Friday, September 26, 2003
THE THREE FACES OF ANDREW:
Sebastian ponders the evidence that Smalltown Boy has multiple personality disorder.
posted by Sully 9/26/2003 04:30:00 PM
ON THE COUCH:
Haggai Elitzur, whom we are relieved to report does not blogroll Charles Johnson as we had once thought, psychoanalyzes Sullivan�s Clark obsession.
What about this demonstrates �Clark�s flakiness�? Sullivan�s inability to understand the difference between the specific point of Clark�s alleged phone calls to Rove and the broader point of his being mad at the Bush administration for rebuking his offers to help? Then we get into the partisanship point. OK, Clark says he voted for Nixon and Reagan, but now he�s a Dem � does that make him flaky? Only if Ronald Reagan could be called flaky for having become a Republican after voting four times for FDR. Then there�s the point about wanting �revenge� on the Clinton administration by �returning in glory to help run a war� � what? That makes no sense whatsoever. Anyone who�s read anything about what happened to Clark after the Kosovo war knows that he was pushed out of his job by the higher-ups at the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs. The White House, by practically all accounts, was more or less snookered into it. So how would joining the next administration count as �revenge�? I don�t get that at all.
Finally, there�s this overarching point that�s worth making. Sullivan constantly accuses Democrats of playing politics with terrorism, hating Bush more than Saddam, wanting America to fail, etc. Now a story emerges about a Democratic presidential candidate having wanted to join the Bush administration�s war on terror � and Sullivan cites that as evidence of said candidate�s �flakiness� and �ego-centrism!� Partisan hackery often descends into classic Freudian projection, but this must be close to a record on that count.
posted by Sully 9/26/2003 04:18:00 PM
DON�T GO THERE, CONTINUED:
TAPped agrees with us that Sullivan is asking too much in his campaign advice to Clark:
How, exactly, is a person supposed to lay out a plan to �bring Iraq to democracy, nation-build in Afghanistan, and get tough on Saudi Arabia� without criticizing the president�s conduct of the war on terrorism? If the president�s policies had been working, there would be no need for someone to lay out a plan like that. Since, as Sullivan himself seems to see, the policies aren�t working, they need to be criticized.
posted by Sully 9/26/2003 04:13:00 PM
DON�T CONFUSE ME WITH THE FACTS:
Via Atrios (doing a hilarious take on Bill O�Reilly, Fox News�s Angry Dad, today), we see how difficult it is to make Sullivan correct himself:
Well, considering I don�t believe (nor will I ever), that messing up those dates was an honest mistake, I�d say Sullivan's, ahem, character came shining through as well. It�s a tiny little pinprick of light that my cat's chasing around my office right now.
Also, it�s interesting to note that he still hasn�t corrected the error in his original post, even though that post and the correction post use entirely different linkback URL�s. We�re not talking print media here, Sully. You can add the correction above the original post or, here�s a crazy concept, just fucking correct it. But then that might change the point, huh? Hate to ruin the fun for the folks who have already linked to it.
We�d just add that Sullivan�s correction basically boils down to �But it was a greater truth no matter when he said it!�
posted by Sully 9/26/2003 02:31:00 PM
DOING THE TIME WARP AGAIN!:
According to his timestamps, Sullivan won�t have posted these for at least another hour. But they�re here anyway.
posted by Sully 9/26/2003 01:13:00 AM
�WE�RE NOT TALKING SANITY HERE�:
But read the full Post article, for gems like these:
The world's second-largest oil country is importing oil, and a country full of concrete is importing concrete.
[...]
Pete Sepp, a spokesman for the conservative National Taxpayers Union, said Americans are being misled.
�Many members of the general public are being led to believe this money is just to turn the lights back on in Iraq,� Sepp said. �Once word gets out about the nature of some of these projects, it will pose a real dilemma for a number of policymakers who believe U.S. foreign aid is already suffering from administrative problems as well as overambitious goals. These are the kinds of things that radio talk show hosts love to chew up and give to their listeners.�
This bit�s particularly eye-raising, and should be on other liberal blogs (hint: you readers know who you are)
Some Republican aides say the numbers may be more defensible than they sound because the budget is not quite real. They suggest the administration has inflated costs, in part to avoid having to come back next year for a new emergency spending bill, and in part so they can skim some of the money for classified military efforts.
(Emphasis ours)
Has the administration grown so bold that its defenders can admit so offhandedly to what always goes on but is never acknowledged? And just what are these projects that have to be funded outside the usual black budget?
Sullivan, naturally, appeals to the neocon faith, to that special knowledge of the future for which dollars and cents are unimportant fragments of the ephemeral material world. �You want to ensure costly military spending for decades in the Middle East?� he asks, apparently oblivious to the possibility that many will respond, as we do �Like we haven�t already?�
posted by Sully 9/26/2003 01:11:00 AM
DON�T GO THERE:
If I were advising Clark, I�d tell him not to attack Bush�s conduct in the war on terror, or impugn his motives or sully his reputation.
In other words, don�t ask any of the real important questions like whether you really believed any of that WMD stuff. Or why you�re letting domestic security go so neglected so soon after its importance was so graphically demonstrated. Don't make Bush uncomfortable. We Republicans need to believe in the illusion of him as somehow the opposite of everything we believed Bill Clinton to be, and we go apeshit bonzo when you prevent us from doing so.
Just the sort of neutering the Republicans have always been comfortable with.
(Aside from which, the choice of words is ironic).
posted by Sully 9/26/2003 01:01:00 AM
BIGOTRY:
If he�s genuine � and you have to remember he�s a Rhodes Scholar and they tend to say anything to suck up to whomever they�re talking to ...
Jesus Christ! Sullivan, if someone said something this broad and/or overreaching about gays, Catholics, Republicans or bodybuilders you'd call it for what it was!
We really shouldn�t be having a pity party for Rhodes Scholars, but someone (the boyfriend? Bueller? Anyone?) needs to calm Sullivan down here.
