Saturday, October 05, 2002
TIMES TRAVELER:
Atrios has the lowdown on this one.
We also have an interesting point to make in the comments on his post.
BUT WAS IT OR WASN�T IT?:
Apparently having blogged before his testosterone application, rather than afterwards, Sullivan is gentle to Krugman today for having admitted his �error.�
For the full story, however, see Leopold�s version. Krugman was hardly admitting an error, just backing away a bit (It�s entirely possible, given what else has been reported about White, that he is telling the truth when he says he doesn�t remember writing it). All he has said is that the email is �unsubstantiated.�
This will go down as one of the worst moments in Salon�s recent history, moments which are unfortunately becoming all too frequent. Salon itself will just go down.
THE DERBYSHIRE AWARD:
First one since June. Gee, you�d think he�d want to have taken out Coulter during that time, too, huh?
Of course, to be fair, he should note that Falwell�s remark is not too far from what he�s stepped up to the edge of saying himself, he who seems not to be really interested in understanding Islam.
BUSH LICKER:
And that was why. With an example of right-wing anti-gay bigotry even he could no longer ignore, he stepped up in the pocket and, even if he claims not to think Jeb Bush is a homophobe, showed that he does with the ensuing sentences.
CRASHING THE MILITARY BLOG:
Yes, Blog Queen, you linked to it, as did Glenn Reynolds and a whole bunch more chickenbloggers than we ever knew existed. Or even you, probably.
GORE ON SPINSANITY:
Uh, the same Spinsanity he�s described as a �partisan hit-site� in the past?
WHY YOU SHOULDN�T REACH FOR YOUR REVOLVER AT THE MERE WORD �PC�:
As happy Winusers here, we have to say: HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW!!! in our best Jack Chick impression. So his Mac broke down? Maybe it has to do with the swill he keeps pumping through the buffers.
And then it gets really funny, as he complains about this in light of Apple�s recent �Switch� campaign, in what Smarter Andrew Sullivan notes is a not-too-subtle attempt to get himself into one of the ads (which seem aimed mainly at getting the sort of people who used to use Macs to switch back). What makes him think Apple even notices that he uses their machines? (Oh, we know, we know ...).
Sully, let�s be frank, this is the only ad you�re going appear in, anymore, ever (A nice job really ... too bad you couldn�t figure out how to get paid for it!!!).
What�s the betting that this time he tries Linux (now seeing him write about that ... that would be scary). You just know he�s not going to try FreeBSD, as it was so obviously a project of the radical left, as you can tell from the name.
posted by Sully 10/05/2002 01:04:00 AM
Thursday, October 03, 2002
HITCHENS POST:
(cute hed, no? ... alright, maybe it wasn�t all that cute).
Not much is new in his Sunday Times of London piece on Hitchens� departure from The Nation. As usual, he seems to have pretty much phoned it in and saved the freshest thoughts for his blog (Isn't it funny how, when David Brock could no longer morally abide his co-ideologues and quit, Sully can�t stop the pathetic attempts to discredit him (meanwhile, no one has been able to touch Brock�s core allegations of conservative bad faith and duplicity), yet a drinking buddy on the other side gets a hero�s sendoff?)
But pay attention to this:
I first met him almost twenty years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and despite disagreeing with him on almost everything, found him irresistibly charming, mischievous and kind. He rarely failed to crack me up. And if I ever avoided his company, it was partly because I couldn't begin to keep up with his consumption of alcohol, and because I genuinely hated to disagree with him. I liked him too much. Even when he wrote a rather acerbic and ungenerous article the week after I quit being editor of The New Republic, I let it slide. I knew that, sooner or later, I'd come across him on the streets of our shared neighborhood in Washington and be greeted with elegant bows and sloppy kisses on my cheeks.
Now read this link, sent our way by Grady Olivier.
Kind of puts the whole thing a different light, doesn�t it?
WE DO KNOW HOW TO CORRECT OURSELVES:
We should say that the Michael Moore who wrote an anti-Lynne Stewart letter to Eric Alterman was not, as we had originally believed, the same Michael Moore who directed Roger and Me.
