Andrew Sullivan: Then and Now

Mr. Sullivan is currently reprinting a few of his pro-war, America-Fuck-Yeah-and-fuck-those-fucking-traitor-Liberals posts from his salad days as Dick Cheney's biggest fan and Dubya's most loyal nad-buffer.

So good on him for that.

The problem, of course, is not that Mr. Sullivan got the Bush Administration completely wrong: the problem is that he got and continues to get virtually everything about American Conservatism completely wrong. Which has got to be both personally embarrassing and professionally perilous for someone whose CV, business card, letterhead, and, presumably, obituary all stand a fair chance of carrying the phrase "Andrew Sullivan, the Conservative..." somewhere in their first lines.

So, for example, as you watch how Mr. Sullivan gleefully embraces the "Vast Left-wing Media Conspiracy" pillar of American Conservatism back when that particular bit of batshittery was popular and profitable...

... and then sprint like hell away from that same pillar of American Conservatism once the market for it was cornered by Conservatives who exceeded Mr. Sullivan's capacity to suppress his gag reflex...

...you will no doubt notice that he somehow never quite gets around to acknowledging that the Left was right all along.  In fact, quite the contrary: Mr. Sullivan now makes a regular thing out of drawing false equivalences between Fox and MSNBC as both being too, too partisan  for his delicate,True Conservative sensibilities.

De-Legitimizing Fox And MSNBC

JAN 29 2013 @ 1:22PM

And I have to say that even if it means agreeing with David Brock, I’m afraid I have to confess that I do not regard Fox News as a legitimate news organization. It’s a propaganda channel for the far right, and not much worse than MSNBC’s leftist partisan smugbursts.

Because that "Both Sides" dollar is a mighty good dollar.

Anyway, here is Mr. Sullivan then (with emphasis randomly scattered in here and there):

LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS

MAY 3 2004 @ 12:37AM

There’s something really quite beautiful about a New York Times article about a self-described liar, David Brock, setting up a, er, blog, to combat, er, media bias. Brock’s argument is that the mainstream media, including the New York Times, is skewed to the right. So why, one wonders, did the New York Times barely mention the emergence of hundreds of similar websites over the last few years that popped up to counter what they believed was liberal bias in the mainstream media? Could it be that the early blogosphere – which didn’t require $2 million grants to get in business – was too conservative to be acknowledged in the Times? Even when those blogs played a small but important role in the exposure of the distortions and lies once run as news by Howell Raines’ New York Times? No liberal media bias, is there?

And Mr. Sullivan now:

Stories The Media Tells Itself 

NOV 8 2010 @ 6:22PM

... Having been through this cycle a couple more times than Matt has, even I have been struck by the lame predictability of the media's sudden turn.

Nothing we didn't know – but confirmation nonetheless: too many in the media don't have any view but what is outside themselves. They're afraid to be biased, and therefore too quick to jump on what seems like the majority mood at any time...

Mr. Sullivan then:

WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA?

APR 26 2002 @ 1:51PM

Say this for People For the American Way. They’ve been doing a terrific job lately. Almost single-handedly, they killed the Pickering nomination and almost certainly will be central in any upcoming judicial fights. (I should say here that, despite many political differences, I’ve been good friends with some PFAW staffers and admire the professionalism of their work, however much I deplore their partisanship. Hey, politics isn’t everything.) But I’m a little taken aback that several media organizations have been indirectly funding this left-group, including CBS and the New York Times. Byron York has the skinny. CBS and the Times, of course, have no political agenda in their reporting, and their news organizations remain strictly neutral. It’s just that they help fund some of the most partisan liberal groups in Washington.

Mr. Sullivan now:

Polls Are Now Part Of The Liberal Conspiracy, Ctd

SEP 27 2012 @ 5:13PM

Like many Republicans, the hosts of Fox & Friends don't trust the polls...

Mr. Sullivan then:

THE LIBERAL MEDIA VS BUSH

APR 30 2001 @ 12:33AM 

Only 22 percent of respondents to the New York Times’ online poll have a negative view of George W. Bush’s first 100 days. But the editorial columns of the Washington Post and the New York Times, says the Project for Excellence in Journalism, are another story. A full half of the editorials were critical of Bush, with only 20 percent positive. Compare that with coverage of Clinton, who, despite a disastrous beginning by any standards, garnered positive editorials in his first hundred days twice as often as Bush has. Taking op-eds into account, anti-Bush pieces comprised 40 percent of the space in the Times and Post, compared to a meager 16 percent pro-Bush – a tally that amounts to an unprecedented liberal media crusade against the president. “I think it’s ideological,” Tom Rosenstiel, the project’s director, tells Howie Kurtz, winning the “no-shit” quote prize of the day. Still, the good news is that readers are simply ignoring the editorials. Over 60 percent approval ratings among the general public – and 60 percent approval ratings even among the Times’ online readers – is the best answer to the combined whine of DowdHerbertLewisFriedmanKrugmanCollins, from which not a single positive, or even vaguely fair, squeak can be discerned.

Mr. Sullivan now:

Busting The Daily Caller

MAR 6 2013 @ 11:43AM

This is a pretty definitive exposure of a total fabrication in the Daily Caller. But along with its sister propaganda sheet, Breitbart, what defines this new form of hackery is not that it makes shit up, but that even when it is busted, it keeps up the Baghdad Bob routine. Its imperviousness to truth even when it is presented with it. The detachment from reality – the strongest feature of today’s degenerate Republicanism – is embedded in its own fabricated media. That’s partly why they were living in never-never-land even on election day last November...

I could do this for another 20 pages, but why bother?