The second most annoying thing about Andrew Sullivan’s latest back-patting exercise is how casually he repaints his part in the right’s psychotic 2003 wargasm as if he was just sensibly skeptical of leftwing extremists. Look, Sullivan has already admitted that he went way too far with the Saddam-lover, weak on terror Christopher Hitchens crap. Everyone but Dan Riehl knows that Sullivan bought wholeheartedly into something truly dangerous during those years. The war propaganda campaign did worse than wreck America’s economy and kill more Americans than 9/11. If Republicans did their job just a bit better, maybe not flushed their brand with Katrina and Shiavo and the Social Security embarrassment, America would be a different place.
Do we have accountability for torture yet? Did Obama rescind any Presidential powers? The last time I checked Glennzilla the government was still making inane appeals to the State Secrets clause. As much as it seems like we stepped a long way from the Bush years, too many reforms barely scratch the first layer of TV makeup. Let’s say the next guy decides that America does torture. What will stop him? A guilty conscience? We are too close to the edge to forget the sickness of Bush’s first term.
That said, I can get why Sullivan does not want to pick the wound daily, even if it leaves useful context unspoken. It galls me a lot more that he implies that ANSWER and Code Pink somehow equal Republican party leaders from Boehner and McConnell all the way down to Assistant Deputy Director of OMFGHITLER. I mean, jesus, I can’t believe that I forgot all the times that Harry Reid got on his knees to beg Code Pink to forgive him over some innocuous remark. The two phenomena are obviously exactly the fucking same.
MikeJ
Why does any pay attention to that worthless fuckwit again?
Dave
George Bush? Never heard of him.
Lola
Andrew loves the false equivalency game. Conservatives couldn’t survive without it.
Cat Lady
Also, too, OT but you should be watching Mad Men. Matthew Weiner brought it….
Calouste
Andrew Sullivan == Idiot. Endof.
VidaLoca
This. Again with yet another discussion of Sullivan? Fuck Sullivan.
socratic_me
I am especially fond of the bit where he claims that anti-war protesters were totally equivalent to Teabaggers because they pointed out that W was and they refused to address the underlying issue of Saddam’s (non-existent) WMDs.
Shorter Sullivan: Damn you DFHs for being so damned right! As a conservative, I cannot abide someone holding a position strongly, be they bat-shit crazy or…well…correct.
jl
@MikeJ: an intellectual trainwreck that we cannot resist. I just went back there to peer into the abyss again. I am weak, I admit it.
Sullivan also has a post that says he would take the teabaggers seriously if only they would make their fiscal policy history and viewpoints consistent. Is he serious?
When I see clips of the teabaggers, that is what really jumps out at me, their incoherent fiscal policy views. Absolutely. The racism, sexism, gun nuttery, implicit threats of violence, and uncontrollable paranoid fantasies are weak sauce compared to their inconsistent fiscal policy stance. No question about that. /end sarcasm tag goes here
Tim F.
@Calouste: The thing that bothers me is that you are completely wrong about that. Sullivan is an unusually bright guy and he has more self-reflection than most ten people in the blogosphere. We need more people like that, who (eventually) admit when they’re wrong as thoroughly as he does, not less.
I’m hard on him because he is so good and because he listens. I don’t even bother anymore with the other kind. Several attempts to get through to Ed Morrissey cured me of that.
jl
And he thinks liberals would have warmed to GW if only he had been serious about Iraq reconstruction after the idiotic and criminal Iraq invasion was over.
Not me. After the insanity of the invasion, nothing could redeem him. I hoped that he would have some realization that he had surrounded himself with nutcases on foreign policy, and try to do better. That may have come in the second term, but years too late to help with the existing disasters. Though it may have prevented some new ones, I give GW that. That is about all I give him.
Is there a way I can block myself from accessing certain blogs? I will have to make a rule and exercise iron self control. No more trainwreck watching.
jl
@Tim F.: Maybe he feels guilty about past mistakes, so rehashes them? When he does that he goes off his rocker, IMHO. He should give it up and move on.
Steve Balboni
@Tim F that’s exactly why I read him too. I know what his faults are but when he is at his best he really is a great read. He’s very bright and he has tons of heart, sometimes one or the other leads him dangerously astray. Intellectually he wrestles with himself very publicly every single day. He has obvious biases and blinders but he at least tries to challenge himself and his preconceptions (most of them anyway).
He’s one of the very few of the original “name” bloggers that I continue to read after all of these years.
C Liss
Sullivan’s pretty good. He makes mistakes, but he’ll cop to them when they’re pointed out. Agree wholeheartedly with 9 and 12.
Brian J
I’ve never been a big follower of Sullivan’s. He seems to be a pretty smart guy, but he also seems to get carried away and argue with the passion and tenacity of a preacher giving a sermon whatever particular point of view he’s holding at the moment. Of course, it’s not bad that people change their minds, but when one seems to switch sides and argue with the same sort of force that they did before, they are either revealing a little bit of intellectual hollowness or a personality quirk. In Sullivan’s case, I’m not sure which it is.
