Athena, Goddess of Wisdom. Devi. The Buddha. Moses. Jesus. Mohammed. Guru Nanak. Mother Ann Lee. Andrew Sullivan. http://t.co/7PDXlGXuh2
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) February 2, 2015
The fanbois begged, they wept, they sent embarrassing word-pics pledging their undying love and devotion… but it was not enough. Andrew Sullivan is taking down the Dish, come Friday. Although, as always, his GBCW comes with a promotion-friendly caveat:
… And yes, the conversation will continue – just not in this form and not in this place. The Dish, after all, is a very new media invention. It’s less an institution than an organism – a living breathing creature that is more than the sum of its parts. It’s you and me and life and the Dish team all living and thinking and writing together in real time through the twists and eddies of history… And we’ve tended to it like a living organism, listening to its intimations, letting it take us where it wants us to go, always innovating but also retaining core elements that never change. Once you start dismantling bits of it, or removing parts of its DNA, or reconstituting it without me, you risk an unraveling. The Dish’s legacy deserves better.
As for you and us, we will stay in touch. We have 30,000 email addresses – and we’ll reach out to you as the team goes on to new projects and as I figure out my own future…
I had refrained, until now, from quoting Professor Krugman on “Floor Waxes, Dessert Toppings, and Blogging“:
I see from Ezra Klein that Andrew Sullivan says that he’s stopping blogging; Klein and others are offering various encomiums. You’ll pardon me if I don’t join in. You see, I remember Sullivan declaring that the “decadent left” was poised to become a fifth column in the war on terror — and of course I remember the campaign of character assassination he waged against yours truly for daring to criticize his then-beloved George W. Bush and his wars. If he ever apologized for any of that, I never heard about it…
… I think you’re missing a crucial part of the history of political blogging if you fail to acknowledge the importance, back in the early 2000s, of right-wing warbloggers — which is where Sullivan started. You hardly hear about most of these people now, but for a while cheering on the Rumsfeld doctrine and giving it to lily-livered liberals was a big part of what the blogosphere — certainly the part given any attention by mainstream news media — was about…
Krugman goes on to say smart things (and provide interesting links) concerning the way modern blogging involves the “tension between maintaining a conversational feel and producing pieces that can be read on their own… you can, with effort, maintain a blogging style that makes regular readers feel that they’re part of an ongoing conversation yet makes individual posts meaningful to people who aren’t reading everything you write. A blog can be a floor wax and a dessert topping, if you work at it…”
And that is why, even though I don’t pretend to understand his more advanced economic lectures, I would genuinely miss reading Paul Krugman’s blog.
***********
Apart from closing internet chapters, what’s on the agenda for the new day?
Villago Delenda Est
One of these things is not like the others.
One of these things just doesn’t belong.
Montanareddog
I had to search for the meaning of GBCW. My initial thought was that it stood for God-Bothering Conventional Wisdom; perhaps not entirely inappropriate.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
Moses isn’t worshipped as a god.
Tommy
I have been so busy with work I had not read this until very late last night. I’ve read more than a few words Andrew wrote, because well I am online. I don’t dislike the guy exactly but never saw the “hype” behind him. Did not find him that insightful nor funny. He was a frequent guest on Bill Maher’s HBO show where he was often a “train wreck.”
What got me about all of it was the ego that The Dish could not/would not go on without him. If Markos left Daily Kos. Josh left Talking Points Memo. Would it be a loss for each, of course. But each could and I am sure would go on without them.
The sheer ego of Andrew that The Dish is “him” I find both interesting and kind of sad at the same time. Just saying ….. now off to the Aeropress for more coffee!
Baud
@Tommy:
Hell, if Cole left Balloon Juice, we’d see a significant improvement.
(Just kidding, big guy.)
OzarkHillbilly
Well, we got about an inch of ice, sleet, and snow, not much, not even worth mentioning except that driving on the backroads of these hills and hollers, that is playing dice with the devil himself. Which blows the hell out of my plans for the day. Oh well, 10 degrees right now, gonna hit a high of 28, and by the wkend… 60s. February is always a little schizophrenic around here but if I’m not careful I’m gonna get whiplash.
Tree With Water
“You see, I remember Sullivan declaring that the “decadent left” was poised to become a fifth column in the war on terror”.
Oh, that asshole. Now I know who Sullivan is, because I do remember that slander being prominently broadcast.. again. It was the same birdbrain refrain once commonly heard from the “fight ’em over there or in the streets of San Francisco” crowd during the Vietnam War. I hold the type in utter contempt, and consider them enemies of humanity and the planet..
I don’t like the Dodgers, either.
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: Got almost the exact thing here just North of you. At least here it all came down in about 15 minutes. Walked past my front door yesterday early evening and nothing. Walk back a few minutes later and a “nice” layer of ice on everything. My AWD VW Passat could handle it and I don’t mind driving in these conditions, well outside all the other yahoos on the road which frankly scare the heck out of me. Happy to be in my home office working the rest of the day.
NickM
Yes, the “decadent left” quote is atrocious and well sums up what Sullivan was circa 2001. But almost alone among prominent neocons, Sullivan learned something from the war, and he apologized profusely for his part in beating the drums (his apology for other awful things , like promoting the Bell Curve, has admittedly still not happened. His site introduced me to Balloon Juice, Ta-Nehisi Coates and plenty others, and I will miss the aggregation of articles about everything from politics to sex to poetry. The site helped make me much more well rounded. I probably wouldn’t miss Sullivan much if he left it – but I will miss The Dish a lot.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Neither is Mohammed.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh, right. Well, none of them are worshipped as Andrew Sullivan. Except, of course, Andrew Sullivan.
Randy P
@Tommy: “L’etat, c’est moi”.
“Apres moi, le deluge”
OzarkHillbilly
I don’t get what the complaint is about Sullivan shutting down the Dish. What is so wrong about that? It is/was his baby, a thing he created nurtured, turned into a brand name, trademarked. He can do whatever he wants with it and he owes nobody an explanation or an apology.
As does John Cole with BJ or James Joyner with OTB or ad infinitim.
Randy P
@OzarkHillbilly: That paragraph quoted above is kind of self-contradictory though. The Dish is a living breathing organism, like a child (my analogy, not his to be fair). No it’s not, it’s just me and should be put to death when I leave.
