I know many of you are going to groan when you read this, and I expect a number of you will remember Sullivan’s fifth column/decadent left remarks and say “what goes around comes around.” And like many of you, I have my beefs with Sully- he tends to be myopic about what is actually going on around him, he tends to not think through the impact of policies that will not effect him (abortion), he relies on hucksters and right-wing frauds too often for economic analysis, and he keeps pining for some true conservatism that exists only in his mind. I get the beefs with Sullivan, I really do.
But having said all that, I’ve watched over the past few days as Jeffrey Goldberg has launched vicious smear after vicious smear at Sullivan, and it is disgusting. Some highlights:
“I think he’s a scapegoater of Jews”
“an embarrassingly rabid anti-Zionist”
“Andrew, who consistently grants the regime in Iran the benefit of the doubt on the nuclear issue while simultaneously assuming the worst about Israel’s government”
“he’s oblivious to the existence of anti-Semitism”
“But as we’ve learned over time here at The Atlantic, (and by The Atlantic, I mean here at Goldblog HQ) there’s no arguing with the guy.”
These are all just blatant lies, although my favorite is how he co-opted the entire Atlantic staff to attack Sullivan. And then he just decides to drop the whole subject, not really respond to anything, and go on hiatus. A real profile in courage.
Look- this is little more than what the Weekly Standard and the other neocon mags do whenever they disagree with someone- smear them and call them an anti-Semite. These are not the writings of an intellect with a nuanced vision of the world, this stuff is straight out of the Marty Peretz playbook. These are the kinds of grunts you’d expect from an under-educated prison guard.
There should be no place for this kind of crap, let alone from the pages of the Atlantic.
taylormattd
Wingnuts libel people.
Film at 11.
The real question is when will Sullivan crack under the pressure of this mau-mau and in turn libel someone on the left?
David Koch
First they came for the Sully…
arguingwithsignposts
That’s basically true. He’s a pompous ass’s pompous ass.
John O
I’ve been keeping fresh on this particular blogwar, and it’s been…enlightening.
Argumentatively, Sullivan is kicking Goldberg’s ass. I guess that’s why JG took his ball and went home.
This does not change the fact that you, sir, John Cole, are clearly an anti-Semite.
Hunter Gathers
Unless you promise to turn over your first-born to the state of Israel, you are an anti-Semite.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
Don’t stop, let’s not forget the resurgence of intellectualized justifications for racism via Sully’s championing and defense of Murray & Hernsteinn’s The Bell Curve during his days as editor at The New Republic.
My problems with Sully have looong roots.
.
Terry
Wrong. He can be persuaded. I, personally, got Sullivan to change his mind about the utility of bicycle helmets with a personal experience. His change of opinion was graciously done.
cathyx
I think you should just let them fight amongst themselves and just sit back with a beer and a bowl of popcorn and watch.
Dave
Good. Post, though it’s really about Goldberg.
arguingwithsignposts
@Terry:
No offense, but bicycle helmets are small potatoes. On the big things, when called on things, he almost always just doubles down.
gwangung
I think I’ll protest this kind of smearing.
But I’m not necessarily full throated enthusiastic about like I would, say, about arresting a certain Mr. Zimmerman.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top: :
Uh, John … didn’t Sully essentially write the The New Republic playbook for Marty?
.
Schlemizel
Yeah, if you want sympathy for a flaming shitheel like Sully you just about have to dig down to Jeffy Goldberg. Sully looks almost human in comparison. Thats pretty faint praise John.
Spectre
@taylormattd:
Sullivan already libeled people years ago during his neo-con phase. The most famous incident being when he slandered Noam Chomsky on Real Time with Bill Maher. Chomsky was the pre-panel interview, and argued that the invasion of Iraq was a war crime, done for naked geopolitical reasons, and cited international law going back to Nuremberg.
Sullivan was literally shaking with rage, could barely put sentences together, and then accused Chomsky (after Chomsky had left) of having supported the Soviet Union “longer than anyone did!”, which was a total lie. Chomsky is notoriously hated by lenninists precisely because he was a prominent socialist critic of the Soviet Union, calling it a “dungeon”.
Sullivan then libeled him on his site the next day.
http://youtu.be/5Vo9LwuPptU
He also apparently decided that Noam Chomsky is why Kerry lost the election, or something like that…
BDeevDad
I could only imagine the terms that would be used by the right wing in the US if the Israeli’s in this article were US citizens. They’d be branded treasonous, terrorist lovers.
Raven
Well, Tweety thinks he’s “FUCKING Brilliant, the BEST!” That says something.
Spectre
That said, there’s no defending what Goldberg, the former IDF prison guard, is doing to Sullivan.
Andrew’s positions here are not even radical on the spectrum of international opinion regarding Israel.
dmsilev
I believe both of the following are true: (1) Andrew Sullivan is a jackass who refuses to see past his own ideological blinkers and often puts forth shockingly bad arguments. (2) Goldberg’s attacks on Sullivan are completely unwarranted and are disgusting.
