Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says: Clinging to the Last Toehold of Political Celebrity

I know we'd all hoped that Andy Sullivan had finally sailed  far enough past the has-been political celebrity event horizon of that we were, at last, free of him.  That whatever faint blip of phrenological ravings he might continue to pass from pen to paper would be lost forever in immensity of the Extremely White Noise of stupid opinions which now dominates these interwebs.

As I mentioned a couple of years ago:

My regular "Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says" feature has fallen off in recent times since America's most prominent privileged White, gay, Catholic, Tory, Conservative, Libertarian phrenologist has finally gotten around to blocking me on the Bird Hellsite.

So his day-to-day idiocy doesn't cross my path as much as it used to.

However today some of you Alert Citizens sent this along to me and, yep, it checks both the Stupid Shit and Racist Shit boxes. so I felt somewhat obliged.

Sullivan is so far past his sell-by date that the mold that has grown over his opinions has long since become sentient and run away.  And as the aperture of his public spotlight has shrunk to a pinhole, his "hot takes" on any wedge issue he can invent or glom onto have grown increasingly, flailingly stupid.

But I'm man enough to admit I was wrong.  Or at least premature.  Because Sullivan has managed to sorta momentarily return is the most gloriously Sullivan way possible.

This is on January 24, 2025 Sullivan praising Trump's immigration policies 

And this is Sullivan, less than two months later, on March 22, 2025 on Bill Maher's Celebrity Midden Pile raving about how fucking awful Trump's immigration policies are.

SULLIVAN: “I do not care about the economy if the government claims it can break down anyone's doors, seize anyone with no due process, put them on a plane, and send them to a foreign jail… that is fundamental to this country.” 🇺🇸

[image or embed]

— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) March 23, 2025 at 1:57 PM

Because when the jackboots are kicking in the door down the block, that's just Donald Trump "Undoing Biden's Left-Extremism".

But when they're kicking in my door, well that's not who we're supposed to be as Murricans!

Burn The Lifeboats

This Is Why I Keep Archives.*

This post from October of 2012 is a real artifact of the Before Time.  The lede originally consisted of two videos, one long since taken down, the other now tagged as private.  And a big chunk of the post was from Andrew Sullivan's section at The Daily Beast blog* which Tina Brown gave him when she was running the place and which no longer exists.  And the time, between his own blog, The Daily Dish (and thanks to GrafZeppelin127 for the catch)* Sullivan bid fair to being the most read non-mainstream-media politics and media person on the internet.

Also bear in mind that this was about Barack Obama's first presidential debate with Mitt Romney which took place in October, not June.  

Let us proceed.

From this very blog, October 9, 2012 (before I'd begun the "Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says" Feature.)

 +++++++++++

Andrew Sullivan

Based on President Obama's one-sentence joke about his people making him "do his homework", Mr. Sullivan (who has to-date penned over one million "Newsweek" cover articles which, in their aggregate, make Obama out to be the Magic Black Gay Risen Gandalf Christ) concludes that POTUS is...

... 

Too arrogant to take a core campaign responsibility seriously. Too arrogant to give his supporters what they deserve. If he now came out and said he supports Simpson-Bowles in its entirety, it would look desperate, but now that Romney has junked every proposal he ever told his base, and we're in mid-October, it's Obama's only chance on the economy.

... 

I've never seen a candidate self-destruct for no external reason this late in a campaign before. Gore was better in his first debate - and he threw a solid lead into the trash that night. Even Bush was better in 2004 than Obama last week. Even Reagan's meandering mess in 1984 was better - and he had approaching Alzheimer's to blame. 

I'm trying to see a silver lining. But when a president self-immolates on live TV, and his opponent shines with lies and smiles, and a record number of people watch, it's hard to see how a president and his party recover. I'm not giving up. If the lies and propaganda of the last four years work even after Obama had managed to fight back solidly against them to get a clear and solid lead in critical states, then reality-based government is over in this country again. We're back to Bush-Cheney, but more extreme. We have to find a way to avoid that. Much, much more than Obama's vanity is at stake.

So another Surrogate Daddy has broken Mr. Sullivan's heart.  Well, I'm sure he'll find someone else's media image to fling himself into sooner or later.

Meanwhile Mr. Sullivan, if you want a real joy ride, then try the Full Liberal Experience by rinsing and repeating the disappointment you feel at this moment over and over again for 30 or 40 years.  

Experience to gen-u-ine thrill of...

...being right about really important issues. 

...being excluded from any conversation of those really important issues because Liberals are icky and hate America! 

...watching the national dialogue about those important issues being framed by fascists, theocrats, imbeciles and corporate popinjays floating crackpot theories that have all failed dozens times before. 

...being mocked and marginalized as an America-hating, cut-and-run Commie Fifth Columnist for opposing the fascists, theocrats, imbeciles and corporate popinjays and their crackpot theories that have all failed dozens times before.  

...watching your country being driven to ruin by fascists, theocrats, imbeciles and corporate popinjays all implementing their crackpot theories that have all failed dozens times before.   

...watching the fascists, theocrats, imbeciles and corporate popinjays emerge unscathed from the rubble of the catastrophe their crackpot theories have once again created.  Unscathed and loudly proclaiming slogans like "No one could have predicted this would happen!" and "If Only Both Sides Hadn't Been So Partisan!"  and "The problem was that our crackpot theories were not implemented fully and purely enough, but next time..." 

...and then watching as the same fascists, theocrats, imbeciles and corporate popinjays gear up to do it all over again.

