Update: A reshuffle of the art to meet the problem Yutsano pointed out in the first comment below. I’ve got a slightly different order up at the copy of this post at Inverse Square, if anyone cares. (2) Changed the first pic again, for something that pleased my eye more.
Just to jump onto the false equivalence bandwagon, here’s another reason why, unlike John, I don’t love Andrew Sullivan’s work.
__
John’s comment, y’all remember, came in the context of his righteous snort of derision at the thought of one of Sully’s annual awards for bad behavior going to TBogg for a post in which the Bassett Man righteously excoriated the loathesome Bill Kristol. (Which, having campaigned for the honor, TBogg won, hurray!)
__
So why don’t I don’t love Sully?
__
Because for all that I respect his craft accomplishments — the Dish really is a hugely innovative take on journalism and opinion making in our brave new digital era — and acknowledge his non-craziness (most of the time) and his willingness to tackle crucial subjects like torture, he still seems to me to be a deeply sloppy thinker.
__
Case in point, this post, titled “The Borking of Kagan,” in which he shows off truly impressive intellectual incoherence, combined with a genuinely nasty attempt to carry the water of the worst on the right if the opportunity affords to bash a hippie or two. (Why target this post, now seven months gone? Because Sullivan himself touted it as one of his posts of the year, directing his readers to take another look just last Wednesday.)
__
Sullivan writes of his attempt to ascertain Elena Kagan’s sexual identity (or self-identification) that,
Will Saletan pens the most penetrating and persuasive critique of my question as to the emotional orientation of Elena Kagan. He puts it better than I, but his argument is essentially that the personal facts of a supreme court nominee can lead to unending and cruel and prejudiced exposure, in a manner that distorts the process and wounds the person. He reminds me of the religious inquisition of the agnostic Robert Bork. It is indeed vile. What was done to Clarence Thomas was, in my view, viler – although I remain convinced that Anita Hill was telling the truth.
There’s a lot more that one can dispute in Sullivan’s post, but focus here on just this one bit of wretched rhetorical posturing.
__
(note: Below the jump you will see a sixteenth century painting depicting an allegory of justice in the form of a well-armed naked woman. Hence, perhaps, NSFW)
Diagram out what Sullivan does: he acknowledges the criticism that exposing Kagan’s presumed same-sex preference would lead to the presumptively* inappropriate tactics that allegedly marred the nomination process through which Robert Bork was denied a Supreme Court slot.
__
Then, for no apparent reason he throws in Thomas, who did, sadly, navigate the Senate’s narrows to achieve Supreme status.
__
So look what he is trying to claim here: Bork suffered, in Sullivan’s view, because he was denied his goal for illegitimate reasons, as some evil folk slandered him as immoral for failing to acknowledge a living god. And then, Thomas suffered more in achieving his goal after perjuring himself –as Sullivan says he believes — about the sexual harassment of a subordinate.
__
I mean, what?
__
It seems that Sullivan still, after all these years, finds the unseemliness of asking someone about pubic hairs and Coke cans “viler” (an unlovely construction) than lying about criminal acts perpetrated on the folks you boss around.
__
__
What on earth prompted Sullivan to go there? It’s not part of his argument. It sure doesn’t line up with what he’s trying to claim from Kagan. (He wants to know about Kagan’s qualities, her self or identity. At the Thomas hearing, the question was one of incidents and acts: what had Thomas done to whom?) And, of course, it captures the same strange blindness to nonequivalence at the Dish that John pointed out over the Moore award.
__
I frankly don’t get it. A fish =/ a bicycle; sexual harassment =/ asking questions about credible charges that you’ve engaged in sexual harassment. I don’t think that’s a surprising, or even a minority view.
__
And if I were to generalize one level up, I’d say that this is a kind of rhetorical trick that needs stomping on every time we catch it.
__
Why do people attempt to draw false connections? It is to persuade their audiences of things that are not true. In current circumstances, too many of these falsehoods fall under the umbrella of asserting that the sins of the right are forgivable, because they are the same as, or responding to equivalent misdeeds on the left. That in turn gets to the real aim of such rhetorical shenanigans: to defang criticisms of the behavior of the right, so as to render the wholesale return to power of the worst elements in our body politic that much more likely.
—
I imagine Sullivan would argue that he’s been a loud and important voice objecting to exactly that. I think that’s true, actually — really there’s no doubt of it. But he’s sloppy, and has habits of mind, and perhaps he simply writes to fast to interrogate his own reflexes …and this kind of tripe is the result. Which is why, though I find Sullivan’s work interesting, I don’t love it.
__
*The question here is whether Bork was Borked via a relentless personal scapegoating, or by pressing the case as strongly as possible that Bork’s views were the wrong ones to guide a life-long appointee to the court of no appeal.
The answer here isn’t that hard. You look at the record of Bork’s hearings, from Ted Kennedy’s famous speech forward to Joe Biden’s handling of the Judiciary Committee proceedings, and you find that opposition from Democrats was framed in exactly the terms it should have been: that Bork’s views and approach to judging were unacceptable in a Supreme Court nominee.
You can dissent from those arguments, certainly, and Bork himself did with passion. But Bork failed because he and the Reagan administration failed to counter the argument that Bork would reverse a woman’s right to choose and come to other results many opposed by using a philosophy that would consistently skew the results of court decisions in ways that a majority of the senate opposed. How is that not part of a legitimate review process? If you can’t stand the heat…
It is true that Bork’s agnosticism came up in the hearings, as Saletan discusses in the piece Sullivan references. But one should never underestimate Saletan’s gift for omitting key details. He cites two southern senators who explained their votes against Bork on the basis of their distaste for his religious views, or lack thereof (a condition now remedied, presumably, by Bork’s conversion to Catholicism).
But he and Sullivan both, in tying Bork’s failure to survive senate confirmation to this admittedly ugly sideshow, ignore almost all of what went on in the hearings and the surrounding political debate to defeat Bork’s nomination.
Robert Bork is not a Supreme today (for which we all may be grateful, given what Mr. Bork has told us of his views since those days) because he failed to persuade 50 senators and the American people that his approach to judging matters of privacy, of the balance of state vs. individual power and many other such was acceptable in this democracy. Saletan’s and Sullivan’s invocation of Bork’s troubles with the religious litmus-testers is thus a red herring, a too-useful editing of history.
Images: Edgar Degas, The Interior, between 1868 and 1869
Lucas Cranach, Gerechtigkeit als nackte Frau mit Schwert und Waage. (Justice, as a naked woman with sword and scales), 1537.