There’s no intrinsic contradiction between those points.
handsmile
Bruce S
“I, personally, got Sullivan to change his mind about the utility of bicycle helmets with a personal experience.”
One small step, etc. etc.
JGabriel
By the way, despite my problems with Sully mentioned above, I don’t mean to give the impression of siding with Goldberg.
I’m just saying: In a pissing match between Sully & Goldberg, the only thing one can root for is yellow stains.
.
feebog
Yawn, a couple of assholes are flaming each other. I gotta agree with CathyX, pass the Pacifico and ceviche please.
Bruce S
The truly scary and disgusting thing about this is that Goldberg isn’t the craziest apologist for Israel running around…not by a long shot.
Darius
@dmsilev: Well put.
Short Bus Bully
@dmsilev:
THIS.
After reading Sully for years, his recent flirtations with birtherism (specifically; not understanding why just ASKING Obama for the long form BC was so insulting to so many people) and his Bell Curve bullshit and his Paul Ryan man crush have made me stop reading him.
I guess it’s good that JC is still willing to do the work that none of us want to do anymore.
And yes, Goldberg is acting like an asshole.
The Moar You Know
Yay injuries. Sullivan is a flat-out racist. Fuck him. He’s earned this.
some guy
IDF Prison Guard Goldberg does what all American hasbara assholes do: smear anyone who questions the utility, wisdom, or morality of their fealty to the pro-apartheid policies of the Israeli state. Goldberg’s primary political allegiance, just like Bill Kristol et alia, is right out there in the open, and when accurately described as “Israel First” these thugs start screaming and throwing poo and shouting “anti-semite, anti-semite.”
let’s always remember, Jeffrey Goldberg was first and foremost a prison guard who used his weapon to keep the victims of apartheid locked down and brutalized.
kc
I’m glad I don’t read any of these assholes.
Brazilian Rascal
And yet he can’t stop licking Goldberg. Jeffrey could stab him in the kidney and with his last breath Sully would crawl over to an iPad to post of this strange animosity Goldberg seems to nourish against him and how this really won’t be good for any of them in the long run.
As for the Atlantic…yeah, sure, the den of McMegan sure primes for its quality and intelectual honesty. I wish Ta-nehisi Coates would move so I could delete that bookmark.
But yeah, tip your hat to Sullivan once in person and he’ll excuse all your failings way beyind reason. If Benedit XVI ever sends him some Prada footwear and a bible, he’ll drop the whole pedophilia outrage so fast it might knock the Earth out of orbit when it hits the floor.
Bruce S
Two words: “Israel Firsters!”
Now, send the fucking Mossad after me. Because…uh…Hitler!
Amir Khalid
Jeffrey Goldberg has his own ginormous blind spot when it comes to Israel. It’s just Andrew Sullivan’s luck he has a quite different set of blind spots, else all would probably be sweetness and light between those two. Those two deserve each other.
I have never had much time for Goldberg on the Middle East. Juan “No Relation” Cole is both far more knowledgeable and far more evenhanded. And Sullivan is tiresomely emo and pretentious about Catholicism, and about True Conservatism as embodied by his beloved Mummy figure Margaret Thatcher. I tend to think of him as the blogger equivalent of the “Leave Britney alone!!” kid.
Satanicpanic
Fuck em both. Assholes.
John O
Funny ’cause it’s true.
Samara Morgan
Meh.
I get smeared here as a racist and antisemite alla time.
Sully should grow a pair.
;)
Soonergrunt
@BDeevDad: You mean like this US Citizen?
As far as Sully goes, to my knowledge he never apologized for is fifth column remarks. And while he has admitted that he was wrong about Iraq, he has never apologized for that either that I am aware and I have the exact same thing for him that I have for all the unapologetic cheerleaders for Iraq that got my friends killed, which is quite simply, “fuck you and die in a fire.”
LM
I think this New Yorker cartoon captures the mind-set of the attacks on him: http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/He-s-all-right-I-just-wish-he-were-a-little-more-pro-Israel-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8728320_.htm
As to whether Sullivan can be persuaded, I read his blog in part because I’ve seen him change his mind so often. He’ll state a firm, even outraged, “conservative” opinion only to have reader emails erode it over the following days. And he acknowledge the shifts in his thinking. He doesn’t dig in to fire back one ego-saving salvo after another. For lack of a better word, he repents. It gives him a sort of rare charm in the mostly won’t-budge blogosphere.
Baud
@kc:
I’m with you.
Raven
@Soonergrunt: Reminds me of how I fell about Jim Webb. And LBJ for that matter.
JWL
Isn’t getting “attacked” by Goldberg equivalent to being attacked by Joe [pause]…The Plumber?
