This man has been nothing but a net drain on the United States; economically, socially, politically. His efforts and contributions have been entirely negative.
He's the ultimate poster child for anti-immigration. https://t.co/Fx9hjPzXeQ
— Peter Wolf (@peterawolf) May 17, 2021
The NYTimes has historically found refugees distasteful — so needy! Sullivan can only agree with them; if just any hard-working not-white person is allowed to walk in, how will it affect the status of the expensively-educated failsons who pay Andrew Sullivan our national IQ scores?
The Biden wave. The border is effectively all but open for anyone anywhere in the world. https://t.co/rnuGAHUyuL
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) May 17, 2021
This is a feature not a bug
— OC and Stiggs (@_Me_Three) May 17, 2021
Oh noes, where will we find room for all these new immigrants after… (checking notes)… Republicans let 640,000 Americans die because they didn't think Covid was real.
— Jay Louis (@JayLouis) May 17, 2021
mrmoshpotato
Andy can piss off back to England any time he wants.
(Apologies to Tony Jay and Sloane Ranger if he actually does.)
ETA – great post title. Short, to the point, and yes.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
The Sully types bitch and moan about a labor shortage and then want to keep out a labor force out.
Mary G
I have him blocked but people keep tweeting screengrabs of his BS. and he is in full Chicken Little mode. Same as 2003, when liberals were fifth columnist traitors for opposing Bush II’s adventures in Iraq.
But the gall of an immigrant who had to have special treatment to get a green card criticizing new immigrants is NIMBYism at its finest.
frosty
I’m glad he’s faded back into the woodwork. Haven’t read him in ages … probably about the time I found Balloon Juice.
Berliner2
Sullivan is a self-hating gay Irish catholic who made a career out of sucking up to his posh Oxford pals like Boris Johnson and David Cameron, emulating their late-British Empire racist world view and pushing it on America.
Steeplejack
@frosty:
I think Sullivan’s blog was what led me here in the run-up to the 2008 election. Weird. I did like his “View from your window” feature.
Fake Irishman
@Steeplejack: my sister did too. I think her picture was actually on the back cover of a book he published. She was pretty psyched about it. I suspect she’s moved on from him tho.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Fake Irishman:
Cool! I think we’ve all moved on.
Lacuna Synecdoche
Andrew Sullivan via Anne Laurie @ Top:
Just a reminder that, with the immigration policies Sullivan advocates, the Trump administration would have been more than happy to use a pre-citizenship Sullivan’s HIV+ status and sexual preference/identity against him to keep him from entering the country, or to kick him out of the country, or to prevent him from becoming a citizen here.
Sullivan should be careful about what he wishes for, because another reactionary right-wing conservative administration just might give it to him, good and hard.
@Mary G:
Seconded.
Amir Khalid
Now that Sully is no longer in the premier league of Internet punditry, I am usually successful at keeping his Toryism, his silliness, and his irrational worship of Margaret Thatcher out of sight and out of mind. At least until someone at Balloon Juice — you know who you are — decides to bring him up for the heck of it. My serenity is now perturbed, and my brow slightly furrowed.
montanareddog
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t know – “Shut Up, Andrew Sullivan” is pretty much primus inter pares of clickbait titles at BJ. I couldn’t wait to click.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Late night (relatively speaking) crowd does get a higher proportion of the dregs poured into our mugs by the front page than does any other time slot.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Have a good Eid this year?
Mary G
He has a substack Friday column and a podcast now. I loved the View From Your window contest and am still on his list. I delete his emails without opening. He’s developing the hardening of the arteries or whatever that messes up the brain. Can’t imagine that there are enough subscribers to keep it going
NotMax
@Mary G
Excuse my not remembering – does your tenant’s trouble prone teen graduate this year?
Tony Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
On the one hand, no, no way, here’s a map, there’s Hell, get orienteering. You people built that, we don’t want it or need it or have room for it.
On the other hand, Sullivan is just the right mix of privately educated, publicly-ignorant, shit-chattering trigger-puller the modern Tory Party and its Media outlets love them some of. Were he to return to Grey Brexitannia for a spell I’m sure the Toryboys running the BBC would have him on every News, Chat and Comedy-Panel show going as part of their campaign to promote ‘right-wing humour’ and de-Waken the People’s Infotainment Complex.
In addition the soon-to-plop British version of Fox News (‘cos what corporately-owned failed-state doesn’t need a fake-news channel to instruct the flag-waving Oik Class on whose windows need smashing first?) might have a well-paid berth for “that posh poof who can say whatever we tell him to say about poofs because if anyone complains we can just say they don’t like poofs and that will drive them mental, because they’re a load of poofs”.