EconWatcher
@NickM:
A commenter on this very blog once brilliantly summed up Sullivan as someone whose whole schtick is portraying himself in emotionally overwrought terms as a lonely, brave voice standing up to some misguided collosus. Thus, Sullivan the gay Catholic, who begs the denomination to reform and redefine itself. Sullivan, the conservative fighting against the militarism, greed, and anti-science attitudes within conservatism. Etc. He’s turned this act into a stable and lucrative career.
A normal person might conclude, hey, the Catholic Church may not be for me, or, maybe I’m a moderate, center-left Obama supporter and not really a conservative. But not our Andrew. He must bravely shake his fist against the gods (as long as it keeps paying to do so).
I could never find the original comment, which said it much better than I can, but to me it summed up Sullivan perfectly.
wilfred
Making them choose, eh? No dual loyalty there then.
EconWatcher
@Randy P:
Or Joseph Stalin, to his Soviet henchmen: “After I am gone, the capitalists will drown you like blind kittens.”
Mustang Bobby
@Randy P: I think what he’s really afraid of is that if he left without his operatic death aria, no one would notice, and if The Dish went on without him, it might just go on without him.
ETA: Take it from this old queen, nothing befits an old queen like a dramatic exit, sweeping boa and all.
OzarkHillbilly
@Randy P:Sorry Randy but hogswaller. That is so over the top I can’t even properly insult it. It is about as animated as this keyboard.
It.is.a.thing. Like a car. It doesn’t do a damn thing without a driver behind the wheel. And AS has been driving that car for years and if he wants to take it and park it in the garage instead of selling it to some kid who is going to wreck it in less than a week, that’s his right.
Montanareddog
@Mustang Bobby: I’m ready for my close-up Mr DeMille
raven
Who give a flying fuck?
Morzer
Niall Ferguson, Marty Peretz, Charles Murray, Andrew Sullivan.
That’s the list Sullivan belongs on.
OzarkHillbilly
@Randy P: My apologies. I think I gave a slight misinterpretation to your words. Just a little. Wee bit. tiny. Really. Oooopps.
Morzer
@Tommy:
I suspect that the prospect that frightens Sullivan most is that the Dish could go on without him.
Graveyards, indispensable men, fullness of with etc.
Elizabelle
Is Andrew literally “taking down” The Dish? Yes, there will be no new content.
But is he removing the site and its archives from teh intertubes? That’s a bit different.
Ben Cisco
@EconWatcher: Being a contrarian (especially AFTER the fact) puts ducats in pockets.
@NickM:
And never will. For all his ability to “learn” from his mistakes, his “profuse” apologies when it suits, he’ll NEVER cop to that one. HE has to feel superior to SOMEBODY, and there are enough “even the liberal” types who will give him a pass until the sun flames out.
The only thing that distresses me about him leaving is that there will be no shortage of assholes to take up the mantle.
Tommy
@Morzer: Well I guess I just roll a little differently. If I created something like The Dish, I totally left, and it went on without me I’d feel pretty good about myself. For me it is like kind of killing off your kids as you are about the kick the can because if you are no longer around why should they be. And yes I just compared a human child to a website.
Morzer
@Ben Cisco:
Sullivan often reminds of his own relentless portrayal of Hillary Clinton – the inability to really learn and grow, the repetition of the same mistakes and pathologies disguised with apologies and claims of a noble motivation, the same tendency to play it safe and court known demographics, the same rather predictable schtick, the same passive-aggressive tendencies towards those who challenge his “authority”, the same confusion of an elite point of view with the reality of the world as experienced by those who were less lucky.
Morzer
@Tommy:
I agree with you – but I don’t think Sullivan wants to contemplate a future in which the Dish outgrows him. Part of his schtick has always been ever so ‘umble Andy’s absolutely unique voice bravely standing with causes a thousand miles away (while avoiding some very awkward ones closer to home).
Randy P
@OzarkHillbilly: My words? Which words were those?
Oh, OK, I see your reaction to what I said.
Right. So if we’re going to use that analogy, then we shouldn’t use “it’s a living breathing independent organism, something new” IN THE VERY SAME PARAGRAPH, should we? So he’s saying it’s this wonderful grand new thing, bigger than its parts. And then a couple sentences later says nah, if he pulls out there’s nothing left there. He’s removed its DNA. It’s just a column after all.
I see Tommy at #27 makes the same point I was trying to make. This is like those assholes who decide to take out their whole family when they’ve decided life sucks too much, because after all the family shouldn’t go on without them. Or it’s actually not like a child or an independent organism, and just like very other personal column that anybody ever wrote before him.
However, I could point out that in print media, there is plenty of precedent for a column or a feature that went on after the person who started it and wrote it for decades died or retired. Nobody ever claimed those were “a very new media invention”. Yet somehow they survived.
I’m rambling. I guess I’m just saying that Sullivan’s grandiose goodbye makes no sense at all. But we knew that. His claim to have done something new and invented something bigger than himself is contradicted by reality and by his own words.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ben Cisco:
That’s funny, I always kind of felt he had to feel superior to everybody.
mai naem
I just read the blurb about David Axelrod’s new book where he says Obama was annoyed by Mittens’ concession call where he basically thought Obama won because he did so well getting blacks out to vote. Also too, Mittens was apparently surprised he lost(classic douchey Mittens reaction.) First, what if it was black turnout? Are the votes of blacks somehow less worthy than those of whites? How come the MSM never talk about the GOP getting the white vote out? And,secondly, Mittens is a moron. He lost the Asian, Arab and Jewish vote.
Morzer
@mai naem:
Latinos also too. And, for that matter, the Native American vote.
Keith G
@Mustang Bobby: Heh…We have seen many in our time, haven’t we.
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think he was occasionally willing to allow God equality of status. Occasionally.
Mustang Bobby
@Keith G: To quote Chris in The Ritz: “Screw you, honey. Boy, if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a queen without a sense of humor. You can die with your secret… miserable piss-elegant fairy.”
Ben Cisco
@Morzer: That’s him all right.
@OzarkHillbilly: That too.
Schlemazel
I remember Lil Andy from before there were blogs. The whore published a hit job on the Clinton Care Initiative that helped spike the healthcare reform they had proposed and helped had the house to the GOP in 94. It was only after, when it no longer mattered to the debate because that damage was done that he admitted he had not written the stuff, a lobbyist for the tobacco industry had done & Lil Andy really didn’t mean it and was kinda, sorta, almost sorry he had done it.
