Smarter Andrew Sullivan

Let No Booger Go Unpicked

Gosh, he sure is quick, isn’t he! Always on the ball, especially when it comes to Howell Raines and the New York Times. In this campaign, leave no stone unturned, let no booger go unpicked.

Andrew Sullivan (R) today writes (at Raines Watch The Daily Dish, on the web, not The Weekly Dish, for the Washington Times): “I’ve also noticed how Alessandra Stanley has eagerly become Raines’ dutiful copy-slave.”

Does anyone, anyone at all, even Andy, have a clue where this sudden animosity toward Stanley comes from?

A grand total of two articles by Stanley have appeared in the Times since Nov. 19, when Andy accused the reporter of sucking up to Raines: “Forget the Sex and Violence; Shame Is the Ratings Leader” (Nov. 20) and “CBS Silent in Debate on Women Joining Augusta” (Nov. 25), an article with a byline shared with Bill Carter.

(Two articles in seven days! Howie, you copy-slave driver, you! For shame.)

Andy doesn’t mention either article and he doesn’t say whether he objects to both pieces or only to the Augusta National article, but I’ll assume that’s what he’s quivering about since it is the subject at hand in this particular post.

Given that, I’ve said it before, I’ll said it again: Click through and read the article. Let me know if you find anything objectionable in what is really just a run of the mill--even mundane and pedestrian--newspaper article.

Just a Quick Correction…Of Andy

Just a quick note, Andy: Wellesley is not an Ivy League college. Never has been, never will be.

The Ivy League, as I’m sure you know, Andy, is really nothing more than an athletic conference. And during some trial runs early in the 20th century, when the women of Wellesley College went up against the men of Dartmouth College in, among other things, football and wrestling, let’s just say Big Green walked over the Blue.

But those Wellesley girls humiliated the Hampshire boys at the taps later in the evening.

Some things never change.

The Sound of One Eraser Clapping

Norah Vincent (R), friend of Andrew Sullivan (R), is in another of her regular snits. This time it’s over “chalking,” a practice that has emerged on a few scattered college campuses that entails using chalk to write messages, political or otherwise, on sidewalks.

In her Los Angeles Times column today, Norah argues the practice doesn’t constitute protected speech and should be banned. It’s a position that a reasonable person could advance, but Norah approaches the subject with her customary faulty logic.

Before facing the free speech argument head on, Norah, a noted aesthete, writes, “Chalking is graffiti, it's ugly, and it should be illegal on campus for the same reason that it's illegal in most other places. It diminishes quality of life, and if everyone did it, college idylls would become as squalid as subway tunnels.”

From sidewalk chalk to subway tunnels. This is quite a leap, one that I would advise Norah not to attempt without first giving consideration to the fact that chalk dissolves in the rain.

Of course, deeper considerations abound.

“If students want to make this case [that chalking is protected by the First Amendment], they’re going to have to accept one particularly inconvenient truth about free expression. It applies to everyone, not just your friends and co-conspirators,” Norah writes, adding, “Naturally, though, chalkers don’t see it this way.”

The implication, which becomes slightly more clear in Norah’s next paragraph, is that chalkers are, to a man, if you’ll pardon the expression, liberals or leftists, or at least “politically correct.” Norah would have us believe that chalkers are budding Bolsheviks opposed to any expression of moderate or conservative opinions.

Norah’s evidence for this assertion? None whatsoever. Why provide any when she can simply rely on guilt by inference, culpability by ungrounded association? As she does here:

“The same students who shriek loudest in defense of their right to deface sidewalks with intentionally offensive ‘speech’ are usually those who campaign hardest for enforcing draconian politically correct ‘hate speech’ codes.” [Emphasis added.]

And here:

“They’re also often the same people who pilfer entire print runs of conservative campus newspapers when those papers run objectionable commentaries.” [Emphasis added.]

“Not exactly civil libertarians, are they? Nope, just the usual wilding packs of self-entitled, sophomoric pranksters falling back on high principles when it suits them,” Norah concludes. “It’s time they get the spanking they deserve or start living up to what free speech really means.”