Yutsano
Quick editorial note: I know they’re artworks, but any chance of reversing the order of the pictures so that the naked woman is after the jump? It has big NSFW potential there.
Tom Levenson
@Yutsano: Good point.
Will do.
Yutsano
@Tom Levenson: Of course I called in sick today (trying to keep a cold from going truly nasty) so I’m not worried about that for me so much. :)
On your main point: I believe on the whole Sully is an idiot who occasionally gets things right. His true shining moment was the start of the Green Revolution in Iran, otherwise he’s been nothing short of a nuisance that buzzes in your ear.
MattF
It’s good to see someone actually take the trouble to deconstruct the ‘forensic’ side of a Sullivan posting. Doesn’t happen often enough, IMO.
pandera
Well picked apart! And I second your view of Sullivan’s writing and thinking – sloppy and often incoherent. His attacks on atheism and defense of catholicism were the last straw for me. Anybody who could write that drivel has disqualified himself from being taken seriously.
Emma
The thing is, many of you assume that somehow Sullivan is on your side of the divide, and he is NOT. He’s a elitist conservative, and he will wrap his mind and soul into a pretzel rather than acknowledging the failures of conservatism. Period.
Punchy
Owwwwww…SNAP! I second the motion, natch.
And maybe no naked pics/art during working hours? Or a big NSFW warning at the top? Art or not, nude chix + office cubicle =! happy boss.
Brachiator
Yep. This pretty much nails it. The lamest excuse continually offered for the right’s misdeeds is that somebody on the left supposedly did it too, but was not reprimanded by the librul media for it.
I always thought that some of the rejection of Bork had to do with long memory of his role in firing Archibald Cox as Watergate Special prosecutor after attorneys-general Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus both refused to do so (and resigned). Aside from issues of judicial temperament, Bork was, and is, a weasel.
And Sullivan’s revisiting of his Kagan stuff is, well, vile.
va
Andrew Sullivan: in equal measures impassioned, articulate, and shallow.
arguingwithsignposts
Tom, I’ve been following the blogosphere since the early days, and I have to say that the Dish is innovative in neither its take on journalism nor its opinion-making, so, I’ll just disagree with you on that one small point.
Oh, I guess it is innovative in that window thingy he started. So he has that going for him.
WereBear
Bravo! If there’s anything I loathe, it’s the ridiculous “both sides do it” utter crap the right likes to throw in the air like chaff.
And I stand by that “Cloud of Poo” image.
Tom Levenson
@Punchy: Warning added.
I forget that the rules over at my own little blog are a little looser than is prudent in the big leagues…
ed
Nobody, short of perhaps Megan McArdle, can wank like Sully. Self absorbed and small-minded. And inexplicably employed.
Tom Levenson
@arguingwithsignposts: I guess I’ll (a) defer to you a bit, as I got into blogging later than many (2007/8, I think), but (b) I’d defend my perception of the Dish, and hence the Dish itself, as a sustained attempt to create a form of magazine publishing in blog form that is hard to do and that Sullivan, at least in form, does very well.
My biggest complaint is the one that he still hasn’t answered to for his worst misdeeds in his MSM era: that of posting/publishing known-or-easy-to-know crap under the guise of forwarding the debate.
But all that’s for another day — and hell, you may be right. He could be derivative as hell, and a beneficiary of his privileged status as a member of the media village. I think some better of him than that, but I can’t deny that alternative case is there to be made.
Mark S.
What was done to O.J. Simpson was, in my view, viler – although I remain convinced that he did it.
Seriously, WTF is Sully saying here? That it’s perfectly fine to have to have someone who sexually harasses his subordinates on the Supreme Court? I think Sully’s biggest problem is he mistakes incoherence for nuance.
Pococurante
Sully is about due for his every other month smear of Jeff Goldberg. Goldblog just posted another negative critique of Israel policies after all.
Josie
@Brachiator: I agree about Bork. His involvement with the “Saturday night massacre” is the exact reason I wrote my senators asking them to vote against him. It had nothing to do with religion or lack of it.
Ryan
@Yutsano:
Where do you work, Pope Pious’ Vatican?
Tom Levenson
@Ryan: Not a problem for me. Yutsano’s right, IMHO — in the world as it is rather than it ought to be FFN, even of fine art, is a little brash for many workplaces.
I would wish that it were not so, but as it is, I’m not bothered by the need to keep this blog readily accessible to folks whose offices are less private than mine.
long ago
a tax-cut is to a republican as hippy-punching is to sullivan.
they sometimes pretend that they have other aims and aspirations, but that is the objective that always trumps all others.
in sullivan’s mind, it’s always 1979, the liberals are always being mean to Maggie Thatcher, and he’s always about to show them.
Yutsano
@Tom Levenson: I guess I should point out I actually liked the painting of the nude woman and respected your choice there Tom. But that could create uncomfortable situations in various cubicles.
@Ryan: The IRS. And I don’t blog when I’m at work.
Mike in NC
John Ashcroft would have a stroke if he saw that painting.
Meg
A lot can be explained if you recognize that Sully hates women, even he might not recognize that himself.
Mike Kay (Christine O'Donnell's Co-Witch
Tom,
you are aware the usual lefty suspects Borked Kagan as badly, if not more, as the wingers.
daveNYC
Um, yeah, that’s just a steaming pile of stupid right there. Just what then was the vile thing done to now Justice Thomas? Asking him if he had done all the things that Sully thinks Anita Hill was telling the truth about?
Yutsano
@daveNYC: Not to mention it really should be more vile. At least that sounds more euphonious to me.
arguingwithsignposts
@Tom Levenson:
I’ll admit I may be a bit jaded as to the form. He always seemed like a freelancer who happened to have a lot of free time when blogger got started to me.
And the fact that he *still* doesn’t allow comments makes him even more of a weak-ass blogging punk. At least McArgle-Bargle will get down in the comments with the hoi-polloi. Tory Boy can’t be assed to have a comment section.
Of course, part of it may be that he knows he’d get his ass handed to him on a daily basis from both sides of his false equivalency schtick, so maybe it’s for the best.
beltane
Once you understand the depths of hostility Sullivan feels towards all women who are Not Margaret Thatcher, it all makes sense. At least it makes sense in that you will understand why Sullivan makes no sense. Someone could devote a whole blog called “Psychoanalyzing Andrew Sullivan”, as he does not even bother trying to overcome his, er, issues on certain topics.
