Andrew Sullivan Asks PJM to Remove my Blog Post and to Apologize. He Won’t Get One. Here’s Why!
Goldstone proceeded to embark on many extra-legal and questionable tactics, “cutting corners out of excessive ambition,” only to move towards what Johnson calls a “new low” with his role as chairman of what came to be called the Goldstone commission. Johnson concludes: “That a Jewish judge, barred from entering Israel for accepting a commission deliberately biased against the state, should write a report based largely on interviews with Hamas activists in order to pander to anti-Zionist opinion has meant, for many, that he has simply stepped outside the pale.”
Now, more material is appearing about other members of the commission. Writing on the site of The Huffington Post yesterday, Alan Dershowitz reports on another member, the retired Irish Colonel Desmond Travers. Also commenting on Travers was David Hazony, who notes that Travers’ frank admissions about his perspective validates Israel’s decision not to cooperate with what it sensed was a biased group from the start. Dershowitz writes that from the start of his appointment, Travers “was hellbent on revenge against Israel based on paranoid fantasies and hard left anti-Israel propaganda.” He came to the job ready “not to believe anything Israel said and to accept everything Hamas put forward.”
Both writers castigate Travers and the other commission members for failing to acknowledge that Hamas used mosques to store weapons in Gaza, despite clear evidence that it had. They also show how Travers rejected Israel’s claim that it attacked Gaza only after thousands of anti-personnel rockets had been sent into Israel, specifically targeting civilians. Dershowitz also points out that other members of the commission had anti-Israeli predetermined views, and a clear anti-Israel agenda.
Andrew Sullivan has already, as his readers know, ignored everything Dershowitz writes, arguing that he is beyond the pale because he is a supporter of torture. That judgment becomes a clever way of Sullivan to continue to spew falsehoods and ignore evidence, simply because he casts the bearer of the message as immoral.
As to the charge of racism — which is the reason Sullivan wants my blog removed from PJM — he objects to the claim by Chweidan that Goldstone depended upon Arab sources that are inherently not trustworthy. He asserts that to say there is something called “Arab facts, Arab information and Arab truth” that cannot be trusted is simply racist. It is clear that Sullivan does not remember the many false and accepted Arab claims about the Al Dura incident a few years ago, in which many in the media believed the false and staged reports about how the IDF had intentionally killed a Palestinian father attempted to shield his son from being hit during a battle.
One might also recall the false claims by Hamas and its American supporters in the International Solidarity Movement that Rachel Corrie was intentionally murdered by the IDF to scare off peaceful protesters opposed to the Israeli “occupation” of Gaza. I could go on and on with many such examples of the kind of Arab facts that Chweidan warned Goldstone against accepting.
Since 1948, the Arab nations have done everything possible to prevent acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state. They have been unremitting in their opposition to its existence. Even the supposedly reformed Palestinian Authority regularly broadcasts programs depicting the Jews as “monkeys,” “pigs” and the like, and inflaming its viewers, including children, to commit themselves to Israel’s destruction. These are some of current Arab facts; nothing comparable in the form of racist attacks on Arabs or Palestinians ever comes from Israel.
In 2002, Sullivan wrote “I definitely believe that the war on terror means that we must side, basically, with Israel.” He noted that “whatever the cruelty, and I think one can’t defend everything Israel has done, and whatever the pain that is inflicted upon many people in Palestine and in the Palestinian areas, there is still no equivalence.”
Nothing has occurred since 2002 that should have caused Sullivan to abandon his once nuanced position, and to not only argue for moral equivalence, but for the immorality of all Israeli actions and to depict the Palestinians as innocent victims of Israeli aggression. The old Sullivan got it; today’s Andrew Sullivan does not.
So, Andrew, I will not apologize, and PJM will not remove my old blog.
UPDATE: 6:40 pm, EST.
Sullivan has replied to the above post. He argues, as you can see for yourself, that I am indeed both a McCarthyite and a racist for arguing that “an entire people” and an “entire ethnic group” are outside the realm of being normal; i.e., that because they are Arabs, they are by nature liars. He accuses me of making the same arguments as anti-Semites who say all Jews are above the truth by nature.
