Saturday, June 07, 2003
APOLOGIZE TO ALTERMAN:
From Eschaton, we learn that Bill O�Reilly believes liberals �no longer� control the media.
posted by Sully 6/07/2003 12:49:00 PM
THEY DIDN�T BECOME WHAT YOU UNMADE THEM:
Tom also has a lot of fun with Sully�s fatuous self-congratulation over supposedly bringing down the Raines:
Oh, please. Bloggers didn�t catch Blair at anything, but it allowed some of them to show off their inner bigot under the guise of �truth in journalism� and beat the drum against the SCLM. And since Krugman himself noted in one of his earlier columns that he had taken consulting money from Enron years ago, do bloggers get credit for merely reading it and then shouting �Eureka!�? That�s not much of a talent.
Also, he notes the latest example of The Blog Queen�s English:
And while we are looking in the mirror, shouldn�t former editor Andy Sullivan take a look at this construction?:
Then they broadcast the revelation of how Paul Krugman had once had lucrative former ties with Enron.
�once had lucrative former ties�?
posted by Sully 6/07/2003 12:46:00 PM
INTERESTING:
Via TBogg, we learn what we perhaps should have known before: that Baghdad blogger, Guardian columnist and Peter Maass interpreter Salam Pax is gay.
You�d think Sullivan would have touted this the moment he found out, seeing as to how he likes to spank the left for ignoring the persecution of gays in Arab countries. But he didn�t. Is he perhaps still trying to figure out how an Iraqi could be against both Saddam and the war?
posted by Sully 6/07/2003 12:41:00 PM
HEY, HOW DO YOU KNOW THE SIN WITHOUT COMMITTING IT YOURSELF?:
Bob Somerby with another example of Sullivan�s use of highly selective quotation.
Sully began to crow about this as soon as he spied it on other web sites. Yesterday, his posturing hit its zenith. The comedy? On the very day when Sully began thumping Dowd, he posted his review of The Clinton Wars. And right up front in that review, Sullivan clipped a Blumenthal quote, then said the clipped �quote� made Sidney look stupid. In other words, Sullivan did much the same thing he�s been flogging in Dowd for two weeks.
Let�s ignore the general fakery of Sully�s review. Instead, let�s zero in on his clipped quote. Early on, Sullivan wants to ridicule Blumenthal for worshipping at Clinton�s altar (it�s a Standard Hack Spin-Point). To accomplish this end, he quotes an early part of The Wars. Clinton is visiting FDR�s Hyde Park home right at the start of his presidency. Sully lets us know how stupid the passage is. �You�ll just have to take my word for it that I�m not making this following bit up,� he says. Then he quotes from Sid:
SULLIVAN (quoting The Clinton Wars): �An aide gently but insistently reminded [Clinton] that his time was limited. The turbulent world was tugging at him, starting with a boisterous crowd waiting at the local high school. �It�s so peaceful,� Clinton whispered as he stared at the tomb. His mind was filled with great plans: universal healthcare, reducing the federal deficit, investments in education and the environment, cutting crime, remaking the welfare system, ending discrimination, to begin with.�
Now the mockery starts. �To begin with?� Sullivan says. �What on earth would be next? A space colony on Mars? But to ask such questions of this book is to mistake its essence. To ask how Sid knew what was going on in the president�s mind at that moment, is also to miss the point.�
Sullivan mocks Blumenthal�s account. How could Blumenthal know �what was going on in the president�s mind?� he asks. Fairly clearly, we�re supposed to roll our eyes to think that Blumenthal would engage in such silly mind-reading.
But it�s perfectly clear from The Clinton Wars how Sidney �knew what was going on in the president�s mind.� Sullivan simply clipped his quote to keep his reader from knowing. Here�s the fuller quote from Blumenthal�s book � the fuller quote which plainly explains how Sidney could read Clinton�s mind:
BLUMENTHAL (page 8): An aide gently but insistently reminded [Clinton] that his time was limited. The turbulent world was tugging at him, starting with a boisterous crowd waiting at the local high school. �It�s so peaceful,� Clinton whispered as he stared at the tomb. His mind was filled with great plans: universal healthcare, reducing the federal deficit, investments in education and the environment, cutting crime, remaking the welfare system, ending discrimination, to begin with. �I believe that government must do much more,� Clinton had told a joint session of Congress on February 17, quoting repeatedly Roosevelt�s call for �bold, persistent experimentation.�
Duh! How did Blumenthal know �what was going on in the president�s mind?� He knew because he was explicitly referring to Clinton�s just-completed speech to the Congress! Dowd clipped a quote to make Bush look silly; Sully did the same thing to Sid. But now, the loud little fellow is stroking his thigh, scoring Dowd�s �propensity to deceive.� Does anyone else maybe get the feeling that Sullivan bends it like Jayson?
(All emphases in original)
posted by Sully 6/07/2003 12:36:00 PM
SAUCE FOR THE GANDER:
Anybody want to comb through this list and find some good ones? Or think up some from it?
All in U.N. dwarves
AIDS� well-run van
Lad unravels win
Unveil land wars
We viral lads run
DNA all, runs view
Actually, didn't he do something like this at TNR in the �Notebook� section once upon a time, after Douglas Coupland sent him a program that does this? He preferred "unrivalled swan," we think.
posted by Sully 6/07/2003 12:26:00 PM
Friday, June 06, 2003
UH, DID YOU LOOK AT WHAT YOU WERE WRITING TO?:
That�s the worst bit of bad writing married to self-absorption I�ve endured since the junior high poetry book.
So you would prefer to read the bloggings of some guy who devotes two posts to anagrams of Howell Raines�s name? One of which is a poem?