SRW1
What on earth prompted Sullivan to go there?
I might get flamed for this, but my sense is that Sully just has a very hard time to accept that his gaydar wrt Kagan sexual orientation got questioned.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@daveNYC: That sounds an awful lot like “I believe Obama was born in Hawaii, but those other people raise some important questions.”
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
I don’t think he’s an idiot. His flaw is making gut, emotional decisions and then writing rhetorical flim-flam to try to make them look like carefully reasoned opinions. Sometimes his gut is right- torture is wrong, gays deserve full civil rights, Palin would be terrible for the US- but often it’s wrong. Even worse, when he is wrong he’ll often stick with his gut and try to obfuscate matters rather than admit the mistake and move on.
Annelid Gustator
Sullivan is completely innumerate. Therefore his bleats are less and less interesting the more they touch on any question requiring quantitation.
beltane
@arguingwithsignposts: It’s a real shame that Sullivan doesn’t have a comments section, as his comments section would likely be one of the more entertaining places on the internet.
Tom Levenson
@arguingwithsignposts: @beltane: Heh
kdaug
@Roger Moore: I think this is exactly right.
Where I do respect Sully is that, with time and a bit of smearing his nose in it, he does have the capacity to come around and admit his error.
Sort of like one Mr. Cole.
Comrade Mary
@Roger Moore: Yep, this is it.
Facebones
@Meg:
Yes. Isn’t amazing how he can find some fault with every single powerful woman of the last 20 years? Palin is a twit, but not even she deserves Sullivan rooting around in her vagina trying to determine Trig’s “real” mother. And he’s called Hillary Clinton a sociopath on at least one occasion.
Yutsano
@beltane: I’m thinking more along the lines of the term “epic”. The Atlantic blog traffic would increase fivefold if Sully allowed commenters like TNC does. Which of course Sully will never do because A) he would be expected to engage them and B) it would burst the little bubble of SullyWorld where he can be a good Catholic boy and still lust after Levi Johnston. No I still haven’t forgotten that.
MikeJ
@Tom Levenson:
If I were the boss I’d be more pissed about my underlings wasting time reading blogs than which particular pieces of art were displayed on those blogs.
Paris
I had no idea Bork was an agnostic. I have never heard it stated that he was denied being a supreme based on some religious test. Never. It obviously was not important and Saletan is the original Douche-hat.
greennotGreen
Three things:
First, I don’t know nor do I care about Elena Kagan’s sexuality. That being said, there are some of us straight women who do not have any romantic relationships with men for lo these many years because of a track record of Very Bad Decisions wrt men. And some of us single straight women wear our hair short. So, I don’t presume to make any assumptions about her preferences based on observable behavior.
Second, I have a question about Justice as a Naked Woman. The hilt of the sword and the beam of the scale perfectly line up through the woman’s girly parts. What is the meaning of that? This is a serious question. I don’t understand the artist’s intent.
Three, Sully is off my radar. I have better things to do with my time.
Paris
@beltane: Sully’s lack of comments is why I don’t read him. If you’re going to ‘blog’ about controversial issues and expected to be taken seriously then allow comments and don’t be such a pussy. Its like listening to a radio monologue.
MattR
@MikeJ: My first boss told me he expected me to be messing around about 15% of the day.
Yutsano
@greennotGreen:
The way I interpret that, for a painting of that era, is a relief of sexual repression. Essentially it’s the artist showing his sexual desire for his model in a not-so-subtle fashion but displayed in a way that would be considered acceptable for the age. I’m no art historian so I have no idea if the painting caused a scandal when it was released or was just acknowledged and folks moved on.
PurpleGirl
@MikeJ: Depending on the orientation and placement of your monitor at work, your boss may see the visuals before you know the boss is there. If you use the internet for research in your job you may be able to close the page or tab quickly, after all you have a reason to be on internet. Unless the boss is very web savvy him/her-self they may not recognize text as being something off-limits but art, pictures, visuals of some sort, they know that’s off limits (or should be). And it isn’t just the boss, it could be co-workers who see what’s on your screen and may object to the material. (Of course, they spend their time checking travel sites and shopping….)
Dennis SGMM
In reality it was Bork’s carefully concealed dyslexia that cost him a seat on the SCOTUS. That was what led him to answer a question regarding his religious inclinations with, “Senator, I stay awake many nights wondering if there is a dog.”
greennotGreen
@Yutsano:
At first I saw the beam and hilt as one line actually piercing the pubic area, so it just looked painful to me. But you may be right.
Mark S.
If Sully had comments, I’d feel really sorry for the intern who had to moderate them. The right hates Sully just as much as the left does, and the right’s idea of a winning argument is “You’re a faggy fag who likes to take it up the ass. FAGGOT!”
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Mark S.: If Kagan weren’t a woman, we probably wouldn’t have had to listen to Sully blather on about this at all.
ETA: I see that this rather obvious point has been made already.
stuckinred
I woke up from a nap for this?
Tom Levenson
@greennotGreen: I’m no expert on Cranach or the northern Renaissance (far from it), but there are a couple of things to help grasp the context of this painting. First, Cranach was an enthusiastic painter of nudes, and later in life (the period from which this picture comes) changed his style to be more expressive and overtly sensual.
Second, he was an important man, becoming mayor of Wittenberg in 1537, the same year this painting was made. I have no idea if his civic role and his execution of an allegory of Justice were connected, but certainly he could have seen himself as a member of that part of society whose duty it was to bear scales and sword.
Finally, he was committed to Luther’s cause in the Reformation. What effect that religious commitment would have on his sense of women as both symbols and sexual beings, I don’t know…but that’s part of where this comes form.
Paul in KY
@greennotGreen: Erm, after this controversy, I had to study the portion of the picture in question & I can state catagorically that the hilt of the sword does not match up ‘perfectly’ with the scales of justice, as the beam of the scales is at a slightly more severe angle than the hilt of the sword.
I think I like art history :-)
Roger Moore
@kdaug:
Sullivan may sometimes change his mind, but he can resist very vigorously. He still hasn’t admitted that he was wrong to support The Bell Curve.
lllphd
Could not agree more. I return to the Dish because of Sully’s writing skills, because the blog covers a lot of interesting non-political ground, and – mostly – because his inability to see his internal contradictions fascinates me almost as much as his latent potential for changing his mind and admitting it.