Samara Morgan
Hey Brazilian
Sully is the exact same on Douthat. Douthat would gladly see Sully and his hubby nailed to a buck fence in Wyoming, but sully can’t get past the atantic mafia tribalism to diss him.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
It’s not a smear when it’s true.
Samara Morgan
O Maftoon Mufassir.
Give me a link to a racist to antisemitic statement.
I’m not a racist unless Christian and stupid are races now, and I’m not an antisemite unless Semite means Israeli.
;)
Samara Morgan
Racist OR antisemitic statement.
Raven
@Samara Morgan: Listen at you.
dr. bloor
The Atlantic you seem to be referring to croaked when they moved from Boston to D.C. Haven’t read it in years, haven’t missed a thing.
Cermet
Don’t forget that Sullivan has reversed himself on Ryan’s plan and now mocks it and those that still support it. He is also fully supporting Obama. As for anti-choice, last I checked demorats are allowed to voice that opinion, too. He does support woman rights and access to plan parenthood, and the pill. He is a strong supporter of getting the church to own up to what it has done to protect those monster priest who abused children, and he demands that the church help those children it has sexually harmed. Yes, he has issues and is not a democrat but he does, on a lot of critical points, support’s what most democrats support. I have seen him post apologizes for his support of the Iraq war but as he said, over a hundred thousand were killed in an illegal war and that horror can not be undone by words. He accepts his part in the run up and how wrong he was.
Maude
@Raven:
LBJ never paid a price for the war. He walked away unscathed.
Omnes Omnibus
@feebog: There is ceviche? Cool.
Punchy
Cry me a fuckin river
Raven
@Maude: Um. just exactly how does that relate to my response to Soonergrunt?
muddy
@Maude: He didn’t live long.
Bob2
The problem with Sullivan is this:
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle” — George Orwell”
Some of us have an extremely easy time seeing what’s going in front of us and have the ability to admit what we don’t know. He throws out opinions without any research or knowledge. In fact, he wrote a blog post saying “Take a position on topics”..even if you know nothing about it.
This is precisely why he’s dumb. He still thinks in the dialectic debate method that everyone who’s moved on from high school knows better than to use when it comes to expertise.
He tries really hard to say he’s not part of DC insidery stuff, but the larger problem is that he’s part of the glib punditry class that tries hard to NOT understand things.
I may have gotten him to change his mind on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae being responsible for the housing crash, but that crowdsourcing feature he used for that one time seems to have disappeared.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@JGabriel: Thereby illustrating the concept of what goes around, comes around.
Villago Delenda Est
Neocons…to include Goldberg…are to be derided, defamed, and disrespected at all time. They’re all for wars…as long as they don’t personally get involved because, well, it would spoil the effect. You see, Burke had this thing going where the anticipation of war is ruined if you actually get your hands dirty, and the neocons are all about the sublimity of war, not the actual doing of it…that’s for the fucking serfs, you know.
Which is why these vile creatures deserve no liberty or security.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
I found this article about the different character of East Asian Islam.
I wonder if you are aware of what it is talking about?
IM
I had the same reaction. For all his faults, Sullivan looks better in this confrontation. How far he is the victim is another question; Goldberg mostly hurts himself.
Also interesting: Fallows tries to gets some answers out of Goldberg and gets a quite smarmy response.
Bob2
Btw, his apology for the fifth column thing was half-assed and incorrect if you check the specifics of that apology.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Cermet:
Yeah, but at best Sullivan is so inconsistent that, while he may seem reasonable one day, you can’t tell if tomorrow he’s going to go full wingnut. Add in his asinine Fifth Column remark, the shit he did at TNR, and his general level of pretentiousness (all the Burkean shit we rightly mock) and I don’t see why any of us should really care about this internecine splat.
Anyways, I stopped really giving a shit about Sully when he fully supported the non trans inclusive ENDA the house passed in the fall of 2007.
Trentrunner
@Soonergrunt: 100% correct.
Villago Delenda Est
@Maude:
I disagree. Kids shouting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” wounded him, deeply. He aged tremendously in office. He knew his legacy of fighting the good fight for racial equality in this country was severely tainted by Vietnam, and it shortened his life.
Trentrunner
@Cermet: Nice try, Andrew Sullivan.
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: As it should have. I have a whole bunch of friends whose lives were shortened by about 70 fucking years.
aimai
Two assholes don’t make one good person. There are no victims here. The lesson is that when right wing likudniks turn on someone its just as ugly as when Sullivan mealy mouthed his way to the Bell Curve. Is it necessary to say which of the two extremes of American politics is worse? Sullivan is an out and out apologist and publicist for racism, he a accused the entire liberal/left of this country of treason–if he now gets accused of the pro-Israeli version of “treason” which is antisemitism its really nothing more than to say that g-d has a sense of humor and occasionally allows demagogues to be demagogued by other demagogues.
aiami
Villago Delenda Est
@Raven:
Yeah, well Tweety is, um, Tweety. The guy who used to moon over Romney’s shoulders, and waxed romantically about the war criminal deserting coward’s “package” display on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: My point exactly.