And we dunno ... after all, being a Rhodes Scholar hasn�t hurt this guy any.
posted by Sully 9/26/2003 12:56:00 AM
Thursday, September 25, 2003
JESSE�S SOLUTION:
From the panda:
You know how you have to baby-proof a house for newborns and toddlers, so that they won�t bump into and/or consume things that they shouldn�t? Well, after this entry, I�m afraid that the English language may need to be Sullivan-proofed so that everyone�s favorite Big Gay Bear doesn�t start taking obvious sarcasm as serious statements.
posted by Sully 9/25/2003 02:04:00 PM
NEW SENSATION:
Russ at the blawg Legal Memo-random takes time out to analyze Sullivan�s Clark fixation:
Andrew Sullivan has entered a new phase of therapy with regards to the candidacy of General Wesley Clark. You know, anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Insert somewhere in there �masturbation without any real purpose� because that is the only way to describe the steady diet of crap coming from Sullivan�s pages.
[...]
So lets get this straight. Sullivan is unquestioningly believing Colorado's Governor Bill Owens (a Republican operative) version over what happened, but doesn�t seem to find time to question Owens� agenda?
I�m not going to bother with the rest of Sully�s quotes, except to say that its hard to believe that this guy obsesses with the NY Times quality of reporting when he can�t drool fast enough to accept the word of a party figure like Owens without a question in his little mind.
In other words, Sullivan is scared of Clark.
If only Clark had a hot body. Then Sully would change his mind.
posted by Sully 9/25/2003 01:59:00 PM
THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY:
Molly Ivins speaks up for Bush-hatred.
Among the more amusing cluckings from the right lately is their appalled discovery that quite a few Americans actually think George W. Bush is a terrible president.
Robert Novak is quoted as saying that, in all his 44 years of covering politics, he has never seen anything like the detestation of Bush. Charles Krauthammer managed to write an entire essay on the topic of �Bush-haters� in Time magazine, as though he had never before come across such a phenomenon.
Oh, I stretch memory way back, so far back, all the way back to � our last president.
Almost lost in the mists of time though that is, I not only remember eight years of relentless attacks from Bill Clinton-haters, but I also notice they haven�t let up yet. Clinton-haters accused the man of murder, rape, drug-running, sexual harassment, financial chicanery and official misconduct, and his wife of even worse.
[...]
One thing I acknowledge about the right is that they�re much better haters than liberals are. Your basic liberal is pretty much a strikeout on the hatred front. Maybe further out on the left you can hit some good righteous anger, but liberals, and I am one, are generally real wusses.
To tell the truth, I�m kind of proud of us for holding the grudge this long.
[...]
We got no Osama; we got no Saddam; we got no weapons of mass destruction; the road map to peace in the Middle East is blown to bits. We�re stuck in Iraq for $87 billion just for one year, and no one knows how long we�ll be there.
And still poor Krauthammer is hard-put to conceive how anyone could conclude that George W. Bush is a poor excuse for a president.
It is not necessary to hate George W. Bush to think he�s a bad president.
Grown-ups can do that, you know � decide that someone's policies are a miserable failure without lying awake at night, consumed with hatred.
Poor Bush is in way over his head, and the country is in bad shape because of his stupid economic policies. If that make me a Bush-hater, then sign me up.
Link from TAPped.
posted by Sully 9/25/2003 01:43:00 PM
CLARK HAS HANDED HIS PAPER IN:
TAPped tells us to tell Sullivan that Wesley Clark has something he might want to read.
posted by Sully 9/25/2003 01:38:00 PM
BURNS BURNING:
OK, if another reporter really did what Burns alleges, he should be banned from the field for life.
But read what else Shafer said:
It�s possible that Burns is mistaken about the incident. He is maddeningly vague in the interview about when it happened, which doesn�t boost his credibility. (Also, if there�s something unseemly about an anonymous source flinging an accusation at a named person, how do we feel about a public accuser who lodges his complaint against an anonymous person?)
We think we know why this is being buried: it has as much to do with Burns not wanting to draw any more attention than he already has to an interview in which he admits freely to informing Iraqi government officials about coalition airstrike targets a day in advance, an action that as we and Hesiod have noted would not be looked upon with favor by most Americans, no matter how humanitarian his motive (and which also begs the deeper, unasked questions: Who at the Pentagon was passing this information to the New York Times? And, most disturbingly, why?)
posted by Sully 9/25/2003 01:28:00 PM
BBC: THE REAL AGENDA:
A government monopoly on something it doesn�t necessarily need to provide, but does to great public acclaim, slowly begins to face competition that takes advantage of its inevitable staidness. In response, it revamps itself and becomes more responsive to the needs not being met by the market that now exists.
Libertarians often spin this rosy scenario; but, now that it has actually come to pass in the case of the BBC, they can�t stand it.
Let us nurture no further illusions about what�s really going on here: When Sullivan says �privatize,� he really means �abolish.�
The Times story makes perfectly clear that the present issue isn�t so much political bias �
The BBC, which is regulated and championed by its own independent board of governors, has few friends in politics, of any party. Having antagonized the government by its skeptical reporting on the war in Iraq, the national health service and immigration, among other things, it has also antagonized the opposition Conservative Party, which regards the BBC as incurably left wing.
[...]
There is also the issue of anti-government bias in general, a perennial complaint over the years from both Labor and Conservative governments. Supporters of the BBC � and there are many � say that the opponents either have their own political agendas or are direct competitors who would benefit from a neutered BBC.
� as it is this particular bias at this particular time.
And it seems that this has occurred because of competition from the private sector:
While the corporation�s previous director-general, Lord Birt, was known as a systems man who sought to bring some semblance of fiscal rationality to the company, his successor, Greg Dyke, is regarded by people in the industry as a market-driven ratings enthusiast who favors aggressive journalism in which the BBC tries to break stories instead of just reporting them.
And again:
�The BBC suffers from a massive deference deficit,� he said. �It doesn�t have a great deal of respect for institutions, but very few British journalists do. The accusations of irreverence and lack of respect used to be made more often against the commercial broadcasters than against the BBC. Until recently the BBC was accused of being very stuffy indeed.�
So what, by their own theories, do the conservatives have to complain about? Nobody, here or in Britain, is making them watch the BBC (Granted, over there, they�re being made to pay for it, assuming they buy or own a TV set. But remember that the BBC World Service, which draws the most fire from critics, is not financed by the license fee but by the Foreign Office. Where is all the umbrage directed at them for that?).
