One of my favorite bloggers, Lance Mannion, has up a lovely post about Andrew Sullivan.
I haven’t had a credit card for years, because I actually live like a fiscal conservative.
We’re sure you do, Andrew. But you know what else you live like?
A man with a six-figure income and no children.
Getting a little tired of being told by the well-to-do strolling down Park Avenue that the rest of us hoi polloi need to share in some more sacrifice and tighten our belts another notch.
Sullivan also thinks we need to raise the age of retirement. Again not advice we want to hear from someone who can go on vacation for weeks at a time seemingly whenever he wants and who has a job he can do and do well until he’s 90, if his health allows.
One of the things that drives us nuts about Sullivan is that it’s all so personal with him. I don’t mean he thinks it’s all about him. I mean that sometimes—a lot of times—he doesn’t seem able to imagine that not everybody in the United States is a gay ex-pat Brit living in Washington, D.C. whose big disappointment in life recently was being turned down for a mortgage on a second home.
Yeah. Sullivan didn’t get to buy a summer house in Provincetown. The heart heart bleeds.
Because Lance is a much nicer person than I am, his post doesn’t end there and it has some interesting ideas about why many of us keep reading Sullivan (despite Sullivan’s frequent wrongheadedness, weird man-crushes on people who would set him on fire if they could (Paul Ryan, anyone?), inexplicable belief that Margaret Thatcher was anything but a vile and termagant harridan who should have been murdered in a ditch with “Section 28” engraved on her forehead with a stanley knife, and the fact that when he goes on holiday he apparently turns his entire blog over to the tender mercies of a room full of particularly flatulent monkeys).
ETA: H/t to commenter Arundel
Riggsveda
Glad to see you back, Sarah.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Riggsveda:
Thanks. It’s been a distracting couple of weeks, but you can’t keep a bad woman down.
TheStone
Sullivan’s ability to empathize is defined by its blind spots. He’s got a few issues that he seems to have expended all of his moralizing capital on (LGBT rights, Iran, torture). Other than that, he may as well be from Mars. His schtick calls to mind Mrs. Jellyby from Bleak House.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
worse than another cat thread
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@TheStone: We just started watching that!
geg6
Hadn’t read Sully for weeks, clicked yesterday, and this very post was top of page. That’ll teach me. Gave me heartburn immediately. Fuck Sully. With a rusty chainsaw.
Oh, and welcome back, Sarah!
harlana
Yes, can we please dispense with the shared-sacrifice bullshit meme. Is the above an example of how Mr. Sullivan has sacrificed? Well, somehow I feel less than satisfied. I don’t want to hear it anymore! Ordinary people have sacrificed enough already. Come on! I saw 2 people on the blog last nite who have recently lost their jobs. I really wish we could have an open thread for that, for their stories, nobody around here seems interested.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Who cares?
JGabriel
Sarah P&T:
You’re far too kind.
ETA: Welcome back.
.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@harlana:
I’m happy to oblige…
WereBear
Just what are the top 2% sacrificing? I’d like to know. I haven’t cried so much since that one guy lamented giving up his private jet during the Bush Meltdown of 2008.
Dylan Ratigan let loose on the situation on Morning Schmoe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdsdlq42nE
And the sick thing about it is at the end of it, when the Republican idiot used it: to blame President Obama.
You don’t even need sentience to be a conservative these days.
nancydarling
Well done, Sarah, you sweet old thing. I have always thought that Maggie had so much testosterone (and not in a good way)that she probably had to shave at least 3 times a week.
Donut
Since the thread is open and all….
I’m actually pretty heartened by the results in WI last night. The right poured shit tons of money into this effort and barely held on, and in districts that were not exactly Democrat gimmes. Those two seats taken last night are beach heads for the WI Democratic party. We have to ignore the national media chatter and focus on that – these are building blocks, ground work done for future success of how to fight back against the corporate and right wing money election machine. We are in the age of Citizens United and this is the blueprint for how we hold on and make gains in the onslaught they are making.
