Yesterday, I thought Sully was finally getting it, but then today he dumps this on us:
Accusing the president of giving aid and comfort to the enemy is such a disgusting charge, such a deeply divisive, unAmerican tactic, it would be excoriated if it came from some far right blogger. That it comes from a former vice-president, violating every conceivable protocol (as he did in office), reminds me of why Cheney and Cheneyism remain such a threat to core American and Western values.
Excoriated if it came from a right blogger? Has he been reading right bloggers lately? They, on a daily basis, launch this sort of attack against Obama. They then link each other and have their little memeorandum circle jerk, and by the end of the day, the Politico is mainstreaming it so that the attacks are sure to be on the cable news that night or the next.
And this false separation between wingnut bloggers and the leadership of the GOP is odd- surely by now Sullivan must realize that there is no fundamental difference between the GOP and the wingnut bloggers. My god. The party is taking their cues from Sarah Palin’s facebook page, Karl Rove’s tweets, and Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. Show me an instance in which the GOP has strayed in any way from the “right bloggers.” Wingnut bloggers like Michael Goldfarb ran the McCain/Palin campaign. Show me a real split between what any Republican leader is saying, anything on the op-ed pages of the WSJ or the Examiner or the Moonie Times, and the smear du jour from the “right bloggers.” They are one and the same.
What Cheney is saying would not be excoriated if a right blogger said it, in fact the exact opposite is the truth. Cheney is just giving them their marching orders and their new soundbite. Remember where the phrase dithering got started? Cheney utters it, the wingnuts blogs repeat it, multiple op-eds are issued from folks like Bolton, Peter Roff, and David Broder and dozens of others, and then we finally end up with the dithering charge fully mainstreamed, and the Washington Post then feels comfortable to do breezy analyses such as the following:
94 DAYS: Was Obama dithering or decisive?
There is no difference between a wingnut blog and the former Vice President. Period. And neither will be excoriated for anything they say, and, in fact, David Gregory is probably erect as he tries to schedule Cheney for Meet the Press this week-end, and if Cheney can’t make it, I’m sure mean old John McCain can stop by and tell us why Obama has failed us and doesn’t like America.
In closing, I’ll leave you with Dan Bartlett:
That’s what I mean by influential. I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.
There is no separation between the wingnut blogs and the Republican leadership. They are just different wings of the same bullshit factory.
rob!
Sully gets so close sometimes…and then crashes and burns into the pit of Teh Stupid.
I am growing ever convinced that EVERY SINGLE PERSON who is a self-described Conservative and/or Republican is, at least partly, insane.
Kryptik
Goddammit, Sully. So closed to the cheese at the end of the maze, before you turn toward the smelly sock all the way in the other corner, because ‘they smell virtually the same’.
Zifnab
I’m not sure where Sully is coming from here. He’s a bit behind the fold. Right wing bloggers were regularly enough lumped into “peasant rabble rousers” along with their left wing counterparts back in ’03 and ’05 by the likes of David Frum and the other right wing establishment hacks. Hell, Sully has been called out on more than one occasion for being just some shitty blogger.
That’s not so true anymore, now that the GOP is back on it’s heels and looking for allies where it can find them.
And, he’s not in any way defending Cheney’s bullshit. He’s just noting that if this had come from a blogger he’s used to it getting dismissed as coming from a blogger, where as when it comes from Cheney, suddenly we’re hearing a “Serious Person”(tm) give his endorsement.
Sully is clutching his pearls over shit that’s been thrown back and forth for over a decade because he’s just not used to seeing it come from the highest pumbas. :-p That’s blissfully naive. Kinda cute really. But I wouldn’t hold it too far against him.
trollhattan
They’re, at the very least, wired differently. I have yet to find a Republican in today’s party who can define conservative and liberal. They have lot’s to say, but after a lengthy harangue there’s not a fact to be considered.
And guess what: nobody “likes” paying taxes but it seems everybody likes to spend money, regardless of party.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
And lets just remember that Politico(aka Drudgico) is owned by a right-wing family(the Albrittons). They are just as bad as the Koch’s or any of the other groups that support the teabaggers. So, of course, they are going to run to Darth Cheney for quotes when ever it suits them.
gonzone
Michelle Bachmann
Dick Cheney
James Inohfe
Karl Rove
Sarah Palin
all “right wing bloggers”?
Yeah, the crazy runs clean to the bone with the GOP.