That, Mr Sullivan, has been the reality of being an American Liberal for the last several decades: despised, marginalized, constantly disappointed by weak leaders, horrified by the outright, giddy thuggery, lies, bigotry and treason of the Right, enraged by the cowardice and complicity of most of the media and, despite it all, steadfastly engaged in the long-term project of building our more perfect union.

And that, Mr. Sullivan, is a life you cannot handle.

 +++++++++++

And you know what?  Turns out he couldn't handle it.  

I Am The Liberal Media

Looking Forward to Matt Taibbi’s 72-Part Twitter Files II: Egocentric Boogaloo...

...in which he dives deeeeep into Free Speech Absolutist Elmo Mush caving to the political demands for censorship by Turkish authoritarian monster Recep Tayyip Erdogan just days before Turkish elections.

From The Daily Beast:

Elon Musk Gets Roasted After Twitter Bends to Turkish Censorship Request

Which I assume will then become a 144-part graduate seminar at Bari Weiss'  Substack University of Advanced Phrenological Studies.  There to be team-taught by Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald and, if I had to guess, their soon-to-be Fascist-in-Residence, Tucker Carlson.

I Am The Liberal Media

Racist Shit Andrew Sullivan Says

My regular "Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says" feature has fallen off in recent times since America's most prominent privileged White, gay, Catholic, Tory, Conservative, Libertarian phrenologist has finally gotten around to blocking me on the Bird Hellsite.

So his day-to-day idiocy doesn't cross my path as much as it used to.

However today some of you Alert Citizens sent this along to me and, yep, it checks both the Stupid Shit and Racist Shit boxes. so I felt somewhat obliged.

You have an uncanny ability to twist facts to reflect your bigotry. Your racism was exposed when you were at the New Republic and no one with any credibility on the issue of race in America sees anything else.

— Robert Naylor Jr. (@RobertNaylorJr) April 10, 2023

Sullivan is so far past his sell-by date that the mold that has grown over his opinions has long since become sentient and run away.  And as the aperture of his public spotlight has shrunk to a pinhole, his "hot takes" on any wedge issue he can invent or glom onto have grown increasingly, flailingly stupid.

But what makes this time especially savory are the sorts of bottom feeding weirdos who have risen to his defense.

There's "Combat Vet; Christian" guy and "MAGAStormChase, Jesus is my Savior, America 🇺🇸 Freedom of Speech and the Constitution #LetFreedomRing" guy, and "DefundZelensky" guy and on and on like that, plus the requisite number of "DefinitelyNotARussianBot523414, zero followers" guys.

When I said, some while ago, that I had seen the future of Fox News...

...I wasn't kidding.  

Burn The Lifeboats

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says: Stay Off My Corner Charlie Sykes

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any recently-former Republican pundit, in possession of  premium seating at the Beltway Media Adult Table, secretly wants to live the life of a Liberal blogger.

And why wouldn't they?  After all, the life of the Liberal blogger is amazing!  Not just the embarrassing amounts of money.  Or the acclaim.  Or the book deals.  Or the speaking engagements.  Or the high-level consulting offers about which we are presently unable to speak.  

But more than all of that, what we Liberal blogger value most is the near-universal respect and esteem we enjoy from the American political media establishment.  Just the sheer amount of praise and congratulations that pour in thanking us for being right about the Right all along, and warning the country, so early on and so accurately, about the disastrous trajectory the Republican party was on ...well, let's just say there aren't enough hours in the day to get out all the personalized "You're Welcome" notes we would like to send.  

Which is why we all have large and well-paid staffs who attend to such things.

For example, here we find Mr. Charlie Sykes of The Bulwark getting gussied in Liberal blogger threads in order to drag America's most prominent White, gay, childless, Catholic, Tory, Conservative, Libertarian phrenologist.  And thanks to Alert Reader "Dexter" for passing it along!

Why is the Right Losing the Young?

What Andrew Sullivan gets right...and absurdly wrong.

Of course, recently-former Republican pundits like Mr. Sykes don't want to scuff up their True Conserative [TruCon (tm)]  credentials by actually being icky Liberal bloggers, or even acknowledging  that we icky Liberal bloggers  a) exist and, b) were right about the Right all along.   Because in the media terrarium in which they live, "Liberal" does not refer to a political ideology, but to an impoverishing political ghetto from which no amount of "being right about everything" will permit you to achieve escape velocity. 

In their world, "Liberal" is a terrible disease that afflicts losers who do not get invited to spout their views on teevee.  And since they are regularly gifted such largess, they are obviously not icky Liberals.  

Instead, they have recast themselves as some rare and singular new species; some miraculous form of haploid political minotaur, who are definitely not what passes for Conservative these days, but instead are pureblood TruCons (tm) who are also free to smack around their recently-former fellow traveling public intellectuals when it those fellow travelers drop trou in public and remind everyone they're really just goofball stoner pseudolibertarian nitwits.

Here is more of what TruCon-and-definitely-not-icky-Liberal Charlie Sykes is just now noticing about  Mr. Andrew Sullivan.

Here, Sullivan offers a series of tortured and, frankly, confusing proposals. Sullivan begins by suggesting that the right should start sounding more like… Barack Obama...

He proposes somehow blending this renewed Obama-ism with what he calls “South Park” conservatism that “constantly mock[s] the humorlessness, newspeak, and censoriousness of our new woke overlords.”

And:

Sullivan cites the influence of comedians like Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, Tim Dillon, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Bill Burr or Matt and Trey. “They understand that a truly diverse society needs wicked humor to vent its tensions, not pious censorship and threats of cancellation to suppress them all.”

