Today, on his NY Magazine non-blog, Mr. Sullivan was paid to produce 1639 words. For those of you keeping score at home, this is virtually the same number of words The New York Times pays Mr. David Brooks to produce each week.
Here is how Mr. Sullivan met his weekly contractual obligation.
247 words spent on the administration of the "unaccountable, legally immune thug" in the White House.
So far, so good.
And then, with that out of the way, Mr. Sullivan could really lean into the subject that is nearest and dearest to his heart by devoting 662 words to and extended act of Both Siderist pissing and wind-breaking that begins like this:
Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos, for all their provocations and performance art, are not neo-Nazis either. But antifa’s deployment of violence prevented both of them from speaking at Berkeley...
And goes on and on and on like so:
The president, however foul, is not a neo-Nazi, and yet antifa committed violence and vandalism in my hometown, D.C., on Inauguration Day...And yet it seems as excruciating for many liberals to condemn antifa outright as it was for Trump to unequivocally denounce the neo-Nazis. Indeed, masked thugs were welcomed by the entirely peaceful people in the Boston protest, and mingled freely among them...
Perhaps sensing that his Rambles From The Ivory Tower might have strayed too far into Stupidville even for him, America's Most Famous Gay, Conservative, Catholic. Tory, Quasi-Libertarian Thought Leader, pauses mid-ramble just long enough to drop in this disclaimer --
As a physical threat to the lives of Americans, the far right is indeed a bigger worry. I sure don’t want to elide that fact. It has killed several dozen Americans over the last decade, while the far left has killed no one (though one of them did send GOP Congressman Steve Scalise into an ICU a couple of months ago). The president, moreover, has the far-right’s back. In that sense, there is no practical equivalence as a threat.
-- before expending the remainder of his 662 words on this topic doing nothing but playing the tuba and the big bass drum in the False Equivalence orchestra:
But moral equivalence? You bet. Considered as a totalitarian ideology...
Mr. Sullivan then pads out the balance of his column -- 739 words -- reposing comfortably in his dorm room, doing monster bong hits and musing on the meaning of the word "hate".
While I’m at it, some thoughts on the word hate. The dictionary defines it as “intense or passionate dislike of someone.”You would hope that the view from the ippy-tippy top of Mr. Sullivan's Ivory Tower would be commanding enough to see at least some small sliver of the actual country in which he lives and about which he is paid to prattle on endlessly
Sadly, the only thing visible from Mr. Sullivan's window is David Brooks' ass.
Behold, a Tip Jar!
6 comments:
As Princess Sparkle Pony noted last night on twitter, Antifa has become the new ACORN in the absence of actual political enemies to demonize.
And I live here and I can tell you that Antifa didn't stop jack shit in Berkeley, except perhaps the expected cushiness level of said creep and gorgon's appearance there. No-one's stopping them from speaking there. I could go and speak on Sproul Plaza right now, if I wanted to, as could they.
No, what they are blaming Antifa for is the fact that they couldn't be guaranteed safe passage out of Sproul Plaza after spewing their vicious drivel, and the awful, awful, indignity of having to speak there like commoners instead of in one of the more cushy venues the campus has to offer.
Oh, and Andrew? I seem to remember an, oh, let's call it alliance, of anti-fascists that your estranged home country really liked a whole lot back in the day.
-Doug in Oakland
"But moral equivalence? You bet."
"If looks could kill it would've been us instead of him."
Andrew Sullivan, as he's shoved into the gas chamber:
"Well, sure, they're practically killing me for the crime of being gay, but morally the Far Left and Far Right are eq--ackk---lee c...cull-pa--bellll....."
You know, we are such a pickle in this country. At times I despair.
I'm a pacifist probably because of my age. I've been around a long time and I cannot think of any violent action in my personal experience that benefited me. It just seems to me that violence has a way of getting out of hand. And it's contagious. It's too imprecise and volatile a tool to use to effect social change. So I am worried by people who are violent on both the left and the right. I believe that strikes and civil disobedience are the appropriate tool to create positive change.
But I will say that I've been to several of these locations of conflict now, and I tend to believe the the right-wingers present a far more menacing violence at them than does the left. The right tends to have much more scary armaments.
andy baby,
antifa stands for antifascist. you either are or you aren't, like being pregnant.
now what you wear, a scarf a mask, a feather boa is optional...but we're all trying, really trying to be FABULOUS! and frankly sir you might do better to cover your mouth, w whatever, when you have the impulse to give us wisdom...
Doug in Oakland said it best so I will just reinforce that a) antifa didn't exist until Trump and his fascist/racist supporters started to spout hate speech, threaten non-racists and actually injure and kill people. Yes, anti-globalism riots had occurred earlier as well as the non-violent Occupy movement but these have been largely episodic and transient whereas organized racists/fascists have the overt support of advocacy organizations, billionaires and several members of Congress.
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