Something Wicked This Way Emotes: Andrew Sullivan Bashed as Anti-Semite By... Magazine He Formerly Edited, TNR
Bonus: Sullivan Gives Up Vagina-Blogging to Start... Breast-Blogging!

If you read, you can safely skip the overly-padded part I, which is a long bit that attempts to establish Sullivan intended to bait Jewish readers by asserting that the Trinity was unexplainable... at least to Them.

Past that, the writer (Leon Weiseltier) gets on to less metaphysical ground.

Consider some squibs that Sullivan recently posted on his blog. “Most American Jews, of course, retain a respect for learning, compassion for the other, and support for minorities (Jews, for example, are the ethnic group most sympathetic to gay rights),” he declared on January 13. “But the Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing–that celebrates and believes in government torture, endorses the pulverization of Gazans with glee, and wants to attack Iran–is something else. Something much darker.” Michael Goldfarb is the former online editor of The Weekly Standard, about whom the less said, the better. Charles Krauthammer is Charles Krauthammer. I was not aware that they comprise a “wing” of American Jewry, or that American Jewry has “wings.” What sets them apart from their more enlightened brethren is the unacceptability of their politics to Sullivan. That is his criterion for dividing the American Jewish community into good Jews and bad Jews–a practice with a sordid history.

As far as I can tell, Krauthammer’s position on torture is owed to a deep and sometimes frantic concern for American security, and his position on the war in Gaza to a deep and sometimes frantic concern for Israeli security, and his position on Iran to a deep and sometime frantic concern for American and Israeli security. Whatever the merits of his views, I do not see that his motives are despicable. Moreover, Krauthammer argues for his views; the premises of his analysis are coldly clear, and may be engaged analytically, and when necessary refuted. Unlike Sullivan, he does not present feelings as ideas. Most important, the grounds of Krauthammer’s opinions are no more to be found in, or reduced to, his Jewishness than the grounds of the contrary opinions–the contentions of dovish Jews who denounce torture, and oppose Israeli abuses in the Gaza war, and insist upon a diplomatic solution to the threat of an Iranian nuclear capability–are to be found in, or reduced to, their Jewishness. All these “wings” are fervent Jews and friends of Israel. There are many “Jewish” answers to these questions. We all want the Torah on our side. And the truth is that the Torah has almost nothing to do with it.

Sullivan is hunting for motives, not reasons; for conspiracies, which is the surest sign of a mind’s bankruptcy. These days the self-congratulatory motto above his blog is “Of No Party or Clique,” but in fact Sullivan belongs to the party of Mearsheimer and the clique of Walt (whom he cites frequently and deferentially), to the herd of fearless dissidents who proclaim in all seriousness, without in any way being haunted by the history of such an idea, that Jews control Washington.

Discussing Sullivan's daily cri de coeurs about "Jewish fundamentalism" in Israel...

Obama may have been right about Netanyahu–the skepticism about the latter’s willingness to surrender land for a peace that will bring Palestine into being is not exactly fanciful–but Obama failed miserably, and set everything back. Sullivan’s characterization of the recent history is dishonest. On the other hand, there is no suggestion that Netanyahu is Trig’s dad.

Heh.

Oh: The other day Sullivan crept out of Palin's womb to study another part of her anatomy. Safe link to Commentary. Rubin quotes Sullivan, first, who watched her Tea Party address, and gleaned from it that... she has big tits.

It was the most electrifying speech I have heard from a leader of the GOP since Reagan.

She can electrify a crowd. She has the kind of charisma that appeals to the sub-rational. and she has crafted a Peronist identity – utterly fraudulent, of course – that is political dynamite in a recession with populism roiling everyone and everything. She is Coughlin with boobs – except with a foreign policy agenda to expand Israel and unite with it in a war against Islam.

Do not under-estimate the appeal of a beautiful, big breasted, divinely chosen warrior-mother as a military leader in a global religious war.

Clearly he is a man obsessed with Palin and her physique and who cannot resist the urge to degrade and reduce her to a sexual object. For those who portend to offer serious criticism of Palin, and there is legitimate criticism to be had, this should serve as a blinking red light: Go Back! Don’t do it! Don’t humilate yourself in the process, nor reveal yourself to be in the grip of some misogynistic thrall. Stick to what she says and how she says it, not the size of her breasts. For the sane and serious commentator, that should be easy enough advice to follow. But then not all bloggers fit that description.

Some time ago a lefty observed, incorrectly, that America didn't know how to handle a powerful woman with sex appeal.

That's incorrect because it's too broad a statement. It's that the American left doesn't know how to handle a powerful woman with sex appeal.