And look (and please, I’m not criticizing just Obama when I say this), our national party has failed us. We gave them majorities in both houses and a Democratic president in 2008, and collectively, the whole national party, save the House leadership under Pelosi, has blown it (especially the on the Senate side).
The correct takeaway from WI, therefore, has to be this kind of a response at the local level, replicated nation-wide. We can’t wait for the national party to get its shit together, because they are about to fuck up even more (I’m looking at you Max Baucus), so we’d better have more and better Democrats getting elected to our state houses next year.
My half-baked, still sleepy morning 2 cents…
ciaran
i used to take him slightly seriously even though i didnt agree with him b “the maths demand it!” rant i havent been able to look at him more than once or twice week.
it really pisses me off the way everything obama does is evidence of some grand master strategy(“obamas genius lies in how he gets his opponents to destroy themselves” etc etc ad infinitum), but i guess thats bound up in the whole man crush dynamic. what a tosser.
ExcuseMeExcuseMe
Since Mr. Sullivan does own property in Provincetown – it’s public record – he either got his mortgage or paid cash for the property.
Or, maybe he couldn’t get a mortgage on an additional property in Provincetown; which would have been his (at least) third property (including DC).
He can parse that any way he wants to prove his point — it all still points to his being full of shit.
sherparick
Sometimes I think we whole national drama right now is a not very good remake of “Blazing Saddles.” Jonathan Schwarz at “A Tiny Revolution” noticed this failure of imagination among our elites last month in a blog thread highlighted by Kthug July 18 titled “Alice in Billionaire Land.” Andrew, who may grown pretty alienated from his English working class surroundings as a triple outsider (Irish, Catholic, and Gay) is not just pulling in six figures, but high six figures between the writing, the TV gigs, and the speeches. Although Sullivan is not a billionaire, he and much of our media elite, living a pretty comfortable life not troubled by economic catastrophe that is ruining the lives of millions, pretty much buys into all the memes in this little paragraph, including the meme about Saint Ronny and the Holy Margaret ushered in an era of great growth after the barren 70s.
“But here’s what you have to understand: in the teeny-tiny world in which Cliff Asness and Eugene Fama live—i.e., the world of wealthy University of Chicago economics professors and their hedge fund manager former students—the sky actually does look green. While the U.S. economy grew more slowly starting in 1980, it did grow, and almost all of the growth in income went to people like Asness and Fama. Since they’re such a small group, they and everyone they know has been doused with a gushing firehose of money. And because they have no imagination and no curiosity about anyone outside their mental circle, they assume that must mean that the rest of the world has gotten doused too. Moreover, it’s all due to them and the “financial markets and financial institutions” they’ve created. “http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/
ciaran
and this whole pose like he’s some sorta budgetary expert? no matter how often he get it arseways.the man is shameless. like he’s supposed to be a christian.how the fuck does he square his politics with the whole injunction to follow jesus’ teaching. this really annoys me!
Aimai
Does Andrew really not know that a first and a second mortgage are proof that he is definitionally living beyond his means?
Emma
@Donut: I sort of disagree with your judgment on the national party; but I absolutely agree with you on the need to capture the state legislatures. Most people who go off to Washington — in the Democratic side anyway — come from there, and the more liberals we have in place the better.
This is what the Republicans spent twenty years doing and it’s time we got our acts together and fought back.
stinger
“Section 28” and “Bobby Sands”.
Thank you.
Emma
As far as Sullivan goes, meh. The man forgets who he is to ape the life of those he wishes he could be, and doesn’t seem to realize that he’s forever barred from the little club by accidents of birth and sexuality. Someone that divorced from reality makes me twitchy.
no video at work
of course he would turn his space over to flatulent monkeys when he is away. He wants to make sure you don’t notice he is gone.
What I really have never understood was why anyone ever thought of him as an intellectual or worthy of regular reading. I never saw anything other than a sociopath in his work.