Somehow, somewhere, he seems to imagine that all of this will lead to younger voters flocking back to the party fronted by Kevin McCarthy et. al.

And:

But his wish-casting also highlights the gap between the actual, real-world right and the right of Sullivan’s imagination.

What he describing is, in fact, the sort of centrist liberalism that has been roundly and enthusiastically rejected by a conservative movement that which bears little resemblance to the nuanced right of Sullivan’s hopes.

And:

Sullivan thinks that cultural figures like “JK Rowling, Lil Nas X, Mike White, Bari Weiss, Glenn Greenwald (!) and Arnold Schwarzenegger” will “help scramble the idea that embracing diversity means simply adopting the mantras of the woke sect.”

Unmentioned are the actual stars of the conservative movement as-it-actually-exists, such as Charlie Kirk and the trolls of TPUSA, whose approach to “diversity” bears little resemblance to what Sullivan is describing.

And:

To be sure, Sullivan does not hold up any of these misfit toys as the key to winning back the young.

Instead, the one political figure he cites is… Ron DeSantis.

In my long-running and award-ready series, "Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says",  I have pointed out that Mr. Sullivan has always been aggressively clueless about his adopted country.  Until about five minutes ago, he would barely acknowledge that we had fought a civil war over slavery, that Jim Crow had been a real thing with real, long-term consequences, that racism was still a powerful force of gravity in American life and politics, or that the Republican party had embraced racism (along with xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, gun nuttery,anti-Semitism ,  the monstrous perversion of Christianity that is Conservatives Evangelicalism, etc., etc. etc.) as a means to achieve political power.

Instead, Sullivan became one of the Right's most outspoken Useful Idiots by helping the the rotting zombie corpse of actual Conservatism hide behind a Disneyfied fantasy version of Conservatism.  And when that all fell apart, he showed up, hat in hand, to join the High and Holy Church of Both Sides Do It, and has maintained the same pitch of hysterical alarm at both the actual fascism on the Right and the wildly exaggerated/largely imaginary "humorlessness, newspeak, and censoriousness of our new woke overlords” on the Left.  

Since then Sullivan's vision of America appears to be the residue of some combination of fearfully peering out some cartoon version of this country at it from between the slats of his Washington D.C. condo, his seething anger at being knocked off the top of the Conservative public intellectual dung heap, and the voices of his never-cited-by-name "liberal friends" who all agree with him about all this horrible "woke" business and who all appear to be cousins of Tom Friedman's ubiquitous wise local cab drive who, regardless of what country Friedman was traveling in, always manifested themselves out of thin air just in time and with just the right quaint provincial quotes and folk wisdom that Friedman needed to finish his article about the world being a flat Lexus or whatever.  

Oh, and of that stuff I wrote about "largess" and "escape velocity" and recently-former Republicans likes Sykes recasting themselves as a rare and singular new species of haploid political minotaur sounds familiar, it should.  It's what I wrote about Mr. Andrew Sullivan all the way back in December of 2009 on the occasion of his “Tis a far, far better place I go” speech resigning from Conservatism but reassuring everyone that he was definitely not, not, not some icky Liberal now.  

So Andrew Sullivan ("Daily Dish") and Charles Johnson ("Little Green Footballs") are sharing the last lifeboat leaving the shattered hull of the Party of God before it slides beneath the waves.

(Of course that ship has been sinking into the Mariana Trench of Crazy for, what, 30 years now? Well I guess the shark-infested water and the sounds of the alarm bell are only now reaching the First Class cabins…)

Sullivan delivered his “Tis a far, far better place I go” speech here, which said, in part:

For these reasons, I found it intolerable after 2003 to support the movement that goes by the name "conservative" in America. I still do, even though I am much more of a limited government type than almost any Democrat and cannot bring myself to call myself a liberal (because I'm not). My reasons were not dissimilar to Charles Johnson, who, like me, was horrified by 9/11, loathes Jihadism, and wants to defeat it as effectively as possible. And his little manifesto prompts me to write my own (the full version is in "The Conservative Soul").

Now in the whole of Mr. Sullivan's text, I could not help but notice that he italicized-for-emphasis only twice, one of which he deployed here -- "cannot bring myself to call myself a liberal (because I'm not)" -- to underscore how very much NOT a Liberal he is...

13 years later we find that, like ants following a pheromone trail from the nest to a stash of yummy-yummy sugar, every recently-former Republican in the media has found their way to the same TruCon (tm) Elysium.

A paradise  suspended between the actual fascist freak show that now "goes by the name 'conservative' in America" and the fairy tale horrors of the Left and our "woke overlords".  

But for me, the funniest part in all of this is watching TruCon (tm) arrivistes like Sykes, still damp from debarking from their own leaky lifeboats, beating up on one of original TruCon (tm) pioneers responsible for opened this rich and fertile definitely-NOT-a-Liberal-but-apes-everything-Liberals-have-been-saying-for-decades frontier for arrivistes like Sykes so long ago.

This is why we...

Burn The Lifeboats

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says

Nothing to see here kids.

It's simply a function of being around this generation of puritan leftists. They'll turn any sane person into a reactionary.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) December 13, 2022

Must be exhausting to have no control over your own thoughts and emotions.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) December 15, 2022

Just America's most prominent privileged White, gay, Catholic, Tory, Conservative, Libertarian phrenologist using Twitter to urgently remind Bill Maher that it's been simply ages since he's had any of that yummy, yummy HBO spotlight, and he's very much available to be put in front of a camera to talk shit about Liberals.  

