This Is Weak and Maudlin Bullshit Even For Andrew Sullivan

Quoting a reader's email approvingly:

The point has been made before, but we need a reminder. Obama did not have a strong model of masculinity, a father figure to know intimately and revere, in his earliest years. He yearned desperately for it; somehow, finding the patriarch would make him whole and normal in a way he thought others felt.

So he found Wright a few decades ago. But he's flying blind. If we're lucky enough, and our fathers live long enough, we can see them for the humans they are. We don't love them less, but in the process of maturing we begin to grow independent by seeing them with new eyes. We separate, and in doing so, enter a new ambivalence about what the father-son role means as it transforms. We might be watching a limnal process for Obama in real-time here. The sad thing is that (and I believe Obama is sincere) I don't think any of us could know the inner turmoil this causing Obama. Sometimes its easy to forget how privileged those of us who know well the father-son dynamic are; its just too easy to yell "throw Wright under the bus." Obama is human, too.

Awww. Baby Barack just needs some Daddy Time and he'll stop courting racist demagogic Marxist America-haters.

Every woman who read that just started menstruating in sync.

In further evidence that Andrew Sullivan is simply insane, he offers this site as a delightful time-waster, providing him hours of pleasure, and a new reader contest.

It's called "Falindromes." They are almost palindromes. They almost could be palindromes. Except they're not. They're just nonsensical sentences.

Like this:

Bobak eats meat: Kabob!

See... it sort of, kind of, looks like a palindrome, except when you bother to check.

Wow. Dude, how can I even leave the house when I have madcap fun like that going on online?

There was a National Lampoon joke about this sort of thing years ago. Proposing new state license plate mottoes, Ohio was called "The Almost-a-Palindrome State."

That got a smile out of me, yes. But, uh, I think the studio space there is pretty much explored entirely with that. Not sure how much more water that particular well can provide.

This proves something else I've long noted about Sullivan: He does not have a functioning sense of humor. Long ago, back when I was actually bothering to read his tripe, I realized that when Sullivan provided a link he deemed "hysterical" or "hilarious," it was almost entirely unfunny. He's one of those people (like movie critics) who simply guess at what normal human beings find funny.

posted by Ace at 01:47 PM

| Access Comments