There is his intellectual depth, his honesty and his refreshing views in a nutshell. This has been his pattern, his M.O. and I hope he never comes back.
OzarkHillbilly
@Randy P:
These were the words that threw me. Again, I apologize.
As to everything else, everybody seems to think AS is little more than an overly self-important hack (he is) but that his blog is soooo…. Something or other, I really can’t figure it out, maybe Important, after all Andrew said it was, that his blog should go on.
As one who has not read the Dish in years, I sense a contradiction.
Ben Cisco
@mai naem:
This was a rhetorical question, right?
Because it’s a) assumed to be a lock and 2) they can NEVER admit that it wasn’t, hence the “it’s all Negroes, illegals, and illegal Negroes” schtick.
Schlemazel
Yes, yes they are. They are only worth 3/5s of a white vote if you are a “strict constructionist” in the mold of the modern GOP.
Keith G
@Mustang Bobby: You made me laugh way too loud. I think I woke my neighbor. (central city, old “rustic” apartment).
Back in the aughts, Her Highness typed an essay, “The End of Gay Culture”. It was not a sympathetic tip o’ the hat to a very challenging, yet wonder-filled (in my view) time, but was a hectoring lecture about shaping up and behaving responsibly – just like all those good straight citizens.
That’s our Sully…boot licker to the clique of the powerful.
Morzer
@Schlemazel:
“I was aware of the piece’s flaws but nonetheless was comfortable running it as a provocation to debate.”
That was Sullivan’s defense of McCaughey’s fraudulent tripe that fatally damaged Clinton’s healthcare plan and contributed to the misery, suffering and death of millions of Americans.
FarmerG
I too was a daily reader and subscriber to The Dish. I discovered in 2008 after Andrew had admitted his error in supporting the war. While he was wrong, at least he was willing to admit it.
If you held everyone’s lifetime beliefs against them you’d hate me too for as a young youth I was a pro-business Republican that voted for Reagan in 1984 in my first election and voted for his predecessor Daddy Bush before realizing my mistake.
Regardless of one’s personal view of Andrew, The Dish has been my go to site for years. The level of discussion, willingness to post opposing views and the inclusion of thoughtful reader replies via embedded e-mails vs. random comments made for an entertaining and intellectually stimulating experience. And as mentioned above, I have discovered many other worthwhile writers/bloggers/web sites via The Dish. Mining the Internet for worthy nuggets will be much harder now.
The Dish is basically three people with a few helpers. It is not a large established corporation. Take away one of the legs off a three legged stool and the stool is not longer able to stand.
I for one will miss The Dish, and Andrew.
Schlemazel
Colder than a well diggers ankle here this morning. It’s been a long week so far. I have had to take prednisone and the stuff seems to have the side effect of keeping me awake at night. Will be done with it in a tomorrow and may sleep all weekend if possible. I have been a zombie at work.
kindness
C’mon now. Sully isn’t going away. He might be closing the Dish but he still needs a paycheck. No, we’ll continue to hear from him in one way or another.
BruceFromOhio
Fixt.
The new day holds pretty the same as all new days in February at these coordinates, cold… and snow.
NotMax
Dame Edna has had what – 4 or 5 farewell tours?
Sully is still a piker.
The Dish ran away with a swoon.
Schlemazel
@Morzer:
Right, and this is the towering intellect of our time? It used to piss me off that our beloved blog host used to pimp that piece of shit here but made me glad when finally he was moved to the ‘mocked’ though I secretly believe some people still enjoy his “counter intuitive thought pieces”
Makes me wish there were a hell just for AS.
Mustang Bobby
@Keith G:
Yeah, I always knew he was a bottom.
Matt McIrvin
Even when Sullivan was notionally on the side of the angels, he was often obnoxious and weird: his conspiracy-theorizing about Sarah Palin’s pregnancy, for instance, was just embarrassing.
I will give him one great thing: he was amazingly ahead of the curve on same-sex marriage. Even if it did come out of the gay-rights version of Bill Cosby respectability politics. (But it does speak to the pattern of Sullivan being generally progressive when it personally benefited Sullivan.)
Ben Cisco
@NotMax:
I’m only angry b/c I didn’t think of it first.
Iowa Old Lady
@mai naem: Mitt’s surprise that he lost is still stunning to me.
Hunter
“The conversation will continue.”
I seem to remember that Sullivan disabled comments on his blog. Just sayin’.
Sherparick
It is interesting to compare what Jeet Heer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Paul Krugman say about Andrew Sullivan and what young, ambitious members of the Village junior varsity like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias say about (and work hard at forgetting large parts) of Mr. Sullivan. The first three figures have a security (Jeet Heer because he has a young billionaire behind him who apparently has come to hate the Village that the old TNR did so much to create) and Coates because their achievements and prestige allow them to say hard, critical things about Villagers without fear of being sent to the Siberia of outer Blogistan (where Atrios, Eichnide, Kos, Driftglass, and Bob Somerby for example reside, individuals with very different voices, but all of whom have never been shy about directly and personally critical by name of the leading Village lights, and who as result will never be seen on MSM (including MSNBC). Even Charlie Pierce, a career journalist over the last 35 years and whose blog at Esquire has me supporting that sexist rag, is pretty much invisible MSM with the exceptions of a occasional appearance on Chris Hayes or MHP, often related to a sports story (Charlie’s covers both the sport of politics and the politics of sports, so to speak).
Klein, Yglesias, et. al of course, by kissing Andrew Sullivan’s ass, are also kissing all his friends and admirers asses at the NY Times, WaPo, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox, MSBNC, NPR, and PBS. A good career move so to speak.
That this careerism encourages a very stupid group think in the Village is of course Bob Somerby’s running argument (Somerby wants us to resist our tribal instincts regarding our conservative brethren, because he believes it makes us stupid. In doing this, he often rubs people (including me) the wrong way, but nevertheless I much acknowledge that the occasional cold slap in the face does one good. This week he is fisking Nick Kristoff (and Pew Research) and it should be checked out. http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2015/02/crucifying-kristof-kristof-doesnt-seem.html
Baud
But our comment section has picked up the slack!