Chyron HR
I
haven’t had a credit card for yearswant to default on my credit card payments, because I actually live like a fiscal conservative.no video at work
@Donut:
One small bit of cold water reality. One of the seats the Ds won yesterday was taken by the same guy that lost the seat last time by 169 votes. It really was a toss up anyway. A couple of the others were not run aways either so there is no reason given the naked destruction of the Walker administration that more people should have been angry and wanting to set fire to the Rs.
Despite all the happy talk at the GOS & other places this was a dismal showing for people who want a functioning government.
D-Chance.
the fact that when he goes on holiday he apparently turns his entire blog over to the tender mercies of a room full of particularly flatulent monkeys
Hey, POT, the kettle just called you “black”!
Fucking moron.
Marc
Sullivan can be interesting to read, and I simply don’t understand the level of hate that he provokes. He said some stupid things after 9-11 and has recognized that he was wrong. Plenty of other people were wrong about plenty of things, yet they don’t get the treatment that he does.
He’s willing to change his mind in the face of evidence. He has some genuine good points (e.g. his opposition to torture.) And he is at heart a conservative, in the traditional sense of the word – which means that I disagree with him on a lot of things. But he’s not a wingnut and I can usually understand why he believes what he does.
The attacks on Sullivan really seem to be boundary-tending: that is, trying to attack the character of someone so that people don’t pay attention to what they have to say. Or, equivalently, to try and make the case that nothing a conservative has to say is worth hearing.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Marc: WHO CARES?
Starfish
@Chyron HR: If Balloon Juice commenters like you did not make me laugh about these things, I think I would cry.
JGabriel
@WereBear:
UNCIVIL TONE! CLASS WAR! THEY LET OBAMA RAISE THE DEBT CEILING!
ETA: USING ALL CAPS OVERRIDES & REPLACES LOGIC!
.
gypsy howell
If Sullivan were a TRUE conservative, he wouldn’t be getting a mortgage at all. Why, I’ll bet his present mortgage exceeds his current personal GDP! The horror! And he wants to raise his personal debt ceiling to buy ANOTHER house? No real conservative would even think of borrowing more than he makes.
Fulcanelli
That explains why he didn’t get that mortgage.
The lender he tried to use probably doesn’t have a scoring model for somebody with no outstanding CC debt or CC history, or perhaps other ‘anomilies’ in his credit profile.
Life is tough…
RobNYNY1957
One fact about Sullivan that is buried is how homophobic he was before he came out. His very first article for The New Republic (oddly enough, not available online) was an incredibly homophobic piece about the visibility of gay men in advertising. Gay men were Nazis because there are gay men in black and white photos, just like the Nazis used. Gay men were Nazis because they were used as scupural elements in photos, just as the Nazis did. It was revolting.
Oh, and the idea that short-term borrowing for short-term expenses is some sort of flawed financial idea is idiotic. Short-term borrowing for short-term expenses makes just as much sense as long-term borrowing for long-term expenses (say, for exammple, a mortgage on a house).
kay
I just think he’s kind of a fraud on his “core issues”, although he seems to be an engaging enough personality. He says he’s a civil libertarian, but he absolutely freaked out on the underwear bomber. He was calling for heads to roll because Homeland Security didn’t keep him safe. That’s not the gut response of a civil libertarian. That political or ideological position carries risk. The whole premise relies on that basic idea.
I don’t really believe he accepts the risk that goes along with a lot of his positions. He wants it both ways. He wants all the security, order and perks of a big state apparatus, but none of the intrusive downside. That’s just magical thinking. These things are trade-offs.
JGabriel
@Marc:
Some of us are never going to forgive Sully for his role in hyping, and publishing excerpts of, The Bell Curve during his tenure as editor at The New Republic. I’m certainly one of those people, though I don’t hate him as much as others.
.
drkrick
@JGabriel: That and the fifth column business. I don’t care how much he apologizes, somebody who can allow something like that to be published under his name is just a screwed up individual.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
I never got why people bothered with that self-centered jackass.