I attribute much of his internally contradictory bent to his Catholic background, and his persistence in that despite all the logical and emotional evidence against it (apologies to any offended Catholics out there). We see it too in his reverence for Oakeshott. It is the leaning toward authoritarianism that drives this kind of mind, the comfort with keeping all the rules in place in the face of their evil, with forcing ‘reality’ to conform to those rules and the propaganda in the face of that evil, and with maintaining a smug and self-important sense of that insider elitism in the face of one’s own smug and self-important conflicts with those elitist evils.
Fascinating guy, no question. But the posts that ultimately got to me were his giving air time to those whining creepo complaints that the rich did not get enough respect for their sacrifices in paying more taxes. This devolved to the all-time low of defending these people’s right to hoard their gazillions. Sully’s response to anyone reminding him of Jesus’s teaching to “give him your cloak also” was classic: [He did not say] have a government that confiscates your coat based on its beliefs and not yours.” Completely losing perspective that none of the wealthy are taxed down to their skins, not to mention that the government represents the beliefs of the nation of peoples, the majority, decidedly NOT the beliefs of the very very few wealthy. To his credit, when pressed to explain his position, he did say that he felt the rich should be minimally taxed to insure that all citizens had their needs met, but failed to see that the emphasis on the “minimal taxation” over the “citizens’ needs” is what skews policy to what we see now. Moreover, he did not notice how his earlier comments on the matter contradicted what he ultimately clarified; again, that tendency to miss his own contradictions while aggressively asserting “rational” arguments.
I first noticed Sully back in the early 90s when he wrote a piece for the NYTimes about the failing GOP, which led me to the grave misconception that he was liberal. Well, I say that’s a misconception; I actually believe that deep down he is in fact a liberal, but is expending an inordinate amount of psychic energy insisting that he’s a conservative because, well, that’s what he’s always been and was brought up to be, by the Church and Oakeshott. And Reagan, who evidently can do no wrong in his mind, along with Thatcher. (Interesting that both these idols suffered Alzheimer’s.) I find myself getting most irritated with him when he makes a claim about something obvious – like “the government must respond to the people” – and then goes about trying to assert that this is a conservative principle.
Some years later I read another piece by him in the NYTimes about his experiences with HIV and steroids. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely glad he’s kept himself this side of AIDS and that there was a way to do it, but his descriptions of the steroid experience were repulsive, going far beyond addiction to my eye, careering deep into an abyss of lust and unbridled power and self-stimulation. It reminded me of all my music biz pals who fell victim to the dastardly cocaine, all ego maintenance and no substance, no time for that nicety. Whenever I see Sully on Bill Maher, for example, I watch for that driven and hyped up, teeth-gritting push you see in coke freaks (not accusing him of that, just making the steroid comparison). Professionally, we refer to it as “pressured speech,” though Sully’s too articulate to really fall into a pathological category. Still, all those internal contradictions and the elitist self-importance, the rarity of self-reflection on these matters (though he has surprised on this count), they speak to a not-so-healthy hollow streak that borders on narcissism.
Apologies for this longwinded comment, but clearly I’ve spent a lot of time in thought on this man’s conflicted mind. Thanks again for highlighting this flawed but fascinating character.
Facebones
@Roger Moore: Didn’t he do some kind of mealy mouthed justification about trying to foster discussion about an important topic without agreeing with it?
Yeah, weak I know.
lllphd
@Facebones:
but oh, the man just loves him some margaret thatcher! i mean, he worships her, truly.
(of course, we could argue as to whether or not thatcher actually counts as a female.)
Omnes Omnibus
@greennotGreen:
It could be a proto-Republican statement that justice is for pussies.
Cheryl from Maryland
NSFW — Sign, no wonder the U.S. is culturally backward. Has nothing changed since Menken and Sinclair Lewis? This is a 500 year old painting. 500 years old.
People were much less hung up about nudity back in the day in Europe. Nudity in European painting was a sign of advanced thinking — remember the Renaissance? Nudity was a reference to humanism, to the Greeks and Romans, that one was no longer in the backwards, superstitious Middle Ages. That’s why Michaelangelo’s David is nude, not because the big Mic got his jollies from naked men.
Prudery appears later in the 16th Century thanks to the Council of Trent and Paul lll, which condemned nudity in art. Paul III had artists cover everything up (the painter mainly responsible for adding fig leaves and underwear to Michaelangelo’s and Raphael’s frescoes was known as Daniel of the Jockey Shorts “Il Braghettone”). Among his other lovely accomplishments, Paul III gave us the Inquisition (aka the “Spanish” Inquisition”).
Lucas Cranach the Elder was the court painter to Friedrich, Duke of Saxony. His paintings were in the palace, where justice was dispensed. He was also best buddies with Martin Luther; he painted Luther, Luther’s wife and family, as well as other important religious figures of the town, both Protestant and RC. He promoted equal opportunity in his art — both Adam and Eve appear frontally sans clothes in his paintings. Despite Luther’s initial proscription of graven images, Luther relented in his later years, and Cranach did several altarpieces for Protestant churches in Saxony.
So, want to strike a blow for learning and culture? Want to show you don’t support the Spanish Inquisition? Want John Ashcroft to blow a gasket? Look at nudes!
Also, the placement of the sword crossguard and the scale balance? If the painting hadn’t been cut down (because the scale is mostly missing, it was probably a full length rectangle), it would form a line across the painting which would follow the golden ration, the mathematical proportion popular in classical architecture and revived by the Renaissance. Get your minds out of the gutter.
Alwhite
This is exactly why I don’t read this over inflated gas bag.
Watching him ‘think’ is like watching a blind sow search for acorns. The rare occasion when the sow finds an acorn do not make up for having to watch it shovel through a ton of pig shit to find it.
I am a weakling, I count on stout men like John to watch the shit being flung & pointing out the rare acorn for me.
nota bene
@Brachiator (re:Watergate)
I was too young for the Bork hearings, but my impression was likewise that his connection to Watergate is what made him unacceptable, even before considering his judicial views. All the other stuff that happened afterwards was secondary. He was “controversial” the moment he was nominated.
P.S. Sullivan is like Bill Maher to me; more of a shotgun than a laser. Occasionally dead on target, frequently scattershot.
Tom Levenson
@Cheryl from Maryland:
heh. Thanks.
Xenocrates
@lllphd: I always wondered if she was in fact a member of the human race, but that’s just me.
JAHILL10
@Roger Moore: That’s what put me off Sullivan altogether. I was sort of willing to put up with his super Catholic blinders in exchange for coverage on the Iranian elections, but when he went full Herrenstein and Murray, I jumped off that train and haven’t been back except when I hear dribs and drabs on this blog.