And by a guy who can�t keep his font tags straight yet?
posted by Sully 6/06/2003 11:26:00 PM
OH, SO IT WAS PERSONAL AFTER ALL:
We gave Captain Bareback a pass yesterday in the mistaken belief he might show some class for once.
But, no, today he obviously got up in the morning, wanked off and then gleefully greased himself. There are no less than five posts on the subject and we don�t feel like counting the words right now.
It disgusts. Fortunately other people have taken up the commentary slack.
Neal Pollack channels Sullivan�s id:
Oh, Hallelujah! Sweet victory! You are out on your ASS, mothafucka!
Please excuse my outburst. I simply cannot contain my glee at the resignation of my archnemesis, now-former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines, the worst newspaperman of my time, or any time, really. The Times� circulation, under his watch, had dwindled to a mere 15,000, and it will take a true genius of newspapering, like me, to put it all back together again. I know I wasn�t going to post today, but let me make a few quick suggestions about what I, or whoever else the Times might hire, could do to improve the paper. Remember that I was first to post this, before the competition started gnawing on this story like the Internet hack buzzards they truly are.
[...]
Finally, and most importantly, the Times needs to provide balanced coverage of the Bush Presidency. It�s fine to hate America up to a point, if you keep your mouth shut, but don�t make everyone else hate it, too. The failing economy, the wartime lies, the quasi-Triumph Of The Will speeches, the dying environment, these are all minor compared to the warm feeling Americans get when they think about George W. Bush. Why doesn�t the Times report on that? If you think about it, and I do, every day, Howell Raines is gone, and George W. Bush is still standing. This is the perfect opportunity for the Times to join the American mainstream in mindless adulation of the President. And I am the perfect man to lead the Times in that quest.
My phone is on vibrate, Arthur. I�m waiting.
The Mighty Reason Man says what we would say if we hadn�t said it so many different ways over the last year:
Of the many columnists, talkshow hosts, and think-tank hacks that have been waging this campaign, Sullivan has not been the most dishonest; nor has he been the most vicious.
He has, however, been the bitchiest, and that is saying quite a lot.
When a person is drummed out of their job, particularly if the reason for the drumming-out is their constant public belittling of the people in charge, they are expected to say horrid things about their ex-employer to their friends. It is also reasonable to expect them to constantly complain about said employer to their family on a regular basis, possibly for years � although that depends on the general tolerance of the family in question.
Disgruntlement is a perfectly normal reaction to events one perceives to be unfair.
However, a reasonable adult with some sense of propriety does not constantly stand in front of their former workplace with a large sign saying �My ex-boss sucks!�
This is essentially what Sullivan has been doing on his website for quite some time now, and it is tacky, juvenile, and annoying as hell.
From the Raines Watches to the Times Watches to the jihad against an editorial page he thinks he deserves to have a spot in, Andrew has made war on the New York Times in general and its now-former editor-in-chief in specific, magnifying not only minor errors but any facts which do not agree with Sully's worldview into indications of fraud, bias, and general maliciousness on the part of the Times.
[...]
Now, with the ripple-effects of the Blair scandal finally having brought Raines down, just as the ripple effects of the Lewinski scandal led to Bill Clinton�s impeachment, Sullivan is dancing with joy and claiming a personal victory over his foe, whom he thinks he knocked out through his own efforts, mano-y-mano, a hero in his own eyes. Newt Gingrich and his crew felt much the same way, and, just as with Sullivan now, their inflated perception of their own Cojones & Righteousness kept them from realizing the simple truth that, despite their best efforts, what actually led to their victory was a foolish mistake on the part of their enemy, without which their impotence would have continued unabated.
Andrew Sullivan did not bring Howell Raines down; Howell Raines did. He may have booed him until he was knocked from his pedestal, but I booed the Lakers until they were knocked off of theirs, and I am not vain enough to think that my efforts meant anything to anyone but me.
Rock on, Christian.
posted by Sully 6/06/2003 01:27:00 PM
Thursday, June 05, 2003
�THIS WILL BE A DAY LONG REMEMBERED ...�:
So Sully finally got his wish: regime change at 221 West 43rd St.
We admit to mixed feelings: on the one hand, Raines seems to have earned his fate through his management style, and there is his persecution of Clinton to recall ... another one, along with John Fund and Sully himself and a handful of others, for the �payback is a bitch� list, 1998 edition.
But on the whole we do not this was a great day for American journalism. Let�s be frank: Raines�s dictatorial managerial style wouldn�t have so aroused the right�s ire if he had largely shared their politics (as indeed was the case with Abe Rosenthal). Whatever he says, this was a coordinated political effort. And it would have mattered not at all if Jayson Blair had never hired on, if Rick Bragg had done all his own reporting, if a few politically-motivated errors had never been made. Raines was a marked man because he dared to use a major media outlet to question the divinely-anointed Bush administration in the absence of any other voice (one need only look at the Washington Post for comparison). Like Clinton, he eventually and unfortunately gave his enemies the knives they needed to put in his back; unlike Clinton (and may Howell always remember this) he was too unloved to count on any friends when he most needed them.
Smalltown Boy is right to credit the role of blogs in doing this and �ending� the Times�s traditional arrogance; although some good will undoubtedly come of it, what this really means is that a message has been sent to every newspaper editor in America: You are not safe. We can get to you if you dare row against the current.
For it is not a two-way street. Blair and Bragg have been humbled; but Kolata, Gerth and Markoff still draw checks (along with their partners in crime Sue Schmidt and Ceci Connolly at the Post) and the man who let them get away with it has been brought out of retirement, with the likely somnolence of Bill Keller in the wings.
If this were ever really about journalistic standards, all of them would have been hounded back to the local shoppers a long time ago. And Sully would have joined Roger Ailes in seizing on on this weird Post correction and the management of that paper (Hey, The City Paper reported on it too, just like they did with Blair).
