You Only Live Twice

As Power Line notes, over at the once-respect publication The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan has posted (under the same headline) a YouTube video trashing Sarah Palin titled, “Red, White and MILF.” John Hinderaker responds:

I don’t think there is any precedent in our history for the shameful manner in which the Left has treated Sarah Palin. Left-winger Andrew Sullivan gleefully posted a particularly disgusting example of the phenomenon today; it’s a YouTube video titled “Red, White and MILF.” Watch it only if you have a strong stomach. If you don’t know what “MILF” means–I’m sure most of our readers don’t–Google it.

I can remember when Sullivan was a respected journalist, not a gutter smear merchant and borderline pornographer. His descent exemplifies the Left’s decline in recent years to a baboon-like level of discourse. The vileness of much of what passes for political “argument” on the Left has to be seen to be believed. The worst impulses of human nature have been not just unleashed, but rewarded. If you haven’t looked at web sites like Democratic Underground, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post and Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, you have no idea what the phrase “gutter politics” really means.

Nowhere has the vileness of the Left been more sickening than in its treatment of Governor Palin. It is interesting to contemplate what a semi-pornographic video about Barack Obama, playing on the same sort of prejudices and stereotypes that are so disgustingly on display in Sullivan’s video, would look like. Frankly, I can’t imagine such a video being made, let alone featured on the web site of the once-proud Atlantic magazine. But on the Left, anything goes–the more slimy and disgusting, the better.

Sadly, that’s been true for a number of years now. But from time to time, some have called the left on their actions. Here’s a pioneering member of the Blogosphere in 2002 on the dangers of racism, invective and ad hominem attacks emanating from the left:

When a black public person like Harry Belafonte calls another African-American a slave to white masters, you see what I mean. When defenders of feminism call someone who files a sexual harassment lawsuit “trailer-trash,” you get the picture. When a gay man can write a column asserting that another man is a “nasty faggot,” it’s hard to think of how much lower the discourse can get. When liberals denigrate the president as a “boy” or as a “sissy,” to quote Maureen Dowd, homophobia doesn’t lurk far behind.

I remember a brief interaction I had with one Barbra Streisand long, long ago when the Paula Jones suit had just been filed. I asked Ms. Streisand what she thought of the suit. “Oh, she’s just a little kurva,” she replied, referring to Jones. That’s a yiddish expression for “whore.” Charming.

That blogger’s name? Andrew Sullivan, oddly enough.