Shortly after I first discovered Andrew Sullivan’s writing in the New Republic in 1989, i started reading his work with great alacrity. As I was then struggling with coming out, I appreciated his unique perspective on the gay world. He did not subscribe to the orthodoxy which was making it difficult for me to believe I had anything in common with other outspoken men with whom I shared an attraction to our own gender.
When I started law school in 1991, I found it difficult to keep up with outside reading, such that I didn’t read Andrew’s stuff as regularly as I would have liked. When I had more time after I graduated in 1994, I found he had lost some of the acuity he had had when I first discovered him. He seemed to be trying to appeal to the gay ideology which in so eloquently and effectively opposing, he had helped secure his own standing in the world of political punditry.
Tired of the increasing mushiness of his writing, I stopped reading his stuff, only to resume again in 1998 when I picked up his book Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival in a Washington, D.C-bookstore and started reading. Unable to put it down, I bought it. That very month, I read his piece Sex, lies, and … us – criticism of gay and lesbian support for Bill Clinton in the Advocate, delighted to discover a gay writer taking issue with the prevailing gay political orthodoxy in our nation’s capital, that the then-incubment president was a hero to our community.
I would read Andrew regularly for the next five-and-one-half years, even donating to his blog when it became, in 2003, the first I checked daily. But, by the 2004 campaign, he had become so emotional when discussing the president, I no longer paid him much heed, only reading his posts when other bloggers linked him, usually to mock him for his hyperventilations.
Perhaps, he still had some sensible things to say. I just didn’t see them all that regularly, for, as with Glenn Greenwald, I tended only to see his blog in those moments of excess. On Friday, when searching his blog as part of the research for my post on gay marriage advocates and monogamy, I chanced upon two posts which showed he had retained some sense. In one, he acknowledged he was wrong when he predicted the failure of the surge. In another, he expressed concerns about the “soak-the-successful” aspect of Obama’s tax proposals.” He he has normally been an overenthusiastic cheerleader for the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Today, he even noted that global warming is not just a terrestrial problem, a finding which calls into question the assumption that this environmental phenomenon is caused by men. Not just that, in reviewing his blog today for this post, I found him largely level-headed with little of his (since 02/24/04) trademark anti-Bush bile. To be sure, he still does seem a little mushy on Obama.
Maybe we’re seeing, what we once saw (or at least what I begin discerning) in 1998, a new stage in Andrew Sulilvan’s writings. If this were so, this could herald a new era of eloquence and insight as his last such shift, began (at least in my mind) the period of greatest fecundity and understanding.
UPDATE: I wonder if I spoke too soon. I saw that he was still giving his still awards with a “Hewitt” award to some really juvenile cartoon (an insult to Hugh?). And noticed one piece where he all but “outed” a leading Republican official, and this the man who so eloquently decried outing in the early 1990s and even more recently.
Just maybe, in the waning months of Bush’s term, Sully’s case of BDS will fade. And, since he’s a smart guy, maybe the growing prospect of an Obama presidency will help to clear his mind.
I wouldn’t mind making The Dish a regular stop again – one of these days.
Oh, please. He only does it as tactics so that people like you will write exactly the post you’ve written. Wouldn’t it be better if he hadn’t gone all hysterical, irrational and (essentially) anti-American in the first place? And does anyone here doubt, for one second, that he will endorse Obama most heartily?
I must say I found Andrew because of some of his tv appearances back in early 2000. Was taken with his health struggles and his support for American drug companies. He refused to criticise those that were saving his life. But I too left him when he had this virulent hatred of Bush 43.
I remember finding Sullivan not long after I came out as conservative and gay. He made me feel less alone then. It made it somewhat shocking to watch him spiral into stupidity after 2003.
Could he come back? Maybe. Will I ever hold him the same regard? Mmmm….
It’s good to see moments of lucidity, may there be more of them. Once he tasted real fame, that is what he wanted, beliefs and character went out the window. Then he capitalized on his ‘name’ as a conservative, and wrote a very non conservative book.
