Andrew Sullivan Vs. Andrew Sullivan On "Blacklisting" Sites That Disagree With You

Andrew Sullivan whining about Jonah Goldberg not giving him the Daddy Time he craves:

What can this mean, except a petty sand-box approach to journalism? I disagree with many people at NRO but I always link and write and even praise when it occurs to me. In contrast, Jonah’s comment suggests an actual informal policy of blacklisting this blog and its arguments at NRO. Blacklisting others is not, I think, a sign of a movement’s intellectual health.

Not a sign of the conservative movement's intellectual health, but apparently quite congruent with the "increasingly salient" Party of Andrew movement.

Because Andrew Sullivan has been blacklisting conservative gay bloggers for years. You'd think that as a, ahem, "conservative" gay man he'd want to do his bit to increase the visibility of fellow travellers like Gay Patriot, the Malcontent, or Eric from Clasical Values.

Not so much. Not only does he not link such conservative gays as a general matter, he routinely swipes stuff he found on their sites without so much as a simple hat-tip.

For weeks he's been knocking the HRC (not that there's anything wrong with that) and using this graphic whenever he does so:

Not sure what it means; I guess it's a suggestion that HRC preaches not gay equality but gay superiority.

Trouble is, this graphic was created by Matt at the Malcontent, who allowed the gay political site Bay Windows to use it. Sullivan lifted it from there, it seems (though I'd say it's even money that he swiped it from the Malcontent directly), and refuses to give a hat-tip or any credit to the Malcontent. When emailed that he was using Matt's graphic, he simply hat-tipped Bay Windows, even though he had been informed of the true provenance.

So Sullivan seems to believe that sites he typically trashes in rather nasty ways (like the "Christianists," "theocrats," and "torture advocates" at the Corner) owe it to him to link him frequently, else it constitute "blacklisting," but sites that trash Sullivan are not owed any links in return -- even when Sullivan is directly stealing from them.

Big blogs like The Corner are obligated to frequently engage ideological opponents like Sullivan, but Sullivan is not, it seems, obligated to engage, or even mention, his own ideological critics. Seems like all he's saying is that he should get traffic from big blogs but he can refuse to give smaller blogs any traffic.

Blogs can, and do, ignore other blogs that are either such ideological opposites as to hardly even be speaking the same language, or blogs that simply trash-talk it. I do it. I do it all the time. And I think that's just fine. Why increase the profile of a blog just for provoking you?

Sullivan seems to agree, hardly ever linking critics (although Michael did one time get this blog linked for criticizing Bush, if I recall correctlly). And yet when bigger blogs do the same to him -- ignoring a quite off-the-reservation and nasty-tongued hack -- it's some sort of McCarthyism.

Incidentally, it's this habit of Sullivan's -- eternally engaging in a "philosophical inquiry" that seems to be little more than a childish attempt to discover "objective rules" that favor him over his opponents -- that makes his thinking so muddied, and made his book sell so poorly.

And that's the real reason The Corner and, yeah, even Instapundit are so reluctant to toss Andrew Sullivan links. No matter what the ostensible subject, he never seems to be discussing anything except Andrew Sullivan.

posted by Ace at 05:32 PM

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