That, however, is not my point. It is, rather, the meta-narrative Thomas Friedman refers to in his Sunday New York Times column, one that is “is embraced across the Arab-Muslim political spectrum, from the secular left to the Islamic right.” That narrative, Friedman writes, citing the words of Lacan Hadad, says: ‘The Arabs and Muslims are victims of an imperialist-Zionist conspiracy aided by reactionary regimes in the Arab world. It has as its goal keeping the Arabs and Muslims backward in order to exploit their oil riches and prevent them from becoming as strong as they used to be in the Middle Ages — because that is dangerous for Israel and Western interests.’ ” Is Friedman too a racist because he argues there is an “Arab narrative?”
By saying that my post is a “McCarthyite internet smear” Sullivan reveals that it is he who cannot deal with facts. It appears he is reeling from the assault levied upon him by Leon Wieseltier, and he is now going to use any cheap shot he can to foil all other potential critics who seek to expose his mindset. It isn’t working. His pathetic answer to my reply to him is all one needs to read to see the truth of my original response.
There are a number of existential question that trouble the human mind. Is there a God, will we be rewarded for our good behavior in the next life, and why do people continue to take seriously the rants of Andrew Sullivan? And yet, this goes on all of the time. Sullivan is still living off his accomplishments of over five years ago. This is getting so old. It is even rumored that his blog over at The Atlantic.com daily attracts thousands of visitors. How in heaven’s name is this possible? Are there really that many ill educated people unable to think and follow a logical argument? Sullivan more often than not sounds like the drunk who just finished his second bottle of cheap whiskey. Am I perhaps exaggerating? Nope, not in the least. I believe that my analysis is very fair and well thought out.
Andrew Sullivan is just a bloviating assh_le. The most common personality among the commentariat. Why does this person enjoy any publicity? Is there a better example of mediocrity stupefying and distracting his readership? Has he ever published even one bright, necessary thought? And what’s with the collapse of his conservative disposition, obviously brought about by a sudden monomania for homosexual marriage? And he still masquerades as – or actually believes himself to be – a conservative?
What is wrong with this arrested little Sullivan? He is auto-superfluous. Hopefully The Atlantic [once a respectable magazine!] will get tired and drop him.
Ron,
I felt it appropriate to cross-post this comment here. A man like yourself who so prizes the free, open exchange of information and ideas would clearly expect nothing less.
Do enjoy your day.
“I cannot vouch for the factual data he offers. You can read it yourself and judge whether the charges made by the writer have merit.”
Ron,
There’s also an Internet letter going around from an alleged long-time friend of yours. In the letter, your alleged close personal and professional associate has charged that you have direct financial ties to al Qaeda and Hamas, that you have supported attacks against Americans, and that you allegedly have received sexual favors from Israeli children as part of your compensation.
Personally, I don’t believe the letter, but it is allegedly from an intimate, long-time personal and business colleague of yours.
As such and employing your own logic above, should you, your readers, your employers, your neighbors, and your financial backers read the letter and judge whether the charges made by the writer have merit?
Hope this helps. Wish you well.
Ha, nice to see you double-down on the old racism. Israeli partisans like you are hilariously lacking in introspection, spewing nationalist rhetoric straight out the twentieth century even as they demand sympathy and forbearance for being victims of the crime that discredited said nationalist rhetoric.
Two comments and two exclusively ad hominem attacks, but then only one resorts to profanity (so much for the posting guidelines). I believe Sullivan’s point was that lying isn’t exclusive to Arab muslims, and care must be taken to avoid framing one’s discourse in needlessly inflammatory terms, offering up a simple thought experiment wherein he imagined what would happen should someone use such a broad brush when characterizing Israeli “truths”or “facts”. Though in my mind there is hardly an equivalence between Israeli propaganda and the Hamas disinformation machine, the muslim world is vast and a little sensitivity to the hundreds of millions of folks we ostensibly will be forced to co-habitate with for the rest of eternity seems mild and not too controversial to me. Now go ahead and label me a ranting leftist both blatantly bigoted and clueless if all you want to do is talk amongst yourselves.
Sully put forth one of the most cogent arguments for invading Iraq in early 2003:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/860669/posts
How disappointing that he’s taken himself so low.
When he apologizes to Sarah Palin and her son, Trig, you can think about apologizing.
I have been reading your commentary for many years now Mr. Radosh. I have always found you to be very informative, logical, thoughtful, and scrupulous in your research. Andrew Sullivan has gone off the rails. He is suffering from some kind of mental disturbance and comes across as hateful, bitter, and desperate. It is said that as we get older we become what we always were without the ability to soften the mask. Sullivan is a head case and it shows. I hope I have the opportunity to continue to read your material in the years to come. I gave up on Sullivan years ago.
