andrew sullivan c/d

• surely singular in his online prowess/gayness/brand of conservatism
• weird irrational hatreds of clintons/palin
• enthusiasms pass through him like clouds on a windy day
• facebook/twitter/me will transform the islamic world
• unconvincing nods towards catholic thinkers
• 'sure i was wrong about these dozens of things, so what?'
• sometimes right, and steadfast re: torture

• sort of rly hot

monday: "THIS IS THE TRUTH AND YOU ARE WRONG AND TERRIBLE IF YOU DON'T ACKNOWLEDGE IT"
tuesday: "you are not a serious person if you don't see it this way"
wednesday: "there might be some flaws here"
thursday: "i never said it was perfect"
friday: "this thing is full of holes"

saturday: "look how honest and open-minded i am about admitting the holes in this theory"

sunday: "hey beardo, let's smoke up"

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/images/sullivan.jpg

i like him, tho i haven't read him in a while.

everyone always brings up his crazy post-9/11 spasm of calling liberals a 'fifth column' or whatever, but considering he's apologized for it like 4,000 times (the first time a few days after it happened) it seems a bit unfair to hold it against him now when there's about a million other pundits and bloggers who say that shit and worse every day. he's about as much of a 'conservative' as garry wills (and in pretty much the same, largely non-political way).

i'll take garry wills though!

i did not read him during the wisconsin thing -- i can't keep up unless i am amazingly bored at work -- but i understand he is not a union man

I'm completely mystified by the weight given to the opinions of this kook.

this guy's famous because he had/has an unusual-for-the-media personality (gay! religious! hawkish! libertariany!) and was online writing about politics at exactly the moment lots of people were starting to go online to read about it, and had something Big to Hold Forth About besides (the blog really started to roll, lol, right after 9/11). so he got super lucky. but i think he's totally fun just as a guy to have around; he has so many passionate, ill-considered convictions about so many semicontradictory things it is hard not to like him. i don't read him regularly at all though.

don't think he's just lucky - he's very hard-working & traditionally well-connected (old media pro, oxford (pres of the union), harvard).

just an absurd person, only on the internet

i mean i know he was big pre internet but only wired could he really let his freak flag fly, he seems genuinely insane and uncool to me

like his whole thing of trying to shoehorn contemporary american politics into traditional conservative thought 'sir you are not living up to the ideals laid down by mr locke!' - how out of it do you have to be

The Monday-to-Friday timeline posted above sums up his almost manic twists and turns well, but I started reading him in 2008, and I still do. My initial interest was his enthusiastic support for Obama, and that's still pretty much in place. (He tries hard to appear impartial, and it's sometimes funny when he makes a great show of scolding Obama for something.) Even for someone like me who finds Palin fascinating, his obsession with her can be wearing.

Juan Cole's tirade a few weeks ago was the best recent attack yet so irrelevant, you know? This is Andrew Sullivan.

I wrote a long thing about my history reading him.

He's all id, basically, for better or worse, which is why his willingness to apologize is refreshing. He do needs to stop posting so often – his weekend updates on birds, Episcopalian literature, and genome breakthroughs look like obvious circulation boosting.

his links are often golden, like the one he just put up, "the finland phenomenon: inside the world's most surprising school system"

a big portion of the stuff posted under his name nowadays is not actually by him

this is my all time fave sully quote:

"There are so many good reasons on both sides, so many different possible outcomes, that my only sure conclusion is that I'm glad I don't have to make a decision," - James Downie, on the Libya intervention.

Wise words. But a blogger has to take a position, even if not make a decision.

A BLOGGER HAS TO TAKE A POSITION

a new position!
let's go fishin' in the river of life

(From Alfred's piece linked to above) Longtime readers will have noticed that the bloom is DEFINITELY off the rose when it comes to Obama

I wouldn't go that far. His support of Obama isn't as unwavering as it was in 2008, agreed--that'd pretty much be impossible once someone starts governing--but he's still very supportive most of the time. He was tough on him over DADT, but eventually decided that Obama's handling of the matter made sense. He's been tough on some of Obama's budgetary and deficit dodges, but that comes and goes. When he has what he feels is cause to praise Obama--like with Bin Laden, or the Giffords speech--he still gushes. And I always get the feeling that he's looking to do that as often as possible.

