"...[Bruce Bartlett] was shocked again when he observed that not only were criticisms of such recklessness not allowed, they were not even heard because the right had created its own media chamber, which kept any dissidence or intellectual challenge firmly out of earshot. So Bruce wrote a book, explaining Bush's attack on core conservative principles: balanced budgets, just wars, individual liberty and states' rights. The result? He was swiftly fired from his think-tank job, banned from Fox News, and turned into a non-person like an airbrushed-out member of an intellectual Politburo. (Bush tools, mediocrities and war criminals, on the other hand, were gladly ushered into AEI and the op-ed pages of the Washington Post.)"I endured the same kind of thing, although I was much less polite than Bruce and had an independent platform. But it's still remarkable to me that I have not been invited on Fox for a decade - even to discuss or debate my book on, er, conservatism and fundamentalism. My book, The Conservative Soul, was not reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, and given a formal excommunication/evisceration by National Review's Jonah Goldberg. Compare this with my first book, Virtually Normal, which was reviewed positively in the Wall Street Journal and got a review in National Review that any writer would die for by a distinguished professor of political theory, Kenneth Minogue. So a radically conservative book about homosexuality was admissible, even welcome, in conservative media in 1995, but a critique of modern conservatism's decline was verboten in 2006. No links to this blog were allowed at National Review's Corner. No mention of my name ever crossed the lips of a Republican loyalist."
-- Andrew Sullivan, November 26, 2012
As Liberals, don't you just hate it when the "Wall Street Journal" petulantly refuses to review your latest book? I mean, where the fuck do they get off?!?
And don't you just hate it that the National Review refuses to even link to your stuff?
And don't you just hate it that your employer only gives you six or seven "Newsweek" covers a year?
And the president only invites you to White House galas once in a while?
And you're only invited to share your views on teevee once every few weeks?
Honestly, what can you say about someone who has salvaged his own career as a Fearless, Truth-Waving Conservative by frantically bootlegging virtually the entire Liberal critique of Conservatism while at the same time maintaining his media credentials by joining the media embargo on acknowledging that Liberals even exist?
Mr. Sullivan doesn't engage or debate real Liberals for exactly the same reasons that David Brooks doesn't engage or debate real Liberals and Fox does not debate Andrew Sullivan: their respective well-documented pasts hang over them swords of Damocles, and after two minutes of very pointed questions from anyone who is not bound by the Beltway mutual non-aggression pact, they would publicly shit themselves and/or run away crying. Which, in the end, may be Mr. Sullivan's most truly Conservative characteristic of all.
5 comments:
Huh. I had wondered where Bruce Bartlett had gone.
No stripes on these guys (Sullivan,Brooks,Will,etc. It's all just yellow as any propagandist could ever be. Rrgards, Gary
Good morning, Mr. Glass.
I read the entire Bartlett piece first, since one of my Facebook friends linked it to her page. Planned to email it to you and Ms. Gal before I got to your site and saw that this would be unnecessary. This was the comment I was going to attach to the hyperlink:
If people are going to channel the spirit of Driftglass, they could at least have the decency to wait until he's dead first.
Bartlett and Sullivan still want to publish whining screeds in conservative rags because acceptance by liberals (ie, the powerless) doesn't matter, in their eyes. They want approval from the Wall St trader, a smile from a lobbyist, a gentle question from a deferential WSJ reporter. They want to brush skin with A Great Man (doesn't matter which one, really).
They are such creatures of a Village they cannot comprehend their solipsism, cannot acknowledge their intellectual forerunners, and treat the few wisps of sanity in their heads as archangels bearing golden tablets of Ancient Knowledge That Were Hitherto Unknown By Mortals.
Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party?
The Republican Party is a coalition of feral Stone Age barbarians who haven't discovered fire yet and Galtian Overlords who are stingy enough to make Uncle Scrooge blush in shame?
That Republicans have not the slightest interest in governing, and are more interested in Power, and What Can Be Done With It (namely, torture, killing, and enriching themselves)?
Some people were always saying this.
Some people were against the Iraq War.
Some people called out Bush before he was even elected the first time.
Some people called out Fox News in 1997.
Some people called out Reagan in 1980.
And so, in the timeless dance, after they've fucked up so badly that they're desperate enough to try anything, the conservative reaches out to the liberal to save him from himself. There won't be a reward, a thank you, or even simple acknowledgement. Instead we are treated to pouty consternation that The Liberals Were Right, as if that were akin to making a non-aggression pact with Satan. There are whiny bleats that "only liberals and moderates listen to me these days" as if Bartlett was reduced to playing a wooden recorder in a Times Square Subway. The truth is anathema to them, inimical to their profession. They utter it only with distaste, after all other options are exhausted.
But you know they would much rather be in the Fox News Green Room, rubbing elbows with the soulless ideological vampires with whom they are most comfortable. They would much rather be with people with power, people who understand, people who know that to be Conservative...
You have to be in on the Con,
And you have to be willing to Serve.
Can I make a nomination for this category? I see that Sullivan has given Jon Huntsman a "quote of the day" plaudit for his quote suggesting, among other things, that Dick Nixon deserves credit for ending the Vietnam War. (You don't need to print this comment; I just wanted to offer a nomination)
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