Gene108
I used to be a morning person, from a long line of morning people. I had a major depressive episode twelve years ago and I am no longer a morning person – there’s no time of the day I prefer – but I really want go back to being a morning person.
I am seeing a personal trainer, with morning start times (7:00 am, ideally, which gives me time to get back and get ready for work), but I overslept this week. I have been to the others, but I feel pathetic for oversleeping; I never used to have this problem.
Anybody know how to reset their internal clocks?
I really want to reset mine.
Morzer
Something that I find terrifying:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/05/anti-vaxxers-are-as-american-as-apple-pie.html
We are so far past the herd immunity level if the anti-vaxxers get their way that the only question is which appalling disease will get free first and do most harm.
Baud
Having never read AS, I have yet to understand the interest in him. But I haven’t been able to get into most people that we talk about, so it’s probably just me.
satby
I for one will not miss Sullivan’s misogyny oozing off every word he writes about women’s issues. Dude has serious problems seeing women as fellow human beings. Unless it’s a woman named Thatcher.
Morzer
@Baud:
Sullivan writes monologue as conversation. No doubt that is the approved British Tory spelling.
Morzer
@satby:
It’s emerged this week that Thatcher protected a Tory pedophile who was one of her inner circle.
Somehow I doubt we’d have heard much about that from Sullivan.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gene108: Try insomnia, that always had me up at the crack of dawn! ;-)
mikefromArlington
I don’t get the anti-Sullivan stuff I guess. I’ll admit I wasn’t reading blogs in the early 2000’s though so my liberal leanings were never under assault so that might explain it.
I do appreciate his perspective on events as I do this blogs’ as well. I think my daily blog roll goes BJ, Dish, then a mix of Raw Story, AlterNet, Bloomberg and a few others. That’s about it.
Gene108
@OzarkHillbilly:
I have had insomnia issues for the entirety of this century. My problem with insomnia is around 4;00 am, I tend nod off for short stretches, leading me to be sleeping, when I should have been up.
It is like this, I am up at six but tell myself, I will just stay in bed for 15 more minutes and the next thing I know an hour has gone by and I have overslept.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gene108: Your’s is the exact opposite of mine. After a lifetime of getting up at 3 or 4 AM my bedtime is between 8 and 9 pm, which is great when I actually sleep till then. But some weeks have me up at midnight and there is no going back to sleep till the next 8 or 9 PM.
raven
@Gene108: I wake up at 4, pee and the big dog steals my spot so I go to the couch.
Elizabelle
I get that Andrew Sullivan is an excitable boy and has been grievously (and influentially wrong) about The Bell Curve, Hillarycare, warmongering about Iraq (and duplicitous leftists, who were right about that one), and is kinda blind about women. He’s foisted Megan McArdle and other peabrains on us way too many times, and given them cover.
That said, he’s human, he’s changed his views — in public, and recanted — on several issues (maybe not enough for some here); he’s done some inspired stiletto-wielding over the worst excesses propounded by his beloved conservatives (actually reactionary radicals).
I never subscribed to his blog when it enacted the paywall, but he’s put up some good stuff too. I don’t want to be a mean girl on this.
He’s a tough case. His existence gives cover to people who don’t want to look further (corporate owned MSM, for whom he’s a darling), but he himself is approachable and can come around.
I think we’re harder on those who are closer to our views than those who are at a 180. I get that a lot of Andrew’s stuff does read as parody, but he’s capable of real insight and good writing on occasion too.
debbie
@Morzer:
Americans like to be afraid, it seems. Don’t forget the run on duct tape and plastic tarps after the minuscule threat of anthrax. Why is that?
Elizabelle
As usual, Ta Nehisi Coates’ take is elegant, and a velvet slap at someone who has not repudiated his Bell Curve (among other issues) nonsense: Andrew Sullivan and the Importance of Self-Criticism
It’s a good read, as usual.
Elizabelle
@FarmerG: Nice post. I hope Andrew leaves the existing Dish content online, because it’s fun to go back and check stuff. He’s got some good links. It’s a time capsule.
Plus, I don’t know when I would have found Balloon Juice, my favorite blog, without Sullivan’s numerous links to John Cole rants.
That’s worth some appreciation and a little less derision.
Mayur
@Matt McIrvin: that’s not “progressive” as I understand it. Rooting for societal action only if and when it directly benefits you and yours is actually pretty textbook conservative.
Morzer
@debbie:
I think it’s connected to the media’s endless willingness to serve up the most alarming stories they can find so as to keep the public’s attention/clicks/eyeballs/cash. You see the same effect with the ammosexuals who stock up on fodder for their metal death-penises every time Fox informs them that a massed phalanx of chupacabras trained by Al Qaeda are going to take their guns away and impose Sharia law in deepest Michigan.
Morzer
@Mayur:
“I shall have gotten mine and you shall have the freedom to fuck off and die.”
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Matt McIrvin: This is close to how I feel about him.
When the choices for daily news aggregation sites was Drudge vs. The Daily Dish, the choice was easy, and it had a useful place. And his heart was in the right place during the Iranian “revolution”.
I haven’t been a regular reader in years. He was monomaniacal about Palin and her kids. It was a weird obsession. I stopped going there around that time.
And his thinking is really, really messed up when it comes to his professed politics and his personal and religious life…
It never really was a “conversation” at the Dish though. James Fallows occasionally posts reader comments too, but there’s no real “conversation” to speak of. If Andrew wanted real conversation, he should have had a way for readers to post comments (with moderators – but that costs money).
The cynic in me thinks that Andrew wasn’t making enough money for all the stress and aggravation. If he were taking in $500k a month in subscriptions, I doubt he’d be going away (he’d hire more assistant bloggers). It is a GBCW, a shout out for more attention before he heads to Vox or whereever the “important” bloggers go these days…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
raven
I found this blog trough people who were at Firedog Lake. Hamsher and “Sully” can drop fucking dead.
Elizabelle
@Morzer:
The NYTimes has a good article up today about Mississippi’s batting down anti-vaxxers’ attempts to carve out exemptions. Missp and West Virginia, by god, are the two states with the most stringent vaccination requirements.
So: is Mississippi seeing the side effects the anti-vaxxers claim? The article never goes there. It’s a missed opportunity. Missp is a great test case.
Has anybody seen any good reporting on the prevalence of side effects in a state that allows very few vaccine opt outs?