No, this is all about destroying the impartial media and eroding the people�s trust in independent information. For a man who regularly condemns such disaffected European cynicism, Sully seems to be working overtime to bring it to these shores.
posted by Sully 6/05/2003 06:24:00 PM
HEWITT HOOEY:
Soundbitten�s Greg Beato exposes the blindness of Hugh Hewitt�s Weakly Standing article on the influence blogs will have in the next election cycle (Link via TBogg, whose exegesis is both pithy and priceless).
The Blog Queen obviously had to love a piece that named him one of the Big Four and confirmed his ever-quainter worldview that blogs are largely a conservative medium, even as (it seems to us) the field of liberal-left leaning blogs grows bigger each day, its perspectives constantly diversifying, while Right Blogistan remains relatively static, with newer entrants harder and harder to distinguish from each other as they struggle for new ways of rephrasing the talking point they happened to hear on drive-time talk radio that morning or read on another blog.
Beato�s point that traffic is certainly not the determiner of this status is very well taken, as with his note that Hewitt�s Big Four have largely leveraged their prior media presence, even if it were minimal (as with Reynolds, the only one of those to have made his name as a blogger rather than in dead-tree media, although he had been published in that format before) into blogging success (Indeed, take away Sullivan�s editorship of The New Republic and he�d be just another right-wing loudmouth, albeit British and openly gay, with a couple of graduate Harvard degrees)). By the same token, few of the widely-known righty bloggers save, say, Stephen Den Beste have gotten any gigs outside of their blogs.
But in one respect Hewitt is right ... when blog-percolated stories have leapt into the mainstream media (the classic example being Trent Lott�s comments and John Lott�s sock-puppet) it did take those Big Four to drive it there (Paul Krugman�s columns are the only thing in major media that show any sign of being driven by left blogs (which his website acknowledges more tacitly), which makes it perhaps not coincidental that even Sullivan concedes that he�s �the only liberal columnist with any energy at the moment.�) Almost all stories about political blogging, in fact, treat the phenomenon as if it were largely right-leaning, ignoring the statistics that show just as much penetration by the left as the right (Conservatives themselves are happy to share in this delusion, a phenomenon one can easily see biting them in the ass one day).
It might behoove those of us distressed by this to ask ourselves why, even though such time and effort might be (and usually is) better spent blogging and working for the cause.
Well, there are several reasons that occur to us, the foremost being the anonymity preferred by many of the left bloggers besides ourselves, such as Atrios, Hesiod, Demosthenes, Quiddity Quack and of course The Horse, adopted as a defensive technique against the now-established conservative technique of smearing the person when you sense that you can�t win on the merits (and we�ve noticed that right-wing arguments against those posters are notoriously less coherent when they have to take on your arguments, not you). We don�t like to pose for pictures, making it difficult to write the sort of flattering magazine profiles that Glenn Reynolds collects like baseball cards. Sometimes we even have to turn down gigs like Atrios�s New York Press pieces, because that would mean someone has to know who you are in order to pay you, until we can find a way to loop the money through bank accounts in the Cayman Islands or something (If there�s anyone out there with an ironclad way of protecting identity when receiving money while not arousing any undue IRS attention, let us know). These do tend to prevent the left bloggers from getting as well-known as their rightish counterparts.
And for those left-wing bloggers who do show their faces, there are precious few who had the established names within the punditry community, however modest, that Sullivan, Kaus and Volokh did. Just about every lefty blogger we consider essential reading we read because of what they had written on their blogs, not elsewhere (Josh Marshall is the exception, and although Sawicky is a published and credentialed economist, we had never heard of him until Marshall linked). If someone like, say, John Judis, had started blogging as enthusiastically as Sullivan did, around the same time, the picture of political blogs in the media would look more accurate today.
But maybe this is for the best. Conservatives never grow tired of recounting how the media largely missed the way talk radio, both on the regional and national scale, stoked the fires in the early 1990s that put Republicans in control of Congress two years into the Clinton Administration.
May it happen to them once again. They so deserve it.
posted by Sully 6/05/2003 11:20:00 AM
MORE MEDIA SCANDAL:
Roger Ailes challenges Sully to report on the increasingly corrupt state of British journalism with the same vigor he devotes to Raines.
posted by Sully 6/05/2003 01:38:00 AM
LONE WOLFOWITZ:
Well, Paul Wolfowitz is certainly speaking his mind lately.
Sullivan links to an obscure blog that (unsurprisingly) proudly banners a blurb from him to claim that Wolfowitz�s remarks to the Asia Security Conference were misrepresented.
Actually, as our blogging makes clear, we think that saying it was an oil-driven war lets the Bush administration off too easy. That would almost be defensible in comparison to the real reasons for the war as articulated by Tom Friedman today (see below).
But assuming that it was ... Gregory at Belgravia Dispatch argues that, since the original Guardian report left out Wolfowitz�s qualification that it was about the options available to us for pressure, that we couldn�t do it economically because oil revenues were propping up Saddam in a way that they aren�t propping up North Korea.
A review of the transcript of the question-and-answer session, helpfully linked to by Gregory, however, provides no explicit statement or reference by Wolfy to make that clear. He could have meant that, but Iraqi oil jumps out in one ill-phrased graf and then disappears.
To be fair, his comments really can�t be read as suggesting that the war was about controlling oil revenues, and even Atrios�s sub, Lambert, takes the Guardian to some degree of task for their hed; and according to Kevin Drum there may be some translation problems going on (interesting discussions in the comments there, many of which parallel arguments in this post). But it does seem interesting that, without anyone in the audience using the word �oil,� Wolfowitz blurts it out. Perhaps it played a more significant role in the closed-door policy discussions than he wants to admit.
(Josh Marshall, by the way, has his doubts as to whether the Defense Department transcribes Wolfowitz�s remarks accurately).