Jackie
Andrew Sullivan has produced attacks on Sarah Palin because he believed her son was not her son. It was the Sullivan form of birtherism. His attacks on Hilary Clinton were of the hysterical type.
He went back over the racist bell curve crap as if he hadn’t bothered to grow in thirty years.
He is a man who over and over proves to be a product of a white male world.
He sets out a point or view so out of touch with a world in which women or people of color are even on the playing field that it is breath taking.
I don’t have to spend a second feeling badly for him in his battle with Jeffrey Goldberg.
Bob2
I’m surprised no one’s pointed out Goldberg’s previous cheerleading for the Iraq War yet, and that’s why we don’t like him.
Litlebritdifrnt
WOW on Ed Show right now Communications Director for Clinton (I think) just said that during the 2008 campaign the Secret Service for Obama contacted the McCain campaign and asked them to tone down their attacks as they were actually worried about Obama’s life. I had never heard that before.
existential fish
Nixon goes to China, Cole defends Sullivan.
Thumbs up.
BTW Cole, if you want to link to the Beinart piece in the Tablet from today, that’d really complete the circle. Peretz’s literal response to Beinart is “your mother.”
dmnolan
Forget Goldberg, he’s done this sort of thing before. Sullivan ought to be able to take care of himself or he’s in the wrong game. If you’re reading the Atlantic, stick to James Fallows. He, at least, is a grown-up.
beergoggles
The Atlantic employs Goldberg and McBargle right? So I think those comments fit right in at that publication. Wasn’t it also the publication that fully supported Sullivan when he was pushing the notion that the bell curve was a serious piece of research?
Yeah. I think the whole lot of them fit right in.
Trentrunner
Oh, and how could I forgit: Andrew Sullivan is a cunty git.
Terry
Jackie, I do not recognize the man from your perspective.
driftglass
I’m sure once reality coshes Mr. Sullivan in the skull a few hundred more times, light will sloooooowly begin to dawn on him about the true nature of his friends.
I’m sure shortly after that he will write a Newsweek cover breathlessly explaining as epiphany stuff one more thing that thoughtful liberals have been saying all along.
Meanwhile, putting Peter Beinart at the center of this controversy had the unfortunate side-effect of making me remember that there is absolutely no good reason why Peter Beinart should have any job AT ALL that doesn’t involve wearing a paper hat and asking me if I want my meal super sized.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/03/over-at-daily-beasts-home-for-troubled.html
Also too, h/t to Brazilian Rascal from whom I stole without shame :-)
Vanfur
Don’t like Mr. Sullivan one bit, but I agree with you calling this crap out, Mr. Cole
eemom
@Bob2:
I’m surprised too, because for all the bile being spewed on this thread I haven’t actually seen one solid charge against him. And if we’re gonna keep hating on EVERYBODY who supported the Iraq war, ahem….
From what I’ve read of Goldberg, this shit is way overblown. Have any of you mindless knee jerkers ever actually READ any of his reporting on Israel?
And he has a fucking point about Sullivan — most notably, that his current position on Israel is a 180 degree shift from the equally simplistic and stupid cheerleader he was FOR the country in the past.
Bruce S
“he will write a Newsweek cover breathlessly explaining as epiphany”
For the record, I really hate that pinched little lady Tina Brown. One of those “Morning Joe regulars” who account for that program being so godawful.
Daaling
There is almost no grey area that Wrong Way Cole won’t come out of the wrong end on. A lot of black and white areas too. Cough….LIBYA….cough.
fuzz
@Bob2:
I think Goldberg’s article(s) in the lead up to Iraq were far more damaging for the anti-war cause than anything Sullivan said. Remember Sullivan is paid to talk and voice his opinions, Goldberg was supposed to be a journalist.
Karen
People like Goldberg who throw the word “anti-semite” around cheapen the terribleness of the word and the meaning of it. So when there are real examples (the whole idea about Sandra Fluke’s “Jewy” boyfriend, comes to mind)it robs them of their horror as well.
CT Voter
From above:
It’s more comfortable when wingnuts are…obvious, I guess.
Andrew Sullivan exasperates me. So what.
The fact that The Atlantic is willing to condone the smearfest that goes on, though, is chilling. Those other people’s wingnuts are crazy. Ours? Mainstream.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jackie:
His attacks on Sarah Palin were because her story about her last pregnancy makes absolutely no sense, and we know for a fact that she’s a pathological liar. She’s been caught in multiple whoppers and it doesn’t even phase her when she’s confronted with them.
CT Voter
@Bruce S: Not a fan of Tina Brown, but the person the show is named after is the main reason the show is so awful.
