Like DougJ, I, too, fell off the wagon and I’ve been reading Sullivan more since he came back from his eleventy-third vacation this year to come back and cheer austerity, and not to step on DougJ’s post, but when I read that the following comment:
I am more surprised at the cheering of someone dying because he couldn’t afford intensive care. Yes, the GOP is now not only cheering executions; they are cheering people dying because thay cannot afford any health insurance. Cheering death by poverty. “Yeah!” came the cry at the thought of a twentysomething dying because he didn’t have insurance. I didn’t think I could be more shocked by the instincts of those in the Republican base, but I just was.
The first thing I thought was when reading that is if Margaret Cho or Susan Sarandon or Alan Grayson or Paul Krugman or some random DKOS diarist or some other dirty fucking hippy who isn’t deemed serious enough to break bread and share brie with Friedman and Brooks at the Aspen Institute had said that, he’d be screeching about a Moore award.
Remember what he thought was beyond the pale just a few months ago:
“This [Ryan] plan would literally be a death trap for seniors,” – incoming DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Now Sullivan is shocked (SHOCKED!) that the GOP is actually cheering death by poverty. Hoocoodanode?
The next time he gets an itchy trigger finger and stumbles to the fainting couch, maybe he should give himself the smelling salts before he posts? And maybe he should realize all the “serious” proposals he is giving the kiss on the lips with a little tongue, like the Ryan plan, do precisely what he now has the vapors about.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Oh chit, here it comes…lol!
ETA/OT:
To David Weprin in NY-9:
Lose. The. Fucking. Rug.
You look like a used car salesman. A sleazy one.
Big Baby DougJ
It’s a death trap it’s a suicide rap.
Big Baby DougJ
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I know this is wrong, but I am kind of hoping Welprin is beaten badly because I think he’s a hack.
trollhattan
And maybe winged monkeys will fly out of my butt. (Hey, somebody had to.)
Sully’s whole dealio has been distilled to: The principles are sound, we just don’t have the right sort of people to apply them.
It’s Oakeshottian!
Fulcanelli
@Big Baby DougJ: Better get out while you’re young…
Cliff
Like DougJ, I, too, fell off the wagon and I’ve been reading Sullivan
Oh my god you fucking assholes. What the hell did you expect?
I had a whole screed written about Sully but then I realized that my first line says it all.
Darnell From LA
OK, that does it! I knew the GOP was nuts, but c’mon! Jesus Christ on Crutches! WTF?
The GOP is now cheering the execution of hundreds of human beings, charging the FED Chairman with treason, letting young uninsured sick people die in the streets, and ending Social Security. I mean….wow. If America’s citizens elect any of these clowns over Obama then frankly, America does not deserve to survive as a country. Period.
suzanne
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
In my dreams, once a dude loses about 20% of his hair, it is societally expected to shave off all of the rest of it. No more rugs, combovers, mullet-y-type things. Just gone.
Lit3Bolt
Dr. Frankenstein is horrified by his creation. News at 11.
Sullivan’s more shocked at the mask falling off the pseudo-intellectual facade for conservatism that he helped perpetuate in the 90s and most of the 2000s. When the peasantry and brown people merely vanished like dust under the rug, everything is hunky dory. It’s only when confronted with the logical conclusion of his conservative ethos (pictures of torture, stories of people actually dying from lack of healthcare) that he recoils. For Sullivan and his ilk, conservative philosophy was a means to defend their own self-righteous, self-absorbed lives.
Sadly for Sullivan, it seems years of Catholicism have given him something resembling a guilty Sunday school-boy conscience. He knows what he’s done is wrong, but his mea culpas have been few and far between, and he’s merely pivoted his self-righteousness onto his conservative kin now as well while maintaining his contempt for liberals. The man’s writing is great, but he embodies the biggest white whine of all: “I didn’t know anybody could get HURT from the horrible policies I shrilly advocated!” His moral outrage aims everywhere but at himself.
wasabi gasp
This is something that is, of course, appalled by all Conservatives. Sullivan’s shock is shared by many.