The deeper issue to us, however, is that we think Wolfowitz is being disingenuous. We did have economic options that we didn�t use ... there were opportunities to strengthen and target the sanctions better, to get more of our allies to go in on them more seriously with us, that for various reasons the current and (yes) former administration didn�t fully exploit. Of course, the Iraqi people were the primary victims of all this, and it�s a legitimate argument as to whether they would have forced Saddam out at any point. But that didn�t, in our opinion, excuse us for not trying and not more seriously supporting efforts to encourage the Iraqi people to oppose Saddam first.
It's also worth noting that Saddam didn't control all the oil in Iraq, either ... the Kurds had quite a bit, too. And if the illegal oil revenue was making it possible for Saddam�s government to defy sanctions, why not just bomb the pipelines and refineries? Crude oil, if you can�t get it to market, is just so much sticky, smelly brown-black goo.
posted by Sully 6/05/2003 01:29:00 AM
EVEN IF YOU�RE WIRELESS, YOU STILL HAVE TO SPELL CHECK:
Ending it was one of the most prgressive things the United States and Britain and their allies have ever done.
SNOT RUNNING DOWN HIS NOSE:
Sorry. His hed for that item about his wireless made that bit of free association irresistible.
posted by Sully 6/05/2003 12:49:00 AM
PARTIAL-TRUTH:
Sullivan, in for once honestly restating his position on abortion, shows all the more clearly why he should oppose the so-called partial-birth ban.
If, to him, it�s about �a result of trying to balance in my own mind my personal view that all abortion is wrong and my understanding that in a liberal democracy, others sincerely disagree; and in many cases, such disagreement also involves such an intimate decision on the part of a woman that I feel the state is unqualified to intervene,� then why should he or anyone acquiesce in any legislation whose primary proponents are those who promoted it solely as the cutting edge of an effort to ban abortion entirely? (This, of course, leaves aside entirely the questionable provenance of the concept of �partial-birth� abortions, and dubious �facts� about same, in the first place).
He says that �If the pro-choice movement eagerly agreed to outlaw these more horrific operations, they would surely have more credibility in arguing for retaining legal abortion in earlier stages.� Funny ...he regularly accused liberals and leftists of letting politics trump morality during the war debates, yet sees no problem here with urging them to sell out American women for the greater good.
posted by Sully 6/05/2003 12:38:00 AM
STARSTRUCK:
But I simply went by what this president actually said, which is often a good indicator of what he will actually do.
Actually, we could say something about how America�s small investors or veterans would react to that, but the fact is Sully may get the benefit of the doubt ... if only because W is so incoherent most of the time it�s hard to tell exactly what he intends to do.
RIGHT NOW:
Andrew again returns to the argument that �Saddam bad, looky mass graves, therefore the WMD question is moot." This time, he at least has the presence of mind to address our frequent rejoinder � in his words, �People say to this argument that if we depose one dictator for these kinds of abuses, where will we stop?� and then points to the discovery of the mass grave of 200 Kurdish children as something unique to this situation.
Well.
Let�s just say for our part that we are offended to no end by this cheap and cynical use of the victims of tyranny to try to draw attention away from the fact that Bush and his cronies lied to the American people, lies that Sullivan avidly passed on.
It is sickening to try to suggest that there is some level of human-rights abuse at which military intervention is justified but not below. We�re certain that, whenever the North Korean Communist Party is deposed, crimes equal to those of Stalin and Hitler will be unearthed. So why aren�t we fighting the good fight in the Korean Peninsula right now? Who cares if they have nukes? Who cares if such a war would wreak severe damage on the South Korean (and maybe Japanese) economies and infrastructure that would have repercussions worldwide? (Besides, if those ingrates in Seoul are going to ban us from restaurants, they deserve it anyway). Hey, it�s a moral imperative. You don�t let these things get in the way when lives are stake. Did we care about not bombing Europe all to hell to drive Hitler out? Did we care about how beautiful Dresden was? No, because getting rid of Hitler was worth all that. Huh? Why has the Bush administration gone all wobbly?
Robert Mugabe has massacred hundreds of innocents for purely ethnic reasons, by the way. The Burmese generals have filled a few mass graves of their own. Syria, whom we are well-positioned to attack right now, liquidated quite a few of its own citizens some years back in a successful effort to wipe out Islamism there. Yet we don�t hear any impassioned calls for action against them anytime soon from Sullivan.
This is not to diminish the horrors committed in these other places by comparison. Hardly. But it does tend to call into question the sanctimony of those who claim that Saddam�s butchery lets the US and UK off the hook for (quite probably) knowingly deceiving the public as to their own intelligence about Iraq�s weapons of mass destruction capability.
This war was always about so many other things, and they know it.
posted by Sully 6/05/2003 12:20:00 AM
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
A NEW SULLIVAN PRINCIPLE:
The Mighty Reason Man returns from a recent slow period (exams, perhaps, Christian?), and comes out swinging on Sullivan�s �if the people believe it, it must be so� WMD post.
In contrast, it is exceedingly clear who Sullivan is trying to stick it to with that second poll result. Actually, it reeks of desperation. With the weeks going by without any evidence of WMDs in Iraq, the administration is coming under increasingly heavy fire for deceiving the country on the road to war. For the first time since Enron, it seems that there is a seriously damaging story that is not going to go away in a week or two. As more and more people are realizing (some to their joy, others to their horror), this one has legs.
And so, the ridiculously fraudulent ex post facto explanation angle being covering in other corners of the Right-wing media, Andrew decides to rely on the good ol� common sense wisdom of the American people, a huge chunk of whom believe that some or all of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi.
Well, shit, if the American people plus Andrew Sullivan believe it, it must be true!