Nor is he the former head of the World Trade Organization, but we think you were all already clear on that.
posted by Sully 10/03/2002 11:38:00 AM
LIKE HE WAS SO OUTRAGED AT THE FIRST FLORIDA?:
We already knew Andrew Sullivan was no economist.
Now we know he�s no lawyer.
After basically conceding that the New Jersey Supreme Court had some grounds for its decision, he then demonstrates what conservatives mean when they talk about �natural law:� a sort of Kantian concept whereby the written, democratically-derived statute must be disregarded entirely if it produces a result that disgusts them, a sort of law that defies being put into words, because to do so would confine it within bounds that could be defined by interpretation (When you fully understand this concept, you will never be prouder to be a post-modernist, believe us).
In this case, just because the statute says nothing about why the vacancy was created shouldn�t have stopped the NJSC from granting the Republican petition, according to The Sage of South Goodstone. As in that other Florida, the literal meaning of the language of the law should be no barrier to a man or woman of alleged principle doing what he or she just knows is the right thing.
Frankly, we think the NJSC � a court whose members were appointed almost entirely by Republican administrations, by the way � is gently trying to remind its own party that the interests of democracy demand that they try to win this one honestly. (As Mickey Kaus puts it, �some voting laws need to be overturned in the name of constitutional rights.�)
They may also, as we�ve indicated before, still have in mind how the New Jersey Republican Party brazenly bent the rules last year, to the outrage of the Wall Street Journal, to try to get its preferred candidate on the ballot over a maverick outsider.
As for the previously pushed Republican spin that this will allow �closer� candidates to take over from losing ones, Josh Marshall outlines why this is not likely to happen:
But such arguments toward practical effect must withstand some measure of logical scrutiny and this one really doesn�t. When filing deadlines come down how many candidates do you usually see rushing to cash out their candidacies? Right, not many. The sort of people who run for elective office just don�t do that sort of thing. And in how many of those cases is there another credible candidate waiting in the wings? Not often. If there were that other candidate probably would have one the primary. Say what you will about what happened here, it's hardly likely to become a pattern.
And if it did, Mickey Kaus (another person Sullivan normally deigns to engage in argument and counterargument with), says it�s not such a bad thing:
Critics argue that this precedent, if followed everywhere, would result in a situation in which faltering candidates were routinely replaced in the final days of a campaign, throwing elections into a tizzy and rendering useless all the campaign strategy and advertising their opponents have designed for use against them. ...
And you have a problem with that?
Consider the virtues of this new last-minute-substitution system: The voters would be more likely to get the two most appealing candidates, not the "two evils" they now commonly pick the lesser of. More choices! Better choices! Meanwhile, the wishes of primary voters would still be respected (their nominee would get a fair shot -- only if he were so far behind that he himself quit, Torricelli-style, would he be replaced). Elections would be far more exciting -- they'd be like the final lap of a stock car race in which new entrants were allowed to zoom onto the track! Voters would pay attention. And, yes, all the carefully calibrated strategies designed to defeat a particular opponent would be useless � candidates wouldn't know whom their ultimate opponents would be. They might have to resort to the last-ditch, common-denominator strategy of actually stating their own positions and arguing for them! ... It all sounds do-able and desirable, a form of democracy better suited to our fast-paced electronic age (with its ability to quickly process new information) than the cumbersome system of permanent party nominees, designed as it was for the horse-and-buggy, pen and ink era in which information took weeks and months to spread out to the hinterlands. ... Bring it on! ...
COKE VS. SOMETHING YOU MIXED UP IN YOUR BASEMENT:
It�s disingenuous of Sully to argue that the various minor-party candidates are a sufficient alternative for voters. Minnesota and Vermont aside, non-Democratic or Republican candidates rarely have the resources to compete in a statewide election (Although this would have been a perfect opportunity for the Greens to establish themselves in New Jersey ... imagine if the Dems and Torricelli had thrown their weight (and Torricelli�s campaign funds) behind such a candidate!). Yes, without a viable Democratic nominee there is indeed a choice ... but look at the recent DC mayor�s race to see just how well those minor candidates would do against a well-funded, establishment candidate. If the status quo ante to the NJSC decision were an industry, the FTC would have initiated anti-trust actions.