Sullivan is losing his mind.
I guess it’s all right for him to posit that the GOP perpetuates a culture of unquestioning, nationalistic solipsism, but G-d forbid anyone propose that Arab political leaders do the same. And G-d forbid we separate the artificial and essentialist notion of “race” from that of “culture” – a notion which is neither (wholly) artificial nor essentialist.
G-d forbid we accept that 20+ nations with a common history, language, religion and culture see strength in their own numbers and not much reason, over the long-term, to ever really agree to the presence of a “different” nation within their midst – save for a those few which just happen to be led by more practical leaders. And G-d forbid we recognize such exclusionary prejudices as themselves “racist” and the products of a political culture that has not yet decided to embrace open-ended inquiry, self-criticism, and other tenets of Western and Jewish civilization.
G-d forbid that Andrew Sullivan would recognize the blinding hypocrisy of seeing attempts by foreign, Western governments to liberalize the Arab states by military force as short-sighted, imperialist and naive, while refusing to apply the same judgments to attempts by those same governments to liberalize the same Arab states’ relations with Israel. I suppose the imposition of desired outcomes on other nations through the use of war is one thing, while the imposition of desired outcomes on other nations through the use strong-arm tactics short of military force is somehow just that much less naive.
Andrew Sullivan is so far gone on this it’s not even funny. His colleague, Jeffrey Goldberg, politely demurs that Andrew is simply not all that knowledgeable about the Middle East. Talk about an understatement!
But Sullivan is capable of proposing, addressing and advancing a rational argument when he wants to. His utter inability to do so in the case of Israel, however, is glaring and notable.
Sullivan is besmirching whatever credibility he had left on this one. He’s quickly losing it.
Andrew Sullivan, what a dweeb. Everyone has a point of view, a reality, according to the left and Andrew Sullivan–you know, those alternate multiple reality identity life styles. Except in certain specified conditions–hiring, retention promotions, and housing–being a racist is no more illegal than being a Marxist in the United States–of course, both ideologies my equally be ethically reprehensible in practice. Andy’s Ideas do have consequences, except Andy’s ethnocentric ideas aren’t accepted every where, like American Express. I suppose that means some of Andy’s ideas are impotent rather than consequential. For example, today treason is just another active life style that should be tolerated with good will by all in Andy’s liberal United States, but religious treason can still get you killed in those Western oppressed Muslim states that apparently Andy is so concerned about and never visits. They even execute homosexuals to have gay free societies, and with no apologies to Andy.
David, the other day I said something about my three categories of reactions to comments. With this:
There are a number of existential question that trouble the human mind. Is there a God, will we be rewarded for our good behavior in the next life, and why do people continue to take seriously the rants of Andrew Sullivan?
I must add a fourth category: damn near fell down laughing.
Andrew please turn back to God he forgives you.
Unfortunately Andrew Sullivan’s beliefs are ephemeral. He’s views almost every public issue through the prism of his homosexuality rather than core beliefs. Although he’s now in the Obama camp, George Bush would be much more likely to defend his rights than Obama who throws people under the bus as soon as that person becomes an inconvenient distraction to Obama’s agenda.
“How disappointing that he’s taken himself so low.”
The linked February 27, 2003 Time magazine article is very well written and logically precise. Andrew Sullivan had his act together. Saddam Hussein later admitted that he deliberately deceived the Western nations into believing he possessed ample supplies of WMDs. The Bush administration acted on the intelligence provided by a number of legitimate sources. It can therefore be argued that Saddam pushed his con game a bit too far. Sullivan lost his sanity later that same year during the presidential campaign. He has never been the same since then.
Andrew Sullivan also inadvertently revealed that the Democrats commonly lie to the American people. George W. Bush and John Kerry officially held the exact same position regarding gay marriage. But only the republican candidate experienced Sullivan’s wrath. It was obvious that he knew Kerry was lying! The Democratic Party standard bearer was merely attempting to deceive the middle-of-the-road voters. Sullivan was very well aware that Bush meant what he said.
I once subscribed to Andrew’s blog and contributed to it. He went off the rails when George Bush supported the anti-gay marriage position. At one point, I even e-mailed Andrew to ask if he was having trouble with his meds as I was concerned. I am a physician and really was concerned. Needless to say, I received a nastygram in return so I quit going there. It is kind of sad to see a bright mind go so wrong.