But we also learn in passing in this story that the BBC is making a push into the American market, as anybody with public TV or a sufficiently large cable package knows.
Hmm ... could it be that, now that there is a Fox News Channel, conservatives are afraid that the BBC (which drew a lot of watchers and listeners during the march on Baghdad, proving that enough American want impartial news, even if it means � gasp! � having to look at pictures of dead soldiers and enemy over dinner (One really wonders why a nation that watched hundreds of people die on live morning television in collapsing skyscrapers and crashing jetliners should still insist on being so squeamish after such a blooding)) will prove that a genuine market exists to the left-of-center and that the CNNs, MSNBCs et al will stop providing the workfare for marginal conservatives like Michael Savage and Joe Scarborough. That they might actually have to work to win arguments, and base them on facts. Hell, some of them might even have to find real jobs!
Yup. As we�ve been saying all along, the real agenda here has been and remains to marginalize left-wing discourse as much as possible.
posted by Sully 9/25/2003 01:12:00 PM
CONDENSATION:
Jo Fish sums him up:
Almost Shorter Andrew Sullivan: I hate Saddam. He was a bad evil man. Now that his regime is over, tell me why we were wrong to get rid of him? Bother me not with facts about WMDs and alleged administration lies. Saddam was a bad evil man. I cannot use too many words to express loathing of Saddam and the anti-war liberals. Wesley Clark is a liar. Nine-Eleven.
posted by Sully 9/25/2003 12:45:00 PM
ORWELLIAN IN WAYS HE DOESN�T REALIZE:
Rereading that Arthur Silber post below in the light of day reminded us of this passage (from something written by Eric Blair and not Eric Corley!):
In one combination or another, these three super-states are permanently at war, and have been so for the past twenty-five years. War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference. This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one�s own side and not by the enemy, meritorious. But in a physical sense war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly-trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at ... In the centres of civilization war means no more than a continuous shortage of consumption goods, and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb which may cause a few scores of deaths. War has in fact changed its character. More exactly, the reasons for which war is waged have changed in their order of importance. Motives which were already present to some small extent in the great wars of the early twentieth century have now become dominant and are consciously recognized and acted upon.
[...]
To understand the nature of the present war � for in spite of the regrouping which occurs every few years, it is always the same war � one must realize in the first place that it is impossible for it to be decisive.
[...]
The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
[...]
War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist. The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of doublethink. Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world.
All members of the Inner Party believe in this coming conquest as an article of faith.
[...]
The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense. Actually the three philosophies are barely distinguishable, and the social systems which they support are not distinguishable at all. Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure, the same worship of semi-divine leader, the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare. It follows that the three super-states not only cannot conquer one another, but would gain no advantage by doing so.
In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality.
[...]
The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair ... The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word �war,� therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist.
The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This � although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense � is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: War is Peace.
God, that Orwell ... One merely has to read him at work on something like this to remind oneself how good he really was.
Sullivan�s hero-worship of the man is no less than a desecration of his memory (of course, has anyone noticed how long it�s been since he last quoted or invoked Orwell?)
posted by Sully 9/25/2003 12:41:00 PM
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
GETTING THEIR IRISH UP:
The good folk at Best of Both Worlds have more on the fake no-sympathy-for-the-US claim.
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 09:26:00 PM
ISN�T THERE A RUSH SONG ABOUT SOMETHING LIKE THIS?:
Arthur Silber is getting really disgusted with Andrew:
So there you have it: perpetual war. We�re the victims of forces beyond our control, of historic inevitability, it�s just our �bad luck� � all of which is straight out of the New Fascists� handbook, as set forth by Irving Kristol. Glad to have confirmation on that point, too...
One more thing: Sullivan relies on a fundamental false alternative, which hawks always do. Either we wage the war on terrorism the way he wants to, and the way the Bush Administration wants to � or we�re �complacent,� we �withdraw,� and, apparently, do nothing. No, Mr. Sullivan, that is not the choice, although the hawks refuse to admit any other alternatives into their worldview. Many people, like me, are saying: Yes, fight the war on terrorism, defeat the bastards � just not this way ...
[...]
Sullivan can�t have it both ways, not that I expect him to address this inconsistency. His response, I have no doubt, would be Irving Kristol�s: it�s just our �bad luck.� We have enemies. We have to fight them. We have to fight them this way.
But we don�t. There are entirely different ways of fighting them. But, of course, those other ways require giving up the program of the New Fascists. Sullivan appears not to be willing to do that. Too bad for him, and for us. But at least we know clearly where he�s coming from now. And it�s not from a position that supports the United States in its founding principles, or that supports individual rights and liberty. And whatever we�re in the process of exporting to other countries around the globe, it�s not freedom. And if the Sullivans have their way, we eventually won�t have any freedom left here either.
But as long as people are allowed to read his blog, Sullivan won�t notice.
As for flypaper, Silber found a couple of critiques we�d missed. Here�s Jim Henley�s:
Andrew Sullivan among others expresses satisfaction that, �The extra beauty of this strategy is that it creates a target for Islamist terrorists that is not Israel.� I can�t begin to say how appalling it is that Sullivan thinks it appropriate to make American troops into targets for another country�s enemies, given that the other country has its own government and military already charged with safeguarding its citizens and interests, and given that the Administration did not exactly put this motivation out there for acceptance or rejection during the debate on the war. Indeed, if you argued that war proponents like Sullivan conflated Israeli and American interests, said proponents called you a nutcase or a bigot. Glad we cleared that up. But there�s also the minor practical problem that it doesn�t seem to be working. Iraqis and (some number of infiltrators) can attack Americans in Iraq at the same time as Palestinians attack Israelis in Israel and Palestine.
Also apparently not working: Saddam�s checks to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers have presumably stopped. Suicide bombings themselves have not.