SW
Goldberg is a fanatic. There is no other word for his world view. It doesn’t matter what purpose that sort of lunacy is put in the service of. The guy standing on the street corner railing about the voices speaking to him through his dental fillings is as believable. The problem is those who take the asshole seriously. As though he is contributing anything of any intellectual value to the debate.
eemom
@Karen:
I would like to see some examples of where Goldberg has done that.
I know there are plenty of right wing assholes who do — but again, when and where has Goldberg done it??
I trust you don’t mean the quote in Cole’s post that Sullivan is “oblivious to the existence of anti-Semitism”, because not only is that something else entirely than calling someone an anti-Semite — but, given Sullivan’s well-documented head-up-the-ass oblivion to racism, sexism, misogyny, elitism, and all manner of other injustices, I’d say it’s most likely true.
eemom
@SW:
Give a fucking example — one actual link to something he’s written, that demonstrates his “fanaticism.”
khead
LOL.
Sully wouldn’t piss on Cole – or any other BJ poster – if they were on fire.
muddy
@driftglass: He noticed the poo smell.
Zach
The weird thing is that Sullivan was probably the most visibly gung-ho opponent of the Iranian government during the 2009 Iranian election controversy and subsequent protests. He was all about being totally sure the elections were fraudulent. Why? Because you just know it in your gut — that’s why. There was never a solid statistical argument for Iranian election fraud or any on-the-ground evidence despite the fact that massive fraud in an Iranian national election would be about as impossible as in an American election. Similarly, there’s no solid evidence for imminent Iranian nuclear weaponization; Sullivan’s just on the side of rationality this time.
I have no clue why people don’t demand solid evidence for this sort of thing after Colin Powell’s stunt at the UN.
fuzz
@Zach:
I thought there was some evidence, not a lot but some. I remember reading A-jad had won ethnic Azeri areas by huge margins even though he’s not very popular there and there were Azeri candidates running against him, and that he won almost everywhere by a 20 pt margin. It’d be like if McCain had not only won the 08 election but swept every state and carried MA, VT and HI by twenty points.
not motorik
You all underestimate Goldberg. He is, in fact, the finest propagandist currently working in Western journalism. He skillfully applies pressure on just the right points in order to advance his aims, but does so in a way that gives him a semblance of neutrality.
The key is that he makes his debate-changing arguments infrequently. The point of view that he pushes, a sort of sly Zionism that admits no wrongs, is couched with interviews with Castro, praise for Fallows and his other Atlantic colleagues, and reassuring assertions about his “own views” on the desirability of yet another pre-emptive war. It’s all smokescreen for the ratcheting up of pressure on American political elites regarding Iran and the discrediting of politicians and journalists who dare point out that Israel, as a state, is currently doing some really terrible things (see Walt, Mearsheimer, Sullivan, etc., etc.)
He’s an extremely dangerous man. He’s far slicker than bumpkins like Bill Kristol and Reuel Marc Gerecht.
I just keep thinking of all the corpses. Iraqi, American. Now Iranian.
SoINeedAName48
I proudly stand with Andrew Sullivan.
And to all you Haters That Just Got to Hate: FU<K YOU!
not motorik
@eemom: It’s not surprising that you would be too dense to get it.
eemom
@not motorik:
nor is it surprising that you would resort to slime and innuendo rather than actual proof.
One link, fucktard. Just ONE.
eemom
@not motorik:
a sort of sly slander that admits no facts.
You fucking weaselly little coward. Do tell, to what do we owe the honor of your presence for some purpose OTHER than to slime ABL on comment 300 of a thread that has nothing to do with her?
Uncle Cosmo
@Maude: “LBJ never paid a price for Vietnam”? You don’t think that being forced out of the White House is a helluva price for someone who busted his nuts for his whole life to get there? You don’t think dropping dead barely 4 years after leaving office (22 Jan 1973) had anything to do with that? Puh-leez.
ETA: I see Villago Delenda Est got here a mite afore me (#60). [Hat tip]
PTirebiter
@driftglass: Well, you’ve always had a soft spot for Sullivan and his band of collaborators and lobster backs. I’ve forwarded the pic of Sully in pumps as the Gipper leads to everyone I’ve ever known.
priscianusjr
Well, I don’t have much sympathy for Sullivan, but I have even less for Jeffrey Goldberg, so OK, I hear you.
LT
God I fucking hate the things fucking Sullivan has done – I wish the fucker would give out a “Sullivan Award” – for things twenty times worse than Michael Moore will ever dream of doing – but Goldberg has lost his mind on this. But those fuckers are so depressing because they’re both often so good.
some guy
@eemom:
Jeffery Goldberg was a prison guard for the IDF.
case fucking closed.
some guy
@not motorik:
they don’t call her eemoron for nothing.
some guy
@eemom:
your ignorance and stupidity speak for itself.
Google, how does that work?
LT
@some guy:
That’s just fucking silly.
Joel
Everything you write about Sullivan could be said for Goldberg.