Anyway, whenever I have a chance to post this, which isn’t often, I do. I’m going to post just one paragraph of Eric Alterman’s takedown of Andrew Sullivan. If nothing else, it’s well written and pretty entertaining, so read the whole thing:
Remfin
@Tim F.: Are we talking about the same Andrew Sullivan? Or perhaps some kind of alternate reality? Isn’t this the man who still stands beside The Bell Curve? The Andrew Sullivan who only ever supported Obama because of his visceral hatred of Hillary Clinton? The Andrew Sullivan who was just bashing Obama over and over about not using the word “gay” as he signed history-making legislation? I’m not even going to mention the darker stuff he’s done over the years.
Andrew Sullivan has never demonstrated any capacity for self-reflection that I’ve seen. I’d ask for actual examples if you think he has.
Stefan
@Steve Balboni: Plus he haz linx. I think I’ve been far more enriched by the random effluvia that he posts than what he himself writes. Exception: his coverage of the Green Wave in Iran this summer. Still classic as far as I’m concerned.
But yeah, those posts Tim linked to are bullshit. What anti-Semitism “buried” within ANSWER, again?? Most of the “radical left” is well in sight of where Sully is now on Israel-Palestine, which is a pretty reasonable place. I seriously feel like this guy has personality issues, or something. Whenever we’re talking about an issue more than a few years old its like some Id-Sully comes bubbling up from under that thoughtful British voice.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@jl:
Fiscal conservatism is the last shred of conservatism left to Sullivan, so it is a veddy, veddy serious business from his point of view. After having broken with the theocons over Xianism and the neocons over torture, either he is a fiscal conservative, or he is no sort of conservative at all, at least not in the American sense of the word. It is his figleaf, the only thing he has left but Oakshottean windbaggery with which to cover his philosophical nakedness.
And so he sees everything through that viewpoint. He desperately wants other people to be fiscal conservatives so that through them he can continue to affirm that he too, is also a conservative, still. Otherwise he might have to admit that he isn’t really a conservative after all and change the title of that damn book he keeps hawking – either that, or go back to the UK to find some of his sort of conservatives to eat pub lunches with. Anything but that.
Ash
@Cat Lady: I feel like I should like Mad Men. I’m smart, it’s a smart show, we should go together, right? But meh, the few episodes I watched I just hated everyone.
Corner Stone
@Tim F.:
What exactly are you referring to? He had all those heartfelt posts from people who were destroyed re: abortion and he posted how he couldn’t get there mentally?
Why is he bright again? Because he quotes people who died 150+ years ago?
I’ll agree with you in that he’s unusual. Unusually, he believes several things diametrically opposed to his lifestyle.
It’s like a fish believing that laying on the beach is a healthy thing to do. Even after the severe suntan.
Sullivan=Bah.
tripletee
@Tim F.:
He has a back-patting, semi-coherent post up right now about Palin’s amniocentesis. That seems to argue against the “unusually bright” portion of your thesis, at least to me.
Calouste
@Tim F.:
That was snark I hope?
Self-reflection doesn’t just cross the street when it sees Sullivan coming, it hails a cab and flees out of town.
MikeJ
Fuck it. I’ve had four maker’s in a wooden cup. I’ll just play DA and ignore the idiots.
jwb
@Stefan: “I seriously feel like this guy has personality issues, or something. Whenever we’re talking about an issue more than a few years old its like some Id-Sully comes bubbling up from under that thoughtful British voice.”
Mostly, he just can’t deal with the fact that he’s really not a conservative any more, at least by American standards, but he’s so self-identified that he can’t let go; and periodically he feels the need to prove to himself that he is not a DFH.
Calouste
@tripletee:
Yeah, agree with that. He is bright in the way that he can put together a coherent argument from wrong and occassionally right beginnings, but heck, that’s what you learn at Oxford. Other than that he is a posterchild for the high IQ/low EQ movement.
jwb
@jwb: Also what @ThatLeftTurnInABQ said.
srv
Timmeh, if Sullivan was a bright guy, he’d be right – before he was wrong, but not really wrong because those who were right first weren’t really right because they just had BDS first – once in awhile.
Tim F.
@Calouste: and everyone else: Sullivan always runs criticism from readers on his front page in their original language. That is one thing that almost nobody does. Then he makes a good faith effort to respond to almost every criticism. Those two things set him head and shoulders ahead of most of us.
Some of you guys will point to Sullivan’s sometimes incredibly stupid causes. You’re missing the point. Give or take the topic (lately he is good more often than not), the process is notably better than most bloggers.
Violet
@jwb:
I don’t think anyone who was a conservative back in the day would recognize modern “conservatives.” These days self-described conservatives would think Nixon a DFH if he were here now – the illegal breaking and entering aside.
Zach
There is zero difference between how he talks about the ANSWER crowd in this excerpt and how he talked about all American war critics, the governments of France, Germany, and Russia, the New York Times, etc, etc, etc. His most common rhetorical device was accusing foreigners of being in league with Saddam and accusing domestic critics of being self-hating traitors.
It’s ironic that he’s complaining that ANSWER protesters weren’t armed with a serious argument about the serious problem of Saddam’s WMDs. Throughout the process he advocating abandoning any debate at all and going full Bolton w/ the UN.