Maybe he should come back. Brexitannia During the Years of Plague seems like it was made for him.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Not really. My whole country is in lockdown again, and it was my first Eid without Bianca.
NotMax
@Tony Jay
Isn’t the pale-throated prig the unofficial national bird?
//
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
National dish*. We apparently can’t get enough of them, gobble them up by the score and cry out for more. At least, that’s the ‘Soviet supermarket’ booking system employed by our Media Gatekeepers. Whatever they have on hand to stuff the shelves with, that’s what the People crave!
*Mmmmm, what was Sullivan’s blog called again? I smell synergy!
NotMax
@Tony Jay
Mmmm. Prig and chips.
:)
NotMax
@Tony Jay
The Soviet reference triggered long buried memory of a grinworthy ad.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
Sadly just beating out the Oxford assclown.
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
Give it a couple of years for Brexit to do its thing, change out the uniforms for shiny suits and the violin for a ukelele and that could be a John Lewis Christmas Ad for the ages.
“Oven-ready trade deal. Very nice!“
NotMax
@Tony Jay
Perhaps swap out the “very nice” for full-blown Onslow.
:)
rikyrah
@Mary G:
Tell it.
The nerve of this Muthaphucka?
oldster
One of my regrets in life is the hours that I wasted reading his columns back in the aughts. I wish I had that time back, or that I had spent it on something useful, like sleep.
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
Ah, Geoffrey Hughes, a proper funny bloke.
In his absence Britain has gone full Monkey Dust
Geminid
I saw some interesting political news out of Pennsylvania. Primaries for local office were held yesterday. In Pittsburgh, State Representative Ed Gainey defeated two term incumbent Bill Perduto in the mayoral primary. Gainey will be Pittsburgh’s first Black Mayor (there is no Republican candidate). Down 42% to 36%, Mayor Perduto conceded early this morning and congratulated Representative Gainey.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: Curious. Is anyone calling British Labour Party chief Keir Starmer, “Keir Hardly”?
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
Ha! Not to my knowledge, but it’s pretty damned apt. After a full year of figureheading the ‘Rule or Ruin’ faction of the Labour Party’s cowardly retreat into focus-group bollocks and futile hippy-punching, Sir Keir is now officially less popular and barely (like, 1%) more trustworthy that the shamelessly dishonest oaf currently squatting over the national punchbowl.
I guess enthusiastically colluding with the Tory Party and its Infotainment outlets to sabotage your own Party by convincing millions of potential supporters they’ll go to hell if they vote for you might not have been the smartest move, politically speaking.
ETA – Not that they’ll learn a damned thing from it. Ideologues to the core, that lot.
Geminid
@Geminid: For those not in on the joke, Keir Hardie was a Scottish coal miner and union leader, and was one of the founders of the Labour Party. He served as Labour’s first Parliamentery Leader 1906-08.
Keir Hardie is not to be confused with current Labour Leader Keir Starmer. Not by a long shot.
Matt McIrvin
Why do so many white British and Canadian immigrants make a point of being anti-immigration? It is a mystery, and I say that as a rhetorical device because it is not a mystery in the slightest.
Kosh III
@NotMax: I love Onslow and Our Daisy. The Bucket Woman is still shown weekly on our local PBS. I think we know most of it by heart now.
Uncle Cosmo
@Geminid: It appears no one has pointed out that the incumbent’s last name is the Italian word for “lost.” Which he did.
Morzer
@Amir Khalid:
“My serenity is now perturbed, and my brow slightly furrowed.”
I believe the technical term is “One Susan Collins concern unit”.
Mike G
@Lacuna Synecdoche:
The essence of authoritarian conservatism is, “I make rules for other people, they don’t apply to me because I’m special.”
navigator
From the Times article: “U.S. asylum law grants protection to those suffering persecution on account of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. But large numbers of migrants have been driven to the U.S. border by economic hardship in their home countries, and now the pandemic has widened that circle.” “Most migrants are being released to await immigration hearings that could take years, and if they fail to win asylum, many may wind up staying anyway, adding to the millions of immigrants living in the United States without permission.”
Andrew Sullivan’s consistent point is that the United States’ asylum system is overwhelmed by refugees showing up at the Southern border and claiming it. They enter into a legal limbo that effectively admits them into the country. Listen to his podcast interview with Nick Miroff of the Washington Post from April 9. It’s eye-opening stuff, and a warning siren for Democrats.
Sullivan sees frightening parallels between the immigration attitudes of Britain’s Labor party and those of progressive Democrats. Given Labor’s increasingly minority position in British politics, Sullivan’s is a perspective we can’t ignore. Not if it gives Donald J Trump a shot at the White House for another 4 years.