PS: I am seeing anti vaxxers claim we’d all be better off exposed to “wild strains” of measles. Unless we’re adults. It’s good for kids, they’re writing. What is up with that?
NYTimes:
Some anti-vaxx nurse was roaming the capitol building’s halls in a white coat, talking of freedom, liberty and parents’ rights.
Morzer
@raven:
“blog trough people” really should be a rotating tag. It’s as good as vitriolic jackals any day of the week.
Baud
@raven:
Similar story here, except GOS.
Morzer
@Elizabelle:
IIRC thimerosal (alleged autism cause) hasn’t been used since 2001, except in some flu vaccines. Guess what – no change in the rate of autism. Ought to be a pretty darn good argument for sanity right there.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Gene108: Internal clocks are weird. Maybe you need one of those “daylight simulators” or something…?
What seems to work best for me is trying to always get up at the same time. No matter what. Then subtracting 6-7-8 hours (or whatever you seem to need on avearge) and try to go to bed at that time. You won’t always hit it, of course, but try. The most important thing is to get up at the regular time (for me anyway). After a few weeks, you start feeling the bed calling at a regular time, too.
But people are different. Finding what works is a challenge.
Maybe you need second sleep rather than trying to sleep 8 hours straight? If it works, go for it!
HTH. Good luck.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
@Morzer: Indeed. Which may be why we’re hearing about “wild measles are cool beans!” and “asthma!!”
I wish the NYTimes and some other pubs would review what side effects are occurring in states with high vaccination rates.
Don’t leave it to these empowered, sometimes “prayerful” parents.
Morzer
@Elizabelle:
I really do fear that we are creating ideal conditions for some particularly nasty pandemics to emerge, quite possibly sequentially. We are already seeing the reemergence of diseases that we thought had been effectively beaten. We have an increasing population of un-vaccinated kids. We have misinformation all over the nation via the internet. We have a significant number of ignorantly politicized/religionized doctors and nurses, not to mention cranks, quacks and frauds. I think it’s only a question of when,not if, at this point.
raven
@Morzer: My buddy in LA is a big time Kabbalah and he is posting shit from “The Peoples Chemist”
Chemist Says “Media Left Out Horrifying Facts about Measles Shot”
Mr. Longform
Sullivan lost me right after 9-11 when he started drooling every time GWB said or did something. The whole “thank God Al Gore isn’t president at this crucial time” attitude made me sick. I of course didn’t know any of the details yet about ignored intelligence memos and the deep level of incompetence combined with pro-torture mindset, but I felt pretty sure that if there was a crucial ball in the air, Al Gore would have been a lot less likely to drop it than Bush.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: To be honest, I really don’t care. I find them quite tiresome and easily ignored.
Morzer
@raven:
Interesting way to describe parents who want to protect the health of their children by making sure that the kids aren’t blessed with a free dose of Johnny Anti-Vaccine’s various diseases.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
I agree they are tiresome and can be ignored now. During 2009-10, to their credit, they and their ilk dominated the conversation on the left, to everyone’s detriment, IMHO.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Yea so let’s have endless posts and conversations about “sully”.
Morzer
@raven:
The “People’s Chemist” manages to collect a remarkable number of logical fallacies in one place. I note that he’s peddling a book on “Over-The-Counter Natural Cures”. Nothing like a little corn starch and colored water to counteract measles or whooping cough.
raven
@Morzer: I know, it stuns me that my friend could buy this shit.
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: I liked him too for a long time. Haven’t read him regularly since his overreaction to Obama’s first debate performance against Romney but really appreciated that he supported Obama strongly in 2008 and 2012 while identifying as a staunch conservative.
I could never understand how he supported President Obama and yet believes that Blacks may be genetically inferior to Whites. Plus, I never agreed with his libertarian views in regards to gay rights.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Heh. Too true too true.
Elizabelle
@Morzer: I notice that TPChemist and another anti-vaxx doctor put up studies from 1985 and 1991 respectively. Maybe it’s the same outbreak.
It’s 2015. Don’t you think medicine and vaccines have improved in the intervening years?
I really want to see an incidence report from Mississippi and West Virginia, although those could be problematic, too, since neither state has a great medical safety net for all. You could have unrelated health problems attributed to high vaccine use, the false logic problem.
Morzer
@raven:
I’ve never taken the various super-herb advocates seriously – and it turns out that most of what’s sold as being magical mind-enhancing herbal cures is basically pure placebo. Buy “gingko biloba” and you get crushed radish instead!
I’ve concluded over the course of a longish, vaccinated life that there is no way around the need to put in the hours and the hard work if you want to actually master a skill or learn something to last. I’ve also saved a small fortune by avoiding magical herbs.
It’s funny how luck seems to favor the realistic and fact-based approach.
Birthmarker
I doubt that 10% of my social/peer group know who the man is. I barely do.
Honest question–could his whole move to a subscription model have been part of some kind of noncompete clause with the previous employer? And now that’s been fulfilled? Sorry if this has been addressed- don’t have time to read previous comments right now.
Morzer
@Elizabelle:
I am also fairly skeptical that a Masters in organic chemistry (from where?) qualifies the People’s Chemist to pronounce on vaccines and the medical research on their safety.
Elizabelle
@raven: Hello there.
I’d rather talk about Sully, since his blog is ending tomorrow, than use this space to discuss Jeb! Bush or any of the piteous Republican contenders. Like him or not, Andrew’s been a pioneer of sorts.
Not following any horse race coverage on 2016. I am reassured that President Obama’s at the helm, and the idea of our country electing a Republican to the White House next year terrifies me. It would skew the Supreme Court for the rest of our lifetimes. We could end up in another war, so defense contractors and the military industrial complex can get their grift on.
Morzer
@Birthmarker:
I think it’s more likely that the previous employer refused to pay Sullivan what he considered to be his due and so Sullivan went Galt only to discover that the free market isn’t quite as friendly to those without Koch-sponsored bootstraps as he had previously supposed.
Elizabelle
@Patricia Kayden: Oh yeah. Sullivan has sent me fleeing, for months at a time. And his site takes too damn long to load. I’ve probably read 1% of its content since I found Balloon Juice.
