The Misremembrance of Things Past

On Andrew Sullivan's Vex-o-Meter, the Saga of Jo Becker remains pegged midway between Mr. Sullivan's Trig Palin snipe hunt and his unhinged and comically hypocritical rants on the subject of Alec Baldwin.

You see, Mr. Sullivan is deeply peeved that Ms. Becker has written a history of the marriage equality movement from which has been flensed decades of heavy lifting by people like Mr. Sullivan. Ms. Becker has instead chosen to focus mainly on the very 11th-hour contributions of a couple of johnny-come-very-latelys, with whom Ms. Becker has developed a lucrative, professionally symbiotic relationship:

And Sometimes There Is A Smoking Gun Email

MAY 7 2014 @ 1:30PM

If you were in any way troubled by the idea that a journalist would write a book based on exclusive sources, who are portrayed as uniquely responsible for a breakthrough in civil rights, and then those very lauded sources would throw book-parties and events to promote the book, you’re not alone.

I was a little gob-smacked that Jo Becker’s book tour promotion was aided and abetted by those sources – with book parties by Ken Mehlman and Ted Olson. But we are finding out that this was only the tip of the iceberg...

As a writer, Mr. Sullivan is no doubt keenly aware that, once the foundation stones of Official History begin to be laid down and the mortar begins to harden, it quickly becomes nearly impossible to reposition or upend that canon no matter how ludicrously and self-servingly false it may be. 

I wish I could feel more compassion for Mr. Sullivan's situation, but as a Liberal, my existence and the history of my movement has been so relentlessly mocked and aggressively flensed from the Official History of my own country by Conservatives like Mr. Sullivan that I no longer exist.

Ironic, no?