Fulcanelli
Sully: Shrill conservative is shrill. And now he’s shocked, shocked I say!
He’s stubborn and dense, Mr. Cole. He’s a conservative… It’s in the breed. Kinda like the way Chows have purple tongues.
Meh.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Big Baby DougJ: I guess one vote in a district that will soon be zeroed out (I gather) isn’t huge in the scheme of things, but this will mean two weeks of “A bellwether in a Democratic stronghold” chin stroking from Chuck Todd, Halperin et al.
Unless a butterfly in the shape of a missing blonde or a shark attack flits by
Morzer
@trollhattan:
Oakeshottian.. is that the new Bullshittian?
The Dangerman
@suzanne:
I have an opposite problem; thick head of hair (told I’ll never be bald), grows far too fast (and far, FAR too gray), and it sucks to have to shave it as often as I do (I swim; after the fresh shave, it feels great)…
…but, rugs are ridiculous.
trollhattan
@Morzer:
Yes! Only the bull:shit ratio has been reduced on the bull side.
Big Baby DougJ
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I live in NY and I hate people like Weprin. We’re moving towards one-party rule here, as the Rockefeller Republicans die off. He’s the future, our future. I don’t like it and I’d like the state party to go a different direction if possible.
barath
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
How about a Greeced Eurozone?
Paddy
The video in question- Eat cake and die. I didn’t see it happen, but I’m not surprised.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@Darnell From LA:
On the other hand, plenty of so-called liberals cheer the extrajudicial execution of hundreds or thousands of human beings by the roving global death squad known as JSOC, not letting the Bush tax-cut plan expire, and letting uninsured sick people die in a non-universal style health insurance plan that also doesn’t take effect for four years. It’s quite a quandary, isn’t it?
.
.
jwb
@Fulcanelli: It wouldn’t be so bad if he actually ever learned from his mistakes. But he goes through the same cycle time after fucking time.
dead existentialist
@Paddy: Freedom just got risqueier . . . er . . . !
jwb
@Uncle Clarence Thomas: The last time you pulled out this trick, it worked much better.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Big Baby DougJ:
I agree but it’s hard to want a republican to win. Of course, that’s their fault!
@suzanne:
Fudge that! I’m guilty of a ‘comb back’ but only because I’ve had a pony tail since my teen years and I don’t have a part line in my hair. My top started thinning by the time I was 25 and while it’s not bald it is damned sparse. I’m one of those guys who just don’t care about hair unless it’s on a woman. :)
A rug is not something a guy should wear with pride. The obvious combover/comb back (without a pony tail!) or a rug only makes the guy look like they are avoiding reality. That reality?
Getting old sucks. :)
Martin
@suzanne: You’ll just cause all the guys you’re trying to fix to grow all of their other hair out, which frankly, will probably be vastly worse.
Fulcanelli
@jwb: First as tragedy, then as farce, as they say.
Bruce S
I quit reading Sullivan because I hate clicking on the Daily Beast. I was at the Atlantic site on respectable business and would peek at Sully, but Brown’s Beast is a bridge too far.
dead existentialist
Also, too: Leave it to a fuckwit like Sully to not understand the difference ‘twixt “yeah” (which equals “yes’) and “yea” (which is the sound of the cheer). In this our time of national stupidity, most people typing on the internetz don’t make this distinction. Yeah, you have been forewarned. (Or 4warnd, for those of you who sneer at stoopid linguistic conventions.)
See, e.g., George Orwell on the corruption of language as it relates to the corruption of thought, especially in the political realm.
Yutsano
@jwb: I wouldn’t bother. Some rich white privilege can never be cut through. Best to just mock and deride.
shirt
I’m so sorry but why the Ghouls are against healtcare? silly peoply; they hope to reave their estates upon their passing.