MoeLarryAndJesus
I wish Cheney would spend more time in his bunker swilling Lowenbrau and yanking Little Dick as he watches his world-class collection of lesbian snuff films and less time spouting his dumbass opinions, but that’s not his way.
The bastard.
Jim
It’s at once amazing and utterly predictable that the MSM headlines inspired by this piece are “Cheney Criticizes Obama” rather than “Cheney Denies Responsibility for Afghanistan”, still less “Two Half Wit Pool Boys For Some Reason Ask Second Most Destrcutive Politician In American History for Opinion: No One Knows Why”.
I imagine that Frank Rich, Robinson or Dionne, the lonely members of the Establishment media who notice these things, will comment on it– the first two might even be pretty scathing, but people like the Half Wit Pool Boys, MoDo and Vice Principal Broder will take no notice. And Chuck Todd or Stephanopolous are probably desperately trying to book Dick Jr to expand upon The Evil One’s blathering.
Svensker
Just terrible, Andrew, so unAmerican. Apparently what’s not unAmerican, however, is accusing people who opposed the war of being traitors:
…
Fuck you, Sully.
Pangloss
Charles Johnson of LGF has a post today with 10 reasons he wants nothing more to do with Right Wing Republicans.
Remember what that blog was like just five years ago? When LGF is the voice of reason in the GOP, things must be pretty crazy.
Face
Give some fucking credit where it is due. This is DEAD ON.
Just Some Fuckhead
Different floors, I think. Wingnut bloggers are in the basement.
Svensker
@Svensker:
Apparently, that was Sully’s apology for calling us DFHs traitors. What he was apologizing for was this:
So, double fuck you, Sully. He has not learned, John. But he can’t, really. He’s too narcissistic.
bloodstar
Waitaminute…
I’m reading that differently than you I think, because I read it as Sullivan being frustrated that Cheney is getting more credibility than he deserves and is therefore much more dangerous than the right wing bloggers who are so far off the deep end that ‘teh crazy’ is obvious to anyone who has more than 2 brain cells.
“false separation between wingnut bloggers and the leadership of the GOP is odd” no it’s not, because the mainstream media is too busy treating Cheney like he’s some sort of authority that needs to be trotted out to show how horrible Obama is screwing up and is a traitor or something.
Sullivan is angry that there *is* a distinction between right wing bloggers and Cheney, and that false distinction makes Cheney that much more dangerous.
Dreggas
For a second I thought Sully meant to say “left” instead of right. Kind of a freudian slip.
Stooleo
Sully drives me fucking nuts a lot of the time. I admired his firm stand on the torture issue but then he spews stupid shit like this.
The stupid burns.
Violet
@Pangloss:
No kidding. That post is kind of amazing.
Far right wing bloggers are an arm of the GOP. Unless they’re trying to set up their own Tea Party party. Sully is being willfully ignorant.
Kryptik
@bloodstar:
Except many of us don’t even see that false separation. The wingnutters in the blogosphere and on the internet are key reasons why Cheney’s shit is so easily accepted in the mainstream, even given the ridiculous deference people like the Politico writers give him.
Major GOP figures, fringe right activists, and outer wingnuttia on the internet all form a self perpetuating cycle of cognitive dissonance that eventually spins so fast and so loud, the bleating idiots in the media go ‘well, there’s smoke, there must be fire!’.
Alex S.
Sullivan is a strange person. It’s the same with his catholicism and the Catholic Church that considers him an abomination. It’s the same with his alienation from american conservatism and his self-proclaimed “Tory”-ness (read his answer to LGF) and his continued residence in the USA. I mean, why doesn’t he just go back to the UK? – Because a UK-blogger would be irrelevant. Also, a non-catholic criticising the Catholic Church would be irrelevant. Similarly, a gay liberal/moderate would be irrelevant.
I guess that, mentally, he isn’t very far apart from the Washington Media who want to remain relevant among their own circles, and that means relevant within the reaganite tradition of conservatism. It’s just that Sullivan wears his heart on his sleeve and all the inherent contradictions of that movement come to the surface.
Dreggas
@Kryptik:
that’s exactly it. The wingers are a minority but if they turn it up to 11 they are heard. They’re shit also fits well in a media where the news functions more like a tabloid than actual news (see Tiger-gate). It’s become totally ridiculous but that’s reality for the time being.
Garrigus Carraig
So is the consensus still that the pernicious Sullivan’s good material makes up for the non-negligible amount of crap he excretes? Is there something he brings to the table that hasn’t already been brought by someone else? Is it reasonable to expect that, at this late stage, he will finally “get it”?
