjandrum
This is the tell from Andrew’s post:
This is the absolute logical failure of his argument. Cooper is the ratfucker who probably did more than any other person in Congress to undermine the Clinton plan. He is still in Congress and he’s still a Blue Dog Ball Licking shape shifting swine who whinges incessantly about the mean ol’ liberals. Cooper was PART of the fucking problem. Promoting the Cooper plan was as damaging as the other shit he’s trying to do. It was like pouring gas on the fire. Jesus! Idiot!
EnderWiggin
Speaking about lies about healthcare, this is fantastic
Hey Rep. Boehner! I’m An American, And I Support A Public Option
At the very end is my favorite wingnut behavior ever “no my opinion doesn’t need to be based on facts.”
Midnight Marauder
@asiangrrlMN:
Exactly. It’s the literal definition of a cop-out. Also:
A little bit of this.
And a lot of bit of this.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
I read daily, and I disagree with some things he says. Mainly his general smug self-satisfaction, but specifically his attempts at martyrdom through his anecdotes about breaking up English dinner parties because of his pro-American views, or his attempts at legitimizing The Bell Curve.
And, occasionally, I like to make my disagreement known.
This does not constitute “bashing.”
geg6
@Comrade Jake:
Bullshit. “Oh, I tried! But they made me run the lies!” And why didn’t he quit or run his own editorial saying that BM was full of shit? Oh, he just didn’t. That’s pretty much what he says about that. Pretty fucking weak sauce. And then his ending on it that the whole debacle can only be laid at Hilary’s feet and nothing else had any effect on the defeat? Fuck that. It’s the same sort of bullshit argument Sully gave the other day when he got called out conflating something called “Darwinism” (which doesn’t even fucking exist as far as I know) with atheism/agnosticism. “Oh, I didn’t mean anything by that. It was just a turn of phrase.”
Yes, I read Sully. Yes, he sometimes has stuff that I agree with (like the marijuana stuff–sorry, but I’ve seen it work almost miracles for ill people and it’s a crime that it’s illegal). And I can sometimes see where he’s coming from when he opines about his “conservatism” being overtaken by crazy people who are anything BUT conservative. And I, personally, had no problem with his Sarah Serendipity jihad. But he’s the most un-self-aware person I’ve ever seen when he’s called out on his crap like this or the Bell Curve.
John Cole
@Will: I happen to think it is awesome. I also wish he had told her Obama is not an American citizen and secretly a Muslim.
Violet
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes. His religion posts are dull. I most often skip them.
Posts like like the recent post with a YouTube video of Latin mass and some exclamation like, “It still takes my breath away” completely baffle me. Okay, I understand it’s great theater, but no one understands anything the priests are saying, so why is that good or better than mass in whatever the local language is? As a regular reader of Sully, I think part of his love for Catholicism is due to the pageantry inherent in it. Take out the fancy clothes, funny hats, beautiful churches, and predictable rituals and I don’t think he’d be all that fond of it.
Silver Owl
What Sully really meant to say was it was a “sniff” test. The goal was to find out if anyone could smell the bullshit that was served. Intellect and professionalism had absolutely nothing to do with it.
geg6
@Comrade Jake:
No, it isn’t. Because he didn’t quit. Which goes to show that he didn’t fucking care.
Sheesh.
Joel
@Upper West: Slate has been useless for about five years running, if not longer. I stopped reading two years ago, when I discovered the wonderful wide world of other sources on the internets.
schrodinger's cat
@John Cole: Actually he is secretly a Vulcan
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
I did. It was the same “why isn’t the MSM reporting all the good news about Iraq?” crap we heard from the right, only it just happened to benefit our side.
Ostensibly, anyway.
LD50
@Morbo: In much the same way as most conservative activists are still fighting the sixties, Beltway ‘journalists’ refuse to admit it’s not 1994 anymore. They’re still completely obsessed with the Clinton administration and are incapable of seeing it any differently from how they did back then. I think they’ll all have to die of old age before that changes.