But a blogger has to take a position, even if not make a decision, for an idea to reach fruition, and to see what condition, our condition is in, can I get a 'praise god.'

lol

I read Sully every day. I think his actual value (aggregate of links presented well and at a particular intelligence level) is underrated. I barely care about his opinions (he's pretty much wrong about everything tho admirable re legalization + sometimes torture) but he links to so many ppl that I wouldn't have the time to ferret out myself from such a broad range of opinions and thought that he's very useful to get links to much of the interesting stuff that shows up on the internet.

most recent example of Monday-Friday thing is Paul Ryan plan serious/adult on Monday dismissed by the end of the week. Also the birther-Palin thing is totally insane and no longer endearing.

yeah in that curatorial respect he's def served as a role model for me even if he's overkill sometimes

i'd say the major dichotomy for sully is that he reads broadly but w/ no depth

He can be an incisive, shrewd reader of texts when he wants, though, but yielding to the impulse to blog every twelve minutes surely can't help his reading habits.

I'm not convinced he's a great reader of texts. I can name a number of texts he totally misread (most recently his reading of Rush Limbaugh as praising Obama was pretty awful) but you could always say they are due to his lack of focus. I can't think of anything he has "shrewdly" read tho, at least off the top of my head.

Not to mention his poseur alert sometimes functions as a "I didn't understand this" alert

have you read Virtually Normal? His essay on friendship, using Moliere's as a base, is lovely.

Yeah, his interpretation of Limbaugh's monologue after Bin Laden's death was unbelievably off the mark. As soon as I started reading it--just words on a page, no audio--I thought, "Is he sure this is meant to be taken literally?" Limbaugh's sarcasm was as sledgehammer-obvious as ever.

yeah no doubt he's tone deaf, i attribute it to being british

((its joeks, its joeks))

Virtually Normal blew 18 yr old me away.

His blog was kind of interesting when he was actually going through his falling out of love with Bush conservatism identity crisis I guess. That long term shift underscoring all the short term reversals is kinda rare for such a big name, or rarely admitted to at least.

a big portion of the stuff posted under his name nowadays is not actually by him

he's the jim davis of bloggers!!

So what's his US Acres?

a big portion of the stuff posted under his name nowadays is not actually by him

ok, but no way this is true. when his interns take over all their bylines get slapped over his posts and he has disappeared during big events (one recently tho I don't remember the event) bc he's sick or whatever which would be impossible if someone else was writing his posts.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/sullivan-responds-to-ghostblogger-controversy-with-frontal-cortex-defense/

under-bloggers

well apparently i'm wrong. so the only thing that changes when he goes on vacation is that the underbloggers get to put their bylines up?

Yep, and sometimes it's not his minions but other bloggers (e.g. Ross Douthat).

As the Palin corpse shows signs of life, Sullivan's been pretty funny the past week trying to mask his glee and temper his five posts a day with deep concern about what a bad thing her candidacy would be for the country. He ought to be honest: anyone one who wants Obama to win in 2012 is praying she jumps in, for the political chaos and for the freak-show entertainment value. Especially Sullivan, whose obsession with her is boundless.

And as much as I loathe her, he ought to award himself one of his own Moore awards for conflating this upcoming documentary of hers with Triumph of the Will.

if he gets any more crazy for her theres gonna be a rabbit boiling in her kitchen

there's something a bit ironic about a guy whose political hero is reagan being so profoundly unsettled by the rise of a glib, ignorant demagogue, no?

oh c'mon: Reagan gave the impression that he had at least thumbed through a book. And he could write plain English.

I've stated my complete indifference towards Reagan before, but I agree that there was an intellect there (and politically, a formidable intellect)--and next to Palin, he practically came across like a Rhodes scholar.

I didn't get a chance to look at Sullivan yesterday, but I caught up this morning and count nine Palin posts--one of which links to a guy who pleads with the media to ignore her. (I guess I now become part of that chain: me expressing my disdain by posting on a guy who expresses his disdain by linking to a guy who expresses his disdain by...paying attention to Palin.)

could it have something to do with, oh I dunno---trans?

‘ever-increasing levels of racial identity’

https://t.co/ol9g4IuCJj pic.twitter.com/cwivIT0FBE

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) May 20, 2022

*racial identity intensifies*

"we also need an antidote to the toxins of Critical Race Theory"??

um, has this man read any US history? if not, I have news for him.

So he’s just an apologist for Tucker Carlson now.

Total plod.