SOME RARE PROPS:
A burst of sanity shows itself when Smalltown Boy counsels the Republicans against taking this higher. But then he rights himself by saying the Supreme Court �has been damaged enough by being dragged into partisan disputes.�
Is this his way of conceding that, whatever jealousy he feels about Al Gore�s place in Marty Peretz�s affections, the Bush v. Gore decision was plain wrong?
We, too, believe that New Jersey�s voters will realize that, whatever their dismay over Torricelli�s maneuver, they will realize that six years of a Senator whose anti-choice, pro-NRA views are far more in sync with the electorate of, say, Virginia than their own is too high a price to pay for this protest.
They made themselves heard loud and clear on Torricelli�s future as their senator already, via the polling process, without going to the ballot box. They can go there and send Doug Forrester the same message.
CHANGING THE ISSUE ... AGAIN:
Those of us who read Scott Leopold�s letter to Sullivan are apparently misled if we thought that the issue was still whether or not the White email was genuine. Unsurprisingly, Sully thinks that�s irrelevant since The Krugster decided to use it, which ipso facto means he did it wrongly.
If you go back and read Krugman�s column (we think this is the right one), you�ll see that, contrary to what Sullivan wants you to believe, Leopold shared his source material with Krugman before the story ran.
And who is The Blog Queen to complain about people jumping to conclusions in print on the basis of allegations that later turn out to be false, anyway? We seem to recall that about a year ago he spat venom at Bill Clinton based on a Washington Times account of a speech on 9/11 that turned out to have been �appallingly slanted,� as he later had to admit.
posted by Sully 10/03/2002 11:22:00 AM
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
DON�T BE FOOLED ... �ZIONISM� IS MERELY A CODE WORD FOR �JUDAISM�:
So obviously these people must really be Arabs or Nazis (ooops ... we forgot there�s no difference), right?
(Read the site through ... it�s really provocative. We�d like to see Sully try to tell these people who they are).
posted by Sully 10/02/2002 08:51:00 PM
IT�S A LITTLE DARK AND CRAMPED IN THERE, ISN�T IT?
Check out Alma College�s press release on Sullivan�s speech there last night. One assumes he approved its text.
What aspect of Sullivan � one he�s usually quite vocal about � is missing from its description of him?
Sullivan, columnist, author and a practicing Catholic criticizes and questions the proposed reprimands that will have an impact on the credibility of the Catholic Church as a center of morals.
Of course, the next graf immediately drops a hint as to what was left out. But, after all, we've got to be careful not to be too blatant in the wrong places lest we be excluded from the Children of Light.
posted by Sully 10/02/2002 08:26:00 PM
SHOES AND FEET:
We�d join him in criticizing the Democrats for not taking enough of a stand, too, if we didn�t already know that Republicans and conservatives would simply change their criticism to: �See, they are out of step with the American people!�
And that, in a media universe where the Mighty Wurlitzer�s ability to spread spin halfway around the world within instants of its creation, helped in no small way by bloggers of Sullivan�s ilk, didn't make for the kind of seriously compromised political discourse whereby a ginned-up war can be effectively used to wipe a worsening economy completely off the media�s radar screen prior to a key mid-term election.
And also that, with the hawks making use of increeasingly specious and Orwellian (�Iraq is so weakened economically, Saddam has nothing to lose by attacking us" ... i.e., weakness is strength) rhetoric to further their cause, to engage in a debate under accepted rules seems almost pointless and degrading.
One quote we do want to address:
Any terrorist attack now or soon - by Saddam, his proxies or his allies - will be blamed by some Democrats on Bush.
Uh, didn't someone go hoping in midsummer that another terrorist attack would refocus the electorate on who the real enemy was? We know who those Democrats should blame ...