Morzer
@Elizabelle:
I am fairly hopeful on the 2016 front. I think the Democrats have a solid structural advantage in the Electoral College (which is why the GOP are trying various schemes at the state level to dilute the votes you get for winning states like Pennsylvania/Michigan etc). Unless HRC suddenly decides not to run or something egregiously awful is revealed about her during the race (both, I think, are unlikely), I think she’ll beat any of the GOP candidates handily.
I would love to see Michelle Obama enter politics, but I think she’s rather too sane and has seen enough of the crazy to last her a lifetime. I guess I am going to have to wait for Sasha or Malia to lead the Obama Restoration.
jayboat
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Bullseye.
I read AS regularly for years, and that is how I found this place.
I stopped reading him a few years ago, but thanks to the commentariat here it was possible to keep an eye on andy’s world. (close as need be, anyway…)
I think he underestimated the energy it would pull from his life to run his own operation, especially after subscriptions fell short of expectations. Nothing can weigh on your mojo like money problems and although he never said it outright to my thinking, he always gave me the impression of being motivated by money. But, that’s just me.
I won’t really miss him-
this here BJ ensemble is plenty of attitude, insight and intelligence for moi.
And snark. Always with the snark.
debbie
Glenn Beck’s decided that the measles outbreak is a hoax, that the CDC and Obama are hiding evidence that there’s actually a link between the vaccine and autism in “certain races,” and that the hype is a cover-up for failed immigration policies.
jayboat
And Steve.
rikyrah
OT: Nothing about the FCC and Net Neutrality?
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Good morning. You staying warm?
FCC and net neutrality: that would be a great new thread.
SRW1
@mai naem:
Lemme guess. You’re deficient somewhere in the white, male, christian department and that’s why you have a hard time fathoming what it means to get deprived of the right to have things run according to your whims and preferences.
You know, you put food on the family and then they think they got a say in what TV program to watch.
Morzer
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/new-york-attorney-general-targets-supplements-at-major-retailers/
…
Fair Economist
Sully isn’t being a diva taking the Dish down. He says he’s discussed it with the two other editors and they think it can’t go on either. “Successful” as it is, it’s only squeaking by – it’s not quite met Sully’s original enrollment goal and he wasn’t paying himself a salary the first year. Yes, I know Sully could be lying but he can’t shush up the other two editors so I doubt it.
I didn’t start reading Sully until after he came to the light on the Iraq War. I know he’s done some awful things in the past but while sometimes he’s annoying or clueless I can’t think of anything vile he’s done since I started reading him. If you view him as a “reasonable conservative” which is basically what he is, endorsement of Obama notwithstanding, he’s pretty decent. It has a “bloggy” touch that the other big aggregator’s don’t, and a very broad reach to its aggregation. I will miss it, for all its faults.
Also, he really was an important part of getting equal marriage going, so I owe him a personal debt for that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Morzer: The New York AG should butt out and let The Free Market ™ sort that out.
Just Some Fuckhead
Who is Tyler Cowen?
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly:
I am sure Joni Ernst will stop Evil Libruls from stealing all our gingko bilobas.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Fair Economist: I’m going to miss the Hayek, Oakeshotte and Strauss cartoon series. Those jokers made me laugh.
Morzer
@Just Some Fuckhead:
He’s a mostly glibertarian economist who writes a pretty poor prose style and is one half of the Marginal Revolution blog.
Aaron
I blame sullivan for complicity in killing hillary-care back in the day. Nearly a million americans dead thanks to this a–hole!
Sometimes I wish there was a hell. So people like this can get the punishment what they deserve in the afterlife, since they clearly are not getting it this life.
OzarkHillbilly
For today’s YHGTBFKM file (youhavegottobefwckingkiddingme):
And several pastors and theologians told Istvan that there was no reason that a computer could not be saved by Jesus.
Thank dog for Rawstory. Without them I might have missed this.
Roger McCarthy
I am the only one who mentally edited Andrew’s ‘organism’ to Onanism?
SRW1
@Elizabelle:
That argument makes no sense whatsoever to me. Would you have a link?
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly:
The theological implications of formatting one’s hard drive might be rather interesting.
Also, do good computers go to the Cloud when they die?
OzarkHillbilly
@Morzer:
That is too deep a thought for me this early in the morning.
PIGL
@Mustang Bobby: i luves you, Mustang Bobby.
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly:
I am beginning to wonder whether it’s a sin if a Randroid dreams of electronic sheep.
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist:
There’s the “taking the Dish down” language again, and I am confused:
obviously, he and his colleagues are going to stop posting.
Does that mean the blogsite itself will remain, so we can access its archives?
“Taking an advertisement down” means it’s off the air.
What is “taking a blog down?” Is it destruction/taking it offline, or is it “retiring it”, in which case no new posts and maybe the site is still there?
Calouste
A critical Tory? In the Tory party, criticism of the party leadership comes pretty much exclusively from the people to the right of said leadership.
Elizabelle
@SRW1: Yes. Hunting it down for you now.
Morzer
@Elizabelle:
I think we need Bill Frist to perform a diagnosis via webcam and Jeb Bush to intervene to force Sully to keep Dish on life-support.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Sullivan is Ariana without the Greek accent. He’s always gone to where the money is.
mai naem mobile
@Aaron: he kind of got his dose of karma when he be came hiv+ and was dependent on employer healthcare and couldn’t officially become a US citizen because of the hiv status and being gay. so he couldn’t do it through marriage.
Librarian
I am also going to miss the Dish. I am distinguishing between the Dish and Sullivan; I was hoping that the blog would continue after he left. I read it mostly because of the cultural stuff; it had coverage of literature and academia that I could not find elsewhere. If the Dish had continued without him, I would have been perfectly satisfied.
Tenar Darell
@Gene108: I hope you’re still checking the thread.
1. Verify that there isn’t an underlying cause with your doc, including a side effect of possible mess you’re taking. (Trying to reset your clock is hard enough).
2. No backlit screens late.
3. Everyone needs a minimum of 7 hours a night. (Sleep researchers showed any less glucose and hormones etc. go haywire. They say sleep deprivation causes real physical damage).
3. Install a sleep app on your phone & track your sleep for a week. (Can be anything. You’re looking for your current pattern as baseline. I’ve used Sleep Cycle and Dream:ON).
4. Except for 20-30 minute naps where no REM sleep, sleep seems to go in 1.5 hour cycle. (Probably why you oversleep when you’re not meaning to). So, usually, when you go to bed you want to add 7.5 hours to the alarm.