This piece of shit:

Because you're not.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) May 23, 2022

$2 billion in property damage in the 1619 riots - which were followed by a surge in murders of black Americans. You can despise this mass violence as well as January 6. https://t.co/BnOt7Wwvd6

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) June 9, 2022

jfc

no one bump this thread until he dies plz

I'm trying to write a column and I find myself in tears. I fear that everything she exemplified - restraint, duty, grace, reticence, persistence - are disappearing from the world.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) September 8, 2022

what an utter fucking loser lol

Restraint, duty, grace -- qualities he doesn't show attacking the trans community.

exactly

Restraint, duty, grace -- qualities he doesn't show attacking the trans community.

was that post really needed

sniff ... so graceful ... reticent ... rich *sobbing* so, so rich

andrew sullivan at it again pic.twitter.com/D4pFYvOgV5

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) October 24, 2022

From "We will literally beat you for learning how to read" to "OK fine we'll give you shitty schools with shitty textbooks and furniture and no you can't come to our nicer school" to "We will pull our kids out of school if you try to bus those kids over here" to "Black people have a cultural resistance to learning," all in just 160 years!

i wish he was dead

this guy's respectability in liberal circles over the years is a fucking disgrace and everyone who enabled him should be cancelled

agree with all of that.

nice to see jamelle bouie kicking his ass quarterly or so

i know i've told this story upthread but in 2018 after the demise of my first serious relationship and in the confusing desperation of heartbreak i was swept away by a charming boy scoutish gay guy from utah who was living in dc co-running a fitness music company and djing. i dropped everything and moved out there to be with this guy and was kind of a kept boy for about a year, lots of red flags everywhere including the fact that he invited me to live with him in a serious relationship after having only met me (and being like 15 years older than me) but i went with it because i literally quit my job in utah, what else was i going to do. anyway we would go to this fancy gym on u street and one time he ran into andrew sullivan at the entrance to the men's locker room on our way out of there. i was honestly not familiar with a.s. at all but i remember thinking that he must be an asshole because what kind of person stops right in the middle of the entrance to the locker room to have a conversation? anyway i quickly figured out that this guy who i moved halfway across the country to be with was pretty white supremacist at heart and would show so much weird animosity toward black people in dc. i'm glad that relationship eventually blew up but he could have not just thrown me out on the street in the middle of december with nowhere to go. the end. anyway i can't think of enough bad things to say about andrew sullivan now that i know who he is and the extent of his grossness.

wow

glad you got out of that situation but i'm sorry it happened and ended that way, fuck him and AS

i've been meaning to listen the sullivan episode of the bad gays podcast but i'm worried it will piss me off too much

lol ty, it's long past thank goodness.

there was a great takedown of as linked somewhere upthread but i can't recall who wrote it.

OK this guy went to school with Keir Starmer. I don't know what that says about either of them though.

for real? fuck me I hate this world

Fuck them both obviously, but I don't think who you went to school with says anything much unless you were friends - I certainly went to school with some horrible people.

sure but british private schools tend to produce a certain type

I'm so fucking angry I can barely type.

not saying everyone always but in these cases i think it's safe to say xp

Actually googling both their names throws up a Spectator article by Sullivan and it seems they were indeed friends and still keep in touch. Jesus Christ.

i want to cry

wau did you know this guy approved The Bell Curve articles

And here he is 25-plus years later. Talk about resistance to learning! (OK I borrowed that joke from the Twitter feed.)

learning about how hard liberal-ish prestige media promoted that book in the US in the 90s is so infuriating and a lot of it was his doing

it also feels like a part of the puzzle regarding how we got here and why these outlets we still have unwarrented faith in keep fucking up so badly

According the above-mentioned Spectator article, Sullivan still believes "the role of genetics in intelligence among different human populations is an open question". Starmer sure knows how to pick his friends...

NARRATOR: It is, in fact, fake.

I'm afraid this isn't fake. But it's the most honest explanation of "equity" I've yet heard. Redistribution pudding followed by a topping of racial revenge. https://t.co/ElhxYQ08py

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) February 15, 2023

I hate this racist dickhole

The old rainbow flag was a simple, apolitical unifying metaphor for gays and lesbians. This is an ideological flag for “queers” (including straights) opposed to “white supremacy” and the sex binary. https://t.co/BcSj5nCfDu

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) March 26, 2023

what a fuckin weirdo

I'm waiting for him and Dreher to fall in love.

Sorry WHAT

Hang on, is Coates here saying that Keir Starmer is a long term friend of scientific racism promoter Andrew Sullivan? https://t.co/X6pqO0g8aJ

— Tom Hatfield (@WordMercenary) November 3, 2024

Discussed upthread!

Wow, I had forgotten just how stupid and ignorant Andrew Sullivan is. Pretty much every paragraph of that piece contained either a provable falsehood or a laughable misinterpretation of facts. Thanks for that, I guess...

Went to school with Starmer, according to, er, me two years ago

Discussed upthread!