SCORCHED BY THE TORCH:
Uh, isn't it the Republicans who are trying to deny the voters of NJ a choice? After they called for Torricelli to resign last week, now they want his name to stay on the ballot so Doug Forrester doesn't have to change his campaign strategy? As even Sullivan�s great and good friend Mickey Kaus notes, this might not be such a bad thing if candidates were allowed to pull out in the stretch, as it would curtail campaigns and candidates like Forrester built entirely around trashing the opposing candidate.
And New Jersey�s voters, particularly Republicans, well remember how last year that party actually got the legislative majority it had at the time to change the primary rules just for that year to allow Bob Franks on the ballot in an unsuccessful bid to keep Bret Schundler from being the party�s gubernatorial nominee. They have only themselves to blame for this mess.
As for �breaking the law,� read what Hesiod has learned, simply by doing legal research online.
LEOPOLD! ... LEOPOLD!:
Leopold�s letter to The Sage of South Goodstone is an excellent example of a real journalist standing up to a phony one. Will Sully take him up on his challenge and review the email indepedently?
More importantly, given Leopold�s allegation that Salon, under financial pressure, caved in on its vetting of his source material, will Sullivan do as he has done with other publications and bitterly and publicly resign (as Leopold makes crystal clear, to us, that any current Salon subscribers (not us, thankfully) should do?), claiming its integrity and independence are no more, that it has become a �suck-up?�
Don�t hold your breath.
IF PRESIDENT BUSH DELIVERED TORRICELLI�S SPEECH ...:
... we'd applaud him for finally mastering the English language (Not that Sully could tell).
OTHER THINGS EDWARD SAID IN AL-AHRAM:
As popular protests grow worldwide, the organised Zionist counter- response has been to complain that anti-semitism is on the rise. Only two days ago Harvard University President Lawrence Summers issued a statement to the effect that an anti-divestment campaign led by professors -- an attempt to pressure the university into divesting itself of shares in American firms selling military equipment to Israel -- was anti-Semitic. A Jewish president of the country's oldest and richest university complains of anti-semitism! Criticism of Israeli policy is now routinely equated with anti-semitism of the kind that brought about the Holocaust, even though in the United States there is no anti-semitism to speak of. In the US, a group of Israeli and American academics are organising a McCarthy-style campaign against professors who have spoken up about Israeli human rights abuses; the main purpose of the campaign is to ask students and faculty to inform against their pro-Palestinian colleagues, intimidating the right of free speech and seriously curtailing academic freedom.
[...]
The Zionist dream of a Jewish state being a normal state like all others has come to the vision of the leader of Palestine's indigenous people hanging on to his life by a thread, while Israeli tanks and bulldozers continue to wreck everything around him. Is this the Zionist goal for which hundreds of thousands have died?
MAKING EXCUSES WHEN YOU DON�t HAVE TO:
Sullivan�s chutzpah in the self-esteem piece reaches new heights (or depths, depending on how you read it), especially since Smarter Andrew Sullivan so recently got us thinking about narcissistic personality disorder as it applies to Sully.
Certainly this bit is applicable:
In fact, many criminals seem to have quite healthy self-esteem; and narcissism � excessive self-love combined with a sense of one's own superiority � is a far bigger culprit for poor social conduct than its opposite.
But then there�s this:
I also get tired of hearing that, for example, gay men�s willingness to have condom-free sex or multiple sex partners is also a function of �low self-esteem.� Is it not more credible that such behavior is due to the fact that sex without condoms or with more people is actually more pleasurable than the alternative?
(link added)
Andrew, if you�re going to say this, you ought to at least admit your personal stake in this!!
Actually, we agree with our good Captain Bareback.
Anyone who posts pictures of his muscles and brags about them and his eight-inch cock on the Internet when he seeks to further the spread of a deadly virus is not suffering a deficit of self-esteem. Quite the opposite, in fact ...
We�d also like to know how he squares that last clause with a book and reams of articles arguing that monogamous marriage is the ideal relationship gays should strive for.
What balls ... What absolute, shameless balls!