And letting Elmo Mush know that, like Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, he's also available on a rent-to-own basis

Burn The Lifeboats

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says: Bill Maher, Andrew Sullivan and the Axis of Weasels

On the day that five radical revanchist Republicans erased a Constitutional right for the first time in American history, Bill Maher broke out his Rolodex, thumbed through this list of fellow contrarian dickheads, and decided that what the country was most in need of at this tragic moment was to hear from America's most prominent White, gay, childless, Catholic, Tory, Conservative, Libertarian phrenologist.

And Sullivan did not disappoint.

Sullivan on Biden:

We need someone who can find a center. It turns out, Biden doesn’t seem to be that person 

And on Biden again:

[There is] nothing I can see, right now, even on abortion, where he is anywhere near the center of where public opinion is.

And another shot at Biden, with a steaming pile of Both Siderism on the side:

The right has gone off the deep end. The left has gone off the deep end. We need someone who can find a center. It turns out, Biden doesn’t seem to be that person.

And how about one more shot at Biden, with another steaming pile of Both Siderism on the side:

This is not a moderate presidency. I wish it were. I voted for him. But he’s a captive of his left the way that some of these Republicans are captive of their right.

And we'll finish off with Sullivan smirking at us stoopid Libtards for not realizing that this...

...is actually a great opportunity for liberals, for pro-choicers. The country is not in favor of banning all abortion. Only 13% want that. So, go out there, persuade people, and what this ruling does is call the religious right’s bluff.

While it's true that having your government savagely turn on you -- rip your basic rights away from you -- can be, uh, bracing, the idea that it's somehow a good thing that a radical, revanchist Republican court will spend the next few decades forcing Americans to re-fight for rights we have already secured is typical Sullivan, contrarian mush-brain claptrap. 

On the other hand, I will take some bitter consolation in the knowledge that when this same Supreme Court terminates Sullivan's marriage by decree, I can haul out his words out of cold storage and explain to him how this is really a great opportunity because it means that now he can drop whatever he was doing, put his life on hold for a decade, buy himself a couple of pairs of overalls and hie himself out to Jesusland to persuade the Christopaths and build coalitions and stuff.  

Burn The Lifeboats

UPDATED: Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says: Andrew Sullivan Can't Stop Andrew Sullivanning, Now Updated With Even More Stupid

Over the years, America's most prominent privileged White, gay, Catholic, Tory, Conservative, Libertarian phrenologist has said and written a lot of remarkably stupid shit. 

 I mean, a lot.

Which I have long-planned to bring to the stage in my just-finished series of 107 one-act plays collectively entitled, Driftglass Enacts All The Breathtakingly Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Has Said To-Date.

I know.  Needs work.

However today I find that the title is the least of my headaches.

Today I find that, if, as a true artist, I want to give my audiences maximum value and verisimilitude for their dollar, I must now pen a god damn 108th Stupid Andrew Sullivan Shit one-act play to add to the pile. Which means my entire Stupid Shit cycle will now clock in at longer than Shakespeare's collected War of Roses plays and Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung combined.

Ah well.  One must suffer for one's art, I suppose.  And if I have to suffer, I am fucking well gonna make sure the audience suffers too.

So now, just for you, a first read-through of play #108, which New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley may well one day refer to  as, "The final coda of an indulgent, eldritch theatrical horror which should never have been spawned.  And if there be a merciful God above, may she act through the offices of Saint Genesius, the patron saint of actors, lawyers, barristers, clowns, comedians, converts, dancers, people with epilepsy, musicians, printers, stenographers, and victims of torture to disappear this monstrosity from the world of men, quickly, leaving no trace of it behind."

And let's lower the lights, raise the curtain, and behold, the framework of the 108th addition to Driftglass Enacts All The Breathtakingly Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Has Said To-Date.

Sounds bad: school has different grades for black and white students!
Reality: literal conservative fake news is laundered by mainstream actors like Sullivan, who are perfectly willing to suspend their credulity when the story matches their priors 🧵 pic.twitter.com/Mg19GNNojF

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) May 31, 2022

See?  

It had to be in the canon.

Had to be.

+  +  +  

UPDATE:   Make that 109 one-act plays, because by God and both the Fowler brothers, when Andrew Sullivan gets on a Stupid Roll --

Whether it's Andrew Sullivan on Substack falling for a right wing hoax or Andrew Sullivan on Daily Dish believing a ridiculous email I wrote about shooter rushing, both Sullies have a problem. pic.twitter.com/L8NUU80Epn

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) June 1, 2022

-- there is no stopping him.

Burn The Lifeboats

Andrew Sullivan Circa 2025

I Am The Liberal Media!

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says: I Changed My Hairstyle, so Many Times Now, I Don’t Know What I Look Like!

Crusty contrarian twit doing crusty contrarian twit stuff:

Why do liberals both advocate more democracy and yet seem shit-scared of it when they have popular arguments on difficult topics, like abortion rights and marriage equality?

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) May 3, 2022

You may have noticed by now that all of Conservatisms' mightiest public intellectual enfants terrible of the 80s and 90s turned out to be contrarian cranks, creepy weirdos, thin-skinned narcissists, lying dullards, straight-up grifters, full-on fascists or feeble-minded Both Siderists who wouldn't last sixty seconds fighting it out in the Marketplace of Ideas and live in constant fear of their own past opinions catching up with them.

Burn The Lifeboats

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says: I Guess Bill Maher Was Busy Edition

While I am not the first to admit when I am wrong, as painful as it can be, I can claim to be the seventh or eighth to admit it when the point has been sufficiently hammered home to me.