The fact that he occasionally comes up with something funny or clever can’t conceal the fact that he’s Megan McCurdled with a dick.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@D-Chance.:
I love you too, Mr Grumpypants.
kay
@drkrick:
That’s another example. Is that the gut reaction of a fierce defender of liberty?
He wants a free and open debate, except when it’s important. Then his gut is to shut it down, pronto.
The Worst Person In the World
Andrew Sullivan is a pathologically narcissistic pig, lacking any shred of self awareness.
I am eagerly looking forward to a scandal involving him, his husband, and infidelity.
Delicious it shall be!
Charley on the MTA
“murdered in a ditch with “Section 28” engraved on her forehead with a stanley knife”
That’s a really messed-up sentiment. That’s the kind of thing we decry when it shows up on Glenn Beck’s site.
All done with SP&T, speaking of “flatulent monkeys.”
malraux
@Marc: He’s constantly said stupid things, from the whole black people are genetically stupid, to liberals are traitors, to the math demands it. Yes, when evidence builds up to show that he’s clearly wrong, as with the ryan budget, he’ll eventually relent, but his thinking never changes. Whenever a new subject comes up that doesn’t affect rich gay DC residents, he’s not going to empathize and will get it wrong. Horribly, maliciously wrong.
Poopyman
@Donut:
… And yet there’s not a word in there I would take issue with. More and better representatives in both houses is what we need most of all. Wisconsin is a disappointment, but it could have been worse. I’ll take what we got and move on to working on 2012.
dr. bloor
The inability to decenter and view the world from an other’s perspective is the hallmark of clinical narcissism. To the extent that he can look like he’s effectively empathizing from time to time is nothing more than a case of the stopped clock being right twice a day.
Poopyman
@no video at work:
Actually, it’s a good way to make readers happy when he returns. It’d be bad business (for him) to turn it over to someone more talented than he.
Richard M.
One of the best things about the internet, you have a huge choice in what to read. I can choose the childish, hateful, petulant bile of this blog or Sully, with whom I often disagree but who never lowers himself to this kind of immature name calling. I pick Sully.
RalfW
Sullivan is indeed narcissistic, probably flatulent, and I went from reading him 3 or 4 times a day to about once or twice a week in the past 6 months.
I enjoyed his man crush on Obama for a while. Like Marc, I think Sullivan has some useful things to say as a conservative in ways that I just can’t, can’t, can’t listen to from most other conservatives.
Basically, he’s someone I enjoy disagreeing with, as compared with most bloggers on the right, who I feel contaminated by if I visit their sites.
Omnes Omnibus
@Richard M.: Aha, you are one of those people who is okay with calling liberals fifth columnists, promoting junk science on genetics and race, and the like as long as no one uses the work fuck. Got it. Thanks for chiming in.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus: This.
And anyone who doesn’t follow Driftglass, he is absolutely brutal about Sully’s useful idiocy.
slippy
@Marc:
Because he’s such an out-of-touch arrogant hack, and you could never even begin to get him to admit how out-of-touch he is.
Listen to his bullshit: “I’m a fiscal conservative nyah nyah nyah” while he’s holding two mortgages on his property. Fucking utter bullshit.
And using himself, of all fucking people, as an example apparently demonizing the rest of America who can’t manage a cushy gig bloviating nonsense for a national magazine — it’s beyond arrogant. It’s severe elitism, and he can go fuck himself with a rusty chainsaw TWICE as far as I am concerned.
He has ZERO relevance, and the fact that the only time I see his meaningless scribblings referenced is to criticize how out of touch he is says all that needs to be said about him — he’s useless. A completely useless human being.
El Cid
I despise people like this.
Sometimes I have to despise them for very short periods, like seconds or minutes, if they’re relatives or friends or such.
But it’s essential in the commentariat to have a blissful unawareness of the actual lives of the majority of people you’re paid to look down upon.
Sullivan’s not one of those also bringing the whole ‘I iz Real ‘Murkin fer Reel Dunt Luk Mah Big Haws’. But he appeals apparently to the Anglophilic audience out there.
rikryah
love this takedown of Sully.