There were many more of us saying “hey, you know what this evidence isn’t convincing and Hans Blix isn’t convinced and unlike American government officials he hasn’t already been shown to have no problem stretching the truth” than there were holding Bush=Hitler signs. There was a serious argument but AS couldn’t face it and relied on disgusting caricature instead.
jwb
@Violet: Or Saint Ronnie, for that matter.
slag
I was just thinking about the differences between left and right when I encountered this blog post about how the passage of the healthcare bill in the House now makes Obama a slave owner:
Now, I’ll be willing to grant the premise that there are wackos on the left who say equally stupid things from time to time. The problem with that concession, however, is that I’ve never really proven it, because those people on the left have never shown up in my Google news feed like this guy–and so many like him–have.
williamc
@jwb
I think you are correct. I read his blog, he has even posted an email that I’ve written to him, and love him or hate him, he is one of the most widely read American political bloggers. He is a British Tory, and British Toryism is now analgous here in the USA to being a New Democrat in the Democratic Party, a little to the left of the Blue Dogs on social issues, but essential a money-grubbing Republican on fiscial issues, which goes to show you how far to the barbaric right these boobs have pushed us.
As a person who loves writing and reading people who write well, he’s a goood writer, but he’s also a nelly queen bear. and a Catholic nelly queen bear at that…it would fukc anyone up in the head…
srv
This.
Sullivan is the guy in a British clown car at the Daytona 500. I honestly think he knows even fewer Republicans outside the Beltway and Hamptons than Bobo does.
Cat Lady
@ DougJ – I CAN HAZ MAD MEN POST PLZ?
Kthxbai.
Zach
Also, realize that the only conclusion one can logically come to from this is that it’s quite likely that the Tea Party People are actually right and that we’re two steps from socialist dystopia led by our Manchurian candidate taking Bill Ayers’ marching orders, subjecting unborn fetuses to death panels, and shooting our nukes into space.
jwb
@srv: Bobo has a similar tick of periodically flying off the handle in order to prove his conservative bona fides.
kay
@Violet:
It’s silly, though.
For example. His post equating Code Pink with the teabaggers is called “Consistency”.
He’s talking about how he’s consistent.
But the whole point of the teabaggers is that they are not consistent. They didn’t object to conservative spending or government intrusion. That’s what’s wrong with the teabaggers. That’s what males liberals crazy about the teabaggers.
Code Pink are consistent. They’re antiwar. Wars. Consistently so, and unlike the tea baggers, they oppose Obama’s wars too.
To put that mess under the title “Consistency” is just crazy-making.
Remfin
@Tim F.: That is not self-reflection; self-reflection is the actual changing of ideas/assumptions by critically examining your own failings/prejudices/assumptions/etc. Sullivan is pretty much defined by his never changing his mind on anything. Oh sure, he’ll post stuff about how he’s “doubting” something…three months later he’ll still be repeating it as gospel. Can you actually name an issue where he has turned 180?
BTW, someone posting readers’ mail on their front-page is a level BELOW allowing comments to your posts in the first place on the “open/responsive to criticism” scale. Which pretty much means he only ranks above a slew of crummy right-wing blogs on the web. That is certainly damning with faint praise if I’ve ever heard of it.
Mike in NC
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Maybe it takes a good Tory to really appreciate a steak and kidney pie with chips.
williamc
oh, and this false equivalence between us and rabidly crazy people used to just make me grumpy, but now it’s starting to make me want to break some freakin windows…
I loathed W every day from 1/20/01 to 8 years later when I shed a tear in DC when his helicopter made it up in the air without crashing; I live in atlanta, georgia and spent every waking moment that I spent outside my house back in 2002 and 2003 arguing with every redneck tool I met that invading another country for FREEDOM didn’t make any sense and I was told over and over again that I was going to look like an idiot when these people greeted us with candy and flowers and their hot daughters. I was constantly shouted down by groups of people discussing politics here that you COULD cut taxes and increase tax revenue during a War, and even if it didn’t work, who even knows what the deficit is enough to care about it? Knocking on doors in 2004 here for Kerry was embarrassing, people hated him, and when I tried to talk about Bush’s record of tax cuts for the rich, stagnant wages, and 0 job creation, people here laughed at me and called me a loony liberal…
but Code Pink and ANSWER, fukc those guys with a rusty shovel; I wanted to stop the war, but I know that you aren’t going to get Jethro and Ellie Mae Commoner here or in rural Georgia to listen to you be making a ruckus and throwing buckets of fake blood at old white dudes, and they make the job of organizing harder here…
michelle
You lost me at the Glenn link. Greenwald is just another libertarian with a cause.
Oh, I forgot, this blog loves Mona/hypatia.
As you were.
MBSS
im going to have to ask Cole what he thinks of Dragon Age.
i just saw the commercial.
MBSS
glennzilla is more progressive than glibtard
Zach
@tripletee: I never understood the Trig Palin thing. If you really think it’s necessary to speculate about, Occam’s Razor immediately points to her learning about his disability, keeping the pregnancy private while she waved her options, and not wanting to talk about it afterwards because it’s a private matter. I’m as pro choice as they come, but I hate when she gets ridiculed for showing a hint of honesty when she talks about considering abortion. You can infer from the available statistics that roughly half of women aborting trisomy pregnancies are pro-life… at least she can do some good helping people in similar situations even if she’s an international trainwreck in every other respect.