Anyone who thinks it’s a-okay to institutionalize inequality based on race has no credibility when talking about gay rights or any other social issues. As others have pointed out, Sullivan is good at carving out special exceptions for his own personal quirks but when it comes to that whole empathy thing (speaking of the Supreme Court!) he gives Jesus-lovers a bad name.
Tom Levenson
@Cheryl from Maryland: I will say this: I’m a poster here at the invitation of John Cole.
John has said nothing about the art I post (which has included nudes in the past). I don’t know if he cares — but he’s offered the keys to me and the others who post here…and as far as I can tell, he has walked away, trusting us not to be stupid.
At my own blog, I’ve got Cranach on the front page — but mine is a minor blog, read by a relatively small group of folks, who know or learn fast that I throw up lots of art, some of it depicting naked bodies of both genders…and its mine. This is John’s, and it is a major blog with I don’t know how many daily views. So whatever anyone else thinks, I want to err on the side of not creating problems for either readers or the proprietor of the place in which I am a very happy guest.
Like several readers here, I think that the fact that a 500 year old painting of a naked woman could be a problem for some folks is sad. But it is so — and given that, I think it appropriate to bear that in mind.
And after all, folks — I put the damn thing below the fold. I didn’t get the vapors and pull it.
Also too: FWIW – if you dig a little deeper into the Degas, you’ll find it is a more incendiary choice by far.
lllphd
@Facebones:
um, not to necessarily defend sully on the palin/trigg front, but i’m with him on this point: it’s not about her family or her children or her vagina, it’s about telling the truth. there are so GD many gawdforsaken bizarre elements to her story – ‘scuse me, stories; she has changed them so many times – that she demands we call her on them. and it’s not as if we’re going digging for these crazy contradictions; she has trotted poor trigg out as a prop for her political purposes since the get-go, and she should be called out on her hypocrisies.
so, on this count, i back sully’s obsession with her insanity. but, truly, he does have a thing about non-thatcher women. which makes you kinda wonder why palin didn’t work for him, in a way…..
lllphd
@Yutsano:
yeah; no comments means he can maintain his little ivory tower, above it all and sighing that his minions can be so so slow and foolish.
HyperIon
I was hoping some people would make a New Years’ resolution to avoid posts on:
1. why Sully is a douchebag.
2. anything to do with sarah palin.
3. rightwinger pundits (besides Sully) who say stupid things.
Oh, well.
lllphd
@greennotGreen:
right there with you on point number one.
point number two is a good one.
point number three; i revisit because it’s the least offensive right-leaning blog i can tolerate. i have a deep fear of being sucked into an echo chamber, much as i loathe what i find when i seek that other side.
for balance, and fairness, you understand.
;-)
Tom Levenson
@HyperIon: Not a chance, dude. You’ve just described 3/4 of my output.
Omnes Omnibus
@HyperIon: I am sure some people have made such resolutions, just not here.
Brick Oven Bill
It is the ‘Golden Ratio’ Cheryl. This ratio is clearly visible as displayed above. The Golden Ratio is to remind us that Mathematics equals philosophy equals the quest for truth. Observations can only be proven true by measurement and Mathematics.
lllphd
@Roger Moore:
omigawd, i did not realize he supported the bell curve!! sheez; lemme at him, i’ll eat. his. lunch!
Brick Oven Bill
Eat mine IIIphd.
lllphd
@Brick Oven Bill:
?
slag
I only read Sullivan because all of my thoughts and opinions deeply depend on knowing who Trig’s real mother is. And if anyone can find out, he can.
Violet
@lllphd:
I’m with Sully on this one too. I don’t consider Trigg to be NOT her son, since she acts as his parent and biological parent or not, she’s his mother. But I feel the public should be told what the real story is. Her stories have changed so many times and as a public political figure who promotes her mothering skills as a reason why she should be trusted and/or elected, and who uses her kids as political props, it’s only logical to look into her patently unbelievable story of Trigg’s birth.
Her original story is an example of parenting decisions so bad they’re jaw dropping: 43 year old woman pregnant with special needs child (her fifth child) has her water break while in Texas giving a speech. Instead of going to the nearest hospital, she first finishes her speech then flies from Dallas to Seattle, has a layover (was seen in Executive Lounge), flies from Seattle to Anchorage, then drives a couple hours to Wasilla to give birth. The Wasilla hospital does not have a NICU and refers high risk deliveries to another hospital. Trigg as a Downs Syndrome baby is at high risk for any number of problems but also had a heart defect. Despite all this, she supposedly delivered him (prematurely) in this hospital and took him to work a day or two later.
So many bad decisions are wrapped up in this story: continuing her speech after her water breaks, flying to Alaska after her water breaks with her fifth child, flying to Alaska to deliver her baby who has a known health issue instead of heading to the nearest hospital, driving from Anchorage to Wasilla after arriving in Alaska, choosing to deliver in a hospital without a NICU and which doesn’t deliver high-risk babies, taking him to work only days after he was born thus exposing a heart-defect baby to who knows what. Her decisions are staggeringly awful and, if true, put Trigg at risk in all sorts of ways, not to mention the patent disregard for the airline regulations and other passengers’ schedules and issues. It’s so unbelievable it can hardly be true, yet again and again she claims it is and the media refuses to ask questions.
If she lied about all of it, then she’s created a mountain of a lie. What does that say about her character? If it’s true, then her decision-making ability is dangerously bad. If she’d put her own child at risk, what would she do with things less close to her like, oh, the country.
celticdragonchick
@Mark S.:
Pretty much. The poo flinging right wing monkeys would make a comments section at The Dish utterly unmanagable and unreadable. Every other comment would be a variation on :
Why bother? You can already get that at Redstate.
Brick Oven Bill
IIIphd; Pythagoras held that the numbers 3 and 5 had significant meanings. The number three ‘Triad’, the second male number, denotes a restoration of harmony. The number Five, ‘Pentad’ the masculine marriage number, denotes incorruptibility because any multiple of 5 ends in 5.
The ratio Three-Fifths is a now-controversial part of the United States Constitution, a document which I think we can agree on was a product of the Enlightenment, which was a revival of the thought patterns of the Greeks, the foremost philosopher of which was Pythagoras.