No, Norah, it’s high time the Times hired an editor to give you--and your illogical and deceitful prose--the spankings you both so richly deserve.

Is it any wonder Norah and Andy are buddies?

Reading Between The Lines

Andrew Sullivan (R), self-promoter extraordinaire, today writes, about himself (“natch,” as Andy might say):

“WHAT CONSERVATIVES MISS TODAY: My Bradley lecture, given earlier this month, has just been transcribed by the American Enterprise Institute. It’s posted here. It’s about the relevance of Michael Oakeshott to contemporary conservatism. A couple of caveats: especially in the question and answer section, this is obviously not a vetted scholarly text. My only notes - apart from quotes - were scribbled on a postcard. I hope to nail it down and turn it into a real essay this winter. Until then, please treat the lecture as an extemporaneous work-in-progress. And forgive occasional grammatical (and other) errors.”

In other words…Prepare yourself for a piece-of-shit stream of consciousness.

I’ll tell you one thing, if I sponsored “the Bradley lecture,” whatever the hell that is, and the honoree showed up without a prepared address, only notes “scribbled on a postcard,” to deliver “an extemporaneous work-in-progress” about the subject of his doctoral dissertation--easy fallback, that is--I’d be pretty unhappy. Pissed, even. I might even think the whole damned enterprise was a waste of money.

Clueless Watch

Today I learned that like the rest of our most vocal warmongers, Andrew Sullivan (R) hasn’t a clue as to what the military is really like.

Among today’s treasure trove of ridiculous assertions and half-baked contentions, Andy includes this:

“Nevertheless, big, brawny straight guys - in the military no less! - scream like six year olds the minute they suspect a gay guy might find them sexy.”

Do you see the assumption at work here?

To Andy, the U.S. military is filled is “big, brawny straight guys.” Yes, I know Andy knows, as we all do, that there are plenty of gay men (and straight and gay women) in the military, but looking at this piece apart from the gays in the military argument, the operative words are big and brawny.

I’m sure thinking this does much for Andy’s psyche, including allowing him to believe the soldiers and sailors in America’s “citizen army”--the military our most insufferable resident alien has asserted are in uniform to do his bidding and who gives a flying fuck what they think--are all big, brawny, mature, and brave.

Sorry, chap, but it doesn’t work that way.

Your image, Andy, is an illusion, a misconception, a lie, a fantasy--take your pick--and it is based on ignorance, willful ignorance, and a glaringly obvious detachment from the realities of the U.S. military.

So, Andy, I recommend you do some research. You can do it in the field if you like, or on the web, but take a good hard look at the men and women in the armed services today. You’ll be surprised, because along with the big and the brawny and the mature and the brave, you will see the small and the skinny and the young and the pimply and the scared shitless.

These, dear “Brit abroad,” are the American kids--literally, kids--that you are so eager to send to a possible early death while you safely cruise around Provincetown on that tired-ass bicycle of yours in search of bagels, coffee, and the morning paper, taking breaks for visits to the gym and walks of the beagle, all the while feeling strong and tough and mean and principled.

Sleep well, Queen’s subject. I have no doubt you do, but I’m convinced it’s a sound slumber you have done nothing to earn.

Hilarity Watch

Andrew Sullivan (R) today writes, “When a woman finds me attractive, I’m flattered, even though there’s always a little discomfort.”

Not only is this statement hilarious on its face, it’s intriguing as well.

Who, exactly, in this assuredly hypothetical interchange, is discomforted?

Andy? Or the hypothetical woman who hypothetically finds Andy attractive?

Osama bin Laden:
Dead, Alive, Maybe Not Dead, Dying, Hiding, Whatever

American intelligence agencies have concluded that Osama bin Laden is, indeed, alive, and is not being held in captivity by the U.S. or any of our allies.

That’s weird, because I read at The Daily Dish that “They got him” back in December.

Not only did Andrew Sullivan (R) say then that “They got him,” he added, “Of course they have.”

So much cheerleading has just got to make a man hoarse, don’t you think?

