Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Silly Shit Andrew Sullivan Says, Ctd.



Today, Mr. Sullivan counsels maximal tolerance for objectionable language:
"But I like the term “homo”! I use it all the time – about myself and others, although I also often use “fag” as well. The gay thought-police would be aghast, but the intent is what matters. Mine is mostly benign. Mostly. But mainly, one great legacy of the gay community has been our love of freedom, especially of speech. For centuries and decades, the right to free speech was our only truly secure constitutional right. We were always about enlarging what was sayable, rather than restricting it."


-- Andrew Sullivan, 03/25/14
Yesterday, Mr. Sullivan counselled  maximal magnanimity towards those who would oppose you:
"One obvious objection is that the word bigotry is far too crude to define the vast array of feelings, ideas, arguments or mere ignorance that can lie behind opposition to gays getting married. Using the term “bigotry” or, even worse, the hideous propaganda term “hate”, just doesn’t do justice to the range of human reaction to profound social change. To make an obvious point – around a third of Americans have changed their minds on the subject in the last decade and a half. Bigots, by definition, are not open to such shifts in opinion. You can’t reason someone out of something they didn’t use reason to get into. 
...
"Americans are not all bigots. Not even close. They can be persuaded rather than attacked. And if we behave magnanimously and give maximal space for those who sincerely oppose us, then eventual persuasion will be more likely. And our victory more moral and more enduring."
-- Andrew Sullivan, 03/24/14
All of which sounds quite high and noble and easy to nod along with until you put down the bong for a minute and remember that just four months ago Mr. Sullivan was absolutely reveling in MSNBC's firing of Alec Baldwin for yelling something stupid over his shoulder and thereby single-handedly destroyed New York's hard-earned reputation as a G-rated, family-friendly Disneyland-on-the-Hudson.
I just believe that explicitly homophobic slurs directed at actual human beings as a way to degrade them doesn’t have a “but-he’s-a-liberal” exception. It’s ugly and would not be tolerated if directed against any other minority group. MSNBC did the right thing.
Nothing marks someone as a real American Conservative quite so clearly as the distance between their sweeping statements of universal principles and their pissy, clueless hypocrisy when the real-world application of those principles lands in their own back yard.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dafuq???!?!?

I'm so glad I set down my drink... I can't believe that passes for "intellectual"... wait, never mind. Jesus wrote the Constitution with Ronald Reagan and Adam in the Garden of Eden 6000 years ago....

I actually had to lay down a bit of artillery cover against someone quoting bad science and the "think of the children!!!" shtick. He tried to counter that "liberals" are the real bigots because liberals keep calling conservative bigots. I had to point out that drawing bad conclusions from methodologically flawed "science", which has been denounced by every major healthcare and social work group in the US, to take away the civil rights of taxpaying adults, *is* bigotry, no matter how much Jesus glitter you sprinkle on it.

Sigh... I'm getting really tired of the "Liberals are the *real* bigots for not pretending we are right" crap.

Mike.K.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

For centuries and decades...,



is this really how big-time professional writers write?

RoninMichigan said...

Spot on! As you usual are DG. It just so happens that i'm watching David Brock on Hardball as i type. The contrast between Andrew Sukkivan and David Brock is quite a thing to consider.

Do you think Andrew will ever have a moment of clarity and quite the conservative attack machine the way David did.