Now, observe the ratio of Figure 3 (?!), if you dare.
celticdragonchick
@Violet:
The Trigg stories never washed with me either. She is lieing or she has real severe problms with her judgment.
arguingwithsignposts
Oh, fsm, don’t get bob started on his numerology b.s.
celticdragonchick
@Brick Oven Bill:
There isn’t any controversy about it all, you asshat. We all know what it is and what it meant about the nature of society at the time…and that it codified the idea that some people are “more equal” than others based on skin color.
Nicole
Sullivan is the one guest of Maher’s who will, without fail, cause me to change the channel. Nothing more tedious than an unfunny guy trying to be funny.
kdaug
@Roger Moore: I think that it’s because he was personally responsible for that one.
He came around on the war, but he didn’t start the war.
He was horrified at the torture (offended his Catholic sensibilities – seems no one expects the Inquisition), but he wasn’t the one torturing.
But the Bell Curve? That was all him. His choice as editor.
Anne Laurie
@va: __
An excellent, if dispiriting, summary.
Thanks for doing this piece, Tom. I wish we had a shorthand for the kind of rhetorical “magician’s misdirection” of which Sullivan is a master. It’s not really “Look, a jackalope!” but it’s a variant.
As a playful version of the same… lawyerly-ness?… the people for whom Cranach painted his Justice would point out that, by their community standards, she’s not actually “naked”. She is wearing a fine tunic of lawn or tissue-gauze (notice the pale white lines along her arms & belly), but more importantly, she’s wearing a headdress that would have allowed her contemporaries to understand exactly where she stood on the social scale. That headdress, even more than the scrim over her naughty bits, is intended (and understood to be intended) as separating Art from mere pornography… much as Clarence Thomas’s defenders used the tragic history of racial-based group murder (aka lynching) as a transparent drapery?
asiangrrlMN
@Roger Moore: I’m with you. He can justify and twist and contort anything to make it fit his world-view for a very very very long time. Plus, he’s an utter ass on television. And, he only cares about things that affect him personally. Again, if he were not gay, he would be straight-up hardcore conservative.
I don’t need to watch a privileged (in many ways) man struggle so laboriously to Understand things and still come to the wrong conclusion 9 out of 10 times. And, he never applies what he learns about one issue (such as queer rights) to another (such as race). I don’t even want to talk about his attitude towards women.
I read him for about a month and then quit. I agree with Tom L. in that Sully is a sloppy thinker who just doesn’t make sense, no matter how nicely he turns a phrase.
@Yutsano: How you feeling? I hope you’ve got it nipped in the bud.
Brick Oven Bill
Celticdragonchick’s claim is that in America, people of different skin colors are treated differently. This is true.
The reactionary-conservative organization ‘Society of Blacks in Higher Education’ teaches us that, when indexed to intellect as measured by standardized testing, assuming intelligence is inherited, black Americans are granted Five (?!) hundred percent more compensation than their white counterparts.
Third (?!) article down on the left.
IIIphd?
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@daveNYC:
I knew a woman at the time who fancied herself a champion of women’s issues … who basically agreed that putting Hill before the committee was wrong even if she were telling the truth. It’s a viewpoint I have never understood, but there it is, and at the time, that view seemed to prevail. Thomas himself did the “How dare you!” routine and that was it. As a result I think we have a sociopathic lunatic on the court today.
As for Bork, I can’t remember the proceedings without remembering the feeling then that part of Bork’s problem was just Bork. An odd, unpleasant man with an unsettling approach to his work. In other words, the Senate just did not like him. I have nothing against odd, unpleasant people, I do a pretty good imitation of one myself, but I am not sitting for consideration to a Supreme Court seat. The world has an ample supply of us odd unpleasant people … but it also has an ample supply of more likeable sorts who can make fine judges.
So the whole flap over Bork seems overblown. He is only an important figure because he has been made symbolic of something else, namely conservative fauxrage.
Nicole
@Violet:
I confess to being fascinated by the Trig story when it popped up during the campaign, much to my shame. I sometimes wondered if she was hoping to lose the baby because then she’d stay true to her pro-life position but not actually have to raise a special-needs child.
And then I felt like a horrible person for even thinking someone would do that. But I can’t figure out why on earth someone would do so many things that seem to deliberately minimize their child’s chances of survival during or immediately after birth.
Well, good on you, Trig. You’re a tough kid.
catclub
@celticdragonchick: “Why bother? You can already get that at Redstate. ”
Also here. I just did.
arguingwithsignposts
Is it time for bob to get banned again? It’s been five months since he said three racist things in a row…
kdaug
@celticdragonchick: He’s repeatedly had polls asking his readers if they would like a comments section.
Resounding no.
Violet
@Nicole:
No need to feel shame. It’s a common enough phenomenon that it’s got a name: “Fundamentalist abortion.” Fundie’s won’t go get an abortion, but they’ll do whatever they can to “miscarry” (in quotes because throwing yourself down stairs, etc. isn’t exactly “miscarrying”) so they don’t have to have the baby.
Brick Oven Bill
No need to hail the guards, I’m leaving. Have a nice day.
Lesley
Isn’t this, um, a fundamental expectation of any humane being?
arguingwithsignposts
@kdaug wait, were supposed to accept an internet poll as representative of anything?
Anne Laurie
@Meg: __
I think that’s not quite accurate — Sullivan truly venerates Maggie Thatcher, for instance. My understanding is that Sullivan hates / fears “icky women bits”, and truly wishes that those of us who were not fortunate enough to be born with a penis would just have the grace and decency to disguise our tragic disfigurement while in the public sphere. Our inability to rise to this proper level of political refinement, as indicated by our embarrassing tendency to yap about mundane personal issues (should a woman be forced to carry an anacephalic fetus to term?) rather than the Higher Philosophical Issues (has not the highest representative of Andrew’s god mandated that abortion is wrong?), is not so much an aggravation as a continual sorrow to Andrew Sullivan.
In other words, Sullivan wouldn’t mind us women having vaginas, if only we could keep them at home and not talk about them in the agora.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@Brick Oven Bill:
You are turning into a caricature of your caricature of yourself, FauxBOB.
Can’t we get a better token racist?
lllphd
@Violet:
totally concur on all counts. the original crazy decision, of course, was to fly to TX in the final month in the first place. it all just smacks of deception that needs to be clarified. so yeah, i was with sully on this one all the way.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Tom Levenson: I know — it’s just so sad. I work in a museum; times are tough.
The Degas is great. Are you familiar with Walter Sickert’s “Camden Town Murder” Series? Although Sickert, as with most Brit narrative painters, isn’t as subtle as Degas.