KS in MA
@Karen: “People like Goldberg who throw the word “anti-semite” around cheapen the terribleness of the word and the meaning of it.” Absolutely. I can’t help thinking of the originator of the phrase “high-tech lynching” (though God knows I’d rather not think of him).
Sully and Goldberg deserve each other.
Viva BrisVegas
There are two types of Conservatives, the ones impervious to fact, and the ones persuadable by reality.
Sully is the second rarer kind, which is not to say he is not nuts on some topics, but he can and does change his mind. The Sully of 2003 is not the Sully of 2012.
That alone should cut him some slack from the rest of us.
Now he has dared to critcise Israeli policy and as usual the anti-semite smears have been flung.
Why does it matter? Because the strips that Sully tears off the Right sting them a hell of a lot more than anything that Daily Kos has ever managed.
Sully can be short-sighted, oblivious and just plain stupid, but he is never impervious. That makes him worth reading.
As to the Palin thing. Palin had completely cowed not just the MSM, but the Left as well, into unquestioningly accepting the lunatic story she told about Trig’s birth. Sully didn’t accept her word and took the lumps for it, that was worth something.
eemom
@some guy:
Ah, “prove my case for me” — the classic retort of laziness and ignorance.
Idiot.
eemom
@some guy:
You got a link for even the “prison guard” thing, moron?
Because that’s not what he was.
LT
@eemom: He was an IDF prison guard.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/26/AR2006102601331.html
Djur
@Hunter Gathers: *points* Blood libel!
eemom
@LT:
I’ve read a column where he specifically refuted that label, and said that he worked in a prison, but his job was not a “guard.”
Whatever, it’s a small point. As you say, for these pea-brains to assert that as “case closed” against him is just moronic.
El Cid
You don’t have to stand with or against “Sullivan” — just call out the cheap use of a bullshit “anti-Semitism” charge on the part of those in favor of Israeli militarism. It’s okay to oppose that.
Bob2
The Goldberg stuff is old hat and is only a quick google away. I doubt anyone really wants to rehash that New Yorker nightmare and his rather bad defense of it in The Atlantic.
eemom
@El Cid:
It’s okay to oppose that, but it’s not what Goldberg did. Please see #85.
Look, I know that YOU at least are intellectually honest. If you believe there is actual substance to the shit being slung at Goldberg on this thread, please explain to me what it is.
Anton Sirius
@not motorik:
I see what you did there.
What, couldn’t work in something about Goldberg’s “thick-lipped intransigence” too?
Lyrebird
@aimai: Thanks for this viewpoint.
I don’t know whether I shoulda clicked on this article or not, and I still fail to see why this line is so objectionable:
I stopped reading BJ for a while bc I didn’t feel so welcome as a joosh person… then I watched in wonder as posts appeared with the word “Yeshiva bocher” in them..
This particular post, well — gee, there are bozos like AS and JG in all camps. Surprise.
Another Bob
I stopped reading Sullivan years ago even though I enjoyed his blog. It wasn’t so much because of Sullivan himself, but because I hate a couple of other Atlantic bloggers so much: namely, Megan McArdle and Jeffrey Goldberg. They’re basically professional liars, well-paid to do everything in their power to make suckers believe things that aren’t true. It’s not a coincidence that the Atlantic employs these people. I decided that the Atlantic is just a dishonest establishment, and decided not to patronize it any more. I hope that Sullivan — and Ta Neshisi Coates too — can find work at a venue with a commitment to honesty. Until they do, however, I’ll just have to keep hearing about them second-hand.
burnspbesq
@Samara Morgan:
It’s only a smear if it’s false. Is it?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Lyrebird:
Huh?
El Cid
@eemom: I don’t know yet — I don’t give the slightest fuck about either of them. If it weren’t for their pre-existing prominence, neither of them create a fart in a hurricane’s worth of value.
But “increasingly anti-Zionist” is in no way some serious charge — who cares? You think Jabotinsky or Herzl would see a lack of “Zionist” cred in the early 21st century of an existent Israeli nation-state a serious charge?
I just wanted to distinguish between Cole’s desire to “defend” Sullivan and the aim of blunting this cheap pro-militarism of a particular Israeli nation-state political expansionist project as one and the same. They’re not.
No one has to give a shit about Andrew Sullivan to engage the full range of topics and debate regarding Israeli state policies, and I simply wished to delineate the two.
Sad Iron
Sorry, we’re going to need to drop a “lilly von schtupp” award on this one.
Egg Berry
Am I missing something? Have either of these guys actually put anything on the line? Run for Congress? Argued a case before the Supreme Court? Actively stood up at the UN? Why are they a focus? Because they write well?
GregB
When did this blog become objectively pro-Hitler-Hezbollah-Ahmadinejad-Mullah-Jihadist?
mainmati
After this very long dialogue, all of it worth reading on Balloon Juice, all I can say is that Andrew is a polymath and has a wide view and I appreciate that.
