And the descent into self parody continues for Sullivan, who quotes some random Paul supporter and then finds a black guy who loves him some Ron Paul, so clearly he is not a bigot. Back here on planet Earth, Stormfront founder Don Black calls Paul “one of us.”
At this point, I’m just looking forward to Sullivan tying in the Bell Curve and support for Ron Paul into one comprehensive post.
Omnes Omnibus
The founder of Stormfront is Black?
amk
I blame this on sully being a limey.
norbizness
Thank goodness this descent into self-parody is being meticulously chronicled, or otherwise I wouldn’t know it was happening and be immeasurably poorer for the non-experience.
JGabriel
John Cole:
It’s because Hitchens taught Sully how to be a contrarian over a bottle of whiskey while bullets flew past them in Chechnya.
.
freelancer
Samantha Dunn is a moron. “We need a change”, and that change is a total dismantling of any effort on the part of the federal government to fund or support local (read that as ANY) schools and teachers.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
I have a libertarian friend (public school teacher who rails against “big government” and regularly forwards pieces from Reason, Cato and FreedomWorks) who is equal parts outraged and distraught that Gary Johnson got no play this year.
Mike Goetz
Flag thrown: piling on.
It’s just not fair at this point.
“At this point, I’m just looking forward to Sullivan tying in the Bell Curve and support for Ron Paul into one comprehensive post.” Savage.
maven
So JC.
What’s for din din Saturday nite?…………..
MikeJ
@freelancer:
They’re allowed to vote too. Cue AES and “yes, but we need a majority.”
Mike Goetz
@freelancer:
So she’s going to go from voting for Obama to voting for everything that is inimical to what Obama is, does and stands for. Why? “We need a change.” Great, as long as you’ve thought it through, Samantha, knock yourself out.
arguingwithsignposts
head/desk
aimai
@freelancer:
Paul is 80 years old and has been consistently wrong, in politics and in his newsletter, for at least thirty years. By definition he is not “telling us something new.”
aimai
boss bitch
Me thinks Samantha Dunn is one of those voters who goes for the latest “IT” candidate.
different-church-lady
@amk:
People keep breaking it, I keep fixing it…
Hill Dweller
We have become the most ignorant country in recorded history.
Herb
No more Meep meep?
Mike Goetz
Anybody else feeling Iowa going Paul-Santorum-Romney and Mark Halperin looking like he’s going to puke up his Cookie Crisp on Wednesday morning? That’s what I think is going to happen.
Suffern ACE
@aimai: Not everyone has Tweety’s crabby old uncle who is a salt of the earth voter.
PK
Yes we need a change ie. from bad to worse, or from the frying pan into the fire, or from terminal illness to death. As long as it’s change all is good.
different-church-lady
@freelancer:
Yes, but to be fair, the crazy woman screaming on my street corner is also telling us things we haven’t heard before.
Mike in NC
@freelancer:
I loved the quote I read about Willard from another low information voter (an independent in her 50s) in Iowa: “They say he’s a good businessman”.
They say. Case closed!
losgatosca
Does BJ get more page views when Sullivan is mentioned? If it helps pay the bills fine, otherwise I’m not getting the point anymore. He’s a self-obsessed ass. Everything else is just proof of same. I would however break a 8 year ban on going to his blog IF the wished for Bell Curve and Paul post also included some Ryan on Paul homoeroticism including substances that would be uncontrolled under Paul and uncovered by Ryan’s vouchers. But that would be a one time exception.
ChrisNYC
I’m listening to an RP interview on local Iowa radio. The guy plays that video that Sullivan links to. Then he says to RP, “That seemed to make you emotional.” In response, RP talks about how hard things are for him, being accused of being a racist and all. It’s all so so sad.
PS — Never once did Barack Obama bitch and moan about how hard it was that people were mean to him and say oh poor me, my own loss of face makes me cry. Or Barney Frank by the way. Or Pelosi.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Hill Dweller: But we’re also the most documented gone to shit country in the history of the world. Hopefully they will truly study us in the next 500 years.