Suck This

Today Andrew Sullivan (R) put on his media critic hat--the tall, pointed, cone-shaped one--for yet another lame rush at New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines.

And in a manner not altogether different from his smearing of the award-winning Rachel Swarns, Andy writes this about Alessandra Stanley:

“Good Raines suck-up, by the way, Alessandra.”

Yep. Andy said that. The same Andy who’s spent the last two years kissing every right-wing ass in Washington and sucking up to the Bush administration in a misguided search for a regular paycheck.

(Note to Andy: Think security clearance.)

Andy Plays Journalist!

Check it out!

“PELOSI AS CONSERVATIVE CATHOLIC:…Conservative Catholic? If you have any data supporting this assertion of hers, please let me know. I’ve put a call in to her office asking for details. When I get any, I’ll report back.”

So Andrew Sullivan (R) actually made a phone call to the subject of one of his psychotic rages, providing her the opportunity to elaborate on a fleeting characterization in the media!

I love it when Andy gets all tough and pretends to be a journalist like this. What’s sad is that it’s such a rare event.

Who’s the Most Forthcoming?
The Vatican, the Politburo, or Andy?

On Saturday Andrew Sullivan (R) alerted eager Dish readers that his latest Idiocy Watch--about Eminem, God help us--is available at Salon, which actually had the good sense not to expect anyone to actually pay money to read it.

Andy’s latest Idiocy Watch is also available at the Washington Times web site, incorporated, as several have in the past, into The Weekly Dish, his regular Friday column for that paper. (Note: Links to Andy’s Times columns are not provided at The Daily Dish.)

Wait a minute. No, it’s not. In fact, The Weekly Dish wasn’t published in the Times last Friday at all.

I wonder why not? Did the Times drop Andy’s column? Was it only being published on a trial basis? Was there an editorial dispute between Andy and the Times over Friday’s column specifically? Has Andy pulled his column from the Times?

Care to respond, Andy?

Probably not. These are questions that cannot be answered now and instead await the verdict of historians, for, if I may borrow Andy’s own words, when it comes to his relationship with the Washington Times, Andy “make[s] the Vatican and the old Soviet Politburo look forthcoming.”

Safire and Sullivan: Not Seeing the Obvious

It’s no wonder the once merely overly ripe and now overly ripe and rancid William Safire (R) can’t move from the concluding paragraph of today’s partisan parchment to the obvious conclusion to be drawn from political life in America today, so perhaps it should be no wonder the increasingly ripe and rancid Andrew Sullivan (R) can’t either.

Safire, writing about President John F. Kennedy--yet again, because some hacks never get over certain things--says: “[C]andidates should not put ambition above honesty in dealing with questions about their physical and mental ability to serve. And they should order their doctors to tell the public the whole truth.”

Sullivan, writing about about Kennedy, but with, as Andy himself might say, “a soupçon” of Sullivan, adds: “The full extent of Kennedy’s physical impairment and the deception, lies and diversions it required are surely an important part of the historical record. I just don’t buy the idea that this level of medication had no effect on the government of the country. It must have. The question now for historians is: how much? And what difference did it specifically make?”

Excuse me, gentlemen, but has neither of you heard of a man named Richard L. Cheney?

Vice president of the United States. Caretaker of The Boy King. Has a long history of cardiac problems. Recipient of several major surgical interventions. Tends to disappear from public view without explanation.

Ringing any bells, boys?

We Could Be Over and Done With This By Now

Andy’s pissing and moaning about the “gays in the military” issue again.

I wonder why he just won’t come out and say, “You know, guys, we could have been done with this issue nearly a decade ago. But, nooooooo! You had to cover your chestnuts and play to your right flank. Why does no one listen to me?!”

Oh, and by the way, if I were SullyWatch I might say something really snarky at this point like, “Andy sure likes the word chestnut, doesn’t he?” But I’m not SullyWatch, so I’m not going to say it.

A Rumble After Church Sunday

We all know Andy likes his testosterone as much as any run of the mill drug abuser, but even after massive over-applications of Androgel, I see he’s really not so tough after all.