Being a polymath means you rub up amongst many different uni-dimensional, ideological types and get into conflicts. That’s not him and that’s not me and, frankly, that’s not most people. Most of the GOP, however, have decided to become simple-minded ideologues. Not all of them; just about 90% of them. And that’s a real tragedy.
not motorik
@eemom: Goldberg slimes people who make good-faith arguments about the political power of AIPAC and how it’s unhealthy for both countries.
See Goldberg on WALT, MEARSHEIMER, SULLIVAN, J STREET, PETER BEINART, THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS, GLENN GREENWALD, ETC., ETC., and also:
HE LIED ABOUT IRAQ.
And also:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/09/jeff_goldberg_still_lying_after_all_these_years/
I’m may be a dick, but at least I know what the fuck I’m talking about. Go use the google and read for a while and then contemplate how your unthinking support for Goldberg’s propaganda and the future stacks of Iranian corpses might be related.
Sad Iron
@mainmati: Andrew Sullivan is a polymath? May I suggest you check in with the Sullivan historian, Driftglass, who is easily the authority on what Mr. Sullivan is?
Maybe Here: http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/03/over-at-daily-beasts-home-for-troubled.html
Or here: http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/03/andrew-sullivan-sarah-palin-and-harry.html
Or here: http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/03/those-are-my-principles.html
Egg Berry
@mainmati:
No offense to you, but Andrew Sullivan is a Tory asshole who doesn’t deserve his platform. If he had a conscience, he’d be a liberal, and he’d be out of a job.
eemom
@not motorik:
May be. But you’m for sure a bigoted, know-nothing, blowhard asshole who thinks lotsa CAPITAL LETTERS PROVES A POINT.
pseudonymous in nc
Goldberg knows that he has the power to declare someone persona non grata in Polite American Media circles, and he uses it the way the IDF uses helicopter gunships. I hope his kids like their ponies.
As for Sullivan: he is a prisoner to his own intense subjectivity, but there are times when that subjectivity isn’t a straitjacket.
not motorik
@eemom: There’s your link, and look how you behave, you sad little ignoramus.
You know, people hang out here because they actually know and care about this stuff. You treat it like it’s a parlor game.
It’s childish, and the bombs are on the way.
xian
someone’s off their meds
not motorik
@eemom: This is why we warn about Goldberg and the kid-killers:
http://mindprod.com/politics/iraqwarpix.html [WARNING]
It’s not about your ego or mine.
But you may too dim or drunk to get that.
Karl The Crap Blog Detective
Let them eat each other.
Jay
@eemom:
eemom, c’mon.
Do you know what “baiting” is?
Do you know what a “dog – whistle” is?
Goldberg didn’t straight – out call Sullivan an anti – Semite, he just walked up to the line because he thought he could discredit Sullivan by leaving him barking mad just out of his reach, like a dog behind a fence.
Goldberg knew what he was doing.
He knew he was losing on substance, so we get this “Sullivan is a scapegoater of Jews” business, and “Sullivan is oblivious to anti – Semitism.”
But look: I’m 200% willing to grant that Sullivan writes with too much goddam emotion about Israel, and that he often just vents at the current PM without focusing on those Israeli leaders – like Peres and Livni – who are clearly willing to work with POTUS.
Bibi’s powerful, but he’s not Israel.
He’s powerful, but most of his public opposes him on a unilateral war with Iran. If Sullivan did laser-like reporting on Livni’s willingness to work with POTUS (as opposed to having this brief Paul Ryan style crush on her), say, or the Israeli public’s opposition to a war with Iran, I’d be impressed.
As it is, I think Sullivan and Goldberg are average to below average straight reporters, but in this shouting match, Sullivan looks better.
goblue72
@dr. bloor: Pretty much in a nutshell. When Mort Zuckerman sold the Atlantic to neocon David Bradley, the writing was on the wall. The move to DC was just the nail in the coffin. The Atlantic for years was the intellectual’s general interest magazine alternative to the New Yorker. With the move to DC, it became just another landing pad for a group of overpaid, underqualified ideological hacks and pundits – perfect for the DC bubble. They used to run articles like the virus theory of cancer or the pre-Colubmian “managed wilderness” of the Native American tribes. Now they publish the sophmoric vomit of McCardle & Goldberg. Nuf ced.
M. Bouffant
Here is the single worst sentence typed in the whole exchange (by Sullivan):
Really. He typed that as if he meant it.
chopper
@mainmati:
please, just stop.
chopper
i agree with everybody else, this is a pissing match where i’m rooting for UTIs.
brantl
@Samara Morgan: No, basically we say you’re a jerk. You’re not so much anti-semite as anti-everybody.
brantl
Sully and both Goldbergs are too stupid to be writing for anybody, let’s hope they flame each other to death. Sully is in the right, for once? Note it on your calendar, like the passing of Haley’s Comet, just as rare, just as effectual.