Jay
John, hang on. I love your site & your writing, but it was a known fact back in at least 2007 that Paul took money from Don Black. Can you honestly say you didn’t praise Paul at least a bit on this site when he was swinging away at the GOP’s war hawks in recent years? It’s true that many-including myself, you and every other frontpager here-can now see that Paul’s small-mindedness runs far deeper than a story written three years ago by James “I Oppose Racism, Unless It Comes From The Aging Trophy Husband For Whom I Once Worked As A Personal Assistant” Kirchick. But I think we all have to remember that Paul’s dance with hateful extremists has been going on for a long time.
The real problem with Sullivan’s writing on this, I think, is that he can’t just up and explain why he isn’t supporting, per Gordon @comment 7, Gary Johnson. Right now, Sullivan is blogging like he wishes only to grind his ax with Kirchick and the rest of the hawks.
EDITED
Villago Delenda Est
It stretches the limits of credulity that Sullivan is this fucking stupid.
But, I guess he is.
ChrisNYC
@amk: True. Him and Frum. Neither one of them understands US politics or US conservatives.
Little Boots
sully just seems stuck with this Paul thing. not sure if he regrets the whole endorsement thing, but now he’s gotta tough it out til he comes back around to reality. it’s iraq all over again.
Mark S.
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine:
The problem is that Johnson didn’t spend a decade lending his name to a white supremacist newsletter.
I’m honestly starting to think that is half of Paul’s appeal.
The Dangerman
It’ll be Santorum in the end.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hill Dweller:
I dunno. Those Germans in the 30’s are definitely in the running for that.
Which is not a good sign for us, I might add…
different-church-lady
@The Dangerman: I see what you did there.
Hill Dweller
@Mike in NC: Romney would fire that dumb ass quicker than you can say polygamy if he thought it would benefit him financially.
Little Boots
@Villago Delenda Est:
not sure ignorance explains the Germans or the 30s. crazy comes closer. maybe desperate.
THAT worries me.
pseudonymous in nc
@amk:
Sully has a fundamental tone-deafness towards a) racial politics in the US; b) regional politics in the US; c) the particular strain of “1890s nostagia” politics that Paul embodies. None of those have obvious British political equivalents. But anyone who’s lived in the US for that long — as a fucking political journalist! — ought to know a lot better.
mcd410x
@losgatosca: this
Dee Loralei
Man this Baylor Washington game is crazywild 81 points 700+ yards and 8.5 minutes left
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@ChrisNYC: I thought Frum’s piece in NY Magazine was a pretty good assessment of American conservatives. Sure, there was some truth twisting and gratuitous pot shots at Obama, the Dems and liberals, but that’s what I would expect. His analysis of the current GOP rang pretty true for me.
Link here.
pseudonymous in nc
@Mike Goetz:
One standout thing that Gail Collins wrote during the 2008 — I can’t find the link right now, but paraphrasing — was that if you were the kind of “floating voter” who couldn’t decide between McCain and Obama, you were definitionally too fucking stupid to deserve any respect. The same applies to dipshit 2012 Paultards.
Little Boots
not sure if Sully is a racist. hope not. tone deaf might be closer, but you hear these stories now and then. he seems too smart to be flat out racist, but then he embraces stupid shit like the Bell Curve and the Paul campaign.
something’s going on there.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@Dee Loralei: No shit. Wild. I thought Baylor was out of it and then they came right back to be down by three, only to see Washington score while I was typing that last comment!
jl
Cole just can’t quit him that Sullivan.
Cole, his manias, how do they work?
Perhaps the repeated ugly racist and anti Semitic screeds printed in Paul’s insane scam investment newsletter were a lapse. As Josh Marshall said, who among us has not had to deal with racist hate mongering published under our names?
If Cole links to a Sully post with a sincere Paultard video appreciation Ron Paul’s current apologetic (“FU with the questions, I was making money and couldn’t be bothered with it”), I might check it out. That might be interesting.
Little Boots
sully’s addictive for us ex-cons. he just is. you red diaper babies don’t get it, I know.
handy
I thought Sully had pulled up stakes and re-pitched in the Huntsman camp (all 3 square inches of it) because he discovered the Paul newsletters. All the same the guy is a dud as a thinker.