Finally, there�s a minor matter of morality. Remember all that stuff about how we weren�t at war with the Iraqi people but with Saddam Hussein, or the Ba'ath Party apparatus? Flypaper theory exists to posit and justify a messy war between the US military and non-Iraqi enemies of America and Israel � those infiltrators, remember? Let�s state it again, clearly: the presence of American troops in Iraq draws anti-American and anti-Israeli terrorists to Iraq, where we wipe them out. That is, Flypaper supposedly represents a decision by the US to turn Iraq, a place full of the Iraqi People With Whom We Have No Quarrel, into a theater of war between non-Iraqi forces. The dead, wounded, frightened and humiliated will not, of course, be restricted to non-Iraqis. The stuff that gets broke will not just be non-Iraqi stuff. And we wonder why some Iraqis are so sullen.
And there�s this one, from a conservative:
Andrew Sullivan is running an immensely silly letter on the �flypaper� thesis. What the writer fails to grasp is that his examples are all of geographic positions with specific values in themselves. The enemy forces at Gettysburg and Roman-era Asia Minor would have wanted Little Round Top and the wells respectively even if the Federals or Romans had not occupied those positions. We can�t say the same of Iraq, which did not attract al Qaeda , foreign mujahidin, et al., until the Americans arrived. The real parallel in military history for �flypaper� lies in simple, deliberate embrace of attrition: Falkenhayn at Verdun, Navarre at Dien Bien Phu, flypaper fanatics on Iraq today. It�s a terrible situation for a modern, undermanned, democratic Army to be in: I can only hope that our political leadership did not embrace such idiocy.
Arthur also takes on his last Begala:
I haven�t read Franken's book, so I can�t offer any kind of evaluation of it. But Sullivan is badly overreacting here � the passage he quotes simply suggests that a politician might use religious belief as a cover for other aims, as the means of pursuing the agenda which actually concerns him. And in the excerpt, Franken himself even grants the possibility that Bush is completely sincere about his religious beliefs. But a detail like that doesn�t slow Sullivan down, since he also has a broader agenda. Moreover, it�s not unjustified to be somewhat (or even very) suspicious of people who have proven themselves to be goddamned, lying bastards. In fact, one might argue that such suspicion is required.
But according to Sullivan, it�s outrageous to consider even the possibility that religion might be used as the means to other goals. Well, I�ll have to remember that. I�m sure it�s never, ever happened that politicians � or maybe even dictatorial thugs � have ever, ever used religion as the means of pursuing evil and destructive ends. (No, I�m not saying Bush himself is a dictatorial thug, at least not yet. I�m making a broader point.) I�m just as certain that all those inquisitions, �holy wars,� heretic burnings, and religious persecutions never happened, and aren�t still happening today.
All of which brings us to the real question: why doesn�t Sullivan just write fiction, anyway? He certainly seems to have the knack for it.
As this (reportedly) amply demonstrates.
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 09:23:00 PM
REPUBLICANSFORHILLARY.BLOGSPOT.COM:
Tim Noah tells it like it is.
The standard Republican view of the former first lady is that she�s a power-grabbing bitch. By pretending that Hillary�s scheming to seize the presidency, conservatives can claim to offer evidence for their view.
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 09:04:00 PM
NEGLECTED PROGRESSIVE ROCK LYRICS OF THE DAY:
And there you are,
Saying we have the moon, so now the stars,
When all you see
Is near disaster gazing down on you and me ...
Yes, anticipating the neocon spin job on Iraq by several decades.
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 08:59:00 PM
UH, ANDREW, DID YOU CLEAR THAT WITH THE CAMPAIGN BEFORE YOU SAID IT?:
The official website says AS is 6'2". Others differ. Most think he�s much smaller. So do I. I met him once (it was at an event where a lot of young men were wearing make-up and dresses) and he was, if memory serves, shorter than me and I�m around 5'9" in the mornings.
(Emphasis added).
Great. He�s kept those gay rumors out of the spotlight, left Paco Arce in the grave and now ...
Just when I say
Boy we can�t miss
You are golden
Then you do this
You say this guy is so cool
Snapping his fingers like a fool
One more expensive kiss-off
Who do you think I am
Lord I know you�re a special friend
But you don�t seem to understand
We got heavy rollers
I think you should know
Try again tomorrow
[...]
Lord I know you�re a special friend
But you refuse to understand
You�re a nasty schoolboy
With no place to go
Try again tomorrow
Look at you
Holding hands with the man from Rio
Would you care to explain
Who is the gaucho amigo
Why is he standing
In your spangled leather poncho
With the studs that match your eyes
Bodacious cowboys
Such as your friend
Will never be welcome here
High in the Custerdome ...
(Thanks once again to Donald Fagen and Walter Becker)
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 08:56:00 PM
FAILED COINAGE WATCH:
�Euphemize�?
We�re not sure what he meant here. Numbers aren�t words. You are either telling the truth about your age or you�re not.
Perhaps he means things like saying �middle-aged.� But that�s not euphemistic, that�s just being vague, or coy.
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 08:49:00 PM
FRIENDS DON�T LET FRIENDS BLOG ON ANDROGEL:
Look, he was a Rhodes Scholar. They suck upwards and kick downwards ... But he strikes me as an obviously inferior candidate to several of the others. I�d go for Edwards, Kerry, Lieberman or Dean before this nut.
And just what the hell kind of self-justification is this?
Well, Clark claimed that �something� was a joke; and that he was misinterpreted. I take the point and should have mentioned this interpretation at the time. I was a little flip. But don't get me wrong: I don�t believe Clark for a minute about this incident.
In other words: He's probably right but I�m not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me crawl.
And isn�t it interesting that he defended Fineman so soon after the two were tag-team partners on Sunday morning TV?
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 08:47:00 PM
LET REAGAN BE REAGAN:
Roger Ailes on the truly revolutionary sexual thinking of Ronald Reagan:
Ooohh .... what a free-thinker. Marital sex between a man and woman for purposes other than procreation isn�t bad.
According to Sully, Reagan�s swingin� missive is �particularly embarrassing to the scolds who have come to monopolize much of the discussion of sex in conservative circles.� It also reveals Ronnie�s �candor about how damaging sexual shame and guilt can be.�
I�m skeptical that Ronald Reagan felt much sexual shame when he was banging young women whose names he couldn�t recall. Maybe Sully�s talking about the sexual shame Reagan felt which kept him from addressing the AIDS epidemic and/or doing anything about it.