Comrade Jake
@geg6:
Well, allow the pile-on to continue then. I won’t impede it any longer. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Will
@John Cole:
I think if he had added those last two on, the joke would have landed better. Maybe even she would have understood she was being made a fool of.
Or maybe not.
Notorious P.A.T.
Maybe not by volume, but certainly by weight. Everyone is different, of course, but one shot of “isn’t my religion wonderful?” is one too much for me.
geg6
@John Cole:
I’m with you on this. I laughed out loud when I read the saga this morning. Good on Ayers. I’d have done the same thing.
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
This is awesome.
“I said, I know plenty–I’m from Chicago, a conservative blogger, and I’ll post this.”
handy
@Will:
Never underestimate people’s capacity for
stupiditynot getting a joke.Notorious P.A.T.
http://washingtonindependent.com/62828/yes-bill-ayers-is-messing-with-people
Hmm, I wonder what it is about Barack Obama that makes right-wingers think he couldn’t write a book by himself? Especially the right-winger who wrote “the white man is the Jew of liberal fascism”.
* * *
From Will’s link at 49:
It’s amazing how these people live entirely within their own little world. They assume that Ayers means something to Obama because. . . well, just because, and move on from there. They were on a commitee of dozens of people together and that’s it, yet all of a sudden Ayers is as close to Obama as his pastor of many years? Crazy.
Jamey
And at the same time, Sully complains that he wasn’t listed (with Jonah Goldbrick) among the leading intelecshuls of the Conservative movement …
Money quote (warning: may induce nausea):
What a twat!
LD50
@Jamey: Okay, if Sully is really surprised by this, he’s a lot dumber than I thought.
Warren Terra
With respect to this whole Ayers kerfuffle, apparently when the winger blogger met him Ayers was on his way back from an education conference, at which he was invited to speak. According to a plausible-seeming link from the winger’s otherwise risible post, also speaking at the same conference: Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
May I just say that, assuming this was true, letting those two speak at the same conference, with all its potential to unleash the unhinged who love to draw these connections, was an appalling failure of staff work and judgement at the Education Department, from the conference organizers, and from Bill Ayers himself.
OniHanzo
In other news…
[BLOCKQUOTE]Scalia ridiculed the idea that the memorial would have to include the Star of David for Jewish soldiers or the crescent moon symbol for Muslims. “I don’t agree with you that any time the government allows a religious symbol to be to erected, it has to allow all religious symbols to be erected at the same place,” Scalia told Eliasberg.[/BLOCKQUOTE]
Way to work that doucherocketry, Tony!
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Andrew Sullivan’s biggest problem is his love affair with people who would have no use for him if he didn’t carry their water for them. I used to read Eric Alterman who referred to Sullivan as “Little Roy” (Roy Cohn) and I’m beginning to believe Alterman is right on the mark.
What would the Conservative Sullivan’s life be like if it weren’t for Liberals? Would he even be allowed in the U.S.? Would he be married and living with his husband? Sullivan wrote about being kept on a job just so he could continue to receive health insurance to manage his HIV – how many people get that opportunity in the U.S.?
His support of the Betsy McCaughy’s in the 90’s, his support of that Bell Curve crap, his support of the Iraq war earlier this decade, his continued resistance to real health reform (despite being able to return to England any time he wants to get what he needs). Even his stance on marijuana is fuzzy – despite his personal use of marijuana. He’s a shitty person. If he didn’t carry their water, Conservatives would have kicked his ass to the curb years ago. And it’s only because of Liberals that Sullivan is able to enjoy his life here in the U.S.
Sullivan is a selfish, self absorbed asshole. I like to see Hancock shove Sullivan up his own ass.
Ash
He is being exceedingly obtuse today.
Ron Paul will save us all!!!
Yes, this will happen when…I can’t even think of anything ridiculous enough to put in the “when pigs fly” spot.
MikeJ
I used to make a point of going over there just to read Lithwick but I just kept getting exposed to so much other stupid I quit. I would still read her but the idea of pulling up Slate just doesn’t cross my mind.