Dee Loralei
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine: Looks like Baylor is thinking about scoring again too, LOL
handy
@Little Boots:
You did time too? What were you in for?
Brachiator
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine:
A public school teacher who is also a libertarian is a contradiction in terms. A true libertarian would say that government should not force people to pay for other children’s education. When is your friend quitting her job?
And as for black libertarians. Does Sully believe that because there are gay Republicans, then it must mean that the GOP really backs same sex marriage and is not anti gay?
Warren Terra
I thought Sully had been shamed by the newsletters issue into ditching Paul, but it’s clear from the first page and a half of his site that he’s totally in love with Ron Paul. Dude could shoot Sully’s dogs in front of him, and Sully would forgive him and rhapsodize about him in about a minute and a half.
SiubhanDuinne
@The Dangerman:
Oh stop :-)
pseudonymous in nc
@Little Boots: I think you get more out of an argument that he sounds like a racial determinist, but that’s a kind of weaselry that serves in American politics as a scuffed veneer for a filthy politics.
Little Boots
@handy:
Reaganism,
Little Boots
@pseudonymous in nc:
I don’t know if he has any kind of racial philosophy. as i say, just periodically, you hear or see this crap about him being not quite okay with the blacks.
it’s unfair to treat that kind of shit as definitive, but something about sully and race bugs me, always has.
JGabriel
Samantha Dunn:
That’s right, Samantha. You know why you’ve never heard it before? Because he’s making it up.
.
JGabriel
@Little Boots:
Yeah, I don’t quite get it either, and I’m more of a red adolescent — i.e., discovered my inner socia1ist in my mid-late teens. From reading the Village Voice and George Bernard Shaw, if memory serves correctly. It definitely immunized me against Ayn Rand, that’s for damn sure.
.
LongHairedWeirdo
Does Sully know *any* bigots, some of whose best friends are gay?
But forget that. I’ll be willing to grant that Ron Paul is not a bigot, if he makes a speech in which he says “You know those newsletters? Yeah, I wrote them – actually, I had ’em ghosted – but I didn’t mean anything. Come on! I was just milking the rubes! Face it; bigots are some of the stupidest people on earth, and it’s so easy to milk them. Mark my words: some of them are going to tell all their friends that I just said this – this stuff I’m saying right here – because the forces of political correctness made me do so!”
Because I’m perfectly willing to believe he *was* just milking the rubes. But you don’t get to play both sides. You don’t get to put your name on bigotry *and* get the excuse that you’re just playing the rubes, because of course that’s all he was doing….
Of course, I don’t know how anyone could trust anything said by anyone who milks the rubes. You’ll never know when *you’re* the rube.
Dee Loralei
95 points and 4.5 minutes left in the 3rd. They may break 150 before this game is over, obviously neither team has any defense. Sheesh…….
Little Boots
@JGabriel:
okay, admittedly for me, he was talking about gay marriage in the 80’s. that was absolutely crazy talk then, and I’ll never stop liking him for it.
doesn’t make up for the crazy times, but I’ll always like him.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@Brachiator: The worst part is he will also rail against crony capitalism and then the next day send something along from Freedom Works…. Definitely not quitting that job though. Every year, he has dozens of impressionable high school students in his thrall and can break it down for them for realz. Greater good and all that.
Dee Loralei
And Baylor is about to score again, and they actually held Wash last time. Those damned Bears could go ahead.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@Dee Loralei: This is ridiculous. Anyone posting here, needs to grab a drink, turn the TV on and watch this game. And keep posting of course!
eemom
hey, howzabout a nice New Years Resolution that if any FPer ever mentions Sullivan again, they automatically turn over the keys to toko-loko for the next five days? Jussayinzall.
robertdsc-PowerBook
Reason #576,482 that Sully is a fucking clown who should be shunned.
Frankensteinbeck
@losgatosca:
I’m pretty sure it’s because Sully occupies that perfect niche where the FPers, especially John, really *want* to believe that he can be saved. That if you slap him around right, or show him enough evidence, or he just gets a sufficiently open-eyed view of the monsters he’s supporting, his head will pop out of his ass and he’ll go ‘My Celestia, it’s full of stars.’
