Divorcing Your Parents
By Mitch Berg
Andrew Sullivan is my blogfather, as I’ve noted in many, many places. I started Shot In The Dark hours after reading “The Dish” for the first time, inspired by his take (at the time) on events and by the newfound technology that allowed any schlump with an internet connection to hang out a shingle as a pundit.
And while I’ve become estranged from my blogfather, as his true, not-very-conservative (or, rather, “conservative” that bears no relation to my own flavor of the movement) beliefs took over his presentation – I’ve honestly read The Daily Dish maybe twice in the last four years – I’ve always kept that notion in the back of my head; he’s this blog’s Dad.
And now, I’m done. Sullivan shows us he’s working for the other side, in his rationalization for “endorsing” Ron Paul:
I admire McCain in so many ways. He is the adult in the field, he is attuned to the issue of climate change in a way no other Republican is, he is a genuine war hero and a patriot, and he bravely and rightly opposed the disastrous occupation policies of the Bush administration in Iraq. The surge is no panacea for Iraq; but it has enabled the United States to lose the war without losing face. And that, in the end, is why I admire McCain but nonetheless have to favor Paul over McCain. Because on the critical issue of our time – the great question of the last six years – Paul has been proven right and McCain wrong. And I say that as someone who once passionately supported McCain’s position on the war but who cannot pretend any longer that it makes sense.
Read the whole thing, if only to pound a stake through the heart of whatever admiration you may once have had for the guy.
December 18th, 2007 at 6:27 am
The two pundits who are the most interesting and maddening to me are Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan. Hitchens because he should be sharp enough to see that his arguments against religion are trite, and Sullivan because of his total lack of introspection.
Sullivan doesn’t see that Bush’s endorsement of a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage occurred simultaneously with his turning against Bush and branding him torturer-in-chief. He doesn’t see that he uses the same words to describe the evils supposedly done by Bush to prisoners in Iraq qnd Guantanamo with Bush’s treatment of homosexuals. He doesn’t see that his obsession with waterboarding might be a result of his own history of asthma rather than a reasoned response to a great evil.
Worst of all he thinks it is okay for his religious sensibilities to inform his politics but it is wrong for ‘Christianists’ to do so.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:22 am
I never saw what others did in Sully. I respected his support for the war, but I didn’t think his reasoning was all that good, nor his writing, frankly. To me, Reynolds is more the model that almost got me to blogging.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:34 am
“The other side?” Ron Paul’s a Democrat?
Cause it can’t be batshite-crazy extremists. That’s not exactly the *other* side for you guys, now is it?
December 18th, 2007 at 9:48 am
By the way, when are you guys gonna wake up to the fact that all your candidates suck and give McCain another look?
Never? Not a big deal. Not like you were really using that White House, anyway.
December 18th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Clown has a man-crush on a Republican . . .
December 18th, 2007 at 10:12 am
give McCain another look
Wrote about that very thing a few weeks ago.
December 18th, 2007 at 10:58 am
You rejected the idea though, no? Or maybe Angryclown missed the post.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
You rejected the idea though, no?
I said that he’s SO close to right on – but McCain/Feingold is a huge problem.