FIRST LINK, FIRST LOVE:
David Ehrenstein�s new blog disappointed us when we looked for clever commentary on the above (although he should doubtless have some later), but it did have this take on Sully and Rex Wockner�s crowing over the alleged decline of the gay left:
The NLGTF, like the HRC has always hugged tenaciously to the middle-of-the-road, leaning ever-so-slightly to the right. The left has always been anathema to them.
posted by Sully 10/02/2002 01:33:00 PM
Tuesday, October 01, 2002
SULLIVAN GETS FISKED:
TBogg has him cuffed �n� stuffed on the McDermott/Bonior trip to Iraq. Film at 11.
posted by Sully 10/01/2002 01:44:00 PM
HESIOD DELIVERS:
As usual Hesiod has more questions and thoughts on Iraq that Sullivan never will.
THE THREE CONGRESSMEN:
Smalltown Boy�s daily outrage fix. Max Sawicky has a pretty good take on this, arguing that given how thin Bush's casus belli is it would be scandalous if he didn�t lie to support it.
We�d also note a missed word: Sully writes that they are in �Baghdad, the capital city of a despot who is on the brink of war with the United States� when we think he means to say �the capital city of a country ruled bya despot ...�
Or does he? There may be some parapraxis thing going on here. The fact that Sully equates the physical country of Iraq with the person of Saddam Hussein is ... well, something he shares with Saddam Hussein.
Granted, under some arcane twists of archaic usage it could be parsed the way we think he means it to be, but it's not an encouraging sign for his war thinking (such as it is).
MORE POTS AND KETTLES:
In his rant about Bob Torricelli, which quite naturally turns to Sullivan�s favorite subject after himself � Bill Clinton as a stand-in for everything Sully despises in himself � there is some more projection going on: �Like Clinton, Torricelli still refuses to acknowledge that he did things that were simply wrong, period.� (link added).
But then the jaw starts to drop. Smalltown Boy excoriates Torricelli, a lifelong politician, for doing everything he did for ... power! Wow! Imagine that!
Needless to say, this sort of action is the thing for which he has no end of praise when President Bush or another lackey does it.
Then it gets truly bizarre. In an argument that has to constitute irrefutable proof that he needs an intervention to stop his no-longer-deniable testosterone abuse, he says Torricelli�s worst sin was ... getting out of the race!!
This from a guy who wrote The New Republic�s lead editorial urging Clinton to do the same thing.
But his logic suggests the man really needs help.
Above all, Torricelli's exit unfairly denies the voters a chance to punish him. Such votes are a critical part of the political system. They help cleanse the electoral palette, they allow the body politic to make a formal statement about what matters, and they drive the point home by humiliating the ethically challenged. Torricelli's final, cynical move is of a piece with his entire career. It's a scam and a duck. This time, surely New Jersey's courts shouldn't let him get away with it.
We can laugh about one thing here: the clear misuse of �palette� (It�s �palate,� Captain).
But the rest of it makes no sense. New Jersey voters should go through with a sham election because it makes a good political S&M exercise? (Here at SullyWatch, we have our own ideas about humiliating the ethically challenged, however).
Actually, it makes sense in one way ... it allows Republican Doug Forrester to get a Senate seat he never could have otherwise, and thus gain a seat for his party. Sullivan has contradicted himself before, but by condemning Torricelli for making a move completely motivated by political power and then advocating one himself in the very next paragraph, this is a disgusting new low: he�s done it entirely in the space of a single post.
For a Harvard graduate in the field of political philosophy, this is a sorrily stunted understanding of the purpose of democracy. We at SullyWatch believe that the goal of democracy is to pick the person to represent or lead a people that the people themselves are most comfortable with, not to engage in public shamings (of which Bob Torricelli, whom prosecutors could not find anything even worth bringing to a grand jury on, has plainly had enough of already).
And to that end, we think most of you would agree that the people of the state of New Jersey deserve the chance to choose whether Doug Forrester (who we keep thinking, everytime he�s on TV, is really a character being played by Will Ferrell) deserves to be their U.S. Senator for the next six years. Or someone else.