The funniest part about his post, however, is the obligatory shot at Paul Krugman. This man simply cannot get past his little jihad against PK. From the weeks and weeks of postings about Krugman�s extremely minor but fully-disclosed dealings with Enron, to favorably citing Krugman-stalker Donald Luskin (who has turned into an embarrassment even to Krugman-haters), Andrew simply cannot stand to go even short periods of time without trying to discredit Bush�s most consistent critic in the major media. At this point, it seems necessary to create some version of Godwin�s Law specifically for Sullivan � whenever he mentions Krugman, he is automatically Wrong About Whatever He Is Talking About.
Excellent, Christian! That goes right up there with the �always click on the link� rule.
And he comes back for more:
Like anyone else who has read Eric Alterman�s book without being an utterly blind ideologue, I agree that the Right�s obsession with �liberal bias� is an effort to work the refs of the media in order to actually move the press to the Right and discredit any coverage that is not kind to the Right and its views.
Consequently, the apparent decision on the part of BBC officials to �focus on whether viewers and listeners believe the BBC is biased� is a terrible turn of events. You�ll notice that the focus is on viewers� beliefs about bias, something that is easily manipulated by sources outside the actual content of the BBC � like, say, one of Murdoch�s rags, or people like Sullivan.
It�s bad enough that the Right has succeeded in intimidating most major media sources here in the US, something that was made painfully obvious during the war when a good chunk of the population turned to the BBC for their war coverage. If people who think like Sullivan succeed in muzzling the BBC as well, it will be a dark day indeed.
posted by Sully 6/04/2003 01:29:00 PM
AND THEY THINK JAYSON BLAIR WAS THE PROBLEM?:
Appearances to the contrary, we did not hack into the New York Times�s servers and post this parody of Tom Friedman, in which he basically confirms our entire take on the war:
The �real reason� for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn�t enough because a terrorism bubble had built up over there � a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured. This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K., having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having state-run newspapers call people who did such things �martyrs� was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such �martyrs� was O.K. Not only was all this seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die.
The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world.
But whoever did deserves a lot of credit.
Really, with this kind of cynicism passing itself off as informed commentary, the media expects anyone to take them seriously? (actually, the column is neatly balanced by MoDo: �For the first time in history, America is searching for the reason we went to war after the war is over.�
We�re sure Sullivan will hail this as a work of sheer genius.
posted by Sully 6/04/2003 12:58:00 PM
PUTTING THE �FREE� IN FREE MARKET:
Jo Fish pokes a stick in Sullivan�s eye over his wi-fi squatting:
I�m sure he'll write the Whaler�s Wharf a check for all the time he uses their internet access, right? I�ll bet it feels so good to do something else in a park, he doesn�t even notice he�s �borrowing.�
Ah, to have the moral clarity of a republican...
The blog must go on indeed. Unless a cute guy wonders by.
posted by Sully 6/04/2003 12:50:00 PM
THE BIG NEWS:
It seems like we�re days away from the premiere of yet another season of Provincetown 02657-2315. Yippee! We can hardly wait!
So it seems that he did indeed get his house fixed up. Well, now you know what the pledge drive paid for ...
Actually, we can�t really blame him. He paid $90,000 (he says) four years ago for a cabin with no separate loo? And waited this long to fix it?
Anyhow, this always results in a great deal more amusement for us than Adams Morgan does. We�re looking forward to it.
LETTERS HE DOESN�T PRINT:
On Clinton and gay rights:
On gay civil rights the Clintons did �fuck all?� Good God, Andrew � were you alive during the Clinton administration?
President Clinton issued an executive order making it illegal for the federal goverment to discriminate against gays and lesbians in its workforce. He appointed the first openly gay ambassador. He appointed the highest-ranking openly gay federal official in history. He spoke out in favor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and promised to sign it. He spoke at the Human Rights Campaign national dinner. And though the attempt was certainly politically bungled, Bill Clinton at least addressed the absurdity that gays and lesbians cannot serve openly in the armed forces. But none of that is as important as the cover he gave other politicians to �come out of the closet� as supporters of civil rights for gays and lesbians.
I can put up with your arguments for a more politically diverse gay civil rights movement, but it absolutely drives me around the bend to hear gay Republicans (Republicans!) downplay the accomplishments � the huge strides, even � of the Clinton administration on this issue. You haven�t a leg to stand on.
On anti-Republican bigotry
Your link to Willy Stern's column in metropulse.com gave me a good laugh. So am I supposed to copiously boo hoo at the private pain of �closeted� Republicans? You will forgive me for not immediately grabbing my hanky. When Willy lives for a short while as a gay man in this society, then he will understand what angst really is. Further, I strongly suspect most of the antigay e-mail you are receiving concerning Jonah Goldberg mentioning his wife and baby is coming from members of that most oppressed and marginalized of minorities: GOP voters! Now I know our culture of victimhood has finally gone beyond the pale.
And lastly on Iran:
Fascinating. The war in Iraq turns out less successfully than hoped; immediately Sullivan prescribes starting another war. Without evidence he attributes to Iran decisive power in Iraq, exceeding that of the occupying power. I had thought that attributing to Bush and Rumsfeld a policy of �one two many wars� presumed too much. But their acolyte�s embrace of war against Iran only weeks after the occupation (and liberation) of Iraq tends to confirm my worst fears.
posted by Sully 6/04/2003 02:01:00 AM
DINH SUM:
Our reading of Dinh�s testimony, at least in the excerpt Sully reposted, doesn�t bar the idea that the library records were accessed as part of terrorism investigations.
The two grafs can be boiled down thusly:
1) Yes, we are compiling this information and reporting it to you as the law requires, but it�s classified. Sorry.
2) However, we did visit libraries 50 times or so after getting tips.