They would eat the brains out of their own children’s skull if it gave them profit.
The mofocos are against abortion or birth control for the same reason: need low priced factory (or canon) foder.
PeakVT
Uh-oh. Is this blog about to experience a relapse of Sully meta?
Jenny
Sigh. Nobody cares about Sully.
Suffern ACE
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I don’t know how he can come off as sleazy and look a little like Howard Sprague at the same time, but he does.
Martin
@Bruce S: Same here. The Atlantic had Fallows and Coates, and I could skim through the shallowness of Sully, and enjoy the comedy stylings of McArdle. But The Beast is just pure media skank. No redeeming value at all.
jwb
@Jenny: Inexplicably some people apparently do. He seems to affect some people somewhat like a drug.
Comrade Kevin
I deleted Sullivan from my Google Reader, and now I never even think about him, at all, unless someone somewhere like, well, this place, mentions him.
Amir Khalid
@Martin:
I was hoping Michael Tomasky would help bring some class to the place when he moved over from the Guardian, but so far that hasn’t really happened. And whatever Tina Brown is trying to do with the Beast’s print sidekick, Newsweek, I’m just not feeling it. I don’t like the cover picture stunts like the Photoshopped Diana-at-fifty, which demean a news publication, and the lifestylish emphasis feels like it’s in the wrong magazine. I think Brown is trying to replicate her previous magazine-editor triumphs, but not at the kind of place where her style makes sense.
arguingwithsignposts
Fuck Sully. He’s employed by the shitty tina brown, who’s a british ariana huffington – a shill, a screeching whore for clicks. And less I be accused of sexism, she’s the equivalent of Nick Denton without the net-savviness.
It is easier to drag down than to pull up. Remember that. He was peddling his elistist Tory bullshit in 2009, and he hasn’t changed.
Go ahead and look at his farmed-out window posts and all the intern-posted shit that he claims as his own. I will continue to hate him with the heat of 1,000 suns until he recants it all. Every single fucking bit of it.
RareSanity
Everyone mut see what Sully is doing.
He’s trying to straddle the fence of GOP Crazy/GOP Brilliant.
GOP stock has been trading in a narrow range since the GWB, Hurricane Katrina crash. When it breaks out of the trend, he wants to make sure he has enough material on either side to say he saw the crash/skyrocketing coming all along.
It’s pretty transparent once you realize that there has been no substance to any of his writing in a very, very long time.
Jenny
@Big Baby DougJ: For someone who doesn’t know, what’s wrong with Welprin?
From what I’ve read, he supports the Park51 mosque and voted for gay marriage, both of which his opponent opposes (even liberal icon Anthony Weiner opposed the mosque).
Amanda in the South Bay
Jebus Fucking Christ, he now claims to be concerned about health insurance…and has he ever atoned for Betsy motherfucking McCaughey?
James E. Powell
It isn’t Sullivan, really. It’s the knowledge that there are so many others like him. Upper and upper-middle class, well-educated, but amazingly ignorant of reality. Solid Republican voters. The kind who mindlessly repeats every word of ruling class propaganda because that’s what members of their class do.
RareSanity
@Big Baby DougJ:
I just want to second the request made in a previous thread…
Bring back DougJarvis Green-Ellis!
Turgidson
Haha. As long as no one tells her she’s a comedian, she’ll remain funny.
Nice rant, Cole. Sullivan the innumerate clown’s coverage of the GOP clown car bonanza is good, but you’re utterly right that he’s too much of a moron to see the obvious connection between his “austerity roooolz!!!!!” abstractions and “yay to poor and uninsured people dying miserable deaths!” GOP dogma. And that explains why he’s categorized the way he is. Prego.
