Ace -

Yeah. Who coulda seen that coming?

Jonah's got him, and good. That whole thing where he got all snippy at K-Lo just looks, well, extra snippy now.

I was looking for a pool on this in April and noted a couple weeks later.

But I saw where the gay thing was going last May.

Dang - noted your watch a couple weeks later.

Busted.

It puts into a different light all his hysterical grief about Abu Ghraib, doesn't it?

(Yes, Abu Ghraib was bad, but Sullivan has acted over it like someone wanting to change his position on something and finally finding a haughty stance from which to do so.)

Blaster,

Well, to be fair to myself (pat, pat, pat), I was on this back when I was just a little baby blogger, back in early January or so.

Nick,

I updated to hit that point. It's not just his ultimate endorsement-- it's the fact that, by posing as an "independent" (or even a man of the right), he expects his slams of Bush to be taken all the more seriously.

But he's not an independent or a man of the right. He's a libertarian with many liberal and a few rightish views who is a single-issue voter on the issue of gay marriage, and he's a stated Kerry-supporter. So his Abu Ghraib screeching shouldn't be taken any more seriously than Ted Kennedy's.

I've defended Sullivan on this site before, since his sort of Republicanism (pace those who claim hoaxing) is more like mine than, say, Ace's - and because I had thought his political agonistes were, however overblown, at least sincere.

No longer. This is tantamount to a betrayal of ME - his moderate Republican fellow-travelling audience. You really do seem to have it nailed, Ace: he's an agent provocateur. I don't actually think the issue he's exercised over is a disagreeable one - I'm in favor of gay marriage - and I can even understand his prioritization of it considering his lifestyle (I can't share it, but I understand human selfishness for what it is). But the utter disingenuousness of pretending to still be open-minded (and I read him EVERY DAY so I'd know if he'd declared against Bush and he hasn't...on his blog) while having secretly already made up his mind definitively pisses me off, precisely because he PROMISED on his blog that he'd tell us as soon as he made up his mind.

I'm waiting to see how he's going to spin this (pretty rank) dishonesty, but I anticipate that it will only further my disgust with him. It's sad, how politics will drive people to destroy their integrity like this in the vain hopes of furthering their own partisan causes.

As I wrote Andrew, but never printed on his website, why would Bush's support for the FMA would affect his allegiance to Bush.? Of all issues political, the amendment process is one of the few that the President has ZERO power.

He writes that although Kerry is against gay marriage, at least he's against the FMA! What a frickin' straddle!

I believe Andrew is so blinded by rage over the gay marriage issue he's lost his political compass. To have it so close, and to have W refuse to endorse it is driving him insane, and he's become that hunchback of political journalists: the single-issue advocate.

Ace, on Sullivan's back? Hope it wasn't bare!

That's not too mean, is it?

Blaster,

A little too mean, I think. And unnecessary. There's hardly any reason for irrelevant ad hominems when we've got the goods on him.

Not that I'm against irrelevant ad hominems. I'm just saying-- why go down that road when you don't need to?

Velociman,

But I think he's always been a single-issue advocate. Did you happen to read The New Republic under his editorship? It went from being a skeptical center-left opinion magazine to being The Advocate with a fossilized movie reviewer.

I mean, it was bad. It just became a basically gay magazine.

There was, of course, the famous Batman & Robin gay-lovers cover, for which I think they got sued.

Not only was one third of the content gay, but the sensibility -- a little trashy, a little fey, a little outre -- went gay as well. Again, witness that Batman & Robin cover.

I honestly had to stop reading it because-- well, I'm not a homophobe, but look, the magazine suddenly had as much relevance to me as Cosmopolitan (except no big boobs on the cover), and I honestly didn't want anyone to think I was gay.

I don't know how you could have carried around TNR under Sullivan's editorship without people looking at the covers and thinking, "Heavens, it's the ones you least suspect, isn't it?"

I always thought you were onto something here, Ace.

Good call.