Dinh makes no explicit statement of the kind that Sully attributes to him. That reading would work only if there was a sentence saying specifically that the information discussed in the second graf is separate and distinct from what was discussed in the first. As spoken, it�s entirely possibly the two are not mutually exclusive.
And sorry, we don�t consider the categories of �criminal� and �terrorist� to be as mutually exclusive as he does. How does one know for sure, when investigating a ring selling, say, stolen credit cards, that there�s no terrorist connection? If FAA investigators had once asked questions of the two men who violated regs at Miami/Dade by huffily leaving a training plane on the middle of the runway and walking off, they might have foiled 9/11.
posted by Sully 6/04/2003 01:47:00 AM
MORE FOR THE �HMM ...� FILE:
He acknowledges the Isikoff correction. And runs an email attacking him for his Sontag nominee.
posted by Sully 6/04/2003 01:38:00 AM
SHAFER WAS NEVER REALLY ABOARD SHIP:
We knew the instant we finished reading Shafer�s piece that Sullivan would be all over it like a cheap suit.
To be fair to Smalltown Boy, he actually was more restrained than we expected him to be, although we wonder how he describe Shafer as having �doggedly defended� Raines for months now. (We doubt very much that a Raines apologist would accept this hed? Or written this column, which although he admits he is not a Raines hater takes a few raps at Howell anyway? More recently, there�s this). Shafer is only a �Raines defender� because Sullivan is a raving mad attack dog who wants nothing more than for Bill Keller to give him his old job back (Ain�t gonna happen no way, as we�ve heard).
ANOTHER CARTOON ON THE BLAIR AFFAIR:
This one�s worth clicking on, too. (From TBogg).
posted by Sully 6/04/2003 01:36:00 AM
Tuesday, June 03, 2003
A GRADY BUNCH
Grady Olivier at WarBloggerWatch is on a fine tear on Sullivan, too:
Sullivan�s grip on reality � cakking it tenuous would be complimentary � loosens completely. His interpretation of the posting of a photo of Jonah Goldberg�s kid on Jonah�s mommy's website? A �loud and clear� declaration by Jonah of his heterosexuality.
Non-war-related, I grant you, but totally symptomatic of Sullivania � an insertion of ones pet issues/grievances/prejudices into unrelated issues. And this dullard is just as off-base on geopolitics as he is on a father passing out the proverbial cigars after the birth of a child.
And right below (with a great caption for his Time Out New York photo, too!)
Meanwhile, the WMD-detection team that liaised between Miller and the aforementioned clap-cad gentleman leaves Iraq without finding anything.
The usual venues for Times-bashing, jam-packed to capacity with spectators to the Jayson Blair lynching and the Rick Bragg incident, are giving this one a by. It hasn�t gotten so much as a mention in Andy Land, where Howie�s canonical and Howell�s worse than Hitler.
posted by Sully 6/03/2003 01:04:00 AM
BEST BLURB WE�VE EVER GOTTEN:
How can you not like skippy the bush kangaroo when he says sweet things like this about you?
we enjoy sullywatch, even if only for the wonderful tone it has that strikes a delicate balance between irony and bitchiness, something not seen in english letters since oscar wilde.
posted by Sully 6/03/2003 12:54:00 AM
WHAT�S THE DIFFERANCE?:
Wolff�s theory of journalistic objectivity:
It obviously isn�t advisable in this climate to try to describe, no less to mark, the line between absolute fact and the instinctual sense of how far over the line of absolute fact it�s safe to go, which is more and more the real tradecraft ... [S]tar reporters are often the ones who are willing to push exactly to that point on the reality continuum beyond which you self-destruct.
Sullivan�s theory of journalistic objectivity.
But a certain amount of B.S. is necessary for any vaguely successful retrenchment of government power in an insatiable entitlement state ... a rhetorical smoke screen is sometimes necessary.
Courtesy of Spinsanity (see blogroll).
posted by Sully 6/03/2003 12:47:00 AM
THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT, YOUR HIGHNESS!!:
Hmm ... funny how he makes exactly the same observation about his most recent Sontag Award nominee that we did, several hours later. Somehow we don�t think he came up with that on his own. And is his regret not, in fact, a tacit admission that his usual method is looking hard through a text for the one line that he knows can get him good and pissed off, and only later looking (or getting emailed with) the full context.
Leaving that aside, we still fail to see how �Try to imagine that you are not an American� can seem in any way, shape, or form self-parodic, much less meeting his own criteria for the award. That he sees it that way says more about him than it does about Sontag. A lot more.
posted by Sully 6/03/2003 12:30:00 AM
LIE DOWN, CROPPIES, LIE DOWN!:
It is no coincidence that the radical and violent people who today profess to be acting in Christian causes are almost all �dispensationalist� Christians deriving their spiritual tradition from the Calvinist or Anabaptist strains of Protestantism." You can say that again.
Apparently so, since it�s missing one set of quotation marks.
Other than that, we are just incredulous at this naked expression of pro-Catholic, anti-Protestant bigotry of the kind that one would have expected Yankee Doodle Andy to have left behind in Sussex.
posted by Sully 6/03/2003 12:26:00 AM
WE WON�T MAKE THE OBVIOUS GODWIN�S LAW-TRIGGERING OBSERVATION, BUT IT�S NEVERTHELESS A VALID POINT:
Apparently, since so many people believe the administration didn�t lie to us about WMDs, whatever the other evidence says, it�s not true.
And he wants us to look down on Michael Wolff? He dares uphold standards of objectivity in Howell Raines�s face? Funny how much conservatives are willing to embrace vaguely postmodernistic ideas of constructed truth and perception-as-reality when it suits them.
posted by Sully 6/03/2003 12:23:00 AM
RIGHT-WING HOMOPHOBIA ENABLING WATCH:
Funny that on the Lucianne thread discussing (if that�s the word for it) Hillary�s book, one poster takes a little umbrage at the fact that Paglia is a self-proclaimed lesbian.