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: I would probably hate him like that as well if I ever much thought about him. But like Bobo he’s made himself culturally irrelevant, and I think about him only when Doug, John et al start yammering on about him. I’m not about to get worked up however. He’s really not worth it.
arguingwithsignposts
@jwb: I’d agree with you if he wasn’t culturally-relevant. Just like tina brown – he’s a member in good standing of the village. he shows up on Bill Maher’s show, he’s a former editor of Even The New Republic, and he has several books. When he’s greeting wal-mart shoppers, I’ll stop taking him seriously.
James E. Powell
@arguingwithsignposts:
Do any people who don’t already agree with Sullivan take anything he says seriously? Does what he says change what other people do? The fact that he is a regular guest, a representative of the Beltway Insiders, doesn’t mean anyone cares who he is or what he says.
Among the great mass of American voters who will determine the outcome of the next presidential election, what we call the low information voters, I would be surprised if more than 5% know who he is.
Mike in NC
Daily Beast is a piece of shit. Period.
arguingwithsignposts
@James E. Powell:
You assume that that 5% is the audience he’s aiming at. I’d wager there’s a larger percentage of people in the beltway who listen to what he says. Also, there are a ton of people on the left who somehow think that he’ll change his stripes, because they send him letters all the fucking time. And we witness their defenses of his shit on this blog.
He wouldn’t get hired by Tina Brown if he couldn’t draw an audience. ’nuff said.
Comrade Kevin
@arguingwithsignposts: I’m just surprised he didn’t end up at Politico.
Villago Delenda Est
The dumbfuck is just now figuring out that the GOP base has basically the same attitude as the base of a certain political party that thrived in early 20th Century Central Europe, the people who didn’t know why it was “snowing” in the middle of July? Who thought that their Jewish neighbors were being “resettled” somewhere to the East?
He’s just figuring this out?
I’m shocked, frankly. I didn’t think he’d realize this until he was behind barbed wire with a pink triangle sewn to his shirt.
TenguPhule
When Europe says Americans are revolting, we can only hope.
srv
Someone needs to start a facebook for:
WillAndrewSullivanEverGetAClue?
And see how many friends it gets
James E. Powell
@arguingwithsignposts:
Having an audience, having people read your stuff, is not the same as moving people to act. Believe me, I’m not defending the pompous asshole. I cannot stand him or people who think he is edgy and smart. He is just an asshole who gets tote-baggers because he is British and gay, so different from every other right-wing blowhard, so much more palatable.
But my point is that he has little influence. His audience already agrees with him. That’s why they read is weak shit.
seabe
Michelle Goldberg is worth reading at the Beast *shrug*
And I still read Sullivan because he links to a lot of interesting things. I don’t really care what he has to say on the commentary aspect.
Scuffletuffle
@suzanne: This.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E. Powell: Yes, his primary audience already agrees with him, but what he provides is reinforcement of those ideas. He is a part of the echo chamber.
RandyH
Here’s the CLIP. Listen to the audience.
Rihilism
Sling. SLING!…
eemom
If someone you love has a Sully problem, you can see what it’s doing to their posts — but can you see what it’s doing to your comments?
DON’T be an enabler. Contact SUL-ANON today.
RandyH
@eemom:
Yes. I stopped reading his blog like 6 months or so ago and have never gone back. But it is interesting to hear the tales second-hand about how he’s growing up to be a big-boy by exposing himself to the real aims of his cherished “conservatives.” It’s also fun to see him learn that the Legend Of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were just that – Legend, Myth – who didn’t actually believe in “Freedom,” “Liberty,” or any of that crap. They only cared about making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
I wonder if he will revise his books or issue corrections. Maybe apologies, even?
Kola Noscopy
Why?
No, really. WHY do you guys keep reading Sullivan and linking to him?
NonyNony
No they don’t.
Read what you blockquoted carefully:
Sully isn’t objecting to the policies – he’s objecting to the bloodlust. He isn’t upset because preferred Republican policies would lead to people dying – he’s upset because the Republican base is cheering for people to die. If they were somber and serious but shrugging their shoulders and saying “well something bad things happen but we just have to solider on” or some other ridiculous nonsense he’d nod his head sagely and cheerlead the exact same nonsense that will lead to people dying without healthcare – or being executed.
