histrionic

Download the google toolbar and it lets you search individual sites.

In other words, he's a big drama queen.

I didn't say that.

you don't need the google toolbar to search a particular site. just use the "site:andrewsullivan.com" modifier after your search query. wanna see all the pages on andrew's site where he mentions the vatican? just type "vatican site:andrewsullivan.com" into google and browse away.

(obviously, the "site:" modifier works for any site.)

I didn't say that.

Of course not, I did.

If it makes you feel better ace, you get the money I used to give Sullivan. I thought he was great for ripping on the NY Times and supporting the war and was very impressed when his nemisis Raines fell for the reasons Sullivan attacked him, but then it all went bad.

Just know that some of the dollars coming into your tip jar were diverted from Sullivan's.

WAIT, AM I CATHOLIC? The boyfriend mentioned to me while spooning tonight that he thought I had publicly renounced the faith some time ago. I checked my archives, and it turns out I'm Protestant. Good to know. Henceforth my criticisms will dwell not on my attempts to reconcile my conscience to my belief in Catholicism as the one true faith, but rather on my belief that Catholicism is not the one true faith. Of course, if in my spiritual journeys I should have a change of heart and come to embrace the Church again, I'll be sure to let you know at some distant point in the future, assuming the boyfriend reminds me.

I'm heading up to P-town this weekend to scout around for gay-friendly Protestant churches and Protestant-friendly gay bars. I've also got a little tax problem up there to square away: I sank all the funds from last year's pledge drive into a risky search-engine venture for the site that went belly up, and now they're putting a lien on my house. If you want to make sure I don't end up blogging from inside a refrigerator box, please consider donating twenty, fifty, or even a thousand dollars. In fact, think of it as a "Ratzinger tax." Why? Because I don't like Ratzinger.

That was a fine and funny "analysis" of Andy Sully.

While it's been great sport making fun of Excitable Andy today (as it has been for the better part of a year), I kinda feel like this is a bit of a tragedy.

I mean, the guy is a great writer, but watching his collapse into a shrill, hyper-agitated wreck has been ugly. His site was one of the first that got me interested in reading blogs, and it was one of the first I would check every morning to see what was going on. I actually felt kind of bad when I deleted his URL from my bookmarks, but that feeling didn't last very long.

I'm not sure if I totally agree with ace about Sully's dishonesty. Maybe he is just a weathervane-type, but I suspect he was being dishonest with himself, not just his readers. I think he was always just a hawkish liberal, never really a conservative. And I suspect identity politics influenced his thinking more than he ever imagined it did. But I guess we'll never be sure.

In short, Sullivan ought to be wondering why a lot of people who respected his opinion no longer do, but I suspect he'll probably chalk it up to gay-bashing from the right. And that's a shame, because people like me don't care about something like that. We just know a hack when we see one.

So, now every time the Pope makes the news we can expect to be subjected to another hissy fit? I think they got all the mileage they are going to get out of the Pope being Catholic.

Off to bed. And please, God, no nightmares tonight about the Devil Who Comes Clicking On Little Toenails When You Open Up A Bag of Chips.

One of the bloggers once wrote “Andrew sees the world through the prism of his asshole”. I still get a good chuckle over that line.

Money Quote: "that it is bound up in sexual panic and a conflicted homosexual subculture that is a deep part of the Catholic Church"

This is a fine example of what those brainy psychiatrists call "projection".

You nailed that nicely, Ace. I didn't say, "He's not even Catholic!" in my original comment, because you're right: the guy's mood swings are so wildly out of control that it's not even fair to hold him to the standards of logic and consistency you expect from most grown-ups.

All the same, like Sean M. said, Sully's decline is pretty sad to watch. Not too many years ago Sullivan was a good editor at the New Republic, back when NR was a good magazine. I hate to think what Sullivan and the rest of the "reality based community" are going to look like in another five years.

Lilly - A new discovery at Johns Hopkins Medical Scholl shows that Liberals have a mutation of the anal-optic nerve (which connects the anus to the eyeball) which causes them to have s shitty outlook on life.

Sully's just another of these "buffet table" Catholics, who want the chef (er, Pope) to wheel out what they consider the tasty bits but leave the harsh herbs in the cupboard.

Dolt.

Ditto Sean M.'s comments. Sully was probably the second blog I ever read, after The Corner. I read him for years, and I liked how I agreed with some of his points, and disagreed with others. He seemed "real" that way. Like me-- like anyone-- his opinions didn't always fit into a convenient jar, and we were all invited to watch as he hammered out his positions in plain view. It was messy, sure; but it was honest.