Mark S.
@kdaug:
Huh, I didn’t know that. I guess I’ll have to rethink my Unified Sully Comment Section Theory (USCST, for matako).
I am 100% sure Sarah is Trigg’s mother, but who on earth would get on a what, 12 hour flight after their water broke? That’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard, which is why I think Sarah was making it up. In her weird mind, she probably thought it made her look good or something.
kdaug
@arguingwithsignposts: Perhaps “poll” was the wrong word – he’s invited Dish readers to email him on the issue, and then he reports back that nope, nobody wants ’em.
I suspect he doesn’t want them either, for reasons listed above.
Not impugning his methodology, but I do find his motives a bit suspect – though justifiably.
arguingwithsignposts
@kdaug:
Given that I trust Sully as far as I can throw him, I’m suspecting selection to back up his own choice.
ETA: maybe all his readers are high broderists and don’t want them anyway.
goatchowder
Back before the newspaper business collapsed, see, there were these things called “editors”. And they’d hand you back copy that went on too long or took detours in weird directions or made no fucking sense whatsoever, covered in red ink, strikeouts, and comments, and said, “here, rewrite this”.
I guess, not so much anymore, now that the writers consider themselves TV celebrities, and there’s no money to pay the editors anyway.
Dusty
Re Sully’s Trig obsession, my own personal guess is that Palin embellished a fairly dull story of going into labor right after getting home from a business trip with some nonsense about her water breaking in Texas and then getting on a flight to, I don’t know, make her seem tougher or more Alaskan or just more interesting or something. Which makes her a bit of a fabulist, but there are more substantive questions about Palin’s honesty than this tall tale about childbirth.
That said, even if this was some elaborate cover-up to try to protect Bristol, a cover-up rendered pointless by Bristol’s subsequent pregnancy, so what? Like Palin would be the first family member to take an unwanted child on as her own so a too-young mother can try to get on with her life. I don’t know how this would change anybody’s opinion on Palin, so why bother? This isn’t the magic bullet that’s going to bring her down and it’s just unseemly for Sully to keep on it. I remember the GOS shutting this talk down ASAP when it popped up over there after her nomination was announced.
Anne Laurie
@arguingwithsignposts: __
‘The Daily Dish’ was the first place where a lot of Serious People, plus many of us who aren’t techies or celebrity-watchers, first got an idea of how expansive and useful this BLOG idea could be as a new medium of communication. And that’s largely because there was something new popping up all the time — if you didn’t like the latest political rant, there would be a nifty video or a view from someone’s window in another couple hours.
The downside of this is that Sullivan’s always depended, to a greater or lesser degree, on uncredited assistants to keep his audience sated. Nobody could produce as much content 24/7/365 as Sullivan did to keep the Daily Dish “fresh”, but it was decided (by Sullivan? by his paymasters?) that Andrew should be the “face” of the whole blog — just as, for instance, Jay Leno or Jon Stewart depend on a staff of uncredited-in-public writers to script “their” monologues.
Which is, I believe, why “having a comments section” is impossible for The Daily Dish in its current format. Sullivan isn’t responsible for some part of what appears under his “name” (aegis); he almost certainly doesn’t read at least some of the posts before they appear, if he reads them at all. If he (his paymasters) were to permit comments on every Dish post, not only would the impossibility of keeping up with the volume increase, but he’d have to admit in public that he’s not responsible for writing every post that appears under his name.
Balloon Juice has only a fraction as many readers / commentors as the Daily Dish, and it’s sometimes clear that Cole doesn’t have the time to read the front-page stuff his minions are posting, much less respond to all the comments on that stuff. (As a mitigating factor, BJ is John’s hobby, not his job.) But he had the advantage (smarts) that he’s always let his underbloggers put our names on our stuff, in big letters right under the title, so that it’s clear immediately obvious that he’s not responsible for, shall we say, Anne Laurie’s crappy taste in music videos. And even so, there are a predictable number of people who still assume that Cole’s the guy mixing up Taylor Swift and Ke$ha, for instance.
Violet
@Dusty:
He’s pretty much quit posting on it. He had a post along those lines (stopping posting on it so much) quite a few months ago now.
They also shut down the John Edwards’ mistress stories until eventually they were proved to be true. Why is stopping discussion of this story a good thing? The JournoList folks talked about the Trigg story inconsistencies too, and then decided not to pursue them. Why?
Sure, it’s not WMDs in Iraq, or whatever, but we’d all be better off if the media dug into stories where the going narrative just doesn’t add up. This is one of those. If it involved someone who wasn’t a public figure, who hadn’t run for VP of the country and who wasn’t be touted as a leading Presidential candidate, then I wouldn’t care one way or the other. But Palin is that person and if she’s lying about this issue it’s yet another data point about her character. She can’t run on her excellent mothering skills if this is how she acts as a parent. The media should grow a pair and do their job, on this story and a whole bunch of other ones too.
Tom Levenson
@Cheryl from Maryland: Don’t know the Sickert stuff. Will check it out.
Pongo
@Emma: Agreed, except that he’s an elitist British conservative, which makes him roughly equivalent to a self-professed ‘moderate’ Dem these days. I think he’s actually a self-deluded liberal–at least on social issues and even on some fiscal issues. He’ll make a little conservative noise from time to time (like supporting the universally panned Debt Commission Report as a legitimate effort to make tough fiscal choices), but he clearly sees himself as a distinct creature from the whack-a-doo right and the cowardly establishment conservatives who allow them to operate unfettered. I agree with you that he is still defending his notion of himself as the embodiment of true conservatism, but I think it’s more an issue of denial than of true conviction.
My objection to much of his stuff is that it often feels emotional rather than analytic and a little of that goes a long way. That, and the fact he often quotes/links to Megan McArdle as if she has valuable input on the topics of the day. Aiding and abetting the spread of her error-ridden drivel should be punishable by law.
Svensker
@Violet:
I’ve heard that before on liberal blogs, but can’t find anything else about it. Do you have any links? Just curious.
Dusty
If a journalist wants to get down into it to investigate allegations of adultery (or mysterious births), that’s fine. They can publish the story when they get something. But regurgitating random speculation and possibly scurrilous gossip seems like a waste of time.