Will
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Ok, after reading that, I feel better. Dave Weigel is awesome.
DMcK
Umm….when circumcision is outlawed?
Seriously, his loony ravings about “male genital mutilation” pretty much sum up his histrionic style of “conservative intellectualism” for me.
DMcK
Sorry, was responding to Ash
MikeJ
Sorry, no cringing in fear from me. Fuck the wingnuts. They’re insane. They’re going to get ni a tizzy no matter what you do, so do what you want.
kay
@MikeJ:
Hear, hear. The Ayres meme was a LIE. Pretending it’s true, and acting accordingly, and defensively, gives credence to the lie.
We have to stop doing that. It doesn’t work.
geg6
@Violet:
Yes, exactly. I pretty much have nothing left but complete and utter contempt for the Church now, but my childhood (which goes back far enough to when the Mass was in Latin and I still can recite all the responses in Latin) of growing up with it as the main cultural force in my family leaves me nostalgic for the ritual and ceremony of it. I, too, find it beautiful and moving still. Even though I know it’s a load of garbage.
LD50
Or around the same time conservatives quit hating Sullivan for being gay, take your pick.
gex
Leave it to Sully to find being bribed/paid for and being a liar to be an important intellectual exercise.
kindness
I know Sully has already said he’s sorry he chose to push the lies of McCaughey. It’s not like we’re asking him to throw himself on his sword or anything.
It would be nice if he would simply admit he was an idiot and say he won’t do it again & then stop defending his sorry ass.
Anne Laurie
Thirty years polishing the rightwingers’
knobs‘intellectual credentials’, and they still barely nod to poor Andy across the Village cocktail parties. Then some vicious half-bright MILF breeder winks at Bill Kristol, and it’s all “Sarah is the new face of conservatism who will save us from irrelevance! ! !” … heck, if you were Andrew Sullivan, you’d be bitter too.Nobody hates a clinical narcissist, or can spot one quicker, than another narcissist. Sullivan’s Trig-fixation was just another indicator.
Xanthippas
Another excerpt:
Might that kind of be part of the problem?
Also yes, I enjoy him blaming the failure on Hillary. Because the plan would have failed anyway without the lies perpetuated by McCaughey and the right wing. Douche.
matoko_chan
I don’t know….I think it requires a sort of nobility (and balls of steel) to want to help people like these.
Reihan Salam is the same way…..the GOP base doesn’t know he is a muslim….they would say equivalent stuff if they did.
I think Sully is mad brave.
DBrown
@kindness: Sullivan is a monster as I said in an earlier post. He gets carried(!) by his job so he can keep his health care in order to treat his HIV. Then he calls himself a christian yet because public health care would cost too much for people like him (wealthy, favored and fully covered), he doesn’t want it – if Christ was here today he would denounce that rightwing steaming pile of human waste. Lucky for him, his beloved fellow christians would gladly put him in hell for being gay so considering what a monster he is, so it only makes perfect sense that he helped to muder millions of people (the few hundred thousand who died from lack of health care since the eighties and the 400 thousand plus in Irag (and counting). Like all selfstyled christians he is not a believer in what Christ said, but he only carries a title to justify his selflish interest (gain ‘forgivness’ for his sins) in supporting the ultraweathly who truly control the congress.
Jamey
@15: Are you guys really saying it was “McCaughey’s pack of lies” that stopped healthcare reform in the 90’s?
Actually, no, Sully said it:
Under Sullivan, the magazine campaigned for early intervention in Bosnia, for homosexual equality, and against affirmative action. TNR also published the first airing of ‘The Bell Curve,’ the explosive 1995 book on IQ, and ‘No Exit,’ an equally controversial essay that was widely credited with helping to torpedo the Clinton administration’s plans for universal health coverage. In 1996, Sullivan was named Editor of the Year by Adweek magazine.
binzinerator
@Svensker:
This.