A PISSING CONTEST ABOUT PISSING ISN’T WORTH A PITCHER OF WARM SPIT. Debate something important like legalizing pot or criminalizing Holy Communion.
Sullivan still thinks Bristol Palin is Trig’s mom, and HE calls YOU unhinged?
Why is this nut still employed at The Atlantic?
Well, Sullivan, to the extent that his writing serves any useful purpose, does provide an excuse and opportunity for others to highlight information, such as that contained in this column, which might otherwise go unnoticed by a larger public.
Andrew Andrew who….
I stopped reading anything Sullivan writes a couple of years ago. He became more and more delusional as time went on and is now completely bonkers. It’s unfortunate that anyone listens to anything he has to say anymore.
Andrew Sullivan is a twit. He does not even deserve to be called a schmeggege. He’s a twit, plain and simple. He really has one issue and one issue alone. He sees everything through the single prism of his homosexuality. This elevates homosexuality into a kind of religion, a kind of crazed feckel worship. Under extreme stress, some people revert to the worst conditioning they endured as children, and with Andrew the Twit, there must be some kind of deep self hatred which was drilled into his pathetic little head by his Da and all the wonderful nuns and priests who raised his precious little arse. His Queen (no pun intended) has visited scores of nations including Libya, but could never bring her royal highness self to visit Israel (not even once, not even for a royal stopover). Anti semitism has been all the rage in Britain for many hundreds of years now, so Andrew’s antipathy toward Israel and any Jew who defends her could spring from the deep roots of many generations of Jew haters who nurtured this sorry little twit from Dublin, London and York.
An angry bag of stickey wickets, the poor fellow can’t even figure our who he should really hate. Imagine what would happen to him if he tried to organize a Gay Pride Parade in Cairo, Damascus or Tehran.
If the poor twit is descending into a kind of dementia, a spiral of Ezra Pound like madness, perhaps we should treat him with more pity than scorn.
Don’t like Goldstone. Didn’t like his report. Don’t much like Sullivan. All that aside—that Rosenberg report is simply terrible: 38 pages that should have been 12, page upon page of irrelevance, much more innuendo than proven charges and almost entirely unsatisfactory. Nothing to go into court with, not even the court of public opinion. No wonder Sullivan didn’t read it.
Admittedly, it was easy for me to be supportive of Sullivan when he was passionate and articulate on behalf of things I endorsed. I also knew that he was a trimmer, but kept that in soft focus because he so pleased me.
After the Bush administration’s moves against gay marriage Sullivan began the shift towards the point which he now occupies: completely irresponsible. My real sadness though is about the Atlantic Monthly. Among the triumvirate of great middle-brow mags(the New Yorker and Harpers) it alone seemed to be holding on. For most of the last 30 or so years that I have read the Atlantic Monthly, it would never have hired such a dishonest buffoon.
Keep at it Mr. Radosh, and thank you.
As for being called a racist, I have often thought that the word is so overused we might as well be called, I don’t know…sand! For as much sense as it makes, it carries the same weight.
Ron,
Why haven’t you responded to the imaginary defamatory letter I asked about earlier? Do you not share my obsession with having sex with Jewish children? Surely if you prize the free, open exchange of information and ideas you can indulge my sex-with-Israeli-kids fantasies, can’t you?
DO NOT IGNORE MY SLANDER OR I SHALL CONTINUE TO SPAM IT ON EVERY THREAD! I WILL NOT ALLOW YOUR RATIONAL EXAMINATION OF THE EVIDENCE TO CONTINUE UNDISTURBED BY MY PEDOPHILIC RANTINGS!!!
Hope this helps. I am not a delusional sycophant of RawMuscleGlutes. Wish you well.
Sully’s deal is bashing what he once was while still calling himself that just enough to appear qualified to bash it. He’s also heavily invested in victim culture’s righteous indignation and demands to be heard and avenged. He’s an all-around queen.
“As for being called a racist, I have often thought that the word is so overused we might as well be called, I don’t know…sand! For as much sense as it makes, it carries the same weight.”
Bravo ! although sand’s pretty heavy.
Racist/sexist taunts are discredited PC tools use to stifle free discussion. And free discussion sheds light on modern day absurdities.
Open discussion in a free society can’t be tolerated by authoritarians of any stripe…hence Andrew Sullivan’s call to remove this blogpost.