Sully isn’t upset by the policies – he’s upset by the tone. It’s the exact same fucking reason he came up with the whole “Moore Award” idea in the first place. He’s not a deep enough thinker to actually understand the repercussions of the policies out there but the tone of how they’re presented disturbs him and that’s what matters.
ETA – this is why I gave up on Sullivan years ago. His entire schtick is a riff on the David Broder school of punditry, where tone and image is all important and substance is thought of little if at all. Sully is the kind of guy who will blindly accept a racist argument that is presented in a rational and dry academic manner.
Gex
@Villago Delenda Est: Sometimes I wish we could upvote a comment. This is one of those times.
jimmiraybob
This is the same base that cheered JFK’s assassination and the murder of college students at Kent State. Only surprise is that they have become mainstream enough to cheer in public.
This is the same base that cheered construction workers beating the shit out of the hippies.
This is the same base that loves them some Glenn Beck who hates the 911 survivor families.
This is the base that really loves them some Old Testament justice with heaps-o-smiting and slaughter and rejoice at and long for seeing the sinners (everyone not them) burn in sulfurous flames for eternity.
Thanks CNN. Thanks Fox. For turning America upside down and putting the haters in charge of the debate. What next, the CNN/Aryan Nations debate?
Captain Goto
: This. Abso-fucking-lutely.
jpmeyer
He actually did give Grayson a Moore Award for saying that!
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2009/09/moo.html
Marc
Here is what Sullivan has to say on the hang-em high moment last night:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/09/indecent.html
It doesn’t fit with the BS stereotypes popular here, I guess. I find his writing on this extremely compelling.
And the blind dismissal of something like that – including by front-page writers here – is childish and unworthy of people whom I otherwise respect.
I won’t write more on this here, but the aggressive projection onto Sullivan of things that the man obviously doesn’t believe, the dismissal of actual insights because of personal bias…I expected better of people here. I really did.
Sullivan really screws up some of the time, and you can’t follow him blind. But when he’s right (and I think that he is very correct in that link), he’s very good. (See also: torture.)
Lit3Bolt
@Marc:
I call bullshit. All Sullivan cares about is the indecency and the fish rotting smell. But he still supports and advocates the policies of the party that cheers death, hence his recent man-love for Paul Ryan’s 10 year austerity plan.
As for torture, Sullivan would love for you to believe he’s principled but for that to truly happen, he would have to actually condemn Obama for continuing the Bush policies. If that’s happened, it’s been very meek and mild.
Sullivan is a good writer, and he can be good on issues he cares deeply about. However, he farms content from his stable of interns while claiming it for his own, he’s still conservative and Catholic despite being confronted directly with their evil, and he talks in an effete intellectual babelspeak to philosophically defend a bankrupt religion and ideology, and both his religion and his ideology hates him and his very existence. So some of us read him but can still loathe his shortcomings and blindspots, of which he has many.
HyperIon
People who excuse Sully because he writes well are no different from folks who swoon over Perry because of his macho affect.
What truly matters: form or content?
Does that question really need to be asked?
Sadly, yes.
Tehanu
@jimmiraybob:
You reminded me of something I’d forgotten for almost 50 years. I was in high school when JFK was shot. Late the same afternoon I was driving home and happened to see the local head of Young Americans for Freedom [sic!] walking down the street with a transistor radio pressed to his ear and a big grin on his face. I thought that was the worst thing I’d ever seen … little realizing that he was just the vanguard of today’s assholes.
SoINeedAName48
Oh, just give it a rest (and give the rest of us a break).
Go obsess on someone – or something – else already.
wetcasements
Sullivan is just as much of a lightweight as McCardle. Hell, at least she’s semi-transparent in her Randian jihad.
Not sure why you can’t quit him, Mr. Cole.