So let me say, here and now, that I was wrong about Andrew Sullivan when Tweeted this a couple of weeks ago.  

Since Andrew Sullivan hasn't trended in a few weeks, I'm guessing Bill Maher is due to put him on his show any day now to say something stupid.

— Driftglass, Guardian of Inconvenient History (@Mr_Electrico) March 13, 2022

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Mr. Sullivan was not invited onto Bill Maher's cable teevee show to say stupid shit.

Mr. Sullivan was invited onto Jon Stewart's cable teevee show to say stupid shit.

From Salon (with a big h/t to Alert Reader KH for bringing this to my attention):

Jon Stewart's all-white panel goes off the rails — and gets interesting 

"It's time for white people to talk and figure some things out," Jon Stewart said to Andrew Sullivan.

"The Problem With Jon Stewart" has been quietly humming along on Apple TV+ — until the show decided to invite conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan to discuss race and racism with an all-white panel.

The recently aired episode titled "Taking Responsibility For Systemic Racism" brought together La Salle University sociology professor Charles "Chip" Gallagher, Lisa Bond of Race2Dinner, a group that facilitates discussions about race over dinner, and British American blogger Andrew Sullivan. The intention was to gain insight on the topic but invariably led to controversial opinions and shouting matches...

Once again, my apologies for incorrectly predicting which cable teevee show Mr. Sullivan would be invited to stink up.

However I still stand by my comments regarding why Mr. Sullivan continues to be invited to stink up various cable teevee shows:

There is an exhausted desperation to Sullivan's writing that is more pitiable than it is infuriating.  A man who ran out of game and ideas long before he ran out of words to type or bills to pay. No one really listens to or much cares what he thinks about anything, and the only time he floats to the surface of the pundit turd bowl is when he says something offensive enough to break through to social media noise.

Burn The Lifeboats

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says: "Andrew Sullivan is Ready For His Closeup, Mr. DeMille" Edition

Once upon a time Andrew Sullivan was America's most prominent gay Tory Libertarian Catholic Conservative pundit and amateur phrenologist.  But that was long ago.  A different time.  Now, Sullivan is a fading mangenue locked up with his memories of past glories, whose knowledge of what's going on in this big, complex country is limited to on what he can peep from between the curtains of his Washington D.C. condo.

And yet somehow, base on nothing more than his stunted, stilted perspective,  Sullivan has invented a whole lot of opinions about what conspiracies we crafty Lefties are secretly hatching up at Liberal Central Command.

Antisemitism in America today is often a subset of anti-whiteness.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) February 1, 2022

There is an exhausted desperation to Sullivan's writing that is more pitiable than it is infuriating.  A man who ran out of game and ideas long before he ran out of words to type or bills to pay. No one really listens to or much cares what he thinks about anything, and the only time he floats to the surface of the pundit turd bowl is when he says something offensive enough to break through to social media noise.

This is what it look like when a former enfant terribles age into irrelevance.  They become pissy cranks trying to hang onto their sliver of the increasingly slippery and competitive Contrarian Asshole Pundit market.

In this way, Sullivan, along with Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Bill Maher and a handful of others, constitute the pundit equivalent of Sunset Boulevard's "waxworks".  Dim figures you may still remember from the olden days, with Bari Weiss brought along as the hack writer who will inject a little sour youthful energy into their musty, bitter sarcophagus. 

And who's that, shot in the back and floating face down dead in the pool?

That would be the last of Sullivan's reputation as a Haver of Opinions who can sway the national dialogue and whose good opinion is courted by presidents.

 

Burn the Lifeboats

And Just Like *That*...

...it's 2014 again.

Not in my view. Biden crippled *himself* by being unable to prioritize or to control the interest groups who made BBB such a behemoth. Lack of judgment, vision and leadership by Biden. Weak weak POTUS.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) December 19, 2021

And just like *that* the Age of Trump and the source of all toxins running wild through our body politic -- the long and very public disintegration of the GOP into an irredeemable slag-heap of bigots' and imbeciles -- are wiped away.   

Of course, this isn't the first time America's Conservative Public Intellectuals have buried the inconvenient past in a shallow grave.  Not by a damn sight.  Excerpted from my 2012 archives:

From Mr. Sullivan:

What Moderation Means For David Brooks 

Just substitute the word 'conservative' for moderate, and you've basically got my politics. Which is why I believe that Barack Obama has been the best conservative president since Bill Clinton.

Mr. Sullivan's Conservatism is identical to Mr. Brooks' Moderation in that their respective ideological systems amount to little more than what is convenient and enjoyable for each man to believe at any given moment. 

If Mr. Sullivan suddenly developed a taste for pineapple ice cream, within a week he would be penning columns about how "Liking Pineapple Ice Cream" is a cardinal Conservative value because of something something Edmund Burke.  If he got sick on bad Thai food, we would suddenly see a spate of columns discussing bad Thai food and how it is something that only extreme Christianists or Left Liberal would ever put in their mouths.

He is, at best, a flighty dilettante with a wealth patron and does not have the slightest fucking clue about how his adopted country works.

Likewise the Moderate Mr. Brooks adds or subtracts from his lexicon of virtues based almost entirely on how best to hide out from whichever one of his until-recently-held principled positions has gone hideously wrong. 

Not long ago, Mr. Brooks was a vocal champion of the worst of the Bush Era policies. Mr. Brooks made his bones excoriating those of us who doubted the Dear Leader's infinite wisdom. Mr. Brooks used to mock post-partisan centrism-types as dolts and fools. Mr. Brooks even went so far as to write an entire column about how (now that Dubya is triumphant in Iraq!) us hateful, bile-drunk, Liberals (who are incapable of ever admitting when we're wrong) will just sink deeper and deeper into denial, inventing new reasons why their wrong ideas we were really right and revising our own history to pretend they never said and did what they said and did (links for every bit of what I just summarized in this here exhaustive compendium)...