Michelle
Looking for a reason to quit you guys.
Made it.
General Winfield Stuck
@michelle:
Pretty much how I view him. I just don’t trust the dude, never have. And Sullivan is like the two headed man at the wingnut carnival, different than the rest, but not that much different when all is said and done.
Chuck Butcher
I’ll admit Sully can write, but he still is a dishonest twit. There is no honesty in this paragraph. There were no WMDs and people tried to tell asswipes like him. The greatest assault on Civil Liberties was busy taking place. The Wealthy had been given their cake to eat, and the solution of wait and Inspect was offered repeatedly and the Israeli lobby did push for this. He knows all that, he can read and he could then. There is nothing but pretense offered up quite glibbly and yet I get to see what a fine commentator he is if he doesn’t go off the tracks and how he admits he’s wrong and … This piece of shit is reflective of any of those statements exactly HOW?
Martian Buddy
@Dave: There was a particularly silly column from Jonah Goldberg about a week ago where he was arguing that Bush wasn’t a True Conservative™. At this rate, I give it a month or so until wingnuts are claiming he was a deep-cover Democratic mole.
michelle
No he’s not. He’s a libertarian. Just look at his editors.
Put down the Glenn cup. I did and it has done wonders.
Jon
From his fifth column hogwash to his hysteria over the possibility that it might! not! be! Sarah’s! baby!…it’s just impossible to take anyone seriously when calling him a drama queen would be to tarnish the good name of drama queens.
“Of No Party Or Clique”…because who in their right mind would claim him at this point?
General Winfield Stuck
@Michelle:
That’s what they all say.
Keith G
Many folks with great talent have issues that are….unfortunate. You could write a textbook on the coincidence of above average writing ability and muddled thinking. The Irish chapter could be hundreds of pages.
Actually, I am beginning to get the impression that Sully is just basically an ok essayist with a few extra rhetorical skills that he can flourish from time to time. And he was fortunate to understand the impact of the innertubz on establishing a persona and a audience,
Once he is no longer typing, will his tripe be read? Will he be an Emerson, a Ruskin, a Russell, Sontag, Dideon?
Nope, he’s a slightly above average guy with a blog and several hard working assistants. Pull back the curtain.
michelle
GWS, I can’t get the reply thing to work, but yes.
I found Greenwald when he was first blogging. He had no political interest before he started his old blogspot blog.
He’s just another media craving person. I followed him for a while, but it led me to some libertarians that I just could not take. Mona/hypatia being one of them.
jwb
@michelle: Greenwald is a civil libertarian, not full glibtard. For one thing, he doesn’t spout crazy discredited economic theories or threaten to go Galt every other day. Personally, I’m glad that he’s around even though he can be incredibly annoying.
Sentient Puddle
I was going to come in here and post a deep and meaningful comment about the topic of this post, but then you bums had to come in and derail it. My fucking god, I don’t know if some of you equate those standing three feet or more to your right as the hated enemy or if you just don’t even try reading Sully or what. And now because you people distracted me, I forgot what I was going to say. Nice going.
On the bright side, I’m not sure how deep and meaningful pointing out false equivalencies is, so I suppose it’s not that much of a loss…
PeakVT
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Fiscal conservatism is the last shred of conservatism left to Sullivan
Does he know that the phrase is something of a dog-whistle when most politicians use it?
tripletee
@Tim F.:
If the process doesn’t actually lead to a change in thinking or truel self-evaluation, is it really that valuable? Yes, Sully has had a few notable come to Jesus moments, but those are the exception, not the rule. In most cases it ends up like the abortion example cited upthread.
I agree with Remfin above – an open comments policy is much more effective at promoting openess and honesty than Sully’s method, which in my view is just convenient cover for his solipsism.
Keith G
@Sentient Puddle: Well at least you are a puddle.
michelle
Yeah, I’m serious.
Tomorrow morning, I will not navigate to BJ, as I have.
It may be hard, but I will do it.
No more having BJ up for hours.
I’m done.
Calouste
@Remfin:
This.
I was just going to ask Tim F. if he was aware that he is posting a blog post and discussing his post with commenters immediately, unlike Sullivan.
General Winfield Stuck
@jwb:
That’s just because he doesn’t care about economic stuff. He doesn’t like government power imo, and up to a point I agree, but he takes it way past what is reasonable, or tries to. I don’t know if it’s a genuine libertarian stance he is reaching for, or just fishing for the big one to make a name. But he has no or insufficient sense of and seemingly no desire to understand political reality and a valid need for some government authority in the intelligence realm. Just my opinion as I know plenty of others disagree. I just never trust true believing crusaders, even though I agree in principle with their particular cause. They rarely know of or accept gray areas or boundaries of their pursuits because the pursuit too often becomes the cause.
tripletee
@Zach:
I find her repulsive in almost every way, but I’m with you on this. We had to have an amnio and some more in-depth tests during one of our pregnancies, and it was agonizing (though everything turned out OK). That kind of situation is nobody else’s fucking business and it’s long past time that Sully dropped it.