There is no doubt that Sarah Palin benefits from her attractiveness. There is no doubt, I say, because every other attractive person on the planet similarly benefits. An attractive person is perceived to be, studies tell us, smarter, more competent, more authoritative, more charming, funnier, and... taller, too.

Every good-looking person on the planet has this advantage. Scott Brown had it too, of course. So, too, did Barack Hussein Obama, at least before people began suspecting he was a Mimbo.

Did the right freak out like this over the fact that Barack Obama is a good-looking guy? No. We made fun of the left for praising him as a male model, of course. Who wouldn't? How many time can the left write about Obama's pecs (moobs, really) and how much he curls before it becomes risible? (Two times is the answer, buy the way.)

The left continues freaking out over this -- over Brown's attractiveness, but particularly Palin's -- for several reasons. First of all, they are more superficial than most people, so they have a strong natural inclination to support whoever seems best-looking and coolest and etc., and so they find themselves with a bit of psychic discomfort as their (very shallow) political leanings take them in the opposite direction of their (even more shallow) personal inclination, and react violently to that disconnect.

Related to this -- call this Reason 1 Sub A -- is that liberals believe that simply being liberal makes them more intelligent, and more attractive, and cooler, and hipper, and generally just better people, and they get very resentful indeed to have an attractive person on the other side of things, undermining their belief that being liberal makes them, by simple political affirmation, more desirable people.

The second reason is that left enjoys the unfair advantages it has and gets very angry indeed when the right seems to be cutting into their unfair advantage allotment. By "unfair advantage" I mean all that stuff that shouldn't be part of political decisionmaking -- a politician's charisma, affability, articulateness, "the common touch," "coolness," etc.

You saw the same violent reaction -- though much less of it -- with Scott Brown, again. It wasn't fair! that we had this good-looking squeaky-clean family man with gorgeous daughters out pressing flesh at Fenway and they had the stick in the mud prig they had.

And you see it, much more pronounced, with FoxNews, and Limbaugh, and Drudge, and Breitbart, and alternate media generally. The left is used to controlling the media. They enjoy the unfair advantage of having their message endlessly regurgitated by a monolithically liberal media, and being able to bury any story they found too difficult to spin. They freak out on a daily basis over the temerity of we conservatives thinking we ought to have a voice in the national discourse.

Finally, their is brutal condescension. Sullivan's lament, after all, is that a sizable fraction of this nation is bewitched by this woman's juggs. And that's all that's going on here. Because we're too stupid to evaluate ideas and weigh policies on the merits, so all we conservatives do is say, as Steve Martin did, "Wow! Look at the tits!"

He's angry at Sarah Palin's tits because he thinks those tits have been pressed into service for Pure Evil. Conservatives are so ineffably stupid, and we are so incapable of "thinking" with anything except our "lizard brains" (google conservatives and "limbic system" to see how often it is claimed we react out of literally nothing but the 20 million year old primitive semi-brain inherited from crocodiles), that we are simply like Sarah Palin's policies because we see her breasts and only know "Breasts good. She good. Drill baby drill good, then, I think."

Why, if only Dr. Andrew Sullivan, Freelance Gynecologist, could take that rack away from her, and then, our bewitchment ended, we'd suddenly all see her for the fool she is....!

What was the Washington Post's charming statement on the religious right, reported as straight, objective, factual news? Ah yes: That they are "weak, uneducated, and easily led." And sometimes easily led just by a really kickin' rack.

It seems to escape Sullivan's attention that Palin came to prominence because the entire right was agitating for domestic exploration and then this attractive governor from Alaska spoke the magic words, which even our more conservative leaders shied away from: "Drill, baby, drill." Yes, including in the pristine wonders of the desolate wasteland known as ANWR.

Sullivan would posit that things happened in the opposite order. Here we all were celebrating the untainted and quite godforsaken barren tundra known as ANWR, but suddenly a woman who could rock a D cup came on the scene, and then we were sold.

And finally -- this applies not to the whole left, but to a bizarre, twisted homosexual like Sullivan -- Sullivan really, really hates women, and really, really resents their power and really, really resents that they might possess a degree of sexual attractiveness for the majority of the male population that he can't compete with, no matter how much he squat-thrusts.

What can I say? It is true that attractive people are, what's the word?, attractive. They attract.

This doesn't seem to be a reason for a freak-out by liberals when they are benefiting from this rather well-known phenomenon. It surely hasn't escaped liberals' notice that Mary Landrieu is, or rather was, sort of dishy. And I don't think Norah O'Donnell managed to become a fixture on MSNBC purely on the strength of her reportage.

So, you know, Deal with it. Grow the hell up, and stop whining about it all the time.

And seriously, Sullivan? Please stop talking about Girl Parts. It's really ridiculous.

Thanks to DanF.

posted by Ace at 11:09 AM

| Access Comments