I know this is mean, and I will have to say a few prayers for it, but here it is.
I wish Sully would have to face the American Healthcare System like the AVERAGE American person with HIV does in this country.
then, he wouldn’t say 2/3rds of the shyt he says about ‘ cutting medical expenses’
ciaran
@slippy:
ah well you can go too far to. like he’s not actively evil. just strangely idiotic for (whether you agree with him or not) a bright guy.
Poopyman
@Richard M.: And yet here you are.
Funny, that.
john b
i read sullivan not for his editorializing, but his excerpting of other content and his comments from readers. that is 90% of his content anyway. i do wish that he had comments and i kinda feel like his excuses for not having a comments system are bullshit and he could have a registered user-based comment system and have one of his minions keep it under control.
(and for the record, the post mentioned by SP&T was pretty awful and i don’t see how anyone could write that and not realize how out of touch it was)
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Richard M.:
I like Sullivan. I read his blog every day, and a lot of the time I find it fascinating and entertaining and thought provoking. On the issues he believes in, he is an effective and committed advocate.
Plus he sent a couple of thousand readers my way one day, for which I will always be grateful.
That doesn’t mean I’m not going to point out that, with disappointing regularity, he comes across as an entitled dick.
liberal
@JGabriel:
Yeah, the Bell Curve thing was particularly despicable. Not mere racism, but racism dressed up in bad science.
Richard M.
Mr. Omnibus,
If you will take the time to read what I wrote you will find that I often disagree with Andrew. I will not waste our time with listing the areas of disagreement. And it so happens, I love the word fuck. I just dislike shallow, disagreeable name calling. If this is what passes for intellectual discourse on this site, I’ll pass.
Quiddity
Sullivan writes well but is otherwise ignorant. He doesn’t understand numbers, or science, or even when Limbaugh is being sarcastic (thought Rush was actually praising Obama for the Bin Laden strike).
As to the science part, when he had his own blog (pre Atlantic) he was skeptical of global warming and he’d cite temperatures in some obscure part of Alaska as if that was determinative for the world. Then there’s the much older Bell Curve garbage that appealed to his class mentality.
He is not intelligent. He is smart, but that’s having the ability to speak glibly, not a sign of comprehension.
Omnes Omnibus
@Richard M.: Mr. M. This site varies. Discourse can be quite intellectual. It can be vicious and vituperative. It can be both at once. If it is not to you taste, and you noted, there is a big internet out there for you.
malraux
@Richard M.: Compared to the intellectual discourse of saying that black people are just stupid? That’s not shallow?
Richard M.
Sarah Tall and Proud,
Sorry, I’m still trying to figure out how to link to the previous post. Thank you for your comment. I agree, he occasionally does come across as an entitled dick. I strongly suspect I do also. Still, he is extremely intelligent, articulate and committed. And yes, his link led me to you, for whom I also have a great deal of respect. I’m just getting a bit tired of the Sully bashing. It’s repetitive and all too often, childish.
MBunge
@Quiddity: “He is not intelligent. He is smart, but that’s having the ability to speak glibly, not a sign of comprehension.”
And in that way, Sullivan is like the archetype of the modern “public intellectual”.
Mike
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Richard M.:
I take your point. It’s what I get for posting before I’ve had my first martini.
I promise I’ll get back to making fun of those who have no redeeming features, rather than those who are merely frustrating in their obtuseness.
Now, what’s Mr Brooks been up to?
Richard M.
Opps, sorry Sarah, reversed the name. Still, It works well either way.
Richard M.
Ah yes, Mr Brooks. Please, rip him to shreds with my blessings.
LosGatosCA
And to think I’ve gone weeks without thinking that Andrew Sullivan is simply an ass and that’s why I haven’t gone to his site since 2002.
Plus he seems to have some weird power over people to nearly continually write about him, driving traffic to his site.
