Monday, July 15, 2013

In Which Andrew Sullivan Acknowledges I Exist



Sort of.

So I sent Mr. Sullivan an email.

And whaddya know, here I am (emphasis added):
A reader quotes me:
Bragging about their capacity to blackmail or terrify their own government seems, well, at best hyperbolic, and when the threat is made in a foreign newspaper, disturbing.
Worse. By announcing to the entire planet that if any country or faction or war lord or cartel kingpin or terrorist organization or highly-motivated anti-gummint nutjob on Earth wants to see the United States humiliated and its most intimate secrets splashed all over the media and all they have to do is kill one guy, Glenn has effectively hung a target around Snowden’s neck.
Since I sent this link along with my email, I suppose the next hurdle is persuading Mr. Sullivan to recognize that I exist as writer in the world in the same way he does for, well, everyone else, including these people whose names I skimmed more or less at random from a few day's worth of Dish posts: Glenn Greenwald, Megan McCardle, Michele Malkin, Jonah Goldberg, Josh Barrow, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, David Brooks, Tyler Cowen, Nate Cohn, Alexandra Petri, John Sides, Paul Waldman, Amanda Hess, Jamelle Bouie, Molly Redden, Cord Jefferson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jazz Shaw, Ace of Spades, Eugene Volokh, Steve Grand, Shane Phillips, Caleb Scharf, Andrew Webster, Stuart Reid, Conor Friedersdorf, Adam Waytz, Carl Franzen, Sean Trende, Peter Beinart, Jonathan Chait, Marc Ambinder.

10 comments:

JerryB said...

Baby steps DG, baby steps.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

"A Reader"

You must be blushing from the accolades!

Anonymous said...

Lets see if I can properly butcher this Twain quote:

"Damn sure..I wouldn't want to join..any club that would have me as a member".

...at least thats the way I have been saying it for 40 years.

In this case, I am absolutely positive about it.



Anonymous said...

If he acknowledged you, a lot more people will make the mistake of reading what you've said about him. Sully's too much of a weasel to risk exposure.

Vic78

mahakal said...

More concerned over getting personal attention from Mr Sullivan than whether your point even made sense. I see. But there is no dead man's switch, as Greenwald has made clear. There are people with portions of the decryption key which they could bring together in the event of some action by the United States against Snowden, but no automatic release happens when someone else does something something to embarrass the US.

Pinkamena Panic said...

Woo-head CT spammer says what?

Demian said...

"Has" GG crossed the line implies the relatively recent ripening of conduct into something it wasn't, or wasn't quite, before.

Didn't GG meet with Snowden before the latter went to work for the NSA contractor? I saw this stated at the blog comment level (!) and attributed to a WSJ piece but haven't looked it up.

In any event, if Snowden allegedly violated criminal law(s), and the question arose whether GG allegedly participated in that violation rather than just reporting about it, there'd be damn little evidence of said participation other than testimony by Snowden.

I think the pertinent question is, "did" Greenwald cross the line.

Rev.Paperboy said...

Pssst, Anonymous, that's not Twain it's Marx -- Groucho, that is. "I sent the club a wire stating, "PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER".
Telegram to the Friar's Club of Beverly Hills to which he belonged, as recounted in Groucho and Me (1959), p. 321

Anonymous said...

Weasel words.

Further, Driftglass has written extensively about this topic and cares about it above and beyond this one post. He has the capacity to make the deeper and salient point about the media establishment, since part of what perpetuates our sorry state of affairs is the Village.

But anything to defend Greenwald. Even when Greenwald says the US should be on its knees praying nothing happens to his precious client, look over there when he says something different! That's totally the truth!

Weasel words.

Anonymous said...

All you have to do is understand why it's OK to discriminate against poors, but not gays. Then you can join the club. Then Sully will praise you and you can join the beltway club. You too can go to cocktail parties.

I'm 100% not joking about this either. You see... I grew up in the beltway, in Northern Virginia and Georgetown at that! I go to cocktail parties off on and on. The rule is... "why can't we just let the gays get married and privatize social security", doesn't matter if you are Democrat or a Republican, them's the rules and that's what will be done. Every conservative who thinks gay marriage won't be nation wide even if they vote Republican is delusional, and every liberal who thinks social security won't be privatized even if they vote Democratic is just as big of a fucking moron.

You just have to accept that, say it softly, and then you too can hang with the in crowd.

And yes any liberal who thinks the Democrats aren't going to kill social security is a fucking moron.