But then something changed. He started being dishonest with his audience. He say one thing for one crowd, then contradict himself on his site, and use increasingly tortured language to argue that both positions were consistent with each other. Then, after literally years of assigning primacy to the war as the defining political issue of the day, he abandoned that in order to argue that he had to vote with his sexuality instead. That's okay, that's a defensible position. I happen to disagree strongly with it-- you don't worry about hitting the sack when your house is on fire. But if Sully thinks that, fine.

The problem, of course, is that Sully had painted himself into a corner in arguing the primacy of the war. He couldn't back out of it without taking his time to argue out of it-- even though it's clear in hindsight he was ready to bail on Bush & Co. very early on, and looking for any excuse to complain and insult and mischaracterize the Right. Again, I'm okay with that-- I read Democrat and liberal sites in order to challenge my viewpoints. But in the end, the man simply wasn't making a damn bit of sense. Reading his site became an exercise in intellectual futility-- *what* does he believe? *Why* does he believe it? The answers would change on a daily basis, with no obvious consistency connecting the two. Except, eventually, the theme that everything Bush did was personally directed at Andrew Sullivan's sexuality.

I'm sorry, but I don't have any patience for narcissism. Unless it's funny, like Ace's.

Andrew Sullivan's martyr/persecution complex keeps him from realizing that so many of us on the Right aren't criticizing him for changing his mind-- we're criticizing him for *sloppily* changing his mind. There was no logic, no reason in the decision-- just mercurial emotion. Or, at least that's how it appears to all of us. Perhaps that's not really the case, but Sully's a good enough writer that he should have been able to explain it better.

Oh well. At least there's always Garfield Ridge-- proud home of gob-smackingly vile rank hypocrisy since 2004.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge.

I disincluded AS from my otherwise-excellent Firefox group of tabs to open in the morning about a year ago, right about the time he went "wobbly" on Iraq. I was getting sick of his "principled" criticism of the war's planning and excecution. I assumed that his lefty buddies had finally worn him down with their own naysaying.

I wasn't reading him when he was apparently pioneering this whole blogging thing, so I can't say that removing him from my daily reading was a big blow.

"This is the problem with his wildly bipolar style of analysis"

You said "bipolar" hehehe

Sullen Sully is an effete snob and a nattering nabob of negativism.

Yeah, but the anal-intruder has such low self-esteem he's probably prowling Ace's site because
"At least they're talking about ME!"
Which in his alternate reality is all that counts.

Andy Sullivan poster boy for the narcassistic west.

Andy is currently on

http://www2.krla870.com

some of you might want to check it out.... OR NOT!

I always found it odd that Sullivan squealed like a demented drama queen when W. explicitly came out against homosexual marriage. Like that was some kind of big honking surprise. Gee, a conservative Christian from Texas against homosexual marriage? Who would've believed it?

And then shortly after that, Sullivan went wobbly on Iraq and endorsed Kerry. He's been flopping around ever since. My only question is, why should anyone take him seriously any more?

The thing to understand about Sully, Koz and various other lefty bloggers is that their "Lifestyle" is the main focus of their lives.

I should be more accurate to say that the focus of their lives is to make sure there is no one out there who will remind them that what they are doing might not be the healthiest, sanest or happiest way to lead a life.

Dealing with the daily pangs of guilt is much easier if they can demonize those who remind them of what they are doing.

Our friends at Powerline actually seemed surprised by the ferocity when these activists went after them.

Guilt is a tremendous motivator for backlash.

I read Andrew every day for a couple of years. He was the first gay conservative I found and I will always be grateful to him for that initial support. But he has become practically unreadable. The combination of moralism, hyperbole and squishiness became too much. I hope some day he'll regain his former strength. And, yes, Andrew, the Catholic Church is not in favor of homosexual activity. Cope. (Pardon the pun). The other thing that p***es me off is his coy avoidance of mentioning that after 20 years in America, making his living talking about "us", he remains a non-citizen. What's up with that?

Good for you for finding that extract! I remembered it too, but just couldn't plough through all the back issues to find it. It also confirms something I remembered - it was during that summer of 2003 that Sullivan lost his faith, and I detected the change in tone immediately. As I recall, he took an extra-long summer holiday that year, staying on Cape Cod long after the usual summer crowds had left. I was impatient for him to come back and resume blogging, but when he returned, I could tell right away that he wasn't the same. Now I suspect that that's when he met his all-important boyfriend (I think he's still got the same one), and I'd bet money that the guy is NOT a Catholic. I happens with heterosexual couples too, that if there isn't a match in religious feeling, it's often the pious one who abandons God to keep the partner. Sullivan then assuages his guilt by claiming that it's the Church that's to blame for his apostasy, driving him away with its heartless, irrational prejudice, but really, he just doesn't want to give up his pleasures. Not a new story, just reserved with an extra-thick layer of self-pity.