Not to belabor this, but the few times I did carry around his "sassy" version of TNR, I'd have to go out of my way to fondle and grope strange women on the street, just so they wouldn't "think the wrong thing."

Andrew Sullivan landed me in county lock-up for three weekends. Three fucking weekends I'll never get back.

BH,

Thanks.

But please-- no one pat me on the back anymore. Since I'm posting in here, it feels like I'm trolling for it, and I don't want to troll for it.

Besides, with this level of vindication, it's not really necessary.

Read Ace of Spades:

He can figure out who Andrew Sullivan is voting for.

You are so right - this will get pissy.

Say, wanna lay odds that McCarthyism is invoked tomorrow?

Heh. You all think you've been spat on because he betrayed your politics? Just think how it is for those of us who feel he's been defiling our church.

Note the date. My epiphanny came last September. And I can't believe I was ever so kind and respectful to him. We all grow, I suppose...

Okay, you beat me.

Blaster,

McCarthyism... hmmm... I think he's on the ball enough to avoid using that term to describe something so trivial.

He'll talk about that kind of a thing though. But the actual word-- I gotta think he'll refrain.

He will prove he's a liberal by saying what all liberals always say when you peg them on their political beliefs: You can't define me.

All liberals think they are too unique, freethinking, independent, and interesting to possibly be defined under any scheme of political classification.

Now, this is a tough trick for him to pull off, since he's defined himself, but he'll whine about us putting a straightjacket around him, based on such trivial evidence as his own clearly-worded political statements.

I predict a complete unwillingness to acknowledge any duplicity.

You guys have no idea how much this bums me out. I mean, you folks apparently never had any doubt (and to think of all the times I inwardly clucked at your dismissiveness! Aaigh, it stings!), but I've defended him consistently. And yet it's transparently obvious that he has been intentionally deceiving his right-wing blog-audience in order to be able to exert anti-Bush influence on them, without them knowing his true feelings. I actually feel a little betrayed. And stupid.

Ah well, he's just a blogger. I still think gay marriage isn't a bad thing, but I'll never really be able to trust him again.

Well, he did call the Gary Condit thing "Sexual McCarthyism."

I would bet that if he doesn't, I'll buy one of your mugs, if he does, you buy one of mine, but, well, I don't have any.

You guys have no idea how much this bums me out. I mean, you folks apparently never had any doubt (and to think of all the times I inwardly clucked at your dismissiveness! Aaigh, it stings!), but I've defended him consistently.

Well, I had an advantage over you: I'm a strident partisan hack.

The world looks much clearer through my eyes.

Blaster,

Yeah, I don't have any mugs or tshirts or whatnot either.

I do, however, predict the word "mau-mau" will make an appearence.

I predict a complete unwillingness to acknowledge any duplicity.

Ummmm... no takers on that. That's a gimme. That's a field goal from the three.

One more thing...

As Goldberg says of Sullivan's "fiscal conservatives" post: "This is surely another example of Andrew's effort to build some sort of eagle-schwarzenegger-McCainiac-Catania-liberal Republican-pro-gay marriage-South Park popular front against Bush."

McCain voted for DOMA and just voted against extending hate crime status for homosexuals.

But McCain is a dreamboat as far as Sullivan is concerned.

To borrow a phrase from radio legend Bob Grant, Andrew Sullivan is a FAKE, PHONEY, FRAUD!

"You can't define me", eh? Who needs to, when he does so well on his own (poached from an old entry at my site):

...from his book "Virtually Normal" (1995), "The truth is, homosexuals are not entirely normal and to flatten their varied and complicated lives into a single, moralistic model is to miss what is essential and exhilarating about their otherness."

Nobody I know cares how exhilarating and complicated Sullivan is. We don't like being lied to, even when we know we're being lied to. It fails to meet our moralistic model.

I never liked Sullivan much even when he was 'conservative' because only rarely could he resist making everything about gayness. Back before she went insane, Camille Paglia used to do a wonderful job of writing about current events as a lesbian without letting the lesbian part overshadow everything - it's a skill Sullivan never learned.