I’m starting to think that my hatred for Sullivan is so deep and irrational that I should proscribe myself a month of daily reading his work & systematically picking it apart.
Ugh
I do TOO get it!
licensed to kill time
Maybe Sully’s never heard of the puke funnel. Maybe I’ll email him the def. Nah. He’s on a journey, one step forward two steps back, lurching along the road to seeing the light. He’s just gotta walk the earth some more, grasshopper.
Wax on, wax off.
catclub
Violet @ 17:
That list, from LGF, except for perhaps 6 and 10, is and has
been SOP
for the right since forever.
If you replaced ‘Support for’ with ‘Core Value is’,
in all items in the list,
then you get a hint of an inkling of the real scope of
Charles Johnson’s problem
with the wackalooon right.
MattF
I’m guessing that Sullivan finds it too painful to actually read right-wing blogs– it’s no accident that links on his blog are all lefties and right-wing heretics. I don’t blame him for that on a personal level; I don’t read right-wing blogs either. But he’s placed himself professionally on the line between left and right– so he’s got a responsibility to man up about it and view the awful truth about what’s actually happening.
Mark
How about this exchange I had with the SF Chronicle’s Washington Correspondent:
It’s win-win for the wingnuts. As long as they say something – anything – it will get re-printed as though it’s a rational opinion. In some cases, it will be in the lede, and the analysis will be buried.
Ash
@Svensker: Oh jesus/allah/yahweh. I didn’t pay much attention at all to politics until the last couple of years, so I have no idea with this fifth column nonsense is. But he actually said that the future of liberty hangs on Iraq???
ROFLMMFAO.
geg6
@Pangloss:
I went over there to read it and must commend CJ for finding sanity when all others seem to be losing theirs. However, I also spent some time perusing the comments section and found it pretty funny. Lots and lots of deleted comments from the wingers butt hurting and spewing their last manifesto on the traitor. And so much glibertarianism that it made me want to spew my lunch. There really are not many intelligent people there based on the levels of false equivalency they spew and the Goldwater/Reagan worship is the most laughable shit I’ve ever seen. “Barry and Ronnie would NEVER put up with the racists and fReichtards! They would have drummed them out!”
All I figure is that there must have been two other, not as famous, Barry Goldwaters and Ronnie Reagans that they are referencing there. Cuz both BG and RR had no problem whatsoever with racists and crazy Christianists. Take a look at who voted for them and why. And then tell me they rejected either group. I dare ya.
UncommonSense
I read Sullivan’s post earlier today and I think he was just saying that possesses at this point no more gravitas or credibility than some hate-spewing right-wing blogger.
Jay in Oregon
I’m surprised that Sully stopped sniffing Sarah Palin’s panties long enough to comment on anything else.
Is he on his fourth or fifth re-read of [i]Going Rogue[/i] yet?
Jim
@Ash:
To be fair, he was talking at the time about Afghanistan and the “GWOT”, when that term was at its vaguest and the WTC attacks were still being used as bumper on cable news channels, but the whole “fifth column” prattling was pretty much the end of my taking Andrew Sullivan seriously, whether he was arguing for or against Bush (or Obama, or HRC, or whom- or whatever). Andrew Sullivan is a histrionic dingbat, with an accent that intimidates Americans and an Oxbridge vocabulary.
(but even with that clarification, he was among those who seemed to believe that Osama and Saddam were going to somehow conquer Europe and America and establish Wahhabism and Sharia law. And he rather infamously offered a “you’re welcome” to the people of Iraq after he liberated them by typing on his laptop from his toilet in Provincetown).
Jay in Oregon
Blah, wrong tag format. *cry*
catclub
geg6 @ 28
“All I figure is that there must have been two other, not as famous, Barry Goldwaters and Ronnie Reagans that they are referencing there. Cuz both BG and RR had no problem whatsoever with racists and crazy Christianists. Take a look at who voted for them and why. And then tell me they rejected either group. I dare ya.”
Exactly my point, but now ‘Support for’ is not enough,
it is now a core value.
And CJ has gotten off the bus.
Annie
Many people don’t understand or don’t want to understand the distinction between Republicans, wingnut blogs, Fox news, etc and reality.
They just want their country back, and they happily and willingly look to Cheney, Rove, Republicans in Congress, wingnuts blogs, Beck, Hannity, etc. to provide the “meat.”