Here’s the “money quote” from Secretary of State Powell’s remarks in reaction to certain anti-Islamic observations recently published in the media, remarks Andy adoringly cited yesterday:

“This kind of hatred must be rejected.”

That, according to Andy, is how one “takes on” right-wing religious rabblerousers, those who made the anti-Islamic observations I just mentioned.

And Andy reminds us that President Bush nobly “paved the way” for Powell’s bold and daring declaration with this brave, thrice-hedged statement:

“Some of the comments that have been uttered about Islam do not reflect the sentiments of my government or the sentiments of most Americans. Islam, as practiced by the vast majority of people, is a peaceful religion, a religion that respects others.”

Wait a minute. “That have been uttered.” Isn’t that the passive voice that gets Andy’s jockstrap in such a knot? In this case it should have but apparently it didn’t.

In fact, without the background material the reporters added, a person reviewing Bush and Powell’s comments in the articles Andy linked to would have no idea what Bush and Powell are referring to, and more important, no idea who they were talking about.

These great and courageous men--Andy’s heroes--cannot even muster up the courage to criticize Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson by name. I bow before this display of manly strength and fortitude.

Come on! This is WUSS WORLD!

Here’s Andy in the principal’s office: “Sir, I’m not here to tell on anybody or anything, and please don’t tell anyone I was here, but there are these bad kids saying bad stuff about my friends George and Colin’s friends from Araby and they’re not happy about it, George and Colin, I mean…Yeah, it’s really bad stuff...Yeah, really mean and not nice at all stuff...Yeah, I know who’s saying that bad stuff…Yeah, George and Colin know who’s saying that bad stuff too…No, sir, no. We can’t tell you they’re names. They’ll get really, really, really mad at us. And then their friends might not play with us anymore…No! Please don’t make me tell!...Please just make them stop because it’s really no fun at all, and George and Colin aren’t happy and I really want them to be happy.”

Anyway, watch out, kids. There’s going to be a rumble after church on Sunday!

It’s going to be Bush and Powell on one side and on the other, two conservative religious Republicans who might publicly be named later.

Will the Last Warmonger Left Standing
Please Turn Out the Light?

This little drip of drool is from Tuesday, but it bears notice.

Writes Andy: “IS IT OVER II? Great and simple response from a reader: ‘It’ll be over when every last al Qaeda recruit is dead.’ Amen.”

Simple is the word for it.

I wonder when this day might come.

Any ideas, Andy?

Any at all?

Any thoughts on how we can get to this great and glorious day, one I also would welcome with prayer and thanksgiving, without destroying ourselves, our democracy, and our civilization in the process?

Any consideration that lobbing bombs hither and yon might do as much to sustain and enhance al Qaeda’s recruitment drive as to quell it?

Any wonder whether a massive, most likely unilateral, military attack on Iraq, and then Iran, and then Syria, and then Lebanon, and then Sudan, and then Libya, and then...might actually spawn more al Qaeda-like organizations, more radical terrorists hell-bent on self-destruction and the annihilation of dual-property-owning bourgeois imperialist societal leeches like yourself?

Ah, yes, talking like a decadent leftist, I guess. You know, cycle of violence, root causes, that kind of thing. Don’t mind me. I’m just trying to think a little more deeply about all this than the typical high-school dropout. I hope you’ll join me some day, Andy.

For the Birds. Literally.

Proving, in a bit more than 250 words, that his Harvard Ph.D. isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, Andy today offers an analysis of American politics that would earn a D at any community college worthy of its state cosmetology board certification.

Not just “hawks” and “doves,” Andy says. Also “eagles.”

Unbelievable.

I’m embarrassed to even read this crap.

I’m Starting to Catch On

Andy on healthcare, which, last I heard, for him was being paid for through the inexplicable largesse of one Marty Peretz:

“As someone who grew up in a country with socialized medicine, I’m more than aware of what it really means: the rationing of bad healthcare.”

That explains the teeth anyway.