A wet raspberry to you Mr Sullivan.
Anthrew Sullivan. The Amy Bishop of the Internet.
I did not read this article. I do not care what it says. If it is critical of Sullivan I’m for it. Back at ‘cha Andy!
Andrew Sullivan is God punishing us for an evil world.
Apparently it is snowing in hell today because I understand, in a limited fashion, what the demented Andrew is saying.
Whilst I understand what you are saying Mr. Radosh I would also state that you are doing it in a very heavy handed way. “Arab Facts” are not the facts of every Arab.
All true except for the “Arab facts” bit. It implies that every Arab is an extremeist. That every arab thinks the way the demeted PA authority TV portrays.
This is why I use the phrase “Radical Islamic Fundamentalist”; it is clear who my target is. It is not a blanket term and it includes all that need to be included.
Wishing away comparisons because they seem to be broad based when you use broad based language is, frankly, silly. You’re just parsing word Mr. Radosh…you should know better.
Ron – You have no need to apologize, nor is publishing a letter of a close associate of Goldstone a form of McCarthyism. As for Andrew Sullivan, something seems to have happened to him over the past several years that has made him less than rational and possibly deranged. That was my conclusion in 2008 when he reported about Sarah Palin’s son Trig as being her daughter’s son. As far as I know, he never retracted that absurd claim, so I think there must be something wrong with him. In any event, don’t retract and don’t apologize.
If you’re not a Senator, or at least a Representative, you can’t be practicing McCarthyism.
Sullivan has reverted to the standards of the London tabloids that I presume he read when he was growing up. He likes the game. Why play along?
And a question for multiculturalists: if cultures really do differ, might it be the case that honesty is valued more in some cultures than in others?
Sullivan has so tarnished his brand and reputation that I’m starting to wonder why serious bloggers and journalists are even bothering to respond to him any longer. For a short time after his derangement it sort of became a badge of honor to be slandered by him (similar to being banned by Charled Johnson at LGF) now I think it’s to the point that folks should generally just shrug and move on. Sullivan disapproves!! Demands ACTION be taken!!! oh yawn… Seems the only time he comes on any interesting radar screens is when he’s being expertly fisked. It’s starting to have too much of a fish and barrel quality though to be entertaining. Can we forget him already?
First I must say that McCarthy in his allegations has been proven belatedly that he was not wrong. Too Bad. I must confess that I actually gave some money to Sullivan years ago before he decided to become a “jihadist” and embarrassed by that fact. Fortunately, I caught on fairly quickly that he was a flake.
I do not know Mr. Sullivan, but anyone who believes Hamas is insane.
Most of the world appears to me to have a supernatural hate for Israel, and Jews. I believe it is due to morality given from G-d to Noah, and Moses. Then to the rest of the world. People want to be their own god, not reminded about morality from a G-d that created them.
Andrew Sullivan is an anti-semite.
Too many poppers.
To crooked eyes, truth has an awry face. To Sullivan, the Trig-Truther, all the world is crooked, unless it supports his every quirk-du-jour. What a pity his disease is getting the better of him. He was once an entertaining writer.
Andrew Sullivan is not an anti-semite, but sometimes he plays one on the pages of The Atlantic.
More seriously, a slight quibble: the al Dura affair was the story that a palestinian boy was deliberately killed by the IDF, while his father was wounded trying to protect him.
||
Sullivan’s public about-face on Israel recalls that of Pat Buchanan years ago. Looking for a logical explanation is a waste of time in both cases. Merely two boyos undergoing an atavism and reverting to type.
Sullivan should be denied the US citizenship – an active dopehead who’s arrigantly doing his stuff in public (and dropping his pants in public restrooms as well), is not a positive addition to this nation -
This buffoon – whose dish is widely overrated by a complicite MSM – should be sentr back to England -
When did Buchanans do an “about-face” on Israel? AFAIK, he’s been a virulent antisemite since childhood; his father was a big fan of Father Coughlin.
We ought to have a bit more sympathy for the mentally disturbed. Andrew is hardly responsible for his misbegotten existence. Blame his parents.
I read a lot of blogs, mostly right and center, and, sometimes, left. There are several things that I don’t understand. One is why anyone gives a big rat,s ass about Sully. He is a flaming left wing tinkerbell with, probably, terminal tinkerbell disease. Why does any care about what he says? IGNORE THE LIMP WRISTER, HE’LL DIE AND, IN A YEAR, NO ONE WILL REMEBER WHO HE WAS!!!