Of course, as regular readers know, almost since the day Mr. Brooks' cashed in his Very Immoderate Liberal-bashing and Bush worship for a job-for-life at "The New York Times", not only has virtually every one of Mr. Brooks' cocksure assertions and predictions gone to shit, but Mr. Brooks has barricaded himself inside precisely the same bullshit bunker of denial, revision and falsification that he once confidently told his readers would be the final, hateful bastion of all the Dirty Fucking Hippies he despises so acidly.

Mr. Brooks does not merely commit every sin he once righteously accused the Dirty Fucking Hippies of being on the verge committing, he now positively luxuriates in them.  He has made an industry out of them, and now lies about the present and shamelessly revises the past quite proudly, publicly and repeatedly, just like the rest of the Conservative Movement always has and will continue to do until they are destroyed (from me earlier this year)...

While digging through my archives looking for the above graphic, I also came across this article from Ezra Klein, then of the Washington Post, putting David Brooks up on blocks and stripping off all the bullshit on which Brooks' had built his column that week:

“If you look at the fundamentals,” writes David Brooks, “the president should be getting crushed right now.” The rest of the column is an attempt to explain why President Obama isn’t getting crushed right now. Brooks settles on Obama’s “version of manliness that is postboomer in policy but preboomer in manners and reticence.” But the premise of the column is wrong: If you look at the fundamentals right now, the president should not be getting crushed. In fact, he should be slightly ahead, which is pretty much where he is in most polls.

Brooks never actually defines what he means by “the fundamentals.” The evidence he provides in his column is mostly an assortment of recent poll results related to how voters feel about the economy, Obama’s plan for the economy, and Obama’s view of the role of government.

It’s not clear how Brooks is deciding which poll results are worth including and which are not. For instance, a new USA Today/Gallup poll finds that “though an overwhelming 71% rate economic conditions as poor, a 58% majority predict they will be good a year from now.” That poll — and others like it — don’t make it into the article.

At the time, I wondered if it didn't bother Ezra 

...how often or nakedly people like Our Mr. Brooks gets caught lying.

I wonder if this frustrates him and I wonder if Ezra will ever bust loose and write a column about how such people maintain their positions even after they are exposed over and over again as arrant frauds?

It's now nine years later.  Ezra Klein has become a made man in the Sulzberger New York Times family where David Brooks is a respected underboss ...

 

...and Ezra now has Mr. Brooks babysitting his podcast while he is away on paternity leave.

So I guess I have my answer.

Burn The Lifeboats

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says: Special Scary Black People Edition

If you were worried that somehow America's most famous gay, Tory, Conservative, Libertarian, Catholic, 19th century phrenologist would run out of stupid opinions, you can stop you're frettin'!

For example, today he'd like to tell us all about the coloreds.

This is a big deal. The terrible legacy of BLM - soaring crime, murder and mayhem - is finally being tackled. https://t.co/2nxDonS9ka

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) December 15, 2021

Burn The Lifeboats

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says

Shown above is an artist's depiction of 60 Minutes' Scott Pelley feeding Andrew Sullivan one softball question after another, then staring blankly back at him and not pushing back in the slightest as Mr. Sullivan Both Sides' the living shit out of everything.  

And here is the actual Scott Pelley doing all that stuff.

Other than revealing how desperate the sclerotic 60 Minutes is for cultural relevance (and how wildly they missed) the extended tongue bath that Pelley administered to Mr. Sullivan will tell you, gentle reader, nothing about Mr. Sullivan's hollowness and naked opportunism that you haven't already read on this shitty blog for decades.  For example, this is me from 2009, which is starting to be a long time ago:

...Likewise, even though Mr. Sullivan now, belatedly comes to believe much of what Liberals believe and finally deigns to notice a horde of grotesque truths about his Conservative Movement about which Liberals have been sounding the alarm for 30 years, Andrew Sullivan nonetheless looks us all straight in that eye and argues that he could not possibly be some mere Liberal.

Because in Mr. Sullivan's world, "Liberal" does not refer to a political ideology, but to an impoverishing political ghetto from which no amount of "being right about everything" will permit you to achieve escape velocity. In Mr. Sullivan's world, "Liberal" is a terrible disease that afflicts losers who do not get invited to spout their views on teevee.

Mr. Sullivan regularly receives such largess, therefore he must not be a Liberal.

He instead must be the lone member be of some rare and singular new species; some miraculous form of haploid political minotaur.

Because if he is not something spontaneously-generated and utterly sui generis, then he is just another Lefty-Come-Very-Lately, showing up at our door at 3:00 A.M., 20 years late and trailing toxic baggage behind him like a Halley Comet.

And who in the world would pay him to do his little dance then?

And now, 12 years later, The Bulwark has suddenly decided to step on another of our Liberal corners.  Because without ripping off the Left's critique of the Right from the Before Time, where would our Never Trumper "allies" find brilliant insights of monetize?

Andrew Sullivan and the Narrative of the "MSM Narrative" 

The narrative on MSM narratives is false.

by Jonathan V. Last 

Over the weekend Andrew Sullivan published a jeremiad against the “mainstream media” that tracks pretty closely with the Matt Taibbi-Glenn Greenwald-Bari Weiss view: that one of America’s most pressing concerns is woke activists at the New York Times.