TK-421
Because Sully and McArgleBargle are doing soooooooooooo much to enhance the brand.
I don’t get it. What’s so special today about The Atlantic? They have a few good writers, but they also continue to employ some massively hypocritical/dishonest/etc. writers as well. To me, that makes The Pages Of The Atlantic average, maybe a little above average. But that should inform John Cole and everyone else that The Pages Of The Atlantic are exactly “the place for this kind of crap.”
This should surprise no one. Yet guys like John Cole will romanticize to the point he is ‘shocked SHOCKED I tell you’ that an outlet capable of supporting dishonesty, hypocrisy, and cruelty will also support a LOT of dishonesty, hypocrisy, and cruelty.
The Pages Of The Atlantic may have been hallowed ground at one time, but no longer. Quit pretending otherwise, John.
Samara Morgan
Burnsy, link or gtfo. No one has Evan been able to come up with a link.
Brantley gets me. I basically hate everyone but Obama, Sean Carrol and Dr. Atran.
This whole post is just LEAVE GLENN GREENWALD ALONE for sully.
Sully is a conservative shill and a pimp for Mother Church.
He still can’t admit he was wrong about Trig.
brantl
“Brantley”. Can’t you read, Samara?
Mariano42
I have followed this debate from the beginning, and I read both men frequently. I am surprised that no one mentioned the fact that Goldberg added the parantheses after he was called out by Sullivan to speak for himself
“But as we’ve learned over time here at The Atlantic, (and by The Atlantic, I mean here at Goldblog HQ) there’s no arguing with the guy.”
The fact that he did not acknowledge the fact that he edited the quote points to his intellectual dishonesty.
billiecat
Basically, Sully gets under Goldberg’s skin because he’s got Golberg’s number in that Goldberg may kvetch about how the Greater Israel lobby is bad for everyone, including Israel, but in the end he’ll go along with it because, oh, it’s just too complicated to explain to you little pishers. Goldberg gets under Sully’s skin because he disagrees with Sully.
Hoosierpoli
Can we officially declare “anti-Semite” to be a totally meaningless word?
These knob-polishers are actually doing legitimate Jew-haters a favor by so trivializing anti-Semitism.
KXB
Somehow, when a waitress gets her orders wrong consistently, she gets fired. Yet, Goldberg has a record of failure going back to 2002, with Iraq WMD intelligence, and he keeps on working. He’s like the Harry Crane of DC-journalists – failing upwards.
AA+ Bonds
It’s never a bad time to point out that Jeffrey Goldberg is a crass propagandist for certain figures in the Israeli government
AA+ Bonds
@Hoosierpoli:
No, because we need it to describe conservatives
Samuel Knight
Pox on all houses!
Atlantic generally sucks now.
Sully has lied about Iraq, testosterone replacement, economics (Krugman), pubished racist garbage, Bell Curve. Easy to pontificate if you just make stuff up.
And Goldberg – he’s a loon.
eemom
Just glanced over at Goldberg’s blog again and was struck anew by what a disingenuous piece of shit this post is.
For example, the quote — ONE of the quotes –Cole takes out of context, i.e., Goldberg calling Sullivan “an embarrassingly rabid anti-Zionist” — is actually:
Scroll down to see another post where this “propagandist” “fanatic” “loon,” who “slimes people who make good-faith arguments about the political power of AIPAC,” excoriates the WH for not having Obama or Biden speak at the J Street conference — because, GOldberg says, they are AFRAID OF AIPAC.
Fucking wilfully ignorant morons. And you should be ashamed of yourself, Cole.
Spectre
@Jay:
Livni is an even bigger butcher than Netanyahu. Most of the worst war crimes perpetrated by Israel aren’t even carried out by Likud and the rest of the Israeli far right. It’s people like Livni that are the problem.
Jay
@Spectre:
I’m not denying that Livni is a gigantic hawk, I just think she’d have a better working relationship with Obama than Bibi does. Check out Ackerman for some background: http://bit.ly/GJUI56
EDITED
brantl
@eemom: Do you actually READ what you write, before you post it? Cole got it dead right, notwithstanding your supposed “earth-shattering” context.
You’d argue with a stop sign.
eemom
@brantl:
Yes, Cole got it exactly right BECAUSE YOU SAY SO.
The level of vacuous, fact-challenged idiocy on this thread just went up a notch. Thank you for your contribution.
AA+ Bonds
@eemom:
How exactly does this mitigate again
AA+ Bonds
Fuck Jeffrey Goldberg is really the message here and I can sure fucking get behind that
samara morgan
@brantl: i can read. i cant fucking type on the fucking New Ipad.
fuck off and DIAF.
again, the whole post is LEAVE GG ALONE for sully.
@eemom: sully, like Peter Beinart, is still a Zionist.
the two state solution is 21st century zionism. Greater Israel, or the One State solution is suicide for Our crazy exgirlfriend.