Stay Classy, Atlantic Monthly: Atlantic's Bitch-Blogger Andrew Sullivan Puts Out "Fred Thompson Is A Faggot" Rumor

As Influence Peddler says, "Since that last [smear campaign, pegging him as a trophy-wife cradle-robbing womanizer] fizzled, his political enemies have now decided to try and convince us of the opposite. If he's not a licentious womanizer, then he must be gay."

Please don't hit the Sullivan and Wonkette links; it's what these drama queen traffic whore slander-slinging cocksuckers (and I use that word advisedly) want.

I'll post what they had to say here, sans link. Trust me.

Andrew Sullivan:

Outside the extremist, activist base, regular GOP voters turn out to be relatively tolerant when it comes to sexual minorities and private sex lives. They’re not well represented by their party leaders, as far as policy is concerned. This is good news for Fred Thompson. The man has had a colorful and wide-ranging sex life, as I’m sure we will soon find out.

Wonkette:

Translated: COUGH COUGH GAY COUGH COUGH FRED THOMPSON IS GAY GAY GAY COUGH COUGH

But that’s not all.

Sullivan is not even close to the first person we’ve heard float this particular rumor, not that that says anything as to its truth.

In case anyone doubts that's what Sullivan meant, check out this blog, also floating the rumor:

Is Fred Thompson on the Downlow? Posted by Susie in The Regime, Politics As Usual, Theocracy (July 5, 2007 at 8:02 am)

Why are all his ex-girlfriends so eager to come to the defense of his manliness?

Why did James Dobson say he was “un-Christian”?

Why is Rush Limbaugh complaining about the coverage of Thompson as sex symbol, saying, “There’s something wrong here”?

Lots and lots of rumors. I’ve heard them myself - I’ve even talked to someone who has witnessed some interesting behavior. I noticed when the Washington Post recently profiled him, several of the local commenters reacted along the lines of “I thought he was gay?”

The left has been spreading this for a while -- and now Andrew "Milky Loads" Sullivan peddles the gay rumor, without any substantiation, on the blog of a venerable, respected magazine.

Did they clear that, Andrew?

Matthew Ygelsias slammed me in a post called "Stay Classy, Rightwing Boggers," because, in noting that Glenn Greenwald had implied Instapundit was effeminate and kinda a queer, I noted the obvious -- that Glenn Greenwald is himself gay as the day is long.

Will Matthew Yglesias now take co-blogger Andrew Sullivan to task for his bottom-feeding gossip-columnist smear of a non-gay man as gay?

I'm not waiting on tenterhooks for that.

First of all, let's deal with the absurdity of this rumor. One, gays like to gossip, and according to the gay grapevine, virtually everyone is gay. Sorry to stereotype here, dears, but gays like seeming to be "in the know" especially when it comes to knowing stuff about celebrities and the rich and famous. Gives them some sort of gay fabulousness cred or something.

Second, let's look at some of the women Fred Thompson has been with:

Wife Jeri Thompson

Former flame, country singer Lorrie Morgan

Not to mention Kellyanne Fitzpatrick.

Does anyone, um, notice a pattern here? A certain pronounced development of uniquely feminine secondary sexual characteristics?

Is Andrew Sullivan claiming that closeted gay guys are BIG into tits and ass? Really? Doesn't seem like you could shut your eyes really tight with any of these women and pretend you were balls-deep inside Ethan Hawke. You'd be pretending you were drilling Ethan Hawke like Ben Stiller drilled him in Reality Bites (come on, you know those guys were gay too -- subtext, people, subtext) and you'd have these rambunctious milk-zeppelins battering you about the neck and head just completely ruining it all.

Third, I've known about this for a while. Sullivan dropping the rumor, I mean. I asked my one Hollywood friend about this -- has he even heard such a thing? No, he said. Fred Thompson is known as being "very heterosexual," i.e., a horndog who chases the sort of chicks most often seen on Benny Hill, and not the, say, Audrey Hepburn types one would imagine a closeted gay man would find attractive. (Or, at least, "elegant.")

Nah, he likes 'em the way a straight-up Bubba likes 'em. Built not for speed so much as comfort.

I'm not saying my one contact has some inside knowledge about the closeted gay circuit or anything. But then again, it's Hollywood. Every third party is pretty much like the amyl-nitrate-fueled gay masquerade in JFK. Surely he would have bumped into Fred Thompson dressed up as Marie Antoinette by now.

But seriously -- if there's anything to this rumor, why hasn't someone who, you know, acts in and writes movies and stuff in on the secret? Why is it that it's being peddled by a concerted whispering campaign of internet-based no-name no-account nobodies from nowhere? Check out how persistent the Fred's-a-Fag spammer is near the bottom of this thread. Seems like that guy's pushing the rumor hard, huh? And under multiple Glenn Greenwald style aliases, to boot, to make it sound like "everyone knows." (I find it rather implausible that several different people just decided to show up at about the same time in a rather dull WaPo blogpost to tell the world about their inside knowledge of Fred's secret life In the Line of Fire, as it were.)

So, really -- how is it a kinda burnout has-been of an editor now turned blogger (ooooh! nice career climb!) has the dope on this and yet my guy actually working in Hollywood's never heard a goddamn thing about it?

With that out of the way, let's proceed to discuss Andrew Sullivan's own "colorful and wide-ranging sexual history," since he brought it up, eh?

Edit: Let's not. I've since thought better of this particular attack on Sullivan. I've deleted it for reasons of taste.

posted by Ace at 11:40 PM

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