And gawd, why is it with these conservative assclowns that they always swear up and down about taking responsibility?
From Sully’s earlier lame-ass defense:
Yup. Takin’ full responsibility there.
Must have something to do with the conservative soul.
Me thinks it’s obvious why fundies and conservatives overlap so often. It’s the dumbfuckery and it’s never really their own fault, ever.
gex
@Jamey: Awwwwww SNAP! Awesome find, you win the thread.
Joe Beese
I see that Sully has mastered the technique of saying “I take responsibility” in the knowledge that it will involve no practical consequences of any kind.
freelancer
I wrote this last week when he nominated Rep Grayson for a Moore Award, and I still think it applies:
Fisk away.
LindaH
That’s because you have never been an 11 year-old girl whose agnostic father married a Catholic stepmother. For 1 year I went to Mass with her and loved it. The ritual, the Latin, the censors. Then they stopped babbling in Latin and I finally found out what they were saying,that I was a second class citizen, that birth control was evil and that women were subordinate. I ran for the hills. It just sounds so good in Latin, and you can pretend the church believes the way you do when you don’t understand the language.
binzinerator
@matoko_chan:
If that is what it takes for Peak Wingnut, it won’t happen.
A person whose intellectual dial is set on childish can’t figure that out, same as Charlie Brown can’t figure out Lucy will never let him kick the football.
It’s not optimism that keeps Sully believing conservatism is something other than what it really is. It’s what keeps kids believing in Santa. Of course, an intellectual dial set on childish is exactly what you’d expect in a kid. In an adult that setting is also known as dumbfuckery. Or fundamentalism.
I’m just glad he actually seems to nudge it off that setting once in a while. Which is why he’s not a fundie, I suppose.
Batocchio
If Sullivan was the editor, why didn’t he win the battle he describes? Did Peretz, who apparently likes McCaughey, intervene?
Also, Sullivan hated (well, still hates) the Clintons, and his attacks on everyone who opposed the Iraq war were appalling. I think it’s more credible that back in the day, he was being a disingenuous, partisan douchebag, and he’s become less of one since.
Elizabelle
what Comrade Jake said at 33. And freelancer at 126 or thereabouts.
Consistency being hobgoblin of small minds, and whatever. Also.
whetstone
@Comrade Jake:
CJ: the people trashing Sully don’t just “disagree” with him. They find some of the stuff he’s done unconscionable – making The Bell Curve a phenomenon is my #1, and he’s still proud of that. And in all honesty I can’t see his name without that in my subconscious (at the very least).
I’ve no doubt there are some interesting things on The Daily Dish, I run into them in other places. But he’s been responsible for enough travesties that it’s reasonable, I think, for a person to decide that life’s too short to bother with him further.
Jamey
121@
Partial h/t Duncan Black. But, really, Sully is just such a fuckstick. I’ve had email exchanges with him in which he’d gone down the “fifth columnist” road–and this was long after the 2004 election.
The ability to write with a modicum of style, and speak with an English accent is, apparently, all a “Burkean conservative” needs to succeed as a pubic intellectual here in the colonies.
I liked Sully more when he was begging for donations and trolling for bare-back sex. At least then he was intellectually honest …
freelancer
Okay,
NOW I feel like he’s at least getting it. The guy is willing to consider some scathing criticism. His reader for the win:
Midnight Marauder
@freelancer:
As dense as the man can be at times, no one can say that he avoids taking his lumps. “Dissent of The Day” is probably my favorite Dish feature.
Thadeus Horne
@Brick Oven Bill: God, Bob. I can’t believe how incredibly full of noxious gas you are.I have been lurking for some time and I have been reading your absolute bullshit for months. I have been waiting patiently for you to say something coherent. My wait has been in vain.
dan robinson
Mistake number one is caring two shits about what Andrew Sullivan says.
dan robinson
Piling on: here is Brad DeLong on all of this
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/10/andrew-sullivan-takes-responsibility-for-the-infamous-betsy-mccaughey.html