Er, or something. @Little Boots reinforced it. They WANT to save him, as they themselves were saved.
EDIT @Brachiator:
I don’t follow the man at all closely, so I may be mistaken here, but isn’t his position ‘Oh, the GOP is a good man, he loves me, he’ll stop abusing gays as soon as he sobers up.’?
handy
@JGabriel:
I’d like to think that normal human relationships immunized me against Ayn Rand. That, and a decent sense for good writing.
Little Boots
@robertdsc-PowerBook:
see, some of us can’t do that.
and besides, he’s British. no, you cannot turn away.
British.
Dee Loralei
over 100 points, over 1,000 yards and there is still 15 minutes left to play.
handy
@Little Boots:
Oswald Mosley was British, too.
Oh now I just went shrill.
ChrisNYC
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine: I haven’t read that piece but I don’t read much opinion stuff anymore.
I was way into Frum’s rejection of the crazies in 2008 but I’m sort of over it. You know, he was rah rah through GWB and then he says, “EEK what HAPPENED!” I don’t think the Tea Party people and the outrageous grifters are all THAT different from the prior bunch. Worse, yes. But wildly different? No. So, I think Frum’s tsk tsking now is a sign that he had no clue about the ideology he was promoting or the people he was hanging out with. They didn’t change — they just got blatant enough to be clear to him. Which to me says that he was sort of wide eyed and confused, importing all his dearly held lofty ideas about Buckley and whatever and wrongly superimposing them onto people like GWB and Cheney. And that’s how I get to him not understanding US politics.
I think both Frum and Sullivan dig in on this idea that there is some “noble conservatism” that lies sleeping in the US and that someday, it will rise and they can be proud to be part of it. If they read US history, I think they might find that what they think is there does not and never did exist. With Sullivan, that blindspot is painfully exposed when he bumbles around with race issues. He goes on and on and on about conservatism and never grapples with the history there.
Little Boots
@handy:
maybe a bit.
mclaren
Speaking of self-parody, how many of you have seen Niall Ferguson making himself ridiculous by effusively praising the loon Newt Gingrich?
I mentioned to a friend that David Icke would make an excellent Republican candidate for president, save for the minor problem that he’s British. Other than that, he’s got it all…insane claims (a hollow earth full of reptoids), delusional gibberish (all the royal families are half-human/half-reptoid hybrids)…crackpot conspiracy theories.
He’d shoot right to the top of the Republican pack if only he could run.
MikeJ
@Dee Loralei: I think both sides pulled the goalie.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@handy: Have you seen the Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley song?
JGabriel
@Little Boots:
While I appreciate that Sully very vocally turned on the Iraq War and opposed torture, my big problem with him is that I first became aware of him for his advocacy of The Bell Curve, way back in the early 90s.
I don’t think I’m ever going to forgive him for that, for justifying a return of intellectualized bigotry that I thought had died out with Stoddard in the 1920s or 30s. (No, I wasn’t naive enough to think bigotry had died out, just “intellectual” justifications for it).
.
Little Boots
@ChrisNYC:
this is so true.
don’t have much to add. so true. it’s a problem for intelligent conservatism.
MikeJ
@The prophet Nostradumbass: This one too.
handy
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
That was disturbing yet brilliant. Also check out the top comment on the video. There you find a window into the soul of a Ron Paul supporter.
Little Boots
@JGabriel:
yeah, that’s a big problem. no question. again, not sure what that is all about, but there’s something there.
handy
@MikeJ
I think “Goon Squad” was also about Mosley too, wasn’t it?
MikeJ
I can’t tell the basketball scores from the football. 55-53.
JGabriel
@handy:
Huh. I don’t think we had those when I was growing up.
.
The Other Chuck
From watching his TV appearances, it seems Sully gets this sort of poncy pompous chuckle over how he just gets everyone worked up when he says “controversial” things. He’s the five year old who discovered a naughty word and enjoys how he scandalizes the adults when he repeats it, since his parents won’t punish him for it.
He doesn’t care about anything like truth or ethics as long as he can enjoy a titter over his own perceived cleverness. “Oh posh, look, I said something smart, look how much better I am than these dullards I must deal with every day.”