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 07:03:00 PM
JO! JO! JO!:
Democratic Veteran comes out swinging against Smalltown Boy�s latest bit of backscratching:
A correspondant to the Queen of Mass asks him how come he is such a shill for the 1600 Crew, �such an apologist� for the �wannbe-dictator.� A fair question, asked and not answered ... directly. Instead in a subsequent post Sully wastes bandwidth congratulating three more Chickenhawks, Instahack, Hitchens and of course Tom Friedman, on their support for the war, and their �brave� stands in the silencing of dissent.
[...]
Of course as long as President Kills Americans for Oil keeps the tame journalists tame by the revocation of press privileges (see: Helen Thomas), and the professional flackery (see: Andrew Sullivan et. al.) working for the Rove Spin Machine� Sully will always be able to take a month off with pay courtesy of...who?.
[...]
That�s Monster Food for the Soul on a level surpassing any modern president, maybe any president in the history of the Republic, almost worthy of Adolf Hitler. Our Boy prostitutes himself for that collection of worthless DNA? Bet that�s a quote that will never make it to the whatever-the-hell-it-is.com ... See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, is the real motto of the Master of Milky Loads ... �The Revolution Will Be Blogged� only if Karl Rove gives his permission, and Tom Friedman writes about it first.
C�mon Jo, let it all hang out.
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 01:45:00 AM
WOOF! SIR!:
It wasn�t his pick for the winner, but nevertheless Atrios�s own entry in this photo caption contest met with our approval.
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 01:39:00 AM
TRULY GONE FISHING:
But, of course, can you blame Sullivan after Assfire�s column of Monday?
Salon will mince no words regarding the former Nixon speechwriter:
This is such a doozy that the next time I pass by the corner of West 43rd Street in Times Square, I fully expect to see that Safire has staked out a piece of pavement down the block from the Black Israelites to alert passersby to the Clintons� evil scheme. (The LaRouche people have already claimed Union Square.)
None of it should be surprising, though, coming from a writer who spent column after column theorizing about the �real� reasons for Vince Foster�s �apparent suicide,� a man who once wrote a column entitled �Reading Hillary�s Mind� (presumably the Times could not engage Jeanne Dixon that day), who demanded special prosecutor Robert Fiske�s resignation when he reported Foster�s suicide had nothing to do with Whitewater or the Clintons.
This, of course, wasn�t enough to distinguish Safire at the Times where the reporting on Whitewater in particular and the Clintons in general appears to have been fact-checked by Jayson Blair. But in the aftermath of the brouhaha Blair stirred up, you'd think the Times would be more careful. By the end of the third paragraph of Safire�s column ("Clintons Anoint Clark") he has suggested that Clark improperly arranged defense contracts for clients following his retirement. And that the press will not be able to get to the bottom of that because the general has surrounded himself with Clintonian obfuscators.
[...]
Like a greyhound at the dog track, Safire is already out of the gate, his beady eyes focused on the mechanical rabbit. He has perfected the dubious art of conjecture as smear.
Like the metaphor. But, as we well know, Assfire�s got company.
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 01:25:00 AM
OVER THE RAINBOW HE IS CRAZY:
TAPped lights into Sullivan over his most recent diatribe on Wesley Clark:
Does Andrew Sullivan have any shame? Tapped admits that once in awhile the word �crazy� slips out of our keyboard to describe conservative policies that we think are especially misguided. But we try not to go about questioning the sanity of those with whom we disagree, tempting though it may be sometimes. Sullivan doesn�t have any such compunctions, as has been clear for some time.
[...]
Andrew, try this on for size: Maybe Clark was joking. Hey, that sounds crazy, we know, but think on it. (That's Clark�s explanation, and it makes sense to us.) Also, please check your facts � Nitpicker pointed out yesterday that Clark�s meeting with Ratko Mladic was not only appropriate under the circumstances, but occurred nearly a year before the crimes for which Mladic was later indicted. (Unlike Donald Rumsfeld's meetings with Saddam Hussein while Hussein was gassing the Kurds.) Nitpicker has another post up here with excerpts from Clark6s book in which the general explains that he wanted to size up a potential adversary. As for why Clark is running ahead of Bush, maybe it�s because the president's policies have been a disaster for the vast majority of Americans, and more and more of them are beginning to take notice.
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 01:19:00 AM
CONSERVATISM: NOT JUST AN IDEOLOGY, IT�S A SIXTH SENSE:
Kevin Drum on Glenn Reynolds� ways of knowing:
Really? From where I sit, Glenn opines rather endlessly about the situation in Iraq. You don�t have to look far, either: just read the sentence right after �And neither do I.�
[...]
In any case, there�s no way of knowing whether news from Iraq is slanted unless you yourself happen to know how things are going. And considering the fact that our soldiers continue to get killed, buildings and pipelines are being bombed, the president wants 87 billion additional dollars, and reserve tours have been extended � well, how good can things be? We wouldn�t be extending our troops' stay in Iraq and begging other countries for help if things were going better than planned, would we?
To update Samuel Johnson, media bias is the last refuge of a scoundrel. When the news is bad and you can�t actually marshal any particular facts to prove otherwise � aside from a few cherry picked positive reports and the descriptions of some casual visitors � just yell �media bias� and pretend that �bad news has been consistently overplayed� even if most of the evidence belies that.
posted by Sully 9/24/2003 01:10:00 AM
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
THE FIRST, LAST AND CONTINUING CASUALTY:
TAPped on how Assfire was contradicted by the very newspaper he writes for.
posted by Sully 9/23/2003 01:57:00 AM
THERE�S HOPE:
Fortunately, Jonathan Chait has written a wonderful article on Bush-hating in Sullivan�s old mag that, well, we can�t read at the moment but we believe TAPped when they say it�s good:
To be a liberal today is to feel as though you've been transported into some alternative universe in which a transparently mediocre man is revered as a moral and strategic giant. You ask yourself why Bush is considered a great, or even a likeable, man. You wonder what it is you have been missing. Being a liberal, you probably subject yourself to frequent periods of self-doubt. But then you conclude that you�re actually not missing anything at all. You decide Bush is a dullard lacking any moral constraints in his pursuit of partisan gain, loyal to no principle save the comfort of the very rich, unburdened by any thoughtful consideration of the national interest, and a man who, on those occasions when he actually does make a correct decision, does so almost by accident.