IF YOU DON�T FINISH YOUR FOOD, I�LL GO BUILD A SETTLEMENT:
So Sullivan, who whined about Lee Siegel calling him anti-Semitic because he frequently posts Jewish jokes in the guise of alerting his readers to anti-Semitism, has the nerve to describe this story about an Israeli woman as �a wonderful human interest tale about the classic Jewish mother.�
THE INCREDIBLE DISAPPEARING NY TIMES BB POSTS:
Well, it�s not like anyone else has ever done that sort of thing ... huh, Sully?
Besides, why don�t you do what any real journalist would ... call up Mr. Clapp and ask him whether that story was true?
Oh, we forgot ... never let the facts get in the way of a good story. And always remember that only poor dumb ignorant Muslims accept things that they heard or read about on the Internet as sooth upon which to base political opinions.
OH THE MAIL THE MAIL ... IT MAKES ME WANNA WAG MY TAIL:
This letter writer we just had to quote, again:
You have sunk into a miasma of instinctual responses to any attack on Bush and his administration's policies, going always for peripheral matters of Patriotic Correctness, and ignoring compelling arguments supporting the conclusion that the security of the United States might be jeopardized by a war against a deterrable danger of a second or third order when the struggle against the danger of a first order still hangs in the balance. It's Al Qaeda which has killed three thousand and hundreds more and will try to surpass itself.
There are those of us, Mr. Sullivan, who love this country and fear for its safety no less than you, and out of that love and because of that fear oppose a war against Iraq.
YOU SCRATCH OUR BACK ...:
From our colleagues at Smarter Andrew Sullivan:
Make no mistake. Do not be fooled. Andrew Sullivan is not a journalist. I don�t think he even knows what a journalist is. Yes, he worked at The New Republic, but TNR is not a newspaper, it is a magazine of opinion, and he has been published in the New York Times and the Times of London, but he is a pundit, not a journalist. Hell, Sullivan wouldn�t know balanced journalism if it were tugging at his nipple rings.
Yes, Sullivan is entitled to his opinions and he is entitled to publish them wherever he chooses or wherever he can convince a gullible editor looking for �diversity� on her pages that he has something worthwhile to say, but Sullivan is not entitled to twist facts, quote selectively, or smear the reputations of professional journalists. And yet, I have no doubt, he will continue to do so.
And then SAS gets into the parody game:
As an unproductive writer and arrogant immigrant with a chip on his shoulder, a narcissistic personality disorder, and an ax to grind, I�ve alienated almost everyone I�ve ever worked for or with, and I�ve never been more irrelevant.
And needless to say we just love reading posts like this.
Plus this interesting observation:
Hey, you know what?
If you publish a whole bunch of posts at one time, instead of blogging each item separately, it�s a whole lot easier to delete stuff later.
Actually, since that's the way we prefer to do things, we sort of want to say �hey, we resemble that remark!� But the point is well-taken.
YOU�D KNOW, WOULDN�T YOU?:
�She has so forgotten, if she ever absorbed, the gravity of this crisis that the only thing she can see is petty personal vendettas.�
GOOD QUESTION:
The fact that this is all that�s come up recently in regards to this persistent mystery really scares us (besides the fact that Sully seems to have forgotten who this guy is).
To broaden the issue for a moment, consider that this question is so often brought up in connection with Iraq you'd think that if the Bush Administration had any good intel suggesting he was dead (as they hinted they did a few months back), they would have put it out there as leaks or something.
The fact that it hasn�t suggests that, even by the low standards with which the Bush administration handles the truth or finds justification for its cause, they don�t know.
ALMA MUTTER:
If any of you reading this do happen to be at his speech at Alma College, why not take the opportunity to ask him about his shoddy journalistic practices as documented on this site and elsewhere (particularly the Alaskan climate graph ... we�d love to see him squirm out of that one)? If you do, let us know (we know he won�t).
posted by Sully 10/01/2002 01:51:00 AM