5. Start going to bed 15-30 minutes earlier every night, shifting your wake time accordingly.
This usually works for me. But I tend to cheat on the screens. Couple of nights watching Letterman or Comedy Central or following a thread here and I start shifting my clock back. Hope this helps.
OzarkHillbilly
@Morzer: HA!
Ohio Mom
@EconWatcher: That was surprisingly prescient. I didn’t know Stalin had that kind of foresight in him. It might have taken more time than he thought it would, but Russia really does suffer from the excesses of capitalism.
Amir Khalid
@Librarian:
There’s a fair bit of The Dish that isn’t done by Andrew Sullivan and so lacks the things that a lot of us despise about it. That part should be able to survive without him. I wonder how thoroughly Sully and his co-owners at The Dish investigated that possibility. If they started with the premise that Sully=Dish, they were never going to conclude that it could continue once de-Sullied, as it were. The sense I got is that the months of discussion he talked about didn’t really include the staff.
Morzer
@Amir Khalid:
The Unsullied are still awaiting their Daenerys Targaryen.
Ohio Mom
@Gene108: I don’t know how to reset an internal clock but when you find out, please let the rest of us know. My kid is chronically late for High School and I’d like to solve that problem.
I see there are apps — you tuck your phone in with you in bed. By tracking how much you move, the app guesses what part of the sleep cycle you are in. You tell it you want to wake up, say at 7, and it picks a time close to 7 when you are in a less-deep part of your sleep cycle. Did that make sense? I can’t try it out on my kid because he’d just take the phone and play with it all night.
Morzer
@Ohio Mom:
I think he could have used the last decades of Tsarist Russia as a template for that future. There was an awful lot of brutality and judicial murder inflicted by government forces and the judiciary in defense of an increasingly capitalist and flagrantly corrupt system.
Chris
Yep. Off the top of my head, I remember Bill Whittle, Steven Den Beste, Charles Johnson and James Lileks from that era. Reading this blogs at a time when I was still discovering politics… had a fairly big effect in convincing me that I wanted nothing to do with the gaggle of psychopaths that are the right wing base.
Tenar Darell
@Tenar Darell:
Mess = Meds!
Autocorrect /shakes fist
Ohio Mom
@Ohio Mom: I see Tenar Darell at 130 beat me to suggesting the phone app. It’s a good list, it requires that you be motivated, and you certainly are (not like my 17 yo, sigh).
grandpa john
people like Sully should have the following hanging on the wall where they can see it every day
different-church-lady
@Baud:
Wait.. Cole is still with Balloon Juice?
Elizabelle
@SRW1:
Here’s one to unpack: VaxTruth from January: Measles is GOOD for YOU?
measles and other childhood diseases, caught in childhood, strengthen your immune system; a kid with cancer in Uganda got measles and goodbye cancer, and supposition that childhood vaccines are correlated with a rise in childhood cancer. Busy post. Didn’t check out credentials of “Marcella”, the author.
Makes much hay of recent finding that one young woman who’d had two courses of MMR vaccine infected others in NYC. One occurrence, one study (albeit by the American Academy of Science, a respected organization. Will link that next).
Includes to a 1959 British medical journal article.
Here’s another I particularly love: a physician linking to NIH abstracts on measles studies to discuss how ineffective vaccines are. In both abstracts, the conclusion is “advise vaccinating, it’s important.” Not what this doctor concludes. Undergrad from Johns Hopkins; MD from Univ of San Francisco. Dr. Rowen: Measles Spread by those Vaccinated
Stella B.
@Gene108: force yourself out of bed as soon as you can and go outdoors without sunglasses. Spend some time outside — 15-30 minutes. Bundle up and sit there, walk around, whatever, just get yourself outside. That will trigger evening melatonin production to make you sleep. Do not prop your fatigued self up with caffeine during the day. You’re probably a slow caffeine metaboliser. Sunshine and no caffeine are the place to start for insomnia. Even if it’s overcast, there is enough sun out there.
canuckistani
So will there be refunds for suckers – pardon me, subscribers – who didn’t get full value for their money?
muddy
@Birthmarker:
Well, he apparently got 30,000 people to pay him to take their contact info for later, that was a pretty sweet scam.
Stella B.
@Morzer: Thimerosol was eliminated from Danish vaccines a decade before the US. Guess what? No decrease in autism there, either!
schrodinger's cat
@canuckistani: Would you like the refund in bitcoins or Tunchcoins?
Elizabelle
@SRW1:
Here’s the AAAS article the anti-vaxxers are making hay of. April 2014 article about a 2011 NYC case.
Measles outbreak traced to fully-vaccinated patient for the first time.
Young woman who’d been fully vaccinated infected four others, two of whom had also been vaccinated. Because she was thought to be not contagious
Raises the very good question of how long measles vaccinations actually last. Its final paragraph:
Sifu Snafu
@Elizabelle: I get that Andrew Sullivan is an excitable boy and has been grievously (and influentially wrong) about The Bell Curve, Hillarycare, warmongering about Iraq (and duplicitous leftists, who were right about that one), and is kinda blind about women. He’s foisted Megan McArdle and other peabrains on us way too many times, and given them cover.
Seriously, any ONE of those things is pretty terrible, I’m not clear on why someone that managed to be wrong on ALL of them should be given a pass. I understand that people can change their views over time and that we should be open to giving people a fair chance when they do (if not, we wouldn’t be talking on John Cole’s blog), but even Sullivan’s acts of contrition are often questionable. He didn’t really apologize for the “fifth column” nonsense until late in 2010, before that having only issued two slimy non-pologies to clarify that of course, those of us in the blue states that supported the war would be free from his charges of treason…how generous of him. And has he ever really capitulated on the Bell Curve shit? Even if I was to grant that he often does come around to a sane position on most things eventually, I have no desire personally to wait around for that to happen every time he’s obviously, glaringly wrong on something.
Sully can write well (when not wallowing in his “Oakeshottian” piffle), can be genuinely engaging and I understand why many people enjoy him. For those folks, and the folks that found the Dish outside of Sullivan to be an enjoyable and useful site, I do feel bad that they’re losing a daily read. That said, I don’t think that the reasons that those of us that don’t like Sully are particularly unreasonable.