After all, don’t many of these dangerous idiots wrap themselves in mantles of Christianity and virtue? Therefore, they can’t lie, don’t have their own self-interests at heart, care deeply for our military, and want to do what’s best for the country — get rid of that black man in the white house. Again, Cheney can say whatever he wants because the right gives him a forum and a soapbox and try to convince us that this is legitimate news and respectable opinion.
Mark S.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have Cheney as the face of the GOP. He is incredibly unpopular. Same goes for Palin, Limbaugh, and Beck.
eemom
good heavens, I’ve never seen a love-hate relationship like some of the folks here have for Sully. Does the man justify this level of fascination? Does he really embody such vast complexity?
He strikes me as a self-absorbed twit, but that’s only when I read his column, which isn’t often.
Also, his “views” on abortion disgust me.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
You’re just now coming to that conclusion?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I’m not part of that consensus. For the life of me, I still don’t understand how he got to where he is. I’ve ruled out sleeping his way there since surely there can’t be that many (obviously closeted) gay Repups.
Mark S.
@eemom:
No.
BTW, did he ever find anything out about Baby Trig? His big to-do about blog silence as he read Palin’s book was one of the most ridiculously pretentious things I’ve ever seen on the blogosphere.
Jim
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Well, he made his climb in the media, not the GOP. But I still don’t think he slept his way up, otherwise how would you explain the similar rise of Christopher Hitchens? I’ve never heard of anyone passing out their way to the top. I think it’s the much more banal media obsession with contrarianism: An openly gay conservative! A self-proclaimed lefty who hates Democrats! And those accents!
Midnight Marauder
@eemom:
It is something, isn’t it? But, even though I find him to be exponentially inane 8 posts out of 10 (that goes down substantially when he gets rolling about torture – /obligatory), he really does embody a great number of contradictions about the current country/world we find ourselves in. He’s got the whole gay Catholic thing going right as the Catholic Church continues to substantially ramp up its efforts around the world to treat gays as fourth-class citizens. And then there’s his whole “conservatism is like water” schtick, standing in stark contrast to the modern conservative movement in this country. Not to mention the questions of why he continues to affiliate himself with groups who wouldn’t think twice about wiping him and his kind of the map. That is an adamant belief of the groups to which he “belongs.” So, yes, on many levels, there is a vast complexity to the entity known as Sully.
Doesn’t make him any less of a self-absorbed, nonsensical, egregiously dense asshole. But it certainly is there.
Noonan
You really don’t have to go any further than Cheney’s broadsides of Obama to show the parties are as polarized as they’ve been in recent history. It’s always been viewed as unseemly for a former prez or vice prez to criticize their successor. That we’re taking Cheney’s attacks for granted is perhaps an indication of how dimly we view him or how hyper-partisan the status quo has become. Either way, it’s a huge deviation from the mean. Not that anyone inside the Beltway feels like calling Cheney on it.
Supt. Chalmers
I’ll tell you what, Sully’s tight explanation w/r/t LGF about why he, Sully, parted with the right, is better written than any of the critics here has ever done.
Leaving the Right
That’s more powerful than any of the sneering and namecalling and W.A.T.B.-ness you’ll find in the BJ comments.
stormhit
@eemom:
The cognitive dissonance of someone who agrees with them 75% of the time while still claiming to be a conservative is too much for some people to handle rationally.
Corner Stone
@Supt. Chalmers: Good God.
Joel
@eemom: I’m somewhat partial to sullivan, although i read him infrequently these days. A lot of what he writes is mindless pablum, so I can understand why people don’t like him. But he’s a “trusted source” and a better link aggregator than memeorandum. If it weren’t for Sullivan, many of us (including yours truly) would have never found BJ.
Joel
@Supt. Chalmers: With all due respect, Sullivan lost me halfway through the piece. Too many five dollar words to convey fifty-cent meanings. And this is coming from someone who likes him.
licensed to kill time
With all due respect, Sully takes a lot of words to state what has been obvious to most of us a long time ago.
@Supt. Chalmers:
Well, I can’t write a list of reasons why I parted with the right because I was never there in the first place, so maybe Supt. Chalmers is right on that score.
Batocchio
Home run.
gex
@Stooleo: Well, he’s a conservative. So his sin should be unregulated, but others’ should. QED.
Stupid, Obnoxious and Daft
Sometimes you’ve just got to shake your head and remember the bigger picture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk
gex
@eemom: Really, so much of this is just simple understanding of how our brains work. Sully posts A LOT. And we can click on his link and we are rewarded with a new post quite often. The fact that sometimes we get a biscuit and sometimes we get a turd doesn’t seem to matter to the part of our brain that lights up when we see that new post.
