Sullivan's Weak Answer

And yes, of course, the president's support for the FMA has colored this. How could it not? If you had spent much of your life arguing a) that gay people deserve civil equality and b) that civil marriage is the fundamental mark of that equality, it would require Herculean masochism to endorse a president who wants to enshrine the denial of marriage to gays in the very Constitution itself.

Well, gee, that's all fine and dandy. But then we're still left with this curiosity:

National Review's Kathryn Lopez made the following remark before my spring break: "I do wish Sullivan would save time and come out for Kerry now. In just a matter of time he will come up with the rationalizations, but it's taking him painfully long to get on with it. I'm betting all Kerry will have to do is say that he's against terrorism." I'm mystified by this remark. It has always seemed to me that a political writer is not necessarily partisan. Some of us are actually trying to figure out who's the better candidate for the next four years and haven't made our minds up already.

See, no one's actually questioning your decision at the moment. What is being questioned is your dishonest stance, maintained over some number of months, that you hadn't made up your mind already.

It's fine if you did make up your mind... but then why not admit this? Because you wanted to keep your traffic, and you also wanted to be in the best rhetorical position possible to hurt Bush and help Kerry, i.e., from the dishonest pose of someone who "hadn't made up his mind already."

How does Sullivan square this? Pretty much by pretending he doesn't understand the simple point. But actually, he does offer a Clintonian dodge at the end of his youa culpa that's just delicious. But first things first.

I could live with disagreement on the issue of marriage - but not the amendment.

Obviously. You'd have to live with such disagreement in order to support Kerry.

Pace Jonah, I have been quite clear in this blog that, in my judgment, no self-respecting gay person could vote for Bush; and I consider myself a self-respecting gay person.

Errr, no you haven't, moron. This is evidenced by the fact that Instapundit and Jonah Goldberg are quite surprised by your stealth in-the-gay-mags-only announcement.

If you had made it "quite clear," we wouldn't be talking about you.

Which is, once again, the whole reason you never did make it "quite clear."

In my first response to the FMA, I wrote that "[t]his president has now made the Republican party an emblem of exclusion and division and intolerance. Gay people will now regard it as their enemy for generations - and rightly so." I wrote in a fit of hyperbole on March 3 that Kerry "will get every gay vote and every vote from their families and friends." Get the drift?

Yes. I got the drift, and noted that you had flipped. But others didn't "get the drift," largely due to your penchant for writing things like this:

National Review's Kathryn Lopez made the following remark before my spring break: "I do wish Sullivan would save time and come out for Kerry now. In just a matter of time he will come up with the rationalizations, but it's taking him painfully long to get on with it. I'm betting all Kerry will have to do is say that he's against terrorism." I'm mystified by this remark. It has always seemed to me that a political writer is not necessarily partisan. Some of us are actually trying to figure out who's the better candidate for the next four years and haven't made our minds up already.

Remember all that stuff about "figuring out who's the better candidate"? The stuff about not having your mind made up already?

Sullivan's statements are apparently as disposable as condoms.

No that doesn't mean I cannot praise or respect other things the administration does. But it does mean I would lack integrity if I were to endorse the guy.

Some might say you'd also "lack integrity" for deliberately deceiving your readership into believing you still "hadn't made up your mind already" about whether or not you'd endorse him.

Jonah says that "over the last year," you wouldn't get the impression that I had made up my mind against Bush. He's right.

Ah.

My public piece wasn't published till May 2004 - which leaves ten months for "thinking out loud." And it's still possible to think out loud about the candidates, even if you have ruled one out for support this fall (in my Advocate piece, I insisted I still supported the president's war on terror). So it's hardly an "extremely significant silence."

So you say.

I've said as much to every interviewer who has asked - on television and radio - and many other people who have asked me privately.

And yet, for all your garrulousness, you somehow managed to keep it out of your blog.

And besides, I wrote it for the Advocate - to the readership to whom I most owed an explanation for my endorsement of Bush in 2000. I don't post my Advocate pieces as a rule on the website because I get enough emails decrying my discussion of gay issues, and the pieces are written for a specific audience.

Hysterical. I blogged one day when Sullivan's blog was 80% posts on gay issues. 8 out of ten. I counted.

But now he's telling us that he decided he didn't link or mention his Advocate piece because he just didn't want to bother us straights with all of his gay shit.

Right. Eighteen bazillion posts about AIDS, boyfriends, P-town, gay marriage, Rick Santorum, Virginia's new "Jim Crow" (James Crow, perhaps), etc.

But Sullivan just wanted to spare us the gay stuff.

Besides, the arguments in the piece have been expressed before on this site many times (too many times for most people's tastes).

We don't care about the "arguments," jackass. We're asking about the deliberate concealment of a decided agenda.

But it's public;

But apparently not as public as it might of been.

Oh, right-- he didn't want to bother us with gay-oriented material.

there's no mystery;

And yet Instapundit and Jonah Goldberg are mystified.

and the notion that if you write something for the gay press, you haven't really written it is, as usual, insulting to gay people.

Insulting to gay people and also, as it turns out, true. Who the fuck except gays reads fucking gay magazines?

Do people straight fucking men subscribe to the Advocate because they really dig the fucking crossword?

Has this caused me heart-ache? No end.

The best thing about my decision to stop reading Sullivan was being finally liberated from his constant fucking updates about his current health and emotional state. I don't know about you all, but I just adore hearing about other people's bronchitis.

Sometimes I just go to old folks' homes to amiably chat about this slipped disk or that blushing goiter.

Keep us all posted on the "heart-ache," Sullivan. We're riveted.

I do indeed feel betrayed...

Join the club. I'm not in the "betrayed" club, but reader JeffB. is.

... as do many other gay people who trusted this president and paid a price in many ways for supporting him.

What price?

(I've certainly paid more of a price in my own social world for backing this president than Jonah ever has in his.)

Oh. People disagree with you. What a fucking hero.

Now, remember earlier when I said that Sullivan manages a Clintonian explanation for how he can simultaneously claim to be "making up his mind" and yet already decided against Bush?

Here it is, the piece de resistance:

My only dilemma now is whether to support Kerry or sit this one out. It still is.

Ah. I see. He's still "making up his mind already" about whether or not to support Kerry, or sit this one out.

Might have mentioned the specifics of your dilemma in your snide email to K-Lo, dude.

I hate to use the word Drama Queen, but there it is. This Drama Queen, fresh off attempting to keep us spellbound over his internal Hamlet dialogue for six or eight months, now tries stoking our interest anew by informing us that he's still manfully wrestling with the difficult choice of either supporting Kerry or "sitting this one out."

I'm on pins and needles, Sullivan. Pins. And. Needles.

Suffice to say that from what I know about being a blogger -- being someone who attracts attention by offering his fucking opinion on matters -- I sort of think that "sitting this one out" is a less-than-likely eventuality.

Which sort of means Sullivan did decide.

Six months ago.

During his terrible period of "making up his mind already."

posted by Ace at 02:11 AM

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