You can read it here if you want. A flavor of his complaint...

This is nonsense. Let’s unpack all of it.

I'll end the snip from The Bulwark here because my favorite line from the whole piece is "This is nonsense. Let’s unpack all of it." 

Kid, I've been doing just that for going on 17 years now, and 11 years as a podcaster.

So have many others others. Critiquing Conservative bullshit like this diligently, deeply, consistently, years after year. Completely outgunned in the face of the relentless and well-funded scorn and slander from the goofs who [checks notes] now make up The Bulwark's all-star media team.

And so far it hasn't made the slightest difference. 

Burn The Lifeboats

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says

Once Andrew Sullivan had quit the sunlit media uplands to follow the clues left behind among the fossilized remains of Arne Saknussemm and descend into the hollow Earth realm of Substack, I had kinda hoped I would never have to write another "Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says" post again.

After all, a few hundred such exercises spilt into the abyss is enough for one lifetime.

And then another kind of fossil from a different sunless realm, 60 Minutes, decided to stick a camera in his face and ask him about stuff.    Because...Glenn Greenwald was busy?

From what I can glean from this mercifully short clip -- 

"Phrenologically speaking..." he began. https://t.co/0xfSGVDCyU

— Charming Bastard (@StarlingBuchan1) November 13, 2021

-- the new visiting professor of Phrenology at Substack University has Many Opinions about the January 6th Republican insurrection, none of which center on the responsibility of Republicans for the Republican insurrection.

Instead we get the same shit-scented froth of Both Siderist doubletalk that is back to being the number one commodity of the Beltway media.  

"Tribalism" is at fault. 

"People" are at fault".  

"This country" is at fault.  

"We" are at fault.  

But apparently not the one, specific political party that planned and executed and damn near succeeded in their attempt to violently overthrow of government of the United States, and have done everything in their power to continue escalating the danger every since.  

Of course, who knows?  Maybe before and after this clip, Mr. Sullivan was the soul of sober, clear-eyed judgement.  But I'm not betting the beer money on it.

Burn The Lifeboats

Don't Worry Andrew Sullivan Fans, You Can't Miss Him Because He's Everywhere Now

If you somehow misssed Andrew Sullivan yucking it up with Megyn Kelly one her "Pleeeease re-hire me Fox News!  I'll be good this time I swear!" podcast...

...or fell asleep before you saw Brain Williams fawning over Andrew Sullivan Monday night...

WILLIAMS: Our next guest is out with a new book that is sure to ruffle some feathers. But that`s something he`s quite used to, the New York Times offers this headline for its book review. "Andrew Sullivan, no one`s ally, tells it as he sees it." As Sullivan writes himself, "I have been criticized for abandoning the right and for criticizing the left. I have also been assailed as a defender of the right and hater of the left just to keep things fair."

WILLIAMS:  For more we welcome back the author and columnist and dare I say the public intellectual, Andrew Sullivan, his new book, out on a limb selected writing 1989 to 2021 is out tomorrow, readers can expect a tour of our times, a tour of Andrew`s mind, his life, his health, his unique view of what ails us all. He also writes a column the weekly dish available on Substack and hosts his own podcast called the Dishcast. It is always a great pleasure to have you on the broadcast...

WILLIAMS: I know you have seen the comments from James Carville speaking of infections on things like woke ism, especially in the Democratic Party, and especially on the left, it makes it so hard to feel like you`re living a proper life. It makes it so hard to feel like you`re saying the right thing...

...you could have risen early today to see Joe Scarborough fawning over Andrew Sullivan this morning...

@JoeNBC @morningmika @MSNBC @WillieGeist @clairecmc What's behind Andrew Sullivan's massive time allowance on air this morning? Holy cow.

— B. Sounder (@B_Sounder) August 11, 2021

@JoeNBC why is your show a therapy session for Andrew Sullivan?

— Robin Hood Report (@RobinHoodReport) August 11, 2021

...where I learned all sorts of exciting stuff.

For example, Conservatism used to be so fucking humble and awesome!

And St. Ronald Reagan may have been the greatest human being ever to walk the Earth!

And Both Sides got the Iraq War wrong!

So many things!

Now that I know that by pasting together a bunch of old blog posts one can not only score a lucrative book contract but that that contract also comes with a massive, multimedia publicity push, I'll get to work on one right away.  

Working title:  Bang The Dumb Slowly. 

No Half Measures

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says: Episode #163

I'm opting not to write this up.

Instead let it stand as small monument to our times giving mute testimony to future generations about how completely down the barmy hole our Celebrity Pundits Who Were Terrified Of Disappearing Into Obscurity Forever had fallen just before that thing happened after which they disappearing into obscurity forever. 

No Half Measures

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says: The Adventure Continues

One year ago, America's most prominent White, gay, Catholic, Tory, Conservative, Libertarian phrenologist added to the long list of things he has quit by announcing that he was quitting New York Magazine because not enough people would sit at his table in the company cafeteria.  From The Guardian:

Anti-Trump British journalist quits New York Magazine in 'woke' row

Conservative columnist claims staff no longer want to associate with him because of his attacks on critical theory

Or maybe it was a decision mutually decided upon.  From CNN:

Longtime columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan resigns from New York magazine

Columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan is leaving New York magazine, his professional home since 2016, he announced Tuesday.

"This will be my last week at New York Magazine," Sullivan tweeted. "I'm sad because the editors I worked with there are among the finest in the country, and I am immensely grateful to them for vastly improving my work. I'm also proud of the essays and columns I wrote at NYM - some of which will be published in a collection of my writing scheduled for next year."