Sullivan is the only person who is speaking out publicly that changes his position more than John Kerry. It should be no surprise to anyone that he is shifting his loyalties in the direction of the flip-flopper.

Andrew who?

You do realize that there's a difference between endorsing someone and voting for them, yes? It doesn't exactly take a lot of nuance to see the difference between the two. I would endorse no one in 2004. But I'm going to vote nonetheless. I guess in your mind, that makes me duplicitous.

I feel betrayed, abused, attacked.

The whole "making up his mind" reminds me of the Disney brouhaha of Michael Moore. A bullshit trick to create some suspense. Great move. "I feel betrayed, abused, attacked"? You have wasted your talent on being a drama queen, Andy, and while it helped you gain popularity in the past, it will prevent you from being taken seriously in the future.

I saw this coming from Andy with the first post he made against the FMA and trying to convince the readers if left to the states gay marriage would not be impossed on the Union by activist judges in direct opposition to how our leagal system is supposed to work.

June?

Better late than never.

It's been obvious for a while that Sullivan has been dishonest, though I didn't figure at the time he was a lib in neo-con clothing.

Pasted is what I found to be one of the best comments written on Sullivan's 'unique' outlet on things:

   I have to agree with [Bezowsky]. I only majored in economics in college before getting my JD, so I don't have the background of professional economists, but I find his stuff increasingly unhinged. I have read him since before the 2000 election, but find that I spend little time there anymore. Lately, it is just a quick scan to see if there might be one post worth reading out of the 4 or 5 he puts up and I'm gone.

As for his ethics, you got to be kidding. He has the strangest, most self-serving ethical and philosophical structure I have ever seen. He is a Catholic, except for the fact that he disagrees with the Church on almost everything. He is a conservative, except for the social and economic issues that he disagrees with.

I think he is the ultimate modern man per C S Lewis. Andrew puts God in the dock and judges Him. Sullivan likes drugs, so he decides they are morally acceptable. He succumbs to the temptation of unmarried sex with serial partners, so he decides it isn't sinful. He enjoys homosexual sex, so he decides that it isn't sinful. What he ends up with is a god who is nothing more than a deity who reinforces all of Andrew's rationalizations. Andrew has constructed his own god for his own reasons.

Sullivan apparently doesn't repent. He merely redefines sin to accord with his own earthly desires.

We read him for the same reason we read the papers and monitor the networks. He has influence and it is important to understand how other people are thinking.
- Stan Brown, in comments to “Econopundit”

Whilst driving, I remembered another, probably equally important similarity between Arafat and Sullivan--and no, I am not drawing a moral equivalence between the two.

When Arafat condemns (in English) terrorism, he uses a cute semantic legerdemain whereby he says, "I condemn terrorism in all its forms." That "in all its forms" is a pointed moral equivalence between the IDF's targeted strikes against Hamas terrorists and Hamas terrorists themselves blowing up five-year olds on city buses. Cute.

Sullivan used to write explicitly of Islamic terrorism as that which should be condemned, but that has changed. He traded it in for a semantic sleight of hand known as "fundamentalism". He now condemns "fundamentalists" everywhere, meaning the much deplored "Christian Right". He makes an equivalence between, oh, those who push brick walls atop homosexuals for being homosexual (how do you identify a homosexual in Arabic when there is no word for it in the language?) and those who stand in the way of his narcissistic fundamentalist campaign so that he can marry a man. Same thing. Both "fundamentalist". That he claims to be a Catholic and the Catholic Church has a official position counter to his own does not seem to give him pause.

I suppose part of his own feavered crusade is due to his medical condition. He could be dead in five years or fifty--such is HIV. That uncertainty might be part of what makes him so fervent and single-minded (i.e., I'll vote for John Kerry, who supports a Massachusetts same-sex marriage ban but has no discernable strategy regarding destroying terrorists, rather than George Bush who, by the way, is doing a rather good job protecting me from terrorists...just because George Bush wants a ban on a larger scale).

I recommend that link that 'blaster' posted. It gives some insight to Sullivan's position shifts.