Fulcanelli
Sullivan is a ‘unusual’ individual, which is a big part of his appeal and fame, IMO.
He’s a grab bag of political, religious and sexual contradictions which are rarely, if ever found together even on this side of the pond, and that makes him a perfect candidate for fame in America. Hell, just the fact that he’s a British Catholic makes him an endangered species.
He is intelligent and a fairly decent writer, but at the end of the day I don’t think his opinions are anything special, and that’s what he’s paid for, and supposedly why he’s a Brahman among the pundit class.
He’s wrong as often as he’s right, if not more, so as far as I’m concerned he’s no better than any of the other over paid villager pundits who piss us off daily with their smug bloviating, concern trolling and tiresome flogging of the latest NeoCon/GOP propaganda disguised as “deep thoughts”.
For the life of me, I can not understand why people on this blog, especially the front pagers, hang on his every column like manna from heaven to be digested and analyzed ad nauseum. Give me Frank Rich any day.
But I love the place, so I hang out for the pet pix, the BJ commentariat, the snark and Cole’s cynical ranting.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@PeakVT:
From my reading of his body of work over the years I’d say that one of Sully’s biggest handicaps in commenting on US politics is that he is remarkably deaf to dog-whistles which sound more like bullhorns to those of us who’ve been living here for decades or longer. He literally seems to have no knowledge of US politics stretching back further than 1992, with the very limited exception of mostly mythological accounts of the Reagan administration. That seems to me to be a rather large contextual gap for somebody who claims to be a conservative. If you are all for upholding tradition, shouldn’t you know something about the history of the country whose traditions you claim to be in support of?
Ash
Your username is Zach, so I’m going to assume you’re a male, yes? And while a large number of the male gender are very good with empathy and understanding when it comes to a woman considering an abortion, NONE of them will ever really get it. There is absolutely nothing comparable to it.
There are very few things that piss me off more than another woman who vocally and emphatically campaigns for taking away the rights of other women. So fuck honesty, she deserves every single bit of ridicule.
TenguPhule
Because worthless fuckwits are very serious people.
General Winfield Stuck
@General Winfield Stuck:
Maybe a little harsh on Glenzilla. I will say his efforts to document the crimes of the Bush syndicate and construct a narrative has been a great service in general, and I salute him for that. The rest of my comment remains however.
jwb
@General Winfield Stuck: I think trusting him and being glad that there is someone around articulating a particular point of view are different issues. Would I want Greenwald in charge of government policy? Not on your life; but as a watcher and critic he serves a good purpose. I like having smart conservatives around as well. I wouldn’t want Larison in charge of government policy either, but he’s an intelligent guy and you can learn things by reading him.
General Winfield Stuck
And I think Sully has served at least as one voice of conscience for the neo con bloody misadventures, for whatever that is worth.
General Winfield Stuck
@jwb:
I agree. as stated in my addendum comment.
TenguPhule
It’s worth a bucket of farts.
Of Bugs and Books
@michelle:
“No more having BJ up for hours.”
Somebody has a soft spot in her heart for this blog.
/Just teasing.
What other blogs do you like, if I can still ask?
Just Some Fuckhead
Balloon-Juice just needs to have sex with The Daily Dish and get it over with.
Fulcanelli
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yeah, well I for one will not be sleeping on the wet spot.
slag
@Ash:
This perspective makes complete sense to me. It’s hard to respect women who want to vote themselves back into third-class status. You’d think being in second-class would be demoralizing enough for them.
Matt T.
Does that actually mean anything, though? You are, after all, talking about a group when confronted with evidence that every excuse they’d given for the invasion of Iraq was either useless bullshit or an outright lie, they quit pretending they even need a reason. And like they really listen to what some limey queer thinks about it.
Sullivan’s got good chops when it comes to the actual mechanical process of writing, so I think a lot of intelligent, thoughtful people give him a lot more credit than he deserves when it comes to actual thinkin’. The Bell Curve alone is excuse enough for me to pass over anything the guy ever says again. It’s not just bullshit, but mean-spirited bullshit, and I can’t respect a guy who peddles that without apology.
tripletee
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I’m going to really enjoy the breathless speculation over who the real father of the baby blog is.
Chuck Butcher
@tripletee:
But what would you name it?
Juice Dish
Daily Juice
Ballon Dish
Daily Balloon
Fuck Wit Intelligenceson?
randiego
I believe they call this the “GBCW moment”.
Fulcanelli
@Chuck Butcher: Plato’s Retreat?
Nutella
@tripletee:
I would sympathize with Palin and the difficult decision she had to make if she didn’t sneer at everyone else in similar situations who made a different decision. She’s trying to have it both ways: a lot of talk about how tough her decision was and self-righteous smugness about it being the only possible decision she could have made.
But Sullivan’s obsession with and very detailed speculations about her pregnancy are sick, sick, sick.
valdivia
@Cat Lady:
I am with you Mad Men rocked. Just wow. I will only say I just dont buy Henry Francis.
burnspbesq
@michelle:
Gee, we’re crushed.
burnspbesq
@tripletee:
What breathless speculation? Everybody knows Levi is the dad.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: :: mouth open ::
Nah it’s too easy.