I haven’t read Sully regularly in a long time, so good if he’s cut it out with the Trig talk, but he kept posting on it long after it was clear that all he had was a sense that the story didn’t add up. I remember one commenter noting that she was probably just ginning up a dull story and then sticking to the implausibilities like grim death because that’s just what she does and he still kept on it. Palin’s lied about plenty of things, personal, professional, policy-related. Putting Trig’s birth out of bounds doesn’t exactly dry up the well.
arguingwithsignposts
@Anne Laurie:
D’oh! Almost forgot about that one. That makes him even more of a weasel fuckstick in my book. When I first found out that it wasn’t him posting all those “links of the day,” I about threw up in my hat. The man is a sham, as much of a grifter as Palin, only in more serious dress. He’s a broke clock. And so I don’t give him any clicks. And anyone who releases Connor Friedersdorf on the world deserves to flip burgers for a while at a Wendy’s. Fucker.
DougJ
@Anne Laurie:
Which one of us did that?
Anne Laurie
@lllphd: __
The thing to understand is that Sullivan considers Palin the Anti-Thatcher. Iron Maggie, despite a mooted talent for flirting chastely among fellow conservatives, famously “left her vagina outside the council door” (and I wish I could remember where I first read that line). Her willed refusal to allow petty, personal issues (starving children) to affect her judgement on Deeply Serious Policy (cutting family support rather than raising taxes) made her Sullivan’s personal Madonna.
Palin, on the other hand, is determined never to let anyone forget that she has a reproductively-vigorous vagina. She turns lesser Conservatives’ heads with her famous starbursts; she “reduces” important moral issues to “yer with us, or yer with the terrists”; she is nakedly (oh, ick!) avid after shopping sprees, celebrity gift bags, shoving her unqualified spawn into high-visibility media appearances, basking in the applause of unlettered badly-dressed peasants at backwoods hate-a-thons.
It’s pretty obvious that the Cross-Continental Trig Saga is part Palin’s lifelong habit of embroidering her exploits, and part a half-hearted attempt at Talibangelical “assisted stillbirth”. It’s also obvious that the intersection of Palin’s low-rent political standards and her, um, loud public discussion of anatomical particulars, were divinely calculated to drive Andrew Sullivan right over the edge of the rhetorical cliff along which he is always dancing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: I just want to say that this was a brilliantly well written rant/explication. Well done, my good lady, well done indeed.
Anne Laurie
@DougJ: Me. I mentioned I’d been confusing pictures of the two artists in question, and the second or third commentor told “John” he’d misspelled Ke$ha, before backtracking when he realized Cole wouldn’t front-page DJ Earworm. :)
It’s the squinty-little-pig-eyes over-treated-fake-blond “look” that confused me.
les
Sullivan is privileged, narrow minded and intensely self centered, if not plain selfish. The whole Catholic thing defines him for me–everyone should be obliged to follow the rule of the Roman Catholic Church, except those that might prevent him (and no one else) from doing/being what he wants/is. His apparent goal in life is to corner the market on cognitive dissonance; the only reason t read him is to see what maintaining that store does to higher mental functioning.
Tim
I am fascinated by the fact that Justice shaves her Venus Mound.
asiangrrlMN
@les: This is a great distillation of Sully. Thumbs up!
JohnR
Hey, please don’t boot BoB (it’s perfectly OK if he tosses his hair girlishly and leaves in a snit because he’s unappreciated and unloved, though). After all, without BoB, who’s going to offer gems like this:
?
As for Mr. Sullivan; I find him marginally more appealing to read than Our Megan, but not by much. Of course she has a comments section and he doesn’t, but in the end she doesn’t learn anything from the comments, so who cares? Personally, I stopped reading him a while ago, and find, somewhat to my lack of surprise, that I’m not missing anything.
As for the persistent mischaracterization of the artwork in question; despite the title, you’ll note that Justice is not, in fact, naked. She’s dressed in a completely sheer, almost-transparent negligee’-sort-of-doodad, but that’s not “naked” in my book.
Keep up the good work Tom! More nudes is good news
kc
Whenever someone disturbs my beautiful mind with a mention of Andrew Sullivan, my first thought is of his awful “fifth column” and drumbeating for the Iraq invasion.
So it’s good to be reminded from time to time that there are plenty of other reasons to think he’s a total jerk.
Ruckus
@celticdragonchick:
She is lying or she has real severe problems with her judgment.
I’m going with option C, both of the above.
Rihilism
Thanks to those who mentioned “Bell Curve”, “fifth column”, hatred of women not Thatcher, application of fairness to only those groups to which he belongs, etc.
I’ve been “exposed” to Sullivan for the past twenty years in news and opinion. I don’t consider him particularly intellegent or well writtten or funny (his “attempts” at humor border on saliva-slaked school yard efforts at peer approval and/or failed contrarian tripe).
After years of intellectual incoherence, devotion to discredited eugenic “theories”, double standards, sloppiness, war-mongering, mysogyny, poor bashing, false equivalencies, etc., the occassional “toture is bad, mmkay” (wow, how brave and honorable he is to take a stand against torture!) or “don’t kill teh gays” (does anyone doubt that if he wasn’t gay, he would care less about gay rights) is simply not enough. Since I don’t “read” Sullivan, I’ve nothing to say about his supposed innovative web publishing methodologies (is this why people visit his site, to stand in awe of web publishing prowess?).
As a good friend of mine would say, “Disqualified! And let us never talk of it again”….
kay
@Violet:
I hate the Trig stories, so I’ll tell you what the difference is (to me) between the Trig stories and the Edwards/affair stories.
I think adults who “open the door” to an inquiry into their personal lives are fair game. Conservatives do that when they pontificate to the rest of us, and run on sanctimony and lies. Edwards opened the door when he ran on his marriage (I think he did, but I was never a fan of John Edwards: he’s a phony).
Trig didn’t do anything at all. His ambitious loathsome mother dragged him into the spotlight for political and financial gain.
I just think it’s ordinary, garden-variety decent behavior to protect that little boy from some horrible, intrusive inquiry. We have to do that.
Sullivan has some “transparency” interest, I guess, but Trig’s interest trumps.
kay
@Violet:
I’m pretty sure she’s lying about some or all of the story, and I can’t stand her, so I’m sympathetic to Sullivan’s “go for the jugular” here, but I still think you have to (ultimately) leave it alone, because there’s too much collateral damage. Like, privacy, and not opening up parentage questions to public inquiry (I don’t know that we want to start going there, Jesus, can ‘o worms) and the child’s interests, and on and on.
It has to remain an unsolved mystery :)
She lies all the time. She’ll get nailed on something huge eventually.