Dr. Andrew Sullivan, M.D. OB/GYN, esteemed director of the prestigious Tina Brown Center for Advanced Republican Obstetric Investigation, uses the title quote in reference to moi, a “deranged rightist.”
My post evidently wasn’t good enough for a Malkin Award nomination, but his comment is at least a welcome reassurance of my sanity. Being called “deranged” by Sully is rather like being called “fat” by Meghan McCain or called “ignorant” by Al Sharpton.
Elsewhere, Recovering Liberal M. Joseph Sheppard credits me with the “inner core humanity to do and say what is right and damn the torpedoes” — a compliment I’ll gratefully strive to deserve, reminding me of an incident when I was a boy of about 10.
Our family was vacationing at Daytona Beach, and we’d rented one of those heavy-duty inflatable floats. Late in the afternoon, it fell my task to return the float to the beachside vendor, which I did with some well-taught words of courtesy: “Thank you, sir.” And then the vendor returned my thanks, telling me I was “a gentleman and a scholar.”
This phrase is a sort of commonplace old-fashioned saying, but as a 10-year-old I’d never heard it before and so I’m sure, as I walked back to our motel, I strode the dunes with a newfound pride and dignity at having been recognized as a gentleman and a scholar. Continue reading ‘This Neofascist Fantasy’ →
Was it a boy doll or a girl doll? The newspaper story doesn’t say:
Officers were called to Allendale Elementary School on Prescott Way in Spring Hill amid reports of a white male with a duffle bag under a bridge on school property. . . .
According to Torroll, he suffers from an attention deficit disorder which he says affects his inability to resist certain sexual impulses, though none of which involve children. . . .
On the Web site DannyTorroll.com, the Web site for the Danny Torroll Skool of Music and Art, Torroll says he teaches “eight very gifted students” ranging in age from seven to 12-years-old.
He describes the school as “an anomaly in the upper education platform for serious students of all instruments,” according to the site.
Is he teaching flute lessons to these “very gifted students”? And if he has the “inability to resist” an impulse to have sex with a doll outside an elementary school, what other impulses does Danny Torroll find irresistible? Again, the article doesn’t tell us. But speaking of twisted freaks with irresistible impulses . . .
Why can’t Andrew Sullivan resist the impulse to mock Sarah Palin?
Really, Sully: Did you have to turn a photo caption of Sarah Palin’s toenails into a post? Is your sadistic compulsion to diminish and ridicule women so overwhelming that you lack the willpower to necessary to fight the urge? Do you lack even the basic self-awareness necessary to recognize that your persistent symptoms of Palin Derangement Syndrome reinforce harmful stereotypes of gay men as vicious weaklings with “mommy issues”? And if not, are you such a reckless misogynist as to disregard how your attacks on Governor Palin foster hostility to women in politics?
“So it’s pretty obvious that it was the Israelis who immediately got their US media mouthpieces to spin the speech as some sort of attack.”
— Andrew Sullivan, May 20
Sullivan makes specific mention of Matt Drudge, Fox News and Mitt Romney. Which of these, or which others, does he outright accuse of being “mouthpieces” issuing “spin” at the behest of Israelis?
It may be fair to suppose that some of Obama’s critics took their cue from Israeli sources: “Let’s see what Bibi says” is a reasonable stance for those who profess friendship for Israel. But that is a very different thing than Andrew Sullivan’s depiction of Israeli puppeteers secretly pulling the strings of their American media marionettes.
You can’t just casually drop that kind of accusation into a post and then walk away as if you hadn’t said it.
This Just In: Andrew Sullivan Is Illogical, Irrational, Inconsistent, Inconstant, Hypocritical and Hysterical and Unprincipled and Unhinged
But he’s a “great writer”? I once again refute this claim by posing the Andrew Sullivan Challenge: Name one thing he wrote that really sticks out in your mind as insightful or well-crafted… He’s always been a blathering, hyperemotional borderline-lunatic. It’s just at one time he employed those dubious gifts to push Bush.
The headline links to an item by Pejman Yousefzadeh, who really ought to change his name to “Pete Young” or something easier to spell, because I keep having to cut-and-paste it. This isn’t personal, Pejman — I’d offer the same advice to my friend Wlady Pleszczynski, except he’s been at it 30 years already. Also, he’s kinda my boss.
It was noon in Washington, D.C., when the shooting began in Tucson. Across the country, reporters and media executives rushed to cover the story of the gunman, the Congresswoman he shot at close range, and the 14 other victims. But the news couldn’t reach one of the Internet’s most important writers. For Andrew Sullivan, M.P.A. ’86, Ph.D. ’90, the editor of a blog called TheDish.com, the weekend is a time for rest, and having teed up on Friday afternoon a half-dozen evergreen posts for Saturday, he had turned off his communication devices and was sleeping in.