Hmm. Wonder who he�s talking about when he says Bush is �revered as a moral and strategic giant�?
posted by Sully 9/23/2003 01:54:00 AM
BUT WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT YOU?:
The worldview of some has been shaken. And they are determined to see it restored.
Well, we�d say that everybody�s worldview got shaken when those towers fell. Of course we�d like a return to the status quo ante, even if we know that�s impossible.
But what�s really disturbing to us is the way Sullivan and the other neocon Likudnik chickenhawks seem increasingly to be thankful for a world in which this has happened. The perfect opportunity to rearrange the sharq al-wasat into their grand schemes. The moral opprobrium and condemnation of the world taken merely as proof of their Straussian higher understanding. Their faith in this no more shaken when confronted by the latest atrocity than that of Molotov or Kaganovich when another list of longtime friends and relatives to be sacrificed to the NKVD�s carbines was put before the Central Committee for its unanimous approval.
You don�t like it when Bush is compared to Hitler or bin Laden, Sully? Well, now we�re no longer saying you and your cronies in apology are like Stalinists, we�re saying you have become Stalinists. How do you like that now?
You don�t reply, so maybe you know we�re right.
As for us ... we�d like to have a world back where we didn�t necessarily feel like an accomplice to monstrous evil for simply mailing in our tax return. Where our country didn�t attack unbidden, founded on lies. Where we didn�t feel like we were watching helplessly as it underwent the whole Anakin-to-Darth-Vader transformation before our very eyes, as imported steroid-fed ectomorphs told us this was a good thing.
But now, we�d settle for the corpses of Richard Perle and others whom we ought not to name rotting slowly at the end of a rope in a warm Washington wind ...
posted by Sully 9/23/2003 01:46:00 AM
�I�VE JUST GOT TO GET THE RECIPE! ... I�VE JUST GOT TO GET THE RECIPE!�:
Despite some good material, we haven�t been able to critique his Times columns in some time, even during the August break. But his column on Mrs. Dean and Mrs. Kerry today is just too inviting a target, primarily for some staggering displays of journalistic clich� and pop-culture illiteracy
Hollywood, we�re told, is preparing a new version of the 1975 feminist cult classic �The Stepford Wives.� I caught the movie again recently, channel-shopping on a very dark and cold winter�s night.
If this was last winter, it would have been at least six months ago. Hardly �recently,� unless he actually wrote this column sometime ago, which we doubt.
One America wants the cultural reassurance of �Little House on the Prairie.� The other wants �Sex In The City.�
Uh ... most of America, whether they even get HBO or not, knows the latter show as Sex and the City (and, if it was centered around Samantha, it would be Sex with the City. OK, enough with the cheap jokes that we�re probably sure aren�t even original to us).
Their very names conjure up a kind of feminism that still hasn�t truly sunk in in some parts of America � Judith Steinberg and Teresa Heinz.
Yes, obviously here feminism means �Jewish� or �ketchup.�
It doesn�t seem to have dawned on her yet that the Secret Service detail required to vet and screen every patient would not exactly be conducive to a regular practice.
Question: has this sort of thing stopped Cherie Blair? (Though Sullivan, we have to admit, does have a point about the security issues)
That�s why �Sex in the City� is on cable, not network television.
Amazing! He blew his second chance to get it right.
posted by Sully 9/23/2003 01:24:00 AM
Monday, September 22, 2003
THE VAPORIZER SPEAKS:
Digby on the greater ramifications of being damned by Andrew Sullivan for words he uses in a such a friendly fashion for his fellow-travelers.
posted by Sully 9/22/2003 02:27:00 PM
RHODES KILL:
We were going to do a little bit on Sullivan�s hatred for Rhodes Scholars, based on a (admittedly lacerating) Spy piece he wrote a long time ago, in which he predicted that none of them would ever be elected president.
But why do we even need to when there�s gorgeously bitchy Datalounge threads to quote?
�...mega-losers, curriculum-vitae fetishists, with huge ambition and no concept of what to do with it.�
OH the IRONY. Does he ever shut up and listen to himself?
[...]
He hates them because he was jealous of them when he was a graduate student coming from Oxford to Harvard and he saw his undergrad students make the reverse trajectory and go to Oxford.
[...]
I said it earlier today, I�ll say it again:
No one is more tragic than someone who was once a young man full of promise.
[...]
�a young man full of promise�
you mean, a not-so-young man full of milky loads [link added-SW]
[...]
�huge ambition and no concept of what to do with it.�
How does he want us to apply this critique to Clark? He spent 25 years in the army and became a four-star general. Now he�s running for president. Does that make him some kind of dilettante, flitting from career to career?
[...]
Sullivan is a sorry-assed, unemployed writer with a pathetic tin-begging cup he calls a �blog.� He�s no longer good-looking. He�s no longer bright (steroid abuse). He�s just a very sorry, bitchy little queen who only surfaces when the right-wingers come looking for outrageous quotes in an attempt to appear �inclusive.�
[...]
Sullivan is a living tableau of mental illness and moral squalor in all their ugliest forms.
[...]
She�s just over. Sad. Because she used to be a good writer.
[...]
I *am* big!
It�s the magazines and newspapers that got small!
[...]
Seriously, when he is he finally going to succumb to AIDS? He has been spewing his right-wing bile at an accelerated pace ever since GW got elected. Dubya could announce mass execution of gays tomorrow and Sully would somehow portray it as a necessary heroic act. Why does he have such a deep-seated hatred for the gay community? Is it just bitterness at catching/spreading AIDS?
[...]
I think you�re on to something here. Sully always struck me as someone who must make everyone else feel miserable to compensate for his own self-hatred. We all know someone like that and these are people to avoid like the plague (pun intended). They will always bring you down just to fulfill their own sick pleasure, since they have banished any real good feelings from their lives.