The fact that he has been in the Obama camp from the getgo makes him suspect in my mind. Obama is as far left as one can get, and if someone as bright as Sullivan can’t acknowledge that – we have a problem. The least he could have done is be honest and say he’s no longer a conservative.
I guess I’ll wait for others to point out his lucid posts, since that was how I found out about the two you mentioned.
Shouldn’t confuse disagreement with any of those things. While I often agree with him, I sometimes disagree, too. But I’ve never found him stupid, irrational, nor hysterical. And I’ve certainly never found him to be anti-american.
I’ve found myself at times in disagreement with people on this site, and I’ve seen firsthand how disagreement is often linked with various and sundry mental or logical disorders.
Would that be The Conservative Soul? Not conservative? We read the same book?
There is a certain kind of “conservative” who specializes in pandering to liberals, basically – telling liberals things they will enjoy hearing in exchange for book sales, panel spots, etc. I’m not a conservative and yet even I can see that that’s what Sullivan has been up to. News at 11: Following the world’s first ever transplant of a working uterus, Sullivan has conceived a baby from sperm donor “B.O.” The child will be male and he plans to “Jimmy” (after the President)…
But I’ve never found him stupid, irrational, nor hysterical.
Not even when he was shilling for Ron Paul?
Not even when he was airing whackjob conspiracy theories like:
– Alex Jones’s theory that Cheney shot Harry Whittington at much closer range than he claimed.
– The UK terror plot was a hoax cooked up by Bush and Tony Blair to distract from Joe Lieberman’s primary loss.
– Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld deliberately sabotaged the rebuilding of Iraq to create a pretext for carpet-bombing the region, which St. Andrew labeled “the Likud strategy.”
Not even during his deranged and Dishonest Jihad against Glenn Reynolds?
Not even when he agreed with Dick Durbin in describing our troops as Nazis?
Not even when he was posting personal ads soliciting for unsafe sex? Or when he was boasting about how much hotter sex was when you’re HIV positive.
Not even when he made moral equivalence between our soldiers and terrorists?
This old post at AoSHQ has a good run-down of Sullington’s more emotionally unstable rants, including one against chicken farming,
Let’s not forget his intentionally dishonest conflation of torture, abuse and agressive interrogation. Hysterically claiming that wrapping a terrorist in the Israeli flag, or that a woman touching a terrorist with red marker ink on her hands, claiming it’s menstrual blood amount to TORTURE! Nor should we forget all the times Sullivan took the side of terrorists (phony koran flushing, etc) with no evidence, over the word of our own troops because it offered him an opportunity to rail against Bush.
I honestly don’t care if he shows “snippets” (to use Obamas word) of sensibility, he has proven himself entirely untrustworthy, and frankly, despicable.
…I see from looking at his blog today that that same dishonest conflation continues unabated. And I almost forgot his venemous hatred of religious conservatives, who although they dare to use entirely legal, ethical and democratic means to further their political agenda — the same as any of us, he likens to terrorists with his chosen epithet “Christianists”.
He really is a hateful, loathesome pig.
But at least there’s good news. If I read this correctly, Sullivan may be forced to leave the US in 9 months. Proof that every cloud, and even bad laws, often have a silver lining.
[I wonder if Sullivan is aware and if he were if he’d be willing to acknowledge that the president who loves to hate favors repealing the law which might require him to leave the country. –Dan]
The man he calls a miscreant? I doubt it. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned as they say. But maybe. At least if Bush repeals it, it will cause miss Sullivan some anguish and conflict, knowing deep down that Bush is a far better person than he. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that the law doesn’t get repealed til after he gets deported.
AE, what’s really said about Sullivan is that he used to be so even-handed in his commentary on W. Back when, I started reading his blog on a regular basis (sometime in ’03), he had the capacity to praise Bush while noting the man’s flaws and doing so in a civil manner.
But, now he behaves as if the man is evil incarnate and can do no good.
Since posting this piece, then reviewing his blog, it doesn’t seem those buds of hope have blossomed into anything more than bile.