Sullivan had been lightly ill that week, so he slept unusually late, until almost two in the afternoon. Before he was quite ready to deal with the world, he checked his mailbox — and woke up fast. Along with the news of the shooting was an urgent question from readers: Andrew, where are you?
Sullivan winced. He e-mailed his four young assistants: “We have to go cable” — that is, pump out blog posts 24/7. . . .
And then you must — absolutely must — hit my tip jar for $20. Not that $20 will go far toward hiring “four young assistants,” but it will replace the shirt I just ruined when I spit coffee all over the place.
UPDATE: Damn that Sissy Willis! She urged me to read more of the article, and I saw this:
“The Dish has twice as many readers as the New Republic and more than National Review,” Sullivan says. And on the Atlantic site, the Dish also ruled. Some days, according to Alexa.com, which measures site traffic on the Internet, the Daily Dish accounted for more than half of the visitors to TheAtlantic.com. In cold numbers: Andrew Sullivan—one blogger, with a small budget and a minimal staff—has presented Tina Brown with a gift of about 1.3 million Internet readers.
More readers than National Review? Really? Who are these people?
UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! It’s amazing that Professor Reynolds can run a blog — and he’s kinda successful, you know — without “four young assistants” at his beck and call.
“Him” of course being President Obama, who still moves Andrew Sullivan to paeans of gratitude, no matter how un-constitutionally Bush-like or wrong-headed Obama’s actual policies might be.
Did you say “Battered Wife Syndrome“?
Yeah. Everybody sees it, except the victim who refuses to take responsibility for enabling his own abuse. Meanwhile, with our brilliant European “allies” in charge of the air war, things are going just dandy for the Libyan rebels:
At least 13 people are reported to have been killed when a coalition plane flying over Libya fired on a rebel convoy between Brega and Ajdabiya on Friday, the rebels say. . . .
A doctor in the town of Ajdabiya, Suleiman Refardi, told the BBC that on Wednesday the coalition air strike on Zawia el Argobe targeted a government convoy that included tanks, artillery and lorries carrying ammunition.
A direct hit on an ammunition truck and trailer sent a hail of shrapnel into nearby houses, he said.
Four of the dead were female, including three children from the same family, aged between 12 and 16. Three boys, aged between 14 and 20, were also killed.
Here’s a video report:
Because there are no lefties marching around shouting “Obama lied, Libyans died,” Sullivan can pretend that President Awesomeness is a blessing to humanity “at this fraught moment in history.”
But this pretense cannot be maintained forever, if failures continue being heaped one upon another.
Many of us supported this president because he promised to bring back the constitutional balance after the theories of Yoo, Delahunty, et al put the president on a par with emperors and kings in wartime. And yet in this Libya move, what difference is there between Bush and Obama?
Well, competence — or at least the common-sense recognition that war cannot properly be fought by piecemeal commitments. Obama evidently wants the Libyan intervention to be something that is Not Quite War, and does not appear to have considered the possibility that this will be more damaging for U.S. interests than if he had ordered a massive invasion of Libya. Sully cares not a bit for U.S. interests, of course, but is concerned only for his own credibility: His erstwhile idol Obama has outdone Bush in foreign-policy high-handedness, thus embarrassing one Andrew Sullivan (B.A., Oxford; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard).
U.S. officials are becoming increasingly resigned to the possibility of a protracted stalemate in Libya, with rebels retaining control of the eastern half of the divided country but lacking the muscle to drive Moammar Gaddafi from power. . . .
New evidence of a possible impasse emerged Friday as an opposition spokesman called publicly for a cease-fire that would halt the fighting and essentially freeze the battle lines. The Libyan government rejected the proposal, saying that it would not “withdraw from our own cities.” . . .
So the Obama administration has, apparently, committed insufficient military resources to achieve any decisive outcome. Every additional day Qaddafi remains in power is like an advertisement of American impotence. And Harry Reid adjourns the Senate rather than permit debate on whether the president has constitutional authority to wage this Not Quite War.
“The president’s own words are incredibly important here. The hypocrisy is amazing. In 2007, the president said, ‘The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.’ And yet here we have a president cavalierly taking us to war. He seems to have had a lot of time to talk to people. He talked to the Arab League; they had time to get together and vote on it. He talked to the U.N.; they had time to get together and vote on it. But he had utter disregard and contempt for the most important body in the United States that represents the people, the U.S. Congress — utter contempt. He’s gone to NATO, he’s gone to our allies, he’s gone to the U.N., he’s gone to the Arab League, but he has not had one single minute of debate in Congress. To add insult to injury, he chose to go to war while in Brazil, while Congress was not even in session.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky)
And rather than allow such a debate, Harry Reid adjourned the Senate — leaving Sully’s shredded credibility flapping in the wind.