Alright, that�s enough. Even for us.
posted by Sully 9/22/2003 02:20:00 PM
GAY CONSERVATIVE HIV+ CATHOLIC REPUBLICANS FOR DEAN ... SORT OF, ANYWAY:
[Dean means] a party ... built up from the grass roots by people with passion and ideas[.]
posted by Sully 9/22/2003 02:02:00 PM
THE DIVERSION YOU ARE NOT IGNORING IS NOT THE MAIN ATTACK:
For a totally contrarian take on all the just-discussed, consider this idea of Hesiod�s (well, The Horse�s actually, but his statement of it was clearer): that the Klintons are pushing Clark out and dangling the Hillary possibility to help Howard Dean or any other putative Democratic nominee, by drawing the attention of the Mighty Murlitzer and the mainstream media off them until February.
Hesiod also has more on the Pristina airport incident.
posted by Sully 9/22/2003 01:59:00 PM
FIELD MARSHALL:
Today, Josh goes even further, taking on Assfire�s whites-of-his-eyes-paranoid column on how Clark is but the opening salvo of a campaign to bring the Democratic Party, and ultimately America, back under Klinton Kontrol (really, we�ve seen posts on Free Republic more reasoned than that):
Once an adman, always an adman. When reading Bill Safire�s columns I sometimes wonder when and how he distinguishes between things he actually believes to be true and those which he simply makes up in order to craft a cleaner argument.
Eventually you realize that it�s not a distinction he makes.
[...]
... you�d think Safire would steer clear of these double-bank-shot conspiracy theories after all the Clinton hokum he got caught peddling in the 1990s.
By the way, how can Sullivan say he�s �with� Assfire when the former Nixon speechwriter sideswiped Schwarzenegger in that same column?
Aside from that, in a too-rare Slate piece, Josh reminds us that simple political common sense augurs against Hillary Clinton running for president, possibly ever and certainly not next fall:
Presidents can leave office as exceedingly divisive figures, but successful ones seldom enter the game that way. And that�s just the start of Sen. Clinton�s problems. She probably couldn�t win a single state that Al Gore lost in this election.
Here�s why.
Gore won virtually all the Northeast, all the West Coast, and nearly all the Industrial Midwest, but failed to win any other state except New Mexico. What did him in in the rest of the country was cultural liberalism � support for gun control, abortion rights, and gay rights. This handicap was particularly evident in Appalachia � West Virginia, Tennessee, western Pennsylvania, and southeastern Ohio. And who is more identified with cultural liberalism, Al Gore or Hillary Clinton?
[...]
There are those, of course, who say that Gore�s problem wasn't so much cultural liberalism as the way his boss, Bill Clinton, seemed to personify the dark side of cultural liberalism � sexual license, moral relativism, irresponsibility, and so forth. But if that�s the case, should Democrats really take their next shot at the White House with Clinton�s wife?
Next we come to the question of political baggage: health care, the travel office mess, the FBI files question, the froth of Whitewater, the billing records, etc. I don't believe there�s much of anything to these charges. But then, who cares? You don�t need to believe these charges to know that many people in the country do, and that fact has real political consequences.
Sure, Hillary would pull fevered support from her devoted supporters. But then most any serviceable Democratic candidate would get those people�s votes anyway and without guaranteeing the opposition of other voters, at least some of whom a Democratic presidential candidate very much needs. Even her greatest admirers have to admit that for a Democrat, Hillary Clinton�s public persona plays to cleavages in the national electorate in the worst way.
[...]
A Hillary presidential candidacy seems so unworkable that you have to wonder what all the chatting is about. On the right, the question is easy to answer. Dittoheads and Hillary-haters are paranoid; right-wing fund-raisers regard the Hillary-presidency bogeyman as a cash cow they can milk for years. But what excuses do working journalists have? Some Washington journalists trapped in the Beltway echo chamber have convinced themselves that everybody named Clinton has mystical powers that allow them to overcome impossible odds. Another explanation is that a Hillary candidacy is more fun to talk about than explaining why it�s never going to happen.
If anything, Hillary Clinton is the probable successor to Teddy Kennedy, a talented legislator who is beloved among his party faithful, but whose politics and personal baggage barred him permanently from higher office. If you�re from Alabama or Idaho that may not sound like much of a compliment. But if you�re a liberal Democrat, or just someone who cares about things like universal health care, then it�s no mean accomplishment.
For Hillary Clinton to stand any chance of success in a presidential race, the Republicans would have to put up against her someone who polarizes the electorate from the right every bit as much as she does from the left. But, hey, John Ashcroft is coming on strong. So you never know.
Josh has a good point there. Someone � we can�t remember who � compared Hillary to Jesse Helms in her aggressive use of holds in the Senate. He, too polarized the electorate in his home state and was so outspoken that it was unlikely he was ever going to be elected to anything bigger. But, in time, through a knowledge of the arcana of Senate rules, worked his way up to committee chair and became more effective in advancing the ultraconservative agenda at the national level than even Reagan was.
Consider this: One day, Republican control of the United States Senate will end. If this happens in, say, the next ten years or so, Mrs. Rodham Clinton may find herself a committee chair, far more able to shape policy in any area of U.S. government than she would from the office her husband once occupied, and accountable only to the voters of one particularly large state. She may yet succeed in reforming health care after all.
And, when that day comes, Republicans will wish with all their hearts that she had given it all up to run for president.
posted by Sully 9/22/2003 01:50:00 PM
THE CYNICISM AGAINST CLARK:
In the normal course of things, presidential wannabees with no prior experience in elective office who enter an already-crowded field barely six months before the Iowa and New Hampshire bake-offs are not considered serious by either their own party, the media or even the opposition.
But Wesley Clark is special, apparently. We haven�t made up our mind on him one way or the other, but we are sort of amused by how the right sees the invisible hand of the man from Arkansas in everything. The frantic attention paid to him by the Mighty Wurlitzer has given him credibility he�d otherwise have to spend real money on.
Sullivan cites the FAIR report (funny how a group regularly ridiculed by conservatives for its stand that the media are biased in their favor is suddenly A-OK when it suits thier purposes). As does Josh Marshall, who then shows how facile it is:
One of these contradictory statements, according to FAIR, was one praising the audacity of the original war-plan notwithstanding his disagreement with launching the war in the first place.