At least he says it�s a guilty pleasure. Now we know why.
posted by Sully 6/03/2003 12:17:00 AM
WHAT REALLY KEEPS ANDREWSULLIVAN.COM IN THE BLACK:
I�ve no doubt that some of these companies deserve tough scrutiny. But I also have no doubt that when the history of this period is written, one of the biggest stories will be the revolution in pharmaceutical research that has transformed the lives of millions from sickness to health.
Cha-ching.
posted by Sully 6/03/2003 12:06:00 AM
Monday, June 02, 2003
TWO BELLY LAUGHS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE:
[Y]es, the same evil drug companies that have saved the lives of countless people like me.
But how many of those others have had their websites funded by them?
I�m used to sloppy reporting, attitude-driven prose, and complete contempt for the truth in magazine journalism ...
We noticed.
posted by Sully 6/02/2003 01:33:00 PM
HE BOTTOMS HIMSELF
�Christo-fascist�? Oh, puhleez ... aren�t they people who wrap public monuments and landmarks in swastika flags?
posted by Sully 6/02/2003 01:28:00 PM
NEOCON CON UPDATE:
Josh Marshall on the latest neocon smear:
There�s a new rush of articles claiming that the term �neoconservative� is actually no more than an anti-Jewish slur or codeword and that its use is at a minimum analytically meaningless, almost certainly ill-advised, and quite possibly a form of cloaked anti-Semitism. This of course ignores the fact that the term is itself a coinage of neoconservatives and has been in common usage by them and their opponents for almost three decades.
When the gentiles start charging Jews with uttering anti-Semitic slurs you know there�s something funny in the water.
He also does a good job of debunking the spin on the Wolfowitz Vanity Fair interview.
posted by Sully 6/02/2003 01:13:00 PM
HE�S GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION:
Roger Ailes finds that Slate had to correct Isajerkoff�s Sully-recommended review of The Clinton Wars.
posted by Sully 6/02/2003 01:08:00 PM
FISHING EXPEDITIONS:
Sully devotes a good deal of renewed energy on both his blog and his Sunday Times column to dealing, as many hawks are having to, with the absence so far of any nuclear, biological or chemical weapons to turn up in Iraq so far, now that we have beneficial occupancy of the entire country, pretty much. (Jim Capozzola tackles similar efforts by William Safire and the usual gang of idiots at the Wall Street Journal�s editorial page. UPDATE: Josh Marshall goes after Safire as well).
Those two use the �but isn�t Iraq liberated now, so it doesn�t matter what we said before� line which Sullivan used on his blog: �[T]he daily news of the mass murders that took place regularly under Saddam only confirm more deeply the moral imperative of that truly just war.�
Well then, that begs the question of why we�re letting North Korea and Iran perpetuate similar realities, as well as so many other repressive regimes on the planet.
For the Sunday Times, Smalltown Boy takes a slightly different tack:
But in some ways, these matters, while important, still don�t get to the heart of the matter. The fundamental case for getting rid of Saddam was not dependent on the existence of a certain amount of some chemical or other. It was based on a political and military judgement. Once the threat from Islamist terror was self-evident, it would have been irresponsible for any political leader to ignore the possibility of a future attack with WMDs. It was and is the obvious next step for an operation like al Qaeda. Further, the war against terror, from the beginning, was always directed not simply at terrorist groups, but at the states that aided and abetted them. The key point is that Saddam�s Iraq was a clear and present danger in that context. What mattered was not whether at any particular moment Saddam had a certain specifiable quantity of botulinum toxin. What mattered was his capacity to produce such things, his ability to conceal them, and his links to terrorists who could deploy them. No one can doubt that he had had them at one point, was capable of producing them, and was linked to groups who would be only too happy to use them. That was and is the case for getting rid of him. It�s as powerful now as it was in January.
So why didn�t you say so then? Because you knew that the American people are not so dumb as to support a war on the Minority Report theory of justice and pre-emption. No, they had to be sold on the idea that there was a clear and present danger. Only that would garner the necessary support.
Both these arguments have the same moral and intellectual flaw: The Starr investigation notwithstanding, you do not get to change the terms of your investigation after you�ve smashed up the china shop. The mass graves, horrifying as they are, are not outside the scope of anything alleged about Saddam and his regime prior to the war. They were casa belli only if you were prepared to invade Belarus, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Myanmar, Uzbekistan and a few other countries as well.
And they overlook a salient point already effervescing elsewhere: the WMD proponents were not just wrong. They were, it seems more and more obvious, lying (Links via Quiddity Quack and Hesiod respectively).
This is what really matters, as we were reminded so often during the last administration by those who now excuse or evade this last issue. The American people and the nations of the world won�t remember the Bush administration for ending Saddam�s reign of terror if no WMDs are found. They will remember it for knowingly, willfully and maliciously deceiving them in order to justify that most distasteful of human endeavors, an aggressive war.
(Of course, as Spinsanity found (see blogroll), Sullivan has openly embraced this behavior as forgivable and noble in the service of a greater cause).
posted by Sully 6/02/2003 01:02:00 PM
MAYBE HE�S GETTING BACK AT THE FREEPERS:
Eric Rudolph was just such a figure. He was a warped Christian fundamentalist who murdered for his cause. He bombed symbols of individual freedom, constitutional rights and minority intransigence. He is our Osama.
We only wish Osama had been that klutzy as to go Dumpster-diving at three a.m. in a small town. Or that he had confined his terror to Saudi Arabia. Timothy McVeigh (remember him?) comes closer to being our Osama than Rudolph ever will, if you go by the number of dead.