Sifu Snafu
@Morzer: Shit, I knew someone was going to beat me to the Unsullied gag.
Stella B.
People born between 1957 and 1967 were vaccinated with killed vaccine rather than the live attenuated vaccine now used. People in that age group tend to have waning immunity and should have one or two boosters according to the CDC. People born before 1957 probably had the measles. I sent the spouse to the Minute Clinic this week to get himself an MMR vaccine. He needs a second one since he never had the mumps vaccine or the mumps. I was required to get an MMR booster to go to medical school because of my birthdate.
SRW1
@Elizabelle:
Thanks a lot. I had a look at ThePeoplesChemist raven has mentioned. Most of what I saw was in line with what one often sees on such sides, ie anecdotes taken as data
What was interesting though was the reference to a (court) trial in which two Merck chemists apparently testified that the company had falsified efficiency data for their vaccine. That a) wouldn’t surprise me, and b) is interesting in the context of reports of people that have been vaccinated catching measles in recent outbreaks.
As far as the links you provided go, the first one (Are measles good for you?) appears to confuse the fact that the zero patient of the 2011 outbreak in NY was fully vaccinated with the conclusion of the measle vaccination itself having been the reason for the outbreak. There is no more info than that, but unless there was a very close proximity timewise between the last vaccination of that person and the outbreak that kind of a connection is wholly unsupported. The outbreak the much more likely explanation is that the vaccination of that zero patient had received was simply ineffective.
The stuff about the question of whether the as yet unknown patient zero for the outbreak at Disneyland was a foreigner or not is essentially irrelevant. Measles don’t care for nationality, their modus vivendi is purely opportunistic and if you don’t want your kids to be an opportunity you could hide them in the cellar to not encounter any strangers or you could have them vaccinated.
The connection between measles and cancer is interesting, but so far only in an anecdotal way. I very much doubt that given the current level of information any responsible physician would inocculate a cancer patient with measles. Given the fact that chemotherapy is essentially nothing other than a very crudely targeted approach against the most rapidly proliferating cells in the body of a cancer patient, I don’t find it impossible to imagine that viral infections might, on occasion, produce a similar phenomenon. If so, that is an interesting observation to follow up on with more research. But at this point certainly not with a dose of live measles.
As to the second link: yep vaccines work via antibodies and the memory effect of your immune system. Which is not the same as having survived the full blown disease. But anybody who says let’s have an intentional infection and then fight it with lots of oxygen and vitamine A is a crank in my book.
different-church-lady
@Elizabelle:
You said “unpack”. I think you meant to say, “have the bomb squad detonate”.
Next up: “How structural failure makes buildings stronger!”
burnspbesq
Jeet Heer is an ignorant poopy-head.
Elizabelle
@Sifu Snafu: Cannot argue with one word of your post, and stealing the “non-pology” business. Yup.
Elizabelle
@SRW1: we shall keep tabs on the anti-vaxxers.
I find them more interesting and possibly less dangerous than the GOP clown car calvacade. Anti-vaxxers before Jeb!
Kazanir
I understand the Sully hate, but Krugman’s post is just dumb, and it is dumb because it is so obviously incorrect. Sullivan *did* apologize for his warblogging — profusely, repeatedly, and without reservation. He has many other shitty opinions that he’s never apologized for, but Krugman’s post should read like crazy talk to anyone who is actually familiar with Sullivan’s works in the past 10 years.
Samuel Knight
Kazanir I woudn’t really characterize Sully’s apology as without reservation.
Krugman was right on noting that Sully did start his blogging as a mindless war cheerleader who pretty savagely attacked anyone who pushed back.
My great question is how is it that BS artists like Sully, Ferguson, Alan Simpson and others get treated so seriously for so long. It is hard to really name any subject that Sullivan has written about that he has offered any unique insight.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Morzer: I’m pretty sure that if they dream of such things, it’s of RealDolls.
brantl
@OzarkHillbilly: Sure, but then, don’t pretend it’s some great confluence of minds, if it’s just your own egoistical, egotistical self-blowjob,
The Pale Scot
@Gene108:
The hard reset is to just stay up and cycle forward until your ready to go to sleep 8pm.
RSA
@Samuel Knight:
Sullivan’s fifth-column follow-ons still strike me as non-apologies, even though he calls them apologies.
Jamey
@Morzer: So you’re saying that The Dish may well be a revenge best served cold? Interesting!!
brantl
@Morzer: TBogg had the right answer for Sullivan, though I can’t remember whether he used it on Sully: “Eat a bag of salted dicks.”, never more appropriate than for Sullied.
brantl
@FarmerG: You wouldn’t know real stimulus if it bit you in the ass. Sully’s a customer on a dude ranch, who thinks he’s a cowboy.
Kerry Reid
This is still Andrew Sullivan, the Utter and Complete Waste of His Mother’s Birth Pangs who published “The Bell Curve,” right? That should’ve taken him out of contention for “public intellectual” forever.
(I accidentally typed “Bell Jar” first, probably because some of Andrew’s lookit-me-leaving-the-blogosphere dramatics and flounces reminded me of that, though Plath was at least entertaining to read. Seriously. That is a funny book.)
Birthmarker
@muddy: I can see negotiating a noncompete that did allow me to self employ. Just speculating, but if he pops up as someone’s employee soon, I would wonder.
Kerry Reid
@EconWatcher: I didn’t see the original comment, but I love this distillation of Sullivan. He also strikes me as someone who will take the contrarian stance because it’s “good to get the conversation going.” Well, if the conversation is based on something as inherently and patently shitty as The Bell Curve, no — that isn’t valuable. And you don’t get to pat yourself on the back for being “brave” in publishing such damaging nonsense.
Birthmarker
@Stella B.: Very interesting. I am in the group who had the measles, which we called the red measles, to differentiate them from the 3 day measles. I had the 3 day measles as an adult.
I don’t remember the red measles being that bad.
Kerry Reid
And honestly, the most unforgivable thing about Sully to me is that he actually made me feel a bit sorry for Sarah Palin. For a gay man, he sure spent a lot of time with his head up her cooch.
Kerry Reid
@Sifu Snafu: I cosign this. Many people have suffered far worse than “derision” as a result of the worldviews and politics endorsed for too long by Sully. He brought it on himself and he’s barely apologized for being so wrong for so long. Of course, privilege tends to bring that attitude out in a person.