BTW any pics of the ladykiller in the tux available yet?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
michelle:
No! Please don’t go!! Out of all of the commentary here, your witty and intelligent banter is all I really care to read. If you leave then I, like many others here, will have nowhere else to go on the internet for the kind of deep, intellectual commentary that you have been kind enough to bestow upon us, the unwashed masses, here at BJ. Please, please be kind enough to drop us a link to wherever you end up as I am sure that we will all drop what we are doing and head right over to feed from the nectar that is your intelligence. Of all the genius talent that hangs out at this hellhole, your brilliance has led the way in the dark days we faced in the past and its loss will surely make the days in our future dim indeed.
One question though: Who are you?
Chuck Butcher
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
It did sound as though it had some import as well as reason…
Yutsano
@Chuck Butcher: A tale told by an idiot etc.?
Eric U.
I’m just trying to figure out which one of you is Sullivan. Michelle?
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
BTW any pics of the ladykiller in the tux available yet?
Ladykiller? Not exactly, although I imagine he broke some hearts when he came out. More to the point, pics are still captive in Mom’s camera. Will work on getting them this week.
Will you settle for dawgz? They are aware that the BJ commentariat is fawning over Hurley and Laettner, and they demand equal time.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/burnspbesq/dogpile08nov09.jpg
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: PUPPEH! They look like they’d love some playtime with Buddy and Jack. Was trying to guess the breed of the white one, not quite big enough to be a Great Pyrenees.
Chuck Butcher
@burnspbesq:
Compare and contrast, eh?
I could never get Gus the Pyr and Marlin the Calico that close together for a pic. Sadly she has been gone for close to a month now. I’m afraid she’s had it.
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
It’s a female Pyr, and relatively small for the breed (just over 100 lbs). Our two-year-old male Pyr is going to be 160-plus when he fills out.
The little mutt is of completely indeterminate ancestry. My guess is yellow Lab – miniature Schnauzer, but who the hell knows.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: I grew up with Newfies, a female named Sasha, and yeah they are great dogs, especially with kids.
Oh and BTW:
Will you settle for dawgz?
I saw what you did there. :)
CaseyL
@valdivia: It’s really kind of nuts: They don’t really know each other. His boss just went through a scandalous divorce, and now he’s either going to marry a divorcee or (even better) be named by her husband as the “other man.”
I just hope he doesn’t turn out to have some godawful secret. And that, maybe, she’ll take well to the political life; “find herself,” as they’ll be saying in a few years :)
The song played over the last scene was an optimistic one. I hope that bodes well. Some people dislike the show because they hate all of the characters. I, OTOH, like most of the characters: just about everyone is shown as a three-dimensional person, with good and bad in full measure. I can sympathize at the same time I want to shake them :)
Dave
There is a point to reading Andrew Sullivan: to know what shallow morons think about national affairs. It’s a valuable service he provides, but the fact that he’s influential is very sad.
drillfork
@Fulcanelli:
This.
Tonal Crow
Don’t give the wingnuts ammunition. There is no “State Secrets clause” of the federal Constitution. The State Secrets *doctrine* was basically created by the Supreme Court in U.S v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953), as an additional privilege under the Federal Rules of Evidence.
El Cid
Is there anyone who reads Andrew Sullivan who is interested primarily in finding a truly good argument and learning something from it, or does everyone read Andrew Sullivan because they find Andrew Sullivan fascinating?
If I were not interested in the subject of Andrew Sullivan and what interests Andrew Sullivan and what Andrew Sullivan believes, I do not think I would ever miss anything substantial by not reading Andrew Sullivan’s weak and uninsightful arguments.
Sly
I think people on the left should be careful not to attribute positive traits to people simply as a reward for agreeing with them. It’s nice that Sullivan (and to a lesser extent Brooks) had a wake up call in the past few years that pointed out how absolutely batshit insane members of his own faction have become. But comparing ANSWER to a movement that is sponsored by the NRCC/NRSC is fucking moronic. That Sully doesn’t immediately recognize this is clear evidence that he possesses little capacity for honest and meaningful self-reflection.
“Well, the Democrats do it to!” is an argument put forward by conservatives who dislike the idiots in their own party but don’t have the capacity to step beyond their own petty biases to understand that, within the context of the two-party system, the Democratic Party is the only place where sane discussions on every issue are occurring. Period. But they hate hippies so much, it seems, that even the party establishment doing its utmost to disempower said hippies is not enough. Even a low-rent sideshow like ANSWER prevents a problem for people who are Reaganite to their very core. They might be able to praise individual Democrats, but never the institution as a whole.
But, of course, this isn’t about policy. It’s about the ego rush a person gets when they’re more concerned about appearing sensible (“It’s a small-c conservaive perspective!”) than they do about actually being sensible.
Chuck Butcher
@Sly:
If you want to call what they’ve done a wake up call that’s fine, but I don’t regard it as such. I also don’t attribute any real positive qualities to either – but then I don’t agree with them or have any respect for their views. I’m not real sure where you get the idea there is some generalized left affection for either of these. You sure aren’t getting that impression here unless you’ve done some real hit and miss reading.