The only other person I know who so thoroughly and cynically enjoys such narcissism is Bill Kristoll.
Dee Loralei
It’s wild MikeJ, just fucking wild. My guess, whoever scores last wins this baby. Kinda rootin’ for Baylor, Big 12 and all that. And they beat my beloved Sooners.
And Baylor scores again!
Redshift
On a somewhat related note, doesn’t this summary of the NYT post about the TPers (via Charlie Pierce) sound just like our little troll krawk from last night?
Little Boots
okay, I think he’s ten times better than the Kristol.
bill kristol? really?
I just can’t buy that. Kristol is a say anything for Israel, or the NeoCon war du jour whore, and I just don’t think sully is in that category.
MikeJ
@Dee Loralei: Here in Seattle I have to go for the boys in purple. And the ones that aren’t from Texas.
56-59. Shit.
FlipYrWhig
Ron Paul’s coalition of gay libertarians, stoners, and heavily-armed survivalists is gathering momentum!
MikeJ
I wonder what the record for 4th down conversions is.
Little Boots
@FlipYrWhig:
Iowa really is a paradise, isn’t it?
FlipYrWhig
@Redshift: I always enjoy a good lecture from people living on the largess of a generous government, including honest-to-god subsidized scooters, about how someone _else_ is getting a free ride. Fuck you, grandpa, or you’re getting a glucose meter you have to shove up your ass.
Dee Loralei
@MikeJ: Don’t know, but they’ve got something like 60 first downs so far between the teams.
Can’t believe the Huskies are going for it on 4th and 8.
Little Boots
@FlipYrWhig:
it’s fascinating psychologically, or just annoying.
either way, it helps make us the craziest developed nation in the world.
MikeJ
@Dee Loralei: No point in not going for it. They get the first down they have a good chance of winning. They miss it or punt, they lose.
Little Boots
it’s all just part of that weird cult of Merkin exceptionalism.
ask Romney. he’ll explain it to ya.
Gex
@Little Boots: The way I see it, either you believe blacks are genetically inferior 100% of the time, or you don’t really believe it. So I will assume that yes, he’s probably racist all the time.
Narcissus
Professional contrarian is contrarian.
Suffern ACE
@Redshift: Wow. Tapping that keg of consevativism is so unlike the Gingrich of the past. It must have taken him 5 seconds to find that barrel. He must feel so uncomfortable working that angle.
Is the Times staffed by 12 year olds who missed the past 30 years?
Little Boots
@Gex:
maybe, but I think for a lot of people, it’s more vague and weird than that. part unexamined beliefs, part definite bigotries, part just weird and stupid assumptions. I don’t think most people, at least most people I know think it through that coherently, but you definitely know that some people have an issue, and some don’t.
Anne Laurie
Look at it this way, Cole: We know Sullivan employs half-a-dozen young “research assistants” who write a lot of his posts but don’t get to sign their own names. Who knows, one of those kids could be fronting all this Dr. Ron, for FREEDOM! fluffery. At the very least, Sullivan is going to have more sympathy for Paul’s “Eh, who knows what those punks were filling the inches with, as long as my checks cleared, I wasn’t really paying attention” excuses, yes?
Dee Loralei
123 points so far still close to 2.5 minutes left.
ETA: And Baylor recovers a fumble on kick-off, that’s the game.
Little Boots
@Anne Laurie:
You don’t think he might have just wandered down the, what the hell, how bout Paul road, and then decided, shit, now I’m stuck with the old bastard?
Little Boots
I dunno, I think sully gets impulsive sometimes, and then winds up stuck with that impulse. maybe I’m wrong. (hell, I suspect John Cole does that too, but maybe I’m wrong.)
Gex
@Redshift: Funny how if you don’t have jobs for young people, they have a really hard time developing a good work ethic. Who knew?
Well, actually, no one. Because young people are developing a work ethic quite nicely, thank you. Old people always think everything that came after their prime is a turn for the worse.
@Little Boots: Well, he may not interact with black people in a super racist way. But he’s still a racist.
MikeJ
@Little Boots:
Or if you’re more cynical you might think that if one were to pick someone without a chance one would get to complain for the next four years that things would be so much better had the public simply agreed.