Short-Term Memory is the First Thing to Go

Heeeeere’s Andy:

“This one has to be read to be believed. The military, which is having severe shortages of personnel who speak Arabic, is actually firing Arabic speakers because they're gay. The New Republic will have a story online soon about this scandal. I'll link as soon as it's up. Geitner Simmons provides the crucial and damning background to this insanity. The anti-gay policy makes no sense anyway. No other civilized country engages in such bigotry. No other country at war would put discrimination against its own people above the need to fight a deadly enemy. This targeting of Arabic speakers is, of course, only the tiniest part of it. Each year, the military throws away hundreds of good servicemembers, wastes millions of dollars, to pursue a policy that is not only unconscionable as a moral issue, but dumb as a practical matter. And now they're jeopardizing the war on terror as well. When will what Dick Cheney once described as an ‘old chestnut’ of a policy finally be abolished?”

If memory serves, back in around, oh, 1993, this country nearly tore itself asunder over this very same issue, namely, whether openly gay men and lesbians should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military.

And if memory serves, those hell-bent on tearing the nation asunder over this “old chestnut” were almost exclusively Republicans, i.e., members of the Republican Party, what Andy likes to call “a natural home” for gay people.

And those who thought this nation was great and good enough to approach the 21st century with its head held high, leading the world instead of trailing woefully behind, were largely Democrats, those “rancid and bitter” leftists.

And the man who pressed this issue hardest, out of principle and not out of political expedience, was none other than President Bill Clinton.

You know, Andy, while there may be a few scattered, besotted, and dottering Americans--though none that I know of--who think England is “a halcyon place of tea, crumpets, and generations of aesthetes who went to tony private [sic] schools and know much of Shakespeare and Milton by heart,” this despite the little land of shopkeepers and laundry in-takers having reached its political, economic, and cultural peak some 150 years ago, that doesn’t give you the right to act is if we’re all idiots.

The guy’s a walking, talking advertisement for draconian, Pim Fortuyn-like restrictions on immigration, isn’t he?

Prime Time

“HEADS UP AGAIN: Tomorrow, from 8 am till 10 am EST, Hitchens and I will be taking calls on C-SPAN.”

We are talking prime time here, people.

Jeebers, who even knew C-SPAN was up and running at 8:00 a.m.?

What, no jazzercise for fat-assed middle-aged conservative white men?

Hey! There’s Andy’s next career!

Now That’s Butch!

“Nick Kristof’s column yesterday reads like a potage de Sullivan.”

Jesus, Mary, who talks like this?

Riddle Me This

Here’s Andy: “RIORDAN WOULD HAVE WON: Can anyone doubt that now? Bush would have a friendly governor in California in 2004 if the California Republican party hadn’t allowed itself to become captive to the hard right. The Dems [sic] are not the only people to learn lessons from last night. The Republicans need to internalize [sic] the fact that religious right conservatism, especially in places like California, is poison.”

Tossing aside the swipe at “religious right conservatism,” which is surely disingenuous, given that it is the core belief of the psychotic Moonie types backing the Washington Times, the thin little, heavily subsidized “newspaper” that now helps pay for Andy’s Adams-Morgan condo and Provincetown beach house, What gay man in his right[-thinking] mind would root for either Richard Riordan or Bill Simon for California’s governorship?

Maybe a dopey Brit who doesn’t understand American politics, despite the degree that notorious grade-inflator Harvard University pasted on his randy ass?

None that I know. And let me tell you, this here fag hag knows more homos than Andy does, or at least more homos that are still speaking to me than are still speaking to him.

And by the way, when, when if ever, does Andy plan to tell his loyal but deluded readers that he is now taking money from the irredeemably right-wing homophobic Washington Times? Never?

And when, when if ever, will the mainstream media, of which the Washington Times is most definitely not a part, draw anyone’s attention to Andy’s new job?

Freak Me Out!

On a personal note, I almost completely freaked out when I came home late last night: I thought Andrew Sullivan was in town! And in my building, no less!