Sly
It may be that I’ve just been hanging around NY conservatives too long, who, like Sullivan and Brooks, are rational enough to recognize insanity when they see it but lack the wherewithal to see the connection between the party establishment and that insanity (and imagine connections between the Democratic Party and organizations like ANSWER). But it is, by my own parochial standards, a wake up call. I live in Peter King’s district, where fear of the Mooselims has been the animating force of electoral politics for the better part of a decade.
I didn’t claim to see affection from a “generalized left”, but a trend among small groups of leftists who are not seeing the big picture. Kind of like the liberals who think Ron Paul is great guy, when any government run by him or people who believe as he does would be an unmitigated disaster as well as violate practically every political principle those same liberals hold dear. I certainly wasn’t referring to any meaningful percentage of BJ commenters.
Little Dreamer
@michelle:
Michelle, we hardly knew ya!
RedKitten
@burnspbesq: That photo just made me make a “squee”-ing noise. They look like such good pals, and that little scruffy fella is definitely my kind of dog.
Little Dreamer
@Ash:
How about the 23 (I think that’s the correct number), all-male, Blue Dogs who voted in favor of Stupak’s amendment only to then vote no on HCR? I think they piss me off more than a female campaigning against choice.
dr. bloor
If this blog is going to regress into an online stalking site, at least do me a favor and stalk someone like Anne Hathaway or Kate Winslett. Andrew Sullivan is an obnoxious, hypocritical monkey with a typewriter whose internal conflicts demand more years of therapy than he has left in his life. Let it go, already.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Let’s try a little two-part thought experiment because carrying out an actual experiment would be too dangerous. What would happen if:
1. Sully and spouse attended a Code Pink rally holding hands?
2. Sully and spouse attended a Teabagger rally holding hands?
The man is a fucking clueless twit.
Lou Dyer Jones
Andrew Sullivan needs to stop trying to defend his appalling, hawkish past by continually throwing around red herrings like “anti-war protestors are just like tea partiers”. He was *wrong*-they all were wrong-and thousands and thousands of innocent people died needlessly as a result.
One of these days, he may post a heartfelt mea culpa for the enthusiastic role he played in the needless deaths of so many innocent soldiers and so many more innicent Iraqis. Until then, I hope that torments him, makes him wake up in the middle of the night screaming, for the rest of his life.
AkaDad
@Chuck Butcher:
For some reason I like the sound of Daily BJ.
Fulcanelli
@AkaDad: All kinds of WIN happening here, don’t ya know.
bemused
I’ve never noticed Dems spending any time on bended knees begging forgiveness from Code Pink or any other similar group. I have noticed the numerous times Dems have rushed to apologize to Republicans for any remark, no matter how mild or factual, that the R’s had pitched gigantic hissy fits about.
Senyordave
I find her repulsive in almost every way, but I’m with you on this. We had to have an amnio and some more in-depth tests during one of our pregnancies, and it was agonizing (though everything turned out OK). That kind of situation is nobody else’s fucking business and it’s long past time that Sully dropped it.
Tripletee:
In 99.9999% of cases I would agree, but here is a woman who was would make abortion illegal even in cases of rape and incest. She has all but said that she agonized over her “decision”, but apparently only members of the Palin family should be permitted this decision.
Since she is involved in public policy she opens this part of her life up for public scrutiny.
Maybe while she’s at it, she can explain why a person who bombs an abortion clinic isn’t a terrorist:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/23/palin-abortion-clinic-bombers/
valdivia
@CaseyL:
I just dont trust the guy. even if I often want to smack Betty there is something wrong with that guy…
chrome agnomen
i’ve never once read sullivan, and nothing i read in this blog leads me to believe that i’m leaving out an essential segment in the great dialogue.
but i’m grateful to those who have, i guess.
Shygetz
@El Cid: What he said. Sullivan is only “fascinating” because it is rare to find someone so transparently oblivious to cognitive dissonance. An HIV+, openly gay conservative Catholic who still despises the hippies for not seriously considering the threat of Saddam’s WMD’s that were not there. The fact that someone wields the name Burke in a manner akin to a magic wand does not make that person a deep thinker.
@Tim F.:
Oh bullshit, I’m not letting you get away with that one, Tim. Sullivan always runs selected criticism from readers, and oddly enough he makes a good faith effort to respond to almost every selectedcriticism. But there are tons of criticisms that he neither publishes nor responds to, and since he does not allow comments the criticisms are not collected in a nice, easy to find refutation. Rather, I have to go to blogs like this to read why Sullivan is an idiot today.
Rick Taylor
I have trouble taking Andrew Sullivan seriously after his support of The Bell Curve. That’s just crackpot racism.
Svensker
@Tim F.:
What you’re thinking is self-reflection is just Andrew peering into his mirror and exclaiming, “I wuv you! You are so smart and sensitive. I wuv you!”
Rick Taylor
I’m also sick and tired of conservatives separating themselves and conservatism from the fiscal mess we inherited from the years conservatives were in full control of the government. In this regard, he’s not much different from the tea baggers he’s mocking. Sullivan supported the Iraq war. He supports having a huge military able to conduct wars all over the globe. He supported the Busy tax cuts.
Conservatives like him take it as a matter of faith that it would be desirable or politically possible to make huge cuts in government spending without touching or even expanding the military. As they’re never in power, they just throw stones at whoever is, and conservative principles are never falsified for them.
