Sullivan, 25 April:
I hate the term “war on women”. It’s so hackish and echoes with the kind of liberal screechiness that backfires with everyone else. But the fact that there is a wave of laws in GOP controlled states, making abortion harder and harder and more humiliating to obtain, and what can reasonably be described as a full-bore assault on Planned Parenthood, is simply undeniable.
To which I noted– “It really only is about things that affect him directly, isn’t it?”
Sullivan, today:
Sigh.
xian
He’d really hate the war on narcissists.
Peter
The man really has no self-awareness, does he?
xian
Also, you have “effect” where you want “affect.”
Mattminus
I smell a Malkin Award!
Sly
Sully is principled and serious, defined as someone who masks their personal politics as the will of the American Zeitgeist and the personal politics of others as crass impudence unsuited for meaningful discourse.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Oh, come on, this is too easy. The man’s the poster child for lack of self-awareness.
dmsilev
And today’s “Dynamiting Fish In A Barrel” award goes to John.
Svensker
Sully echoes with liberal screechiness!
Also, too, heh.
Also, also, too, this whole column made my larf and larf. What the hell did Sully expect from the GOP? He’s shocked shocked that they don’t like gays? Silly Sully.
kindness
Oh Noes! Not another Sully post! Run for the hills.
On a saner scale, John you are absolutely right. Sully has been whining about repubs and then backing them up in the very next breath all too often lately. Same as usual I guess. Too bad too.
He’d be a better blogger if he allowed comments because then he’d get the immediate feedback he really needs. No, not from us libs. It’d be the foaming at the mouth conservatives that would drive him sane.
Sly
@Svensker:
I’m not sure if I want to be around when he figures out that many of the reasons the GOP doesn’t like gays are among the same reasons that they don’t like women.
Calouste
I’m surprised Sullivan blames the GOP War on Gays, rather than the Women’s War on
Guys Who Tell It Like It IsMisogynists. That will probably be in an update.Jon O
Y’know, every once in a while we all have an “Is Our Sully Learning?” moment, such as a month ago or so where he asked why women don’t visit the Dish as much. The obvious answer seems to be the one he’s least inclined to admit: he has limited compassion for those who suffer in ways he does not. When it’s about the barbaric war on drugs or gay rights, he’s fantastic. When it comes to the disrepair of our social safety nets or the constant attacks on women, the problem is with Those People.
Raven
Grab your cocks and pull up your socks trooper!
TooManyJens
@Sly: Don’t worry, you won’t be around for that. He’ll never figure it out.
Martin
Only a true Burkean could understand the difference.
maven
Sully is a self loathing homosexual Catholic who coincidentally went to Harvard and is a Conservative. And is married to another man. Margaret Thatcher is his hero.
Of course these pieces all fit together nicely.
General Stuck
Let’s launch a war on inanity, and call it World War 3.
MattF
Well, he’s a Tory. One’s politics is composed of specific cases (which may include oneself), one mustn’t generalize, one ought to be grateful when one’s betters approach. And the poor will always be with us.
Jay in Oregon
@Sly:
They want to be able to fuck them on the down-low with no repercussions?
schrodinger's cat
If he wasn’t gay he would be your standard issue conservative punditubbie. Bobo with an accent if you will.
David Koch
Thank God we can count on Republicans to fight for traditional values and to fight the radical Homosexual agenda.
schrodinger's cat
His blog has gotten bloated and boring these days, even with all the minions he has.
the fugitive uterus
what about republican screechiness, which is way supersonically screechier than liberals?
gex
@Sly: He just thinks he’s found a better method. Hate women so much you don’t even want to sleep with them. Why don’t the women haters in the GOP see the beauty of that system? (Meaning the ones who aren’t closet cases, that is.)
RalfW
Someone asked the other day why Sully was still a conservative.
This may explain it.
bobbo
Pure win. And he does this all the time
the fugitive uterus
I’m calling him “Screechy” from now on
bobbo
@kindness: This is a really good point. The not allowing comments thing is so cowardly. If it could be pitched to him as something that would help HIM, maybe he’d relent!
schrodinger's cat
@MattF: As an Irish Catholic, why is he even a Tory, that’s something I don’t understand.
RalfW
@schrodinger’s cat: Or because of the minions? He’s gotten lazy. Or the pot hangovers are getting worse (yes, dears, there are too pot hangovers).
schrodinger's cat
@bobbo: He is like those vanity fashion bloggers who don’t allow comments. What is biased and balanced supposed to mean, anyway? He is pompous ass, who occasionally writes well, especially on the subjects he cares about.
schrodinger's cat
@RalfW: That may explain it, agree with him or not, he certainly is a better writer than his minions, who take over when he vacations.
kindness
@bobbo: Well yea that’s what we think, but Sully? I doubt he thinks he needs any help. He’s the one who’s level and we’re the ones who have issues.
@RalfW: How much pot do you have to ingest to get a pot hang over? Honestly it’s been a very long time since I smoked up that much. And I usually do a couple bongs every day when I get home.
Emma
@dmsilev: Yep. It’s too damn easy to smack him these days.