That’s all for now. Until the next time when I post an obligatory response to note that, yes, Sullivan is still a self absorbed, illogical ass not worth reading.
Shinobi
In a time when there aren’t enough jobs to go around, raising the retirement age makes no sense to me. I understand they want to save on Social Security, but it seems to me that lowering the retirement age might help with unemployment. (This is from a young person whose friends can’t get jobs.)
malraux
Shinobi:
Raising the retirement age is preferable to high income desk workers (like writers) because they will continue to work, whereas lifting the income cap hits their tax rate. It’s one of those incapable of empathizing things.
jfxgillis
Sarah P & T:
Laugh. Let’s make August 10 “Andrew Sullivan Day!” since I wrote this exactly two years ago to the day: Correctly Political: Why I Despise Andrew Sullivan and it makes the same two key points. 1. He’s a true solipsist. 2. That’s why he’s a compelling read.
In his favor, he linked and quoted from that in his Tenth Anniversary Cheer & Roast series and oooooh baby does a link from Sully generate hits.
RalfW
Several people have claimed that having a mortgage negates being a fiscal conservative, which sounds like hackery to me.
Having a mortgage that significantly exceeds one’s prudent debt to income ratio would indeed be fiscally reckless. But borrowing in and of itself is not a sign of hypocrisy.
I think the conservatives are full of shit vis the debt as a percent of GDP, especially given current interest rates and the willingness of global markets to lend the US as damn much as it wants.
So have at the conservatives for their bullshit. But go after them for realz, not with toss-off lines about a mortgage showing he’s a faker.
thx.
daveNYC
@Marc:
I’m not even sure that he recognized that he was wrong about a lot of things. I know his apology for the ‘fifth column’ mess was one of those, ‘I was worked up and may have stepped over the line, but it was a tough time for all of us and I’m sorry if anyone was offended.’ BS things.
He keeps making the same mistakes again and again, and isn’t willing to nut up and cop to messing up. There’s always ass covering, always that lack of humility.
malraux
Having a mortgage is as fiscally sound as using credit cards to simplify monthly banking. If no credit cards is conservative then having a mortgage must be non conservative.
daveNYC
@RalfW: They’re responding to Sullivan’s pants-on-head point that not having a credit card does make one a fiscal conservative, or at least is a point in ones favor.
Stefan
@Charley on the MTA:
When it shows up on Glen Beck’s site, it’s not a joke. They actually mean that stuff, and every so often they carry it through. The next time a liberal massacres a camp full of teenagers, let me know.
Stefan
I like this comment from Belvoir at Lance Mannion’s site:
Such an odd duck. Still going on about Thatcherism, 25 years after he left Albion. He’d never have made it in the UK, he’d be eaten alive there. Here he’s a special snowflake, who’s coasted on patronage and rewarded as the bright boy on scholarship he once was. And gets very tetchy when his spaecial snowflake status is questioned. He decides long after the fact that the Iraq invasion was a Mistake, but the Hippies Were Still Wrong, and wants a medal for it. OH, I could go on.
It’s a good point about how he’d never had made it in the UK. Here he skates by because of the well-known American prejudice that stupid things somehow sound smart in a posh English accent, but back in London he’d just be one more entitled wanker.
Can you imagine what the Murdoch papers would have done to him if they’d ever gotten him in their sights? They’d have torn him down, made his name a relentless mockery. But with our relatively toothless culture here, he could sail on, relatively unmolested by aggressive questioning or opposition.
Stefan
I know his apology for the ‘fifth column’ mess was one of those, ‘I was worked up and may have stepped over the line, but it was a tough time for all of us and I’m sorry if anyone was offended.’ BS things.
Here’s the essence of his “apology”:
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2010/10/a-response-to-a-roast-a-fifth-column-apology/181356/
By fifth column, I meant simply their ambivalence about the outcome of a war on which I believe the future of liberty hangs. Again, I retract nothing. But I am sorry that one sentence was not written more clearly to dispel any and all such doubts about its meaning. Writing 6,000 words under deadline in the heat of war can lead to occasional sentences whose meaning is open to misinterpretation.