Little Boots
@Gex:
I wonder. I hope not, but I wonder.
hey, everyone, new thread.
CaseyL
Dayum! Thanks for the heads-up about the UW-Baylor game; I was able to catch the last few minutes.
I’m a Husky, but not much of a football fan anymore. It is nice for Baylor, winning their first bowl game in a generation.
taylormattd
@MikeJ: Mike, wasn’t that game effing amazing? And now I’m getting kind of pissed at Nick Holt. I mean jesus christ, should you win the game if your QB scores SEVEN (7) touchdowns?? I mean really. SEVEN.
Warren Terra
@Anne Laurie:
This.
I hadn’t thought about it, but Sully’s shameless use of ghostwriters may go some way towards explaining his inability to connect Ron Paul’s newsletters with any actual volition of Ron Paul’s (the rest of the explanation of course is provided by Sully’s manifest inanity).
Sully doesn’t get nearly enough stick for the way he produces what purports to be his blog. Look at the way Ezra Klein runs his eponymous enterprise to see how a blogger can capitalize on their personal identity as a brand without screwing over their minions.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Sullivan should add a new category to his annual awards: Upper Class Twit of the Year.
Actually, I know why he wouldn’t do that.
Citizen Alan
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Heh. I’ve been saying for over a year now that Suly’s problem is that he saw Monty Python’s “Upper Class Twit of the Year” sketch and thought it was something legitimate and admirable that he should strive for. Can’t you just see him in a tweed jacket and trilby running that obstacle course?
Samara Morgan
IQ since the Bell Curve.
jazzgurl
I think that a lot of these white men crushing on Ron Paul are going through menopause, simply looking to ‘get a rise’ on their mundane little existence. Maybe the drugs and womanising/men-nising and all their ‘habits’ just ain’t doing it for them anymore, as they overlook the stark truths, and intellectually try to rationalise away what is.
Also, Andrew Sullivan always wants his audience to think he is oh so passionate on issues, you know, Libya,Syria, or whatever the latest conflict is! God, I used to really look forward to his columns, but the beast in him has found a daily outlet and I simply fly through his ramblings now, as for months now he has gone the way of lacking real substance. Oh well, another one bites the dust!
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: It isn’t all about you and your obsessions.
OzoneR
@pseudonymous in nc:
the whole undecided voter thing has always confused me. You have two people with two very different sets of ideas. How can you be undecided? You must believe in one.
In the last election, “undecided” in my experience was “I want everything the black guy wants, but I don’t want it to come from a black guy and I don’t want people to think I’m a liberal.”
I had one coworker who told me “I believe in everything Obama stands for, but I’m voting McCain because my dad would kill me if I voted for Obama”
yep. God Bless America.
El Cid
Many people have never encountered the populist and anti-establishment right, and it’s often fascinating to them when they do.
They typically combine a refreshing tone of being bold enough to go beyond frustrating political limits, one or two points which sound really helpful and which aren’t being properly addressed in current politics, and a whole pile of dangerous, reprehensible violent feudalism — and a shitload of grifting, often carried out by selling the rubes various ‘surviving the apocalypse’ (any flavor of apocalypse you prefer, from Biblical to currency crisis) goods.
Gold, preserved foods, arms, fake permits and licenses, fake medical miracle cures, and so forth.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: not my obsession. Cole’s obsession.
you’re welcome.
;)
Larv
@Samara Morgan:
It’s his blog, he’s entitled to indulge his obsessions. You, not so much. But please feel free to do so on your own blog, where the rest of us don’t have to read it.
Ben Cisco
I’m going to do a one-time comment on a Sullivan-related post to say this:
Thus endeth the lesson, I now return you to your abused spouse teleplay already in progress.
Ruckus
@JGabriel:
I’d like to think that normal human relationships immunized me against Ayn Rand.
Huh. I don’t think we had those when I was growing up.
I sure didn’t have any that I can remember and I still managed to see what a 5th rate hack she was, writing nothing but crap books. Never could understand the attraction. Still don’t to this day. Maybe I’m more normal than I’d hoped. Or more screwed up.