RalfW
Wrong thread. Carry on.
pragmatism
@schrodinger’s cat: biased and balanced is a hilarious (to sully) riff on faux news’ slogan.
i’m not a fan of not allowing comments, but i do understand where he’s coming from. every so often i’ll get off the boat in a righty blog where he is being discussed. it’s all “his brain is rotting due to AIDS” and ad hominem attacks on the ghey.
you are completely correct that he is a pompous ass who occasionally writes well.
the fugitive uterus
wow, i just heard a string of Romney quotes from when he was gov and they sound decidedly pro-gay rights/marriage equality; oh well, no contender to dig that shit out now, i wonder why Santorium didn’t do it.
maybe Screechy really still believed that Mitt would, in the end, turn on the base and embrace his old Massachusetts liberal gay-loving republican self! and all would be forgiven. sorry, all that shit went out the door when Bush walked into the Oval Office. and you are not going to get it back by embracing the republican party and its other repressive policies that, as John and others have noted, do not directly affect him.
any discomfort or angst Screechy may feel is karma.
dslak
@schrodinger’s cat: The ‘biased and balanced’ tagline is a swipe at Fox News, who spent a few days attacking his Newsweek article on the stupidity of Obama’s enemies, without ever mentioning him by name or responding to his requests for an on-air rebuttal.
Damn, I feel like a Sullyologist.
DougJ
You know…he’s not bad as establishment commentators go.
Jamey
@General Stuck: There already IS a war on inanity, only you elitist coastal fifth-columnist-types don’t know it yet…
wonkie
“It’s only about the things that affect him.”
That right there is the definition of a conservative.
Jamey
@RalfW: I thought you were going to post a copy of Sully’s 2011 tax return.
schrodinger's cat
@DougJ: Damning with faint praise, you are doing it right.
TenguPhule
Neither one will willingly sleep with them without being paid first?
Jon
Or if the balls are flying at your nose.
bemused
I think Assault on Women is a better description than war on women because it feels like full out assault to me.
Patricia Kayden
Well Sullivan is half right. There is a GOP war against “the gays”. He just has to acknowledge that there is also a GOP war against women. He’ll eventually figure that out.
gex
Can we send him back yet?
Schlemizel
GEE – never could have seen that one coming
Again – why does anyone ever read this useless sack of dessicated sheep shit?
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
You see, this is why he’s on THIS side of the pond, and not back home in the ol’UK.
It’s pretty fucking obvious he wants to be a peer, but has no chance, ever, of being one. So he left the UK to be here, in the land where there are no de jure ethnic/religious barriers to being part of the aristocracy, such as it is, as long as you have the ‘tude and the bucks.
He’s a blatant narcissistic social climber.
Villago Delenda Est
@wonkie:
Well, I’d refine it a bit. It’s only about things that affect him in the short term, particularly in his precious wallet. Long term shit, like the destruction of the environment that humans evolved in, and are therefore adapted to, doesn’t show up on his radar.
different-church-lady
You know what bugs me? The War on Wars.
walt
Sullivan’s obsession is relevance. He must be hip, au courant, plugged-in, and opinionated about everything. And the result of all that is someone who is boring with certitude. I’ll give him credit for changing his mind when the evidence overwhelms his argument. But it bothers me we spend so much time hand-holding a sanctimonious twit. Can’t he simply acknowledge that all his nuanced convictions really don’t matter in the middle of any war?
Heliopause
Time for my quarterly rhetorical question about Sullivan; why does anybody read him? He’s simply not an interesting writer or thinker. Forget whether I agree or disagree with his positions, he’s simply not interesting. I mean, what am I missing?
Midnight Marauder
@DougJ:
Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit, DougJ.
PIGL
@RalfW: I can save you all that reading. The reason he is a conservative is that he is a vicious prick bastard. Who just happens to like cock.
Just as there are tennis players who also paint and utterly useless fuckwits who can recite Homer, Sully’s salient personality characteristics just so happened to turn up in the same person.
The reason he is a famous pundit is his scrape of education and the accent. These secondary aspects, his phenotype as it were, allow him to obfuscate the meaning of his positions just enough to provide the threadbare cover needed for respectability.
As an application of the box principle, are we cursed or blessed that most combinations of bad and good traits, as well most combinations of n>3 languages, will never be instantiated in the same individual?
mainmati
@kindness: Yeah, his blog is totally one-way. Not very interesting.
Jebediah
@RalfW:
I believe I can corroborate this.
Jebediah
@kindness:
How much hash in those bowls?
Also maybe not everybody gets them.
amk
LOL. Nailed it cole.
stoned stats
Hot off the presses or whathaveyou http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/05/busted.html
No hangover for me!
couchlock
As stoned posted, Sullivan says hes was busted, but instead of saying the war on women is ok, he changed war on gays to
GOP: No Gay Allowed
Douchebag
Morbo
@Heliopause: Because they aren’t aware of Buzzfeed or reddit. That is the only answer that makes sense.
Splitting Image
@Heliopause:
Sullivan is a better example of a typical independent voter than any other pundit. Which is to say that he’s a selfish asshole who is obsessed with his own self-interest and maddeningly incapable of voting in his own self-interest. He is convinced of his own importance and demands that elected officials always do what he thinks is a good idea and screams to the heavens when it turns out to be not so good for him.
EDIT: To clarify, you might not have missed any of that, but that is why people are interested in him.
JG
@stoned stats: Oooh, I’m kind of excited. My email was posted as the “Busted” letter to Sullivan. I’ve been writing ranting emails at him for a couple of years…and of course he picks one of the more poorly written ones to post ;)
It is interesting to me that he doesn’t send an email when he’s going to post your stuff.
Oh well…I’d like to think that each time he admits getting called on his crap it will help Sully become more self aware but that might be asking for too much.