This last criticism goes to the heart of the matter � the difference between thinking that this war was ill-conceived and poorly planned (which I think is Clark�s position) and being �anti-war� in the sense of some broader political ethic (which seems to be how FAIR is defining the phrase.) Expecting a retired four-star general to fall into this latter category seems a bit much to expect.
The truth is that Clark�s position on the war is at least as consistent as any other candidate in this race. He is one of the few candidates who strikes me as having given any serious thought to the question � outside the context of the politics. And he is the only one who�s written extensively on the national security challenges which face the country, Iraq, and the strategic and diplomatic shortcomings of the president�s policy. (In other words, not just �me too!� or �no way!�) And � imagine that � his arguments are the same now as they were a year ago.
[...]
The supposed flip-flop isn�t one at all. What he�s saying is that he probably would have voted to give the president the power to use force but never would have voted for the war he actually ended up waging. (We�ll discuss in a later post why there�s nothing necessarily contradictory about this.)
posted by Sully 9/22/2003 01:28:00 PM
GENERAL WESLEY TURGIDSON ... NOT!:
Sullivan oh-so-sneakily uses Katrina vanden Heuvel�s column to set up his attack on Clark for being a hothead who risked �World War III� (yeah, as if the Russians would have started turning the proverbial keys over a wretched Balkan airport and some good p.r.).
It�s a good thing that TAPped sees the other side, one that one would expect pro-military conservatives to instinctively understand:
One of the many anti-Wes Clark memes we.re bound to see more of is that, as NATO Supreme Commander during the Kosovo war, Clark nearly started World War III by ordering British troops to evict Russian forces that had occupied the Pristina airport.
But John Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Senate Armed Services committee, sided with Clark at the time. According to a Sept. 10, 1999 article in The New York Times, he considered holding hearings on whether NATO�s �red card� policy � under which an officer serving in a NATO force under a foreign commander can appeal that commander�s decision to a superior officer of his own nation�s military � still made sense. The Times quoth:
�How do you run a military operation if the subordinates can decide they don�t want to follow the supreme commander?� Senator Warner asked.
Back then, it seems, at least one senior Republican was siding with Clark. Were there more?
It should be further noted that this whole standoff was resolved through diplomacy, when Hungary, newly initiated into NATO, was persuaded to refuse the Russians permission to use their airspace. The Bush administration could still learn a thing or two.
It�s also worth repeating what vanden Heuvel said near the end of her piece.
Despite concerns this incident raises, it remains a fact that the Clark candidacy is a tantalizing prospect. Clark says he is a liberal Democrat who favors abortion rights, affirmative action, gun control and progressive economic policies. He has also spoken eloquently about basing America�s role in the world on the country�s better principles: �generosity, humility, engagement...�
Hardly qualifies as �putting the boot in,� in our book.
posted by Sully 9/22/2003 01:13:00 PM
ANOTHER VIEWER:
Quiddity Quack not links to us but catches something outrageous we missed on Chris Matthews: closely reading the exchange, he determines that Sullivan is implying that Bush would have gladly stated the Saddam/al-Qaeda link to the public but for the demands of having to make the case to the U.N. for war. (with links to audio on QQ�s site).
posted by Sully 9/22/2003 12:58:00 PM
Sunday, September 21, 2003
WATCHING SULLY:
We haven't seen Sullivan on TV in a long time, certainly not since starting this blog ... in fact, now that we think of it, the last time was almost a decade ago, when he was debating gays in the military with Exclusion authoress Maj. Rhonda Wells-Petry, and he looked very sick.
Well, he is undeniably much healthier now, and here are our impressions of his appearance on "The Chris Matthews Show" this morning.
First, looking grown-up is all very well, but the fact is he does not look terribly good in a suit jacket (or blazer ... we couldn't tell), a problem common to men with physiques like his. In fact, we don't mean to sound condescending but he more than once demonstrated what Paul Fussell has described as the Dreaded Prole Jacket Creep, in which a visible and sizable gap opens up on a regular basis between his neck and jacket collar. Spend some of that pledge money on a tailor, Smalltown Boy! You sure as hell can afford it. (Neither Howard Fineman nor Michael Tomasky, the other two male guests, had this problem, and Matthews wasn't shown in a way that would have allowed us to assess it)
The fairer sex was represented by BBC Washington correspondent Katty Kay (yes, that is really her name!), and maybe this is expecting too much but we're really surprised Sullivan agreed to appear on show with someone from the Baghdad Baathist Broadcasting Company.
Sully, for his part, was identified as being affiliated with The New Republic, which is a bit misleading as he seems to write about a piece a quarter for them, far less than his Sunday Times of London output, to say nothing of his blogging (But maybe "ANDREW SULLIVAN of andrewsullivan.com" would lead to every nitwit public-access cable commentator calling up NBC and wondering why they haven't been on).
His discourse, such as it was, was pretty much what he says online, save two things.
1) He apparently still believes there is some sort of connection between Saddam and 9/11, as he was careful to say that even President Bush's remarks didn't rule out a connection, just a specific one. Be interesting to see if he and Laurie Mylroie exchange any email.
2) At the end, Chris asked his pundit guests to tell him something he doesn't know, as he always does (it is, we think, a slight improvement over the McLaughlin Group's predictions).
Sullivan said that the Democratic candidate Republicans are most afraid of right now is ... Richard Gephardt! Yes, they think he has more momentum than anyone's giving him credit for (though how that could happen when a couple of unions key to Gephardt have been talked into delaying endorsement votes by the Dean campaign to give the latter time to show that it's raised way more money, we don't see). This is intriguing, though, because Gephardt does have the best base upon which to attack Bush on the economic front, and we'd like to see Sullivan elaborate this more on his blog. Is this a backhanded way of admitting that the unnamed top Republicans are expecting the economy to continue becoming a bigger issue ... in other words, that this recovery isn't going to be producing a hell of a lot jobs anytime soon? We'd like to know.
posted by Sully 9/21/2003 01:25:00 PM