Chicago Jeff
Sully has mostly good and valid points in his post, although I agree that he got this point wrong.
I do sort of recall however that he beat JC at discovering and admitting what scary frauds the modern Right has become.
GranFalloon
Excoriated if it came from a right blogger? Has he been reading right bloggers lately? They, on a daily basis, launch this sort of attack against Obama. They then link each other and have their little memeorandum circle jerk, and by the end of the day, the Politico is mainstreaming it so that the attacks are sure to be on the cable news that night or the next.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Stupid, Obnoxious and Daft: Stuck?
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Um, yes, this what their own people were saying years ago. We basically published a WashingtonMonthly article to that effect several years ago.
Does the phrase “Dynamite in the Distance” ring a bell?
This is their modus operandi. Has been for a long time. Manipulation, pure and simple. All firmly grounded in principle: I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
Ends justify means. Love it, or leave it.
Irony Abounds
Although it has significant competition, this may well be John’s Post of the Year. Newsweek’s cover story this week is “How Great Powers Fall.” They focus on a lot of economic issues, but really should have spent a great deal more effort on how rancid and dishonest our political system has become and how bereft of integrity and intelligence journalism is these days. Both parties are utterly corrupt, and the Republicans are complete tools who think nothing of lying, misleading and obstructing for the sole purpose of regaining power. My irony meter explodes when I hear a Republican whine about how Obama isn’t in the American Exceptionalism camp – there is no way this country is exceptional when Republicans can pull the shit they do without consequence to themselves.
licensed to kill time
@Irony Abounds:
This is what Obama said about American Exceptionalism:
HyperIon
@licensed to kill time: This is what Obama said about American Exceptionalism
What you quoted sounds like Lake Wobegon exceptionalism. Every country is exceptional just like everyone in LW is above average.
HyperIon
@geg6 quoted crazy right wingers saying: “Barry and Ronnie would NEVER put up with the racists and fReichtards! They would have drummed them out!”
Obviously this person does not know his RR history.
One of RR’s favorite sayings concerned his so-called “11th commandment”: Never speak ill of fellow Republicans. So I don’t think he would have drummed them out. In fact I don’t think he would have spoken ill of them.
HyperIon
@Mark S. wrote: I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have Cheney as the face of the GOP. He is incredibly unpopular. Same goes for Palin, Limbaugh, and Beck.
That would be fine if this were a popularity contest. But we’re trying to govern the country, not drive GOP numbers into the ground.
No election for another year. Will this BS continue until then?
HyperIon
@eemom: good heavens, I’ve never seen a love-hate relationship like some of the folks here have for Sully.
It’s Cole who has the love-hate thing going. Half of his posts about Sully are: what a smart guy. The other half: what a jerk.
I think that’s just JC’s personality type: very strong for some things until he changes his mind and then very strong against some things… until he switches back.
I am not ambivalent; for me there is no love. I dislike and disrespect Sully. I never visit his website and loath his ideas. He’s an “Roe v Wade” hating, asshole Catholic who cheerleaded for Bush until it was no longer plausible. He’s also a self-absorbed gay man who was happy to advertise for unsafe sex….and unaware that others would find out about his willingness to bareback.
Shun him.
scarshapedstar
Oh my fucking god. The Hack is Back.
The notion that Sully wrote that with a straight face is completely incompatible with the notion that he’s “changed” or is “on our side” or does not “have his head squarely up his ass”.
Concern troll is concerned!
Church Lady
John, I would suggest you go back and read your archives for November, 2003. You may have changed sides, but you are just as partisan as ever.
Oh, and Al Gore had a field day criticizing George Bush in a number of speeches. The memory of some is highly selective. I have to give Gore credit though – he waited seven months after the invasion of Iraq to start.
Hart Williams
Hey Church Lady (if that IS your real name) you’ve got quite the selective memory yourself.
Gore criticized Bush after the obligatory couple of years had passed. Cheney started immediately, and THAT breaks all tradition and precedent.
To accuse Gore (who was a model of civility, even if it was to barbarous thugs) of behaving like Cheney (who led those selfsame barbarous thugs) is akin to accusing Mother Theresa of behaving like Lucretia Borgia.
Now: Stop trolling and hit the books. In this economy, uneducated and willfully ignorant aren’t going to get you very far.
Persons with glass jackboots oughtn’t goosestep.