Some numbskull in my building, his windows naturally facing the courtyard, or what I prefer to call the sound-reverberation tank, was blasting, ugh, the Pet Shop Boys, easily one of the most wretched “cultural” exports foisted upon us by the English, and one that went unmentioned in the latest New Republic cover story.

Fortunately, when the doorman examined the situation he found not kennel-tenders aficionado Sullivan, but an apparently harmless couple of homely lads with nothing better to do on a Saturday night.

In retrospect I realize it couldn’t possibly have been Andy. Among other useless things, his blog serves as a veritable itinerary of his every movement.

UPDATE - Monday, November 4th

New tenant. Loves to blast dance music. Sleeps late. Starts work late. Works in one of the services trades. Days off are Sunday and Monday. Take a wild guess. Building management unresponsive. Police will need to be called nightly. I ask so little of municipal services, but on this issue--noise--I will not budge.

Camille Paglia: Proponent of Pederasty

The right and righteous Andrew Sullivan took to the pages of, wait, took to the screen at “The Daily Dish” this week to chastise, yes, again, the New York Times--now called, with laughable immaturity, “Pravda”--as well as his able foe Richard Goldstein for ideologically “air-brushing” the obituary and eulogy, respectively, written this week about Harry Hay.

From what I gather--this isn’t really my area of expertise--Hay was an early pioneer in the gay rights movement, and also a Communist, and was considered by many, including himself, to have been--Horrors!--rather effeminate.

As my readers well know, over at Butch World, where phrases like “Quelle surprise” and “Take that, Al Gore” are the norm, femininity is nonetheless not tolerated, even in women. And certainly not in the gay rights movement.

No, at “The Daily Dish” they like their gay-rights advocates to be right-wing men. And they like their gay men muscular, even if chemically enhanced, and masculine, even if that’s merely an affect unconvincingly displayed. It is this picture of ersatz brawn and manliness, and only this picture, that can be presented to the world.

It seems that Hay also advocated allowing NAMBLA, a coterie of pederasts, to participate in the gay-rights movement, though I haven’t seen any evidence he was actually a member of the organization or a proponent of its agenda. But in the world according to Andy, the only world the poor sap knows, Hay was “a supporter of the sexual abuse of children, fervently supporting the vile organization, NAMBLA.”

Left unmentioned in this hysterical diatribe: the despicable Camille “My Sixties Generation” Paglia, friend of Andy, certifiable lunatic, and vociferous proponent of pederasty.

Atrios, who writes a blog called Eschaton, nails Andy for this devious--and eminently self-serving--oversight, and bangs up Andy’s favorite chicken-lover and, I’m willing to bet, chicken-hawk too, Camille “Come here, little boy, and suck my dick!” Paglia, and then some:

“Can we call on Sully to now frame all discussion of Ms. Paglia as ‘Camille Paglia, supporter of the sexual abuse of children?’

“There’s also his...canonization of recently slain Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, who was also an advocate of the decriminalization of ‘paedo sex,’ which was enough to scare off that other member of the Fortuyn fan club Rod Dreher.

“Think what you want about NAMBLA and ‘NAMBLA supporters.’ Just make sure to include them all.”

I couldn’t have said that better myself. I couldn’t have said that better if someone had fed me the lines to do so. But that’s why I sometimes defer to the great ones.

Raines Watch? Or Reuters Watch?

So Andy’s all giddy with his latest “Raines Watch,” the one where he leads readers into thinking the New York Times is out of control because headlines about the third-quarter report on gross domestic product by the Associated Press and the Washington Post made note of the economy’s strength, while the New York Times headline said the economy expanded at a rate lower than economists had expected.

Andy apparently loved this piece so much it made its way into “The Weekly Dish,” his column published in the Washington Times today.

The problem is, and there’s always a problem, isn’t there?, the offending headline was written by Reuters, the news service that was the source of the article as anyone who actually looked at the story could see, plain as day.

And of course Sullivan neglected to link to two other Reuters stories published at the Times web site under headlines that read “Consumers Push Economic Growth Up” and “Economic Growth Up but Momentum Waning.”

You know, people fire interns for pulling shit like this.