Among the many, many things I found offensive and galling about the “apology” I linked to (and I urge everyone to read it in its entirety to see a true masterpiece of self-serving unreflectiveness) is the use of the phrase “in the heat of war”. Sullivan wrote his sentence from a comfortable desk in DC — he wasn’t getting shot at or bombed, he wasn’t squatting over his laptop knees deep in some muddy trench. In “the heat of war” my ass.
Canadian Shoggoth
Well, with his no credit card confession he has outed himself as an ideal target (carries wads o’ cash) for the self-starting pickpocket in these harsh economic times
Marc
@daveNYC:
I don’t expect to agree with conservatives, but there is a difference between a conservative and a wingnut. I want to learn from reading someone, and it can be an enormous help to have them coherently articulate a viewpoint that is alien to me. That’s very different from listening to, say, Fox News – where all I’m seeing is propaganda.
The Bell Curve business highlights his major weakness for me: he has massive blind spots. (Some taboos are there for a reason…) But his writing on torture, religious fanaticism, and the truly radical nature of the current right is valuable to me.
Lord knows that there are enough left-wingers on the net who drive me up the wall some of the time too.
RGuy
Ha, I had forgotten about this song!
malraux
This actually pretty neatly encapsulates why it is that I think sully is a moron and not a thinker. It’s prima-facie wrong; using credit cards responsibly simplifies budgeting and accounting, provides stronger consumer protections, getting cash back means that cash users are subsidizing your shopping, etc.
More importantly though, it’s knee jerk fetishizing whatever he is doing as both conservative and thus superior that what everyone else is doing. Sure, you could eventually show him that he’s wrong after much linking, but it won’t change his reflexive need to label whatever he’s doing as conserative and morally superior. Whatever he is, he’s not intelligent.
ChrisNYC
Remember when A. Sullivan was hawking those T shirts right before he left the Atlantic? They cost like $50 and he was putting up cringy personal testimonials as to their quality. “Beefy tees” I think they’re called. Ha hahahaha. So funny. So embarrassing. Like QVC on the internet. For “Daily Dish” fans.
Anyway, there’s some argument against his frugality in there — $50 t shirts! — but I’m not sure I know what it is.
PS — I would pay (not $50) for a shirt with a picture of him in that overnight breathing device.
grandpajohn
@Richard M.: @Richard M.:
I find this rather amusing since on his site you are not allowed the privilege of entering into any kind of discourse, intellectual or otherwise. If on reading his musings you wish to disagree, you find it necessary to go to some other sight that you find repugnant such as BJ in order to even voice your disagreement in a discourse.
Librarian
Sully just gave a Yglesias award to Megan Kelly for what she said about the maternity leave law. This typifies another thing about him that I hate: his willingness to compliment almost anybody on the right when they do anything remotely decent. That is, he is so fucking stupid and gullible that he doesn’t realize that the right does that not because they believe it but because it improves their image and makes them seem more sane. And so, he takes at face value anything the right says that he likes, not knowing that they’re just engaging in tactical political moves like they always are. How can anybody be so gullible?
Gus diZerega
Sulivan’s sentiments are a good example of what I think is the major moral failing of those conservatives who actually believe in their doctrine as more than a thin cover for their sociopathy. They are unable to imagine the lives of people much different from themselves. Since they think of they and those like them as morally reasonably good, those who are different are less so.
It is like David Koch becoming a philanthropist for prostate cancer after he got it himself.
Richard M.
grandpajohn,
Actually you can disagree and if it’s a valid argument, he posts it. He has asked his readers time and again if they want a comments sections and the reply has been a resounding no. As to why his readers, by a huge majority reject comments being added, all one needs to to is read the comments on this and hundred of other sites. Too often profane, childish and always distracting to the core argument. Like Sarah, I read him daily. Like Sarah, he often irritates the hell out of me. But like it or not, he is one of the most read bloggers on the net. There really is a reason for that.