Andrew Sullivan And The Dept. Of Rewritten History

5:41 pm EST September 19th, 2007 | News | 8 Comments

Reading blog entries like this from Andrew Sullivan, one could be forgiven for forgetting that Sullivan was one of the pundit class’ biggest war and Bush boosters who labeled people who opposed the invasion as treasonous.

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8 Responses to “Andrew Sullivan And The Dept. Of Rewritten History”

megamoze says:

September 19, 2007 at 6:29 pm

To his credit, Sully admits how wrong he was and has practically dedicated his blog to pointing out the mistakes, lies, and war atrocities of the administration ever since.
Oliver Willis says:

September 19, 2007 at 7:10 pm

Yeah, until he switches his position again to be on the “popular side”.
frameone says:

September 19, 2007 at 8:25 pm

I don’t know. Sullivan was wrong and he has, as megamoze notes, gone a long way toward trying to make up for it but taking on asshats like Hugh Hewitt on a regular basis — a task that no one could enjoy for all the time it takes to scrub the stupid off afterwards — and arguing rather forcefully against this administration’s iraq policies, so called.

It’s a little unfair to suggest that he’s just biding his time until supporting war without end is popular again. I don’t see too many other issues, if any, on which he’s switched positions based on popularity.
Dr. Victor Davis Handjob says:

September 19, 2007 at 8:30 pm

He was a bastard up through 2003, and I’ll never forgive him for the way he promoted The Bell Curve, but he has been quite good on torture.
Duder says:

September 19, 2007 at 10:16 pm

Sully is horrible. Funny you should mention him and rewritten history (even funnier since he’s one of several wingers who claim to be the second coming of Orwell). A sampling:

Five days after 9/11, in an aside in a long essay, I predicted that a small cadre of decadent leftists in enclaves in coastal universities would instinctively side with America’s enemies. They did. Some still do.

Note, via Sullywatch for the previous instance, that this makes it two times that has he now altered that infamous quote, once to lessen its central accusation and now to claim it only applied to universities and not everyone on the coasts:

The middle part of the country – the great red zone that voted for Bush – is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead – and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.
Jamey says:

September 20, 2007 at 9:23 am

Sully is such an overweening prick, it defies imagination to explain his success. Maybe it’s the plummy accent… or that he throws around the word “Burkean” every so often, just to “elevate” the discourse. Even if he were on the right side of 1/4 of the issues (and his tendency to pick the wrong pony in a two-horse race), his nauseating propensity for shilling his book every other posting would qualify him to be cast adrift on an ice floe with a hungry polar bear.

Beneath the polish of his prose lies a towering intellectual dishonesty. And, despite the fact that his fellow travelers (conservatives) have publicly wished him dead from AIDS, Sully also never wastes a chance to stick it to his betes noire, Hillary and liberals in general. The conservatism he espouses exists nowhere; it’s all theory, and poorly supported theory at that.
Dr. Victor Davis Handjob says:

September 20, 2007 at 9:58 am

“The conservatism he espouses exists nowhere”

I totally agree with that. He talks about smaller government, but when he gets down to specific spending cuts, it’s a drop in the bucket. And the Laffer curve is dying. In 20 years even conservatives will wonder what the hell the contemporary GOP was smoking on that particular bit of nonsense.
moron says:

September 20, 2007 at 8:14 pm

I don’t think Sullivan is switching sides in bad faith.

The fact is, Andrew Sullivan, no matter how witty and talented a writer he may be, is just not that smart when it comes to politics — maybe not that bright altogether.

The British educational system has a strange property of educating people to write very well and argue and debate in a flashy, witty way… while really not teaching them to think or analyze in a way that will lead them to sensible, verifiably correct answers.

Andrew Sullivan is in many ways the culmination of this pathological educational system that teaches people to believe in things to argue in the most witty, contrarian and clever way possible rather than to believe in things that make some sort of internal sense.

Being a gay man from a working class background with AIDS, he decided that the most witty, contrarian thing for him to do was to argue in favor of Republican policies that violated every tenet of logic and common sense.

Indeed, the more competently and sparklingly he could debate in favor of their views despite their natural and intrinsic emnity towards him, the more cleverly contrarian he would be seen as.

And unlike someone like Michael Kinsley, Andrew Sullivan only dimly understood that there was more basis for believing or not believing in something than clever, witty contrarianism.

I think it was only the Iraq war that really drove it home to him that clever, witty contrarianism will only get you so far — and that in times of serious crisis, it is a horrible tendency that will lead you in incredibly destructive directions.

To his credit, I think he has really learned his lesson well on this point.

That does not mean his intellectual limitations are magically overcome, but I do see someone who is making an honest effort.