New York editor in chief David Haskell confirmed Sullivan's resignation in a memo to staff obtained by CNN Business.

Haskell wrote that the decision for Sullivan and the magazine to "part ways was mutual."

"Andrew and I agreed that his editorial project and the magazine's, though overlapping in many ways, were no longer the right match for each other," Haskell said...

And although his parting column read as affectionate and wistful, it didn't take more than a New York Minute for him to turn around and come after his former colleagues with both barrels, nor did it take very long for the Very, Very Right to give ol' Andy the prodigal son treatment.  

For example here, from the unbalanced mind of Rod Dreher at The American Conservative.

Defending Andrew Sullivan

And here, from the very publicly disgraced pen of Kevin Williamson who now writes for America's most respected journal of white supremacy and who sees in Sullivan a fellow victim of [checks notes] free market capitalism:

Ritual Denunciation and the Mau-Mauing of the Former Magazine Editors

And as America's most prominent White, gay, Catholic, Tory, Conservative, Libertarian phrenologist has made it increasingly clear that his late-career goal is to anoint himself as the sole and absolute asshole-arbiter of all things historical and racial, so has his prominence among the denizens of the sewer dwelling Right grown.  

Which is how, in the space of one year, Mr. Sullivan's metaphysical home has traveled 3.8 miles South/South-East from the headquarters of New Yorker Magazine to the headquarters of The New York Post, where we find him this week, with his original column from the Post issuing Dire Warnings about yadda yadda yadda being reprinted by -- surprise! -- Fox News directly under a video of Critical Race Theory hysterics from CPAC :

Andrew Sullivan: It's bigger than CRT — radical ideologies transforming US

The CRT debate is just the latest squall in a tempest brewing and building for five years or so

Brief aside: I hope in the course of your extensive reading you are not failing to notice that, in every article like this, all of American history began "five years or so" ago?

And woven between misspelled ads urging you to send money to wingnut grifters -- "CALLISTA AND NEWT GINGRICH: FIGHTING CRITICAL RACE THEORY – HERE'S WHO'S LEADING CHARGE ADN HOW YOU CAN HELP" -- and a Fox News video featuring Mike Lee warning that Race-Crazy!Libtards!Are!Coming!For!Your!Children! you will find what amounts to a full-on "Wake up white people!!" tirade against the the Left by Mr. Sullivan.

In Mr. Sullivan's telling, Donald Trump has completely disappeared from the discourse.  The racist Tea Party movement that prefigured him?  Gone.  The eight years of Republican obstruction, sedition and overtly racist shit like Birtherism that Trump rode to power? Gone.  The entire modern history of the Republican Party?  Gone.

And while, sure, some Republican stuff may be bad -- 

And, yes, some of the liberal critiques of a Fox News-hyped campaign are well taken.

-- the real Big Bad is not Fox News or the GOP:

But does that mean there isn’t a real issue here? Of course it doesn’t.

Take a big step back. Observe what has happened in our discourse since around 2015. Forget CRT for a moment and ask yourself: Is nothing going on here but Republican propaganda and guile? Can you not see that the Republicans may be acting, but they are also reacting — against something that is right in front of our noses? 

What is it? It is, I’d argue, the sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites. It has sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation. It is, in essence, an ongoing moral panic against the specter of "white supremacy," which is now bizarrely regarded as an accurate description of the largest, freest, most successful multiracial democracy in human history.

We all know who the real villains are don't we! 

The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead—and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.

 Oops.  Sorry.  My mistake.

That was Andrew Sullivan slagging the Left twenty years ago.

This is Andrew Sullivan slagging the Left two days ago:

We all know it’s happened. The elites, increasingly sequestered within one political party and one media monoculture, educated by colleges and private schools that have become hermetically sealed against any nonleft dissent, have had a "social justice reckoning" these past few years. And they have been ideologically transformed, with countless cascading consequences. 

Sullivan sprinkles in an obligatory slap at his former friend:

The popular breakthrough was Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay on reparations in The Atlantic and his subsequent, gut-wrenching memoir, "Between The World And Me." He combined the worldview and vocabulary of CRT with the vivid lived experience of his own biography. He is a beautifully gifted writer, and I am not surprised he had such an emotional impact, even if, in my view, the power of his prose blinded many to the radical implications of the ideology he surrendered to.

A pinch of Reverend Wright for the old school wingnuts:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society...

And then, for dessert, Sullivan serves up the red meat:

Religious freedom? Illegitimate bigotry. Equality? Only group equity counts now, and individuals of the wrong identity can and must be discriminated against. Color-blindness? Another word for racism. Mercy? Not for oppressors. Intent? Irrelevant. Objectivity? A racist lie. Science? A manifestation of white supremacy. Biological sex? Replaced by socially constructed gender so that women have penises and men have periods. The rule of law? Not for migrants or looters. Borders? Racist. Viewpoint diversity? A form of violence against the oppressed.

We are going through the greatest radicalization of the elites since the 1960s. This isn’t coming from the ground up. It’s being imposed ruthlessly from above, marshaled with a fusillade of constant MSM propaganda, and its victims are often the poor and the black and the brown. It nearly lost the Democrats the last election. 

How ironic and hilarious that nothing screams late-stage British imperialism louder than the sight of America's most prominent White, gay, Catholic, Tory, Conservative, Libertarian phrenologist single-mindedly using every tool at his disposal to try to invade and colonize a conversation that threatens his hardwired belief in his own aristocratic superiority.  

Burn The Lifeboats