I was once a fan of Andrew Sullivan and used to send donations to his website. Those were the days when he was a conservative. I stopped reading him when, for reasons I do notunderstand, he morphed into a demented crackpot. In my opinion, it is a waste of time to respond to his blog posts.
As someone who knows Ron Radosh personally, allow me to say that calling him a racist is at once so absurd and so despicable it boggles the mind. It’s hard to believe the once-august Atlantic publishes garbage of that nature. Shame on them.
What’s up with Sullivan’s platform boots? Too loose La Trick?
It’s easy to say “just ignore Sullivan, he’s obviously deranged” because, well, he *is* deranged. The problem is that he is still given prominence as a leading columnist for a respected (or used to be) publication. It is disgraceful.
ignore sallivan not because he is deranged, but because he is a deranged antisemite.
whoever quotes him with respect is tainted forever.
Re “He argues, as you can see for yourself, that I am indeed both a McCarthyite and a racist for arguing that “an entire people” and an “entire ethnic group” are outside the realm of being normal; i.e., that because they are Arabs, they are by nature liars.”
Myself, I say that argument’s entirely on the money.
I feel like so many of us — that is, Westerners — have simply lost our minds. Get it: the “Muslim World” plays with a different deck of cards than the West — that’s just reality.
Has Sullivan never heard of the term “hudna”? Or taqiyya and kitman? These are religiously-codified justifications for LYING.
There’s a whole history that he and others are ignoring, and God knows what makes them do it, but screw them if they want the rest of us to bury our heads in the sand. No sale.
Whatever Muslim Arabs once were (and I don’t buy this crap that they were the light of the world way back when, btw), nowadays they bring us suicide bombers, honor killings, and Arabic TV miniseries on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They invent zippo, yet they reap the rewards of the modern world and they demand for respect they refuse to show to others.
To hell with them. They murder gay people for being gay. They stone women to death for adultery. They make the lives of non-Muslim minorities in their countries miserable.
They are bizarre, cruel, anachronistic FREAKS, and I’ll be damned if I’ll apologize for saying so.
And yes, Herr Sullivan, you ARE an anti-Semite.
Keep up the good work, Ron, and stick to your guns.
Sullivan’s hysterical reaction to your post reminds me of those who scream “racism” when faced with reports from Palestinian Media Watch (www.pmw.org.il). PMW simply quotes what the Palestinians are saying to their own people in Arabic, but apparently the truth is too ugly for polite (Western) society to dwell upon. So if PMW insists on bringing these things to light, it must be because they’re obsessive, right-wing nut cases.
Sigh.
I have long since come to the conclusion that liberal gay men like Sullivan have some bizarre masochistic romantic fetish for Arab Muslims – a people who would execute them simply for their sexual orientation without a second thought. You see the same mindless words being spouted by similar men in many of Zombie’s brilliant photo essays covering Berkeley/San Francisco protests. I would feel sorry for Sullivan if his voice were not so loud – Israeli and Palestinian children alike are dying because the Arab world has decided those children can be sacrificed on Moloch’s altar if the end is to sweep Israel into the sea. How can that be defensible? and how can Mr. Sullivan speak to defend it?
Ron, that was all very interesting, I guess, but what about SARAH PALIN??
“It’s easy to say “just ignore Sullivan, he’s obviously deranged” because, well, he *is* deranged. The problem is that he is still given prominence as a leading columnist for a respected (or used to be) publication. It is disgraceful.”
I totally agree. Ron Radosh and others are compelled to take Andrew Sullivan to task because of his modest fame. He cannot be completely ignored. My point is that it is most peculiar that people who claim to be rational and sane actually visit Sullivan’s blog on a daily basis. That is a waste of time and energy.
I’m happy to have played a small part in Ronald Radosh’s effort to counter Sullivan’s ravings about this. I am actually reasonably sure Sullivan understands fully Radosh’s distinction here between an Arab narrative dominant throughout the region and a racist claim that all Arabs think a certain way because they are Arabs. In other words, I doubt Sullivan believes what he says about Radosh. As Radosh notes here, Sullivan switched his stances very suddenly several years ago, and to my knowledge has never attempted to explain his reasons for the sudden and radical transformation he went through. Most people who go through such transformations honestly are moved to explain as thoroughly as they can why they did so. Has Sullivan ever even tried to? To explain, say, his views now about Israel as compared with the 2002 views that Radosh quotes? I would be interested to know if he’s ever done this, but as I say, I have never seen it. I suspect there is a good deal more of the Goldstone-like opportunism in Andrew’s self-makeover than the honest wrestling with oneself by a Whittakar Chambers or a David Horowitz.