In his refuge, he had, like other terrorists, the implicit support of a population who shared his beliefs, if not the extremism that sanctioned his killings.
So, should Congress refuse to seat the Representative from that district?
If we are to call John Muhammed a religiously inspired terrorist (and I think we should) then we have to call Rudolph a Christian terrorist. I propose a new term for those on the fringes of the religious right who have used the Gospels to perpetuate their own aspirations for power, control and oppression: Christianists.
We suppose it�s better than �Christiano-fascists.� Not that any of Sullivan�s neologisms have ever lasted as well as �milky loads� will (Would you, could you, should you call that a neolo-jism?).
Does someone care to trademark �Christianity: The Religion of Peace� when typed with a sarcastic leer?
They are as anathema to true Christians as the Islamists are to true Islam. And they have to be fought just as vigilantly.
Then let�s get those JDAMS falling on Hayden Lake as quickly as we can! Anyone who urges caution is objectively pro-Christianist ...
posted by Sully 6/02/2003 01:47:00 AM
LET�S RETIRE THE SONTAG AWARD, NOW AND FOR ALL TIME:
Not only, as we have previously noted, is it just stupid to give that out to the person it�s named after, the bit from her Vassar commencement speech (as quoted in (he naturally won�t admit this other than via the link) The New York Times) is about the least objectionable statement one could make. It�s certainly not anti-American, never mind rising to the level of equating us with the terrorists or suggesting we deserved it, as his original charter for the award suggests. And it would be well to read the full quote:
Try to imagine at least once a day that you are not an American. Go even further: try to imagine at least once a day that you belong to the vast, the overwhelming majority of people on this planet who don�t have passports, don�t live in dwellings equipped with both refrigerators and telephones, who have never even once flown in a plane.
In other words, try to imagine what it�s like to see the other side, to walk a mile in the other guy�s moccasins. Sullivan may have his own problems in this regard, and consider it a sign of moral weakness, and that�s all well and good for him, but he�s not in good company, and to sneer at this is ... well, it�s asking way too much to call it grasping at straws.
Most importantly, as we all know, for Yankee Doodle Andy this is hardly a theoretical exercise. He wasn�t American once; he doesn�t need to imagine, just remember (Well, we can imagine what it would be like if Sullivan weren�t American ...).
And, lastly, just what is it about Vassar that sets him off in this category? Last year, Tony Kushner made a subtle dig at Sullivan in his commencement speech there, resulting in a few weeks of pissy little asides to get even.
Memo to Vassar Class of 2005: You will likely be able to get Paul Krugman as your commencement speaker, at this rate.
posted by Sully 6/02/2003 01:36:00 AM
Sunday, June 01, 2003
THE DRY DRUNK MEME:
We�re glad it�s finally made it into the mainstream. For the origin of this little discussion, in ways that can�t be easily reduced to his �Begala Award� (and after the one he recently pasted on Sen. Byrd for a single sentence, one really has to wonder if there�s any top for such passionate criticism of the president to be over for Andy), go here. (Van Wormer has, we concede, also made this same argument in that publication edited by Alexander Cockburn that we do not believe should be linked to).
And this commentary on the other articles also serves as a nice rebuttal to Sullivan�s correspondent who tries to make Bush look superior to Clinton on this one:
There is nothing, absolutely nothing to indicate in the lifestyle of George Bush that he is a "recovered" alcoholic. (As indicated above, Bush explicitly implies that he is alcoholic.)
[...]
In some of the more �willful� cases, the dry drunk internalizes a concept of �God�s Will� to justify willful behavior. This mental obsession that the alcoholic now is possessed with the knowledge of God�s Will allows the unrecovered alcoholic to justify ego driven, highly aggressive attitudes and behaviors in the face of opposition of life on life�s terms. Using this God Given mandate, the unrecovered alcoholic is driven by a form of �self will run riot� that becomes not only dangerous to the alcoholic, but to all those the alcoholic affects in the daily course of life.
[...]
President George W. Bush shows every sign of a mental obsession that is rendering him dysfunctional. This obsession that he alone is right in his view of the world is driven by the complex ingredients of egomania and inferiority symptomatic to that found in the medical diagnostic description of the illness of alcoholism.
A simple real world analogy would be to see Bush as the Chairman of the Board of an international corporation whose majority members were opposed to his policies. In like circumstances, should he persist, as he is doing now, he would either be forced to resign or be fired, and/or, the Human Resources department would be called in to require mental health counseling.
And while we�re at it, just why is it so beyond the pale to level such criticism at Bush when there was nothing wrong with similar speculation about Bill Clinton having satyriasis, attention-deficit disorder, or sociopathy (remember that one, Sully?)
Of course, we suspect Sullivan handed this one out because it hits a little too close to home for him. Does this ...:
Obsessiveness: This trait, related to levels of serotonin in the brain, is manifest as an inability to let go, the determination to pursue one path, whatever the cost.
... sound like someone and a certain Alabaman? (See also �Exaggerated self-importance and grandiose behavior� (he would have been the Blog Queen even if he were het) and �all-or-nothing thinking� (his open-hearted embrace of the whole �objectively pro-/anti- ...� meme). And this, of course)
posted by Sully 6/01/2003 04:08:00 PM
RIGHT STORY, WRONG NAME:
OK, so Sheryl got the name wrong, and the fact that no one fact-checked that will doubtless end up on Page A2. It is another one of those instances where a Times� reporter apparently felt that that was something everyone knew, something so obvious it didn�t need to be checked out
But Bush has, in fact, appointed an openly gay man as ambassador to Romania.
Sullivan should at least acknowledge this. From his outburst, you�d be left with the impression that not only has she gotten the appointment wrong, Bush has not appointed any openly gay officials.
posted by Sully 6/01/2003 03:47:00 PM
