Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan continues to show the same easy moral elasticity which made him such a popular Conservative footstool in years gone by.
Also, I would once again ask Mr. Sullivan the same questions I have been asking (and he has been conspicuously ignoring) for years. The same fundamentalism he decries as sick and destructive today --
"To recap: fundamentalism is not the same as Christianity. It has certain psychological tropes. The first is to see sexual sin as far the worst of them and the root of all of them. The second is to see gays – whose very being represents sexual sin – as an enemy class within a society bringing about its destruction if they are not stopped or converted (see: Jews, Europe, circa 1300 – 1945). The third is to see these gays as opening the door to every other sin and evil. The fourth is to 'lose our country.'"
-- has been one of central pillars of modern American Conservatism since before Young Andy Sullivan washed up on our fair shores and went into the worshiping Ronald Reagan business.
Another one of American Conservatism's pillars is white supremacy. Another is the fetishization of guns. Another is a volcanic hatred of the federal gummit. Another is seething xenophobia. Another is homophobia. Another is an obsession with controlling women's reproduction. On and on it goes, and virtually very one of these pillars has its caisson sunk solidly into the blood and soil of modern American Conservatism's diseased nostalgia for the good old days of Jim Crow.
And yet during all the years that Mr. Sullivan was building his career as America's premier, Harvard-educated, gay, Catholic, Conservative public intellectual he somehow managed to avoid noticing the ugly reality of American Conservatism even as it was staring him -- and the rest of us -- square in the face.
How did you miss it, Andy?
Finally, given that Mr. Sullivan spends most of his life firmly cocooned in the Washington D.C./NYC elite media bubble, I tend to believe that his venomous contempt for Alec Baldwin and his detached bemusement with Mr. Robinson --
... I’d much rather have dinner with Phil Robertson than Alec Baldwin. Engaging fundamentalists on this subject is one of my favorite activities. And I’d much sooner engage than condemn.
-- come less from the details and context of either incident, and much more from Mr. Sullivan's hardwired Tory elitism. When he looks at Alec Baldwin, the Conservative Mr. Sullivan sees a successful member of the rival, Liberal upper class who must needs be brought to book in the harshest manner available. When the Conservative Mr. Sullivan looks at Mr. Robertson, Mr. Sullivan does not -- dare not -- see a fellow, card-carrying member of his Conservatism: instead, Tory to the core, Mr. Sullivan merely sees a harmless aboriginal tribesman from the furthest reaches of Darkest Louisiana, brought before him to poop adorably in his teevee cage and say outré things for Mr. Sullivan's amusement.
3 comments:
It's Christmas. You're not supposed to nail Sully to the cross until Easter. But you can borrow my hammer anyway...
Dave asks: Is that photo from Schmuck Dynasty?
There is a line of thought that homophobia a threat to patriarchal fundamentalism because a blended gender identity threatens the notion that masculinity is superior. If gays are treated as equals, and some of them act kinda girly, then that means things feminine, and by extension women, might not be equivalent to dirt.
I think a lot of it is more primal, and is what the uneducated, mis-informed, highly-reactionary types try to dress up with some Bible stickers and Jesus Glitter. There is a notion cultivated in patriarchy that a man has the right to take and fuck whoever he wants as a sexual conquest. This right is his because he can fuck things, therefore God wants it to be so. The problem with homosexuality comes with "what if they want my butt". If a man's manifest destiny is to simply fuck who he pleases, then what happens when he turns his desires on another man? If you call out the patriarchal supremacy as bullshit, then it all falls apart, so you can't say "He can't fuck me because I don't want him to". (After all, a woman's opinion doesn't come into the picture.) It also can't happen, because that would make the fearful target of such attention feminized, and therefore sub-male. The only graceful way around this situation is to place Jesus as a supernatural goalie between your butt-cheeks, to protect it from the opposing team. Jesus must intervene and stop it, or else it causes too many uncomfortable questions to be asked.
And that is why gay people must be evil, despised and reviled by Jesus.
If you talk to any uneducated fundamentalist homophobes (often redundant), you will quickly hear "I don't want *them* hitting on *me*!". Even the most unwashed, beer-gutted, trailer-park-tastic redneck from Sisterfornication, Arkansas, really thinks that The Gays are plotting to sexually savage him.
Religiously and culturally, sex is about power, and that power is "rightly" in the hands and loins of White conservative men.
And... This is one of the many, many things Andrew Sullivan doesn't understand. I know Sullivan has been mugged, and considers one of those incidents a gay-bashing (and I will *not* question the validity of that), but I really don't think he has ever come face-to-face with real Southern Jesus-and-the-Klan homophobia. I know that he is paid to think that such members of the Conservative base are just "misinformed and need to be divested of their bad ideas", but I think that is one of the lies that he has really internalized.
And, along those lines, Josh Barro has been mentioned a few times here. Mr. Barro has share some of his hate mail from Christians
Jesusing at him over his "Duck Dynasty" post.
http://www.businessinsider.com/duck-dynasty-fans-are-sending-me-ridiculous-hate-mail-2013-12
Mike.K.
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