Ho-hum. When libtards like Sullivan can’t win on facts, they resort to playing the lame race card and name-calling. The dude is a dud, a joke without a punchline.
Articles like this are the only reason I know that Sullivan is still alive. He flipped when Bush failed to support gay marriage. I expect he’l flip again after Obama disappoints on his favorite issue. Yawn.
Or, Perhaps Sullivan is auditioning for the role of Vidal’s dauphin; a role now vacated by Hitchens.
Well, Senator McCarthy was right! As was demonstrated by the released Soviet KGB files and intercepts the U.S. government was full of Soviet sympathizers, if not actual agents, and most of the people he accused of being Russian agents actually were. (Don’t confuse McCarthy with the House Un-American Activities Committee, who were totally separate).
I used to read Sullivan, until his descent into madness became too much to stomach.
Great takedown of Sullivan but I couldn’t even finish it. I’m am finding that not only can I not read him any longer, I can’t even stand to read about him.
Doesn’t Andrew Sullivan have any friends? Why do they continue to let him write when it is clear he’s suffering from some mental illness. He’s overly hysterical and has no logic behind his writings. He needs to go somewhere and get some help.
Andrew Sullivan must be trying to emulate Arianna Huffington’s success. She used to be an extremist on the Right before she successfully became and extremist on the Left. Obviously, she found it quite profitable and Andrew wants the same.
Ron Radosh writes: “It is clear that Sullivan does not remember the many false and accepted Arab claims about the Al Dura incident a few years ago, in which many in the media believed the false and staged reports about how the IDF had intentionally killed a Palestinian father attempted to shield his son from being hit during a battle.”
Ron, it’s telling that your example of “Arab facts” is so screwed up by you on the basics
of the event. Putting aside all hasbara denial of Israeli responsibility, it is the world known reality that it was the son who was killed and the father survived.
#26
Mark, you silly boy, I am soo fond of you. In WWII the Allies fought the Germans. Was every single German a Nazi, a war worker, a sailor or soldier who was directly involved in fighting us or supporting those who did? No. Agreed?
Was it a defamation to say, for example, the Germans are attacking us in Africa? My grandparents were born in Germany. They saw three of their American sons go off to fight “the Germans”. Should this way of expression be a crime or something?
Lighten up a bit will you? Live long and prosper in every way, Mark, my beloved but excitable boy.
You can date the decline of the Atlantic from the day Mike Kelly, one of the best editors around, was tragically killed in an accident in Iraq. Soon afterward, P.J. O’Rourke and Mark Steyn (who wrote wonderful obits for the magazine) were booted and the Atlantic took a turn left. They then hired Sullivan, which would have been a smart move back in 2002, when he was still sane. The Atlantic took Sully on once he decided Dubya was the Worst Person in the World for not supporting gay marriage.
Kelly spins in his grave,…,
Kelly
Mr. Radosh, you act like a gentleman. The scum that dirties the pages of Atlantic.com does not deserve your gentlemanly behavior.
Brooklyn boys like me learned long ago that bats were not merely for baseball. But I digress.
Ron:
Excellent posts, both in response to Sullivan and the original post that made him foam at the mouth. Sullivan is a joke and treated as such across a broad spectrum of blogs.
And as for being labeled a McCarthyite, hey, I’d call that a badge of honor considering he was right all along.
Why do we mess with Andrew Sullivan? He’s not worth the effort.
Arab sources sure are accurate!
They brought us the Al Dura incident, the Qana ambulance shelling, Salam Daher the green helmet guy, Flat Fatima, the misreporting of the Tuvia grossman incident, the adnan hajj photo fakes, this little bit of pallywood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj2txySilXc (the guy can suddenly get up after the shock of the ambulance strike, it must have it him in exactly the right place with exactly the right amount of force to fix whatever was wrong with him), and this one’s a doozy of an 18 minute long expose of pallywood lies, watch the whole thing!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2949587287644303331#
helps to post the link
Thanks for posting this; just found your blog searching around. Keep up the good work!