I’m no fan of Bush, but I feel for him a little. He cut taxes, deregulated, and started two wards that are still with us, he did pretty much everything they wanted and they’re still trying to disown him.
Rick Taylor
Here’s what Sullivan proposed at the time to balance the budget:
In short, it would come nowhere near to balancing the budget, and much of it was politically impossible. It was in no way serious and mostly reflected Sullivan’s own hobby horses (yeah, tax marijuana, that will make a big dent!)
But because he was criticizing the administration for the deficit, and making completely impractical proposals to fix it, he’s responsible, he’s not like those inconsistent teabaggers! Maybe if they ever make criticisms like this, then he can take them seriously.
I’ve talked to a few right wingers online (via comments), and despite what Sullivan writes, they are distancing themselves from Bush in the same way. They wanted to have a war and cut taxes without running deficits! Bush and the Republicans let them down, and they’re going to continue shouting until they get what they want. Because obviously, there’s loads of stuff that could be cut from the government while beefing up defense; it’s only because lawmakers are so corrupt they won’t do it; if we shout loud enough and keep sending them tea bags and yelling at their town halls, maybe they’ll get the message.
And that’s conservatism today in a nutshell.
Rick Taylor
Forgot the link to the above. Via Left Coaster.
Svensker
@michelle:
I think you left a few of your toys when you stomped out.
Svensker
@Svensker: @Lou Dyer Jones:
Yes. What you said. Bottom line.
tripletee
@Senyordave:
I kind of conflated two different issues in my comment and I shouldn’t have, so to be clear: if someone is simply calling her out on her obvious hypocrisy, I don’t object to that. It’s the creepy, obsessive speculation on the whys and wherefores of Trig’s birth that skeeves me out.
Will
I remember a post during the run-up to the war where Andrew actually wrote “one of the best bi-products of an American invasian is that it will provide an alternative target to Israel”.
He actually wrote that.
CaseyL
Who is this michelle person who stomped in, sneered at Greenwald, and (threatened to) stomped out again?
I don’t recall her being here before, or taking part in discussions before. I certainly don’t remember her ever complaining about the place before.
I do know there are people who hate Greenwald with a passion, for reasons not very clear; I also know at least one of those Greenwald-haters (whose name I can’t recall at the mo’, but maybe someone elese can) created a sock puppet for the purpose of ginning up Greenwald hate.
Is this michelle person a sockpuppet, or does she really exist?
Nate W.
Setting aside the issue of whether the scope and content of the two sides’ rhetoric is even close to comparable (@bemused already did a good job of pointing out why this is horseshit), thinking that “Godwin’s Law is the point” succumbs to some of the most nihilistic impulses of the Washington villagers.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Tim F.:
“Better than most bloggers” is just another way of saying “damning with faint praise.”
I’ll be honest, I don’t read Sully as a matter of course; about the only time I do is when someone here links to him, just to get some context about the post in question. Not enough swearing for my tastes.
russell
From the first paragraph of the first Sullivan piece Tim F cites in the original post:
Now see, if it were me, I would have ended the first piece right after that full stop, and not even bothered to write the second.
That’s why I’m not Andrew Sullivan, I guess.
The two pieces cited here are self-serving CYA drivel. I second MikeJ’s analysis in comment #1.
JoJo
All I see is endless emo wangst about how hard it is to be a gay catholic. Dude, the catholic church is NOT going to change it’s stance on homosexuality so stop wasting blog space on the issue.
gex
@PeakVT: Well, like most in the fiscal conservative clique on the right, he fails to notice and comment on how the reliably red states get welfare from the blue states. Of course it is really easy to lower taxes and pay for services if someone else is paying for the services.
It is in this that Sullivan joins all the other conservative sub-populations. Correctness of ideology trumps results on the ground.
gex
@gex: I should add that this “Correctness of ideology trumps results on the ground.” is why Sullivan can be anti-war and be correct, while the DFHs who were right all along can be wrong. He got there the right way, dammit! The fact that his path enabled the failed war is not even postscript to this episode.
Calouste
@Rick Taylor:
There is so much concentrated stupid in that comment from Sullivan, that if he ever manages to become a US citizen, he could easily be elected a Republican Congressman, maybe even a Republican Senator.
JC613
The thing about Sullivan is that when he gets an idea, he clings to it with fierce tenacity. And the tenacity results in massive amounts of near real-time linkage that comes as close to reporting as an opinion blog will get.
Examples: he hates Hillary with a weird rancor, so he was great in links to support Obama; he hates Palin even more than Hillary so he was the go-to guy for that; he hates that the US tortured, so he gave great linkage for that.
So when I agree with his obsession, his website is gold, because he gives me enormous amounts of info. But for all those things that he’s wrong about, no matter of facts will sway him, and I just skip those posts.
Caveat: Nothing will sway him – except his own tortured mind. That’s why it’s hard to predict where he’ll wind up on an issue, because of the above-mentioned personality quirkiness (British Catholic Gay HIV-Positive Thatcherite). His load of cognitive dissonance is enormous and it’s now cracking into pieces. Somehow, I think he hates being associated for so long with the Democrats…