Thursday, April 07, 2016

The Triumphant Return Of Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says


When I started writing about the bong-hit, dorm-room Pineapple Ice Cream Conservative blattings of Mr. Andrew Sullivan 11 years ago --
On Chris Matthews – A Return to Mayberry!

A high school production to be sure, where people might need to play a couple of roles apiece.

Andy Sullivan’s there, both as Anj Taylor – the Sheriff without a Gun -- and as Aunt Bea at her most pickle-obsessed.

Matthews steps in as Barney, and Floyd...
-- little did I know --



-- that 11 years later, having promised he would leave and never darken our door again, Mr. Andrew Sullivan would be back on teevee yet again, in the company of Chris Matthews yet again, to share his panicked True Conservative idiocy with the American public yet again.

And so, on the same day that Squint Scarborough on my "Liberal" teevee once again meekly handed a spotlight over to the smirking, blood-drunk, unreconstructed sociopath Bill Kristol, Chris Matthews on my "Liberal" teevee also let Andrew Sullivan cut to the front of the Beltway buffet line to once again make an utter ass of himself as in the days of old.

First, of course, Mr. Sullivan got right with God by denouncing Trump in clear, unambiguous terms.

And then out came the giant Both Siderist hammer... (h/t Crooks & Liars for capturing for posterity the portion of Mr. Sullivan's antics which you will not find anywhere on MSNBC's own website)


...
Sullivan: The Left has gone so far to the Left it's now basically [a] Marxist. Especially on the questions of race.

Matthews: How... Who do you like? Your [bretty?] broad-brushing. Hillary's a loser. She's a Dukakis. The Democratic Party is swept all the way to the Left...

Sullivan: Well not the whole Democratic Party...

Matthews: Well you said that.

Sullivan: No I didn't. I said. You mentioned Black Lives Matter. I mean the race. The Left on the race question is now neo-Marxist in a way it hasn't been at all in the past.

Matthews: Neo-Marxist?

Sullivan: Yes! It believes that race is a structurally, economically and socially imponderable and completely unmovable force. I mean, I've read Ta-Nehisi Coates. That's what it is! It's Marxism without the happy ending!

Eugene Robinson: Oh, that's not quite what Ta-Nehisi says. I means he doesn't quite say it's unmovable.

Sullivan: He does!

Robinson: He says it's big.

Sullivan: He says the oppression is permanent because the structure is permanent....
And here it comes...
Sullivan: You have those attitudes on one side and Trump's white nationalism on another...
Matthews then goes to his safe place -- another meandering, Both Siderist  mouth-dump about how everything is fucked up and gridlocked and its everyone's fault because for the last 20 years...yadda yadda yadda and Sullivan just keeps right on going, shrieking and setting his scalp on fire that we are on the verge of a American fascist state in which Trump will rule by decree somehow.

Mr. Robinson then attempts to talk Mr. Sullivan down off the table by explaining to him as you would explain things to a small, hysterical child that, while scary, Trump is actually just a large, pestiferous rodent and not the second coming the Hitler.

In the many years since I began documenting Andrew Sullivan's public idiocies, Mr. Sullivan compiled such a formidable portfolio of  ludicrous public pronouncements that, for the good of the Republic, I was forced to start an ongoing feature called "Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says".  Like my ongoing coverage of the inexplicably indestructible David Brooks, David Frum, Ron "Severe Dementia" Fournier, the Sunday Shows and so forth, the Sullivan beat was often a lonely one, but I have always known that, as the Conservative movement cracked up and the Republican party crashed and burned, the fairy tales that America's Very Serious Conservative Pundits and Thinkers would have to spin in order to save their seats at the Beltway media trough would get more and more amusing the further and further they fled from reality.

In the case of America's most famous gay Catholic Tory writer of opinions, his Napoleon-retreating-from-Moscow exodus from the real world was made ever so much more entertaining by the fact that three of the topics over which Mr. Sullivan obsessed -- Conservatism, race and politics -- are three subjects about which Mr. Sullivan clearly knows absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Up until he shuttered his blog ans promised to quit bothering everyone, Mr. Sullivan remained defiantly certain that somewhere behind America's fake Conservatism of  lavishly-funded think tanks, newspapers, magazines, book publishers, Hate Radio, Fox news, pulpits and politics ... some Disneyfied Reaganeque fantasyland real Conservatism was lurking.  And in an amazing coincidence, that real Conservatism always just happened to encompass whatever vagrant thought was flitting through Andrew Sullivan's head during any given week, even when that vagrant thought is the polar opposite of the thought which was flitting around in there a few years before.

On the subject of America's long history of white supremacy and racism, Mr. Sullivan has always been a rolling disaster. The existence of persistent and pernicious institutional racism was something that his Disneyfied Reaganeque fantasyland real Conservatism simply could not accommodate so he repeatedly just wish-wish-wished it away.  Hell, as recently as three years ago, Mr. Sullivan appears to have been genuinely unaware that America fought a long and bloody Civil War over the question of whether or not God had ordained that White Men should rule the Earth by divine right.

And having promised to take his leave of Earthly matters and ascend bodily to a Better Place beyond the concerns of the rest of us scuttling buskers, Mr. Sullivan would now like to descend back into the realm of Earthly matters and once again be given a seat at the table and a byline in a major American publication where he convert his misunderstanding of one book by one man into a damning declaration that the entire Left is "neo-Marxist" because Both Sides!

And he'll get away with it too.  Yes, he is a fop and a fraud and, yes, of course he will be skipped to the front of the queue and his Beltway fortunes and privileges will be fully restored.  Because as Tengrain of "Mock, Paper, Scissors" has astutely observed, the Beltway media plays a game of musical chairs in which no chair is ever taken away and no new players are added (except Luke Russert.)

So as we wind down my 11th blogiversary fundraiser, the great wheel turns once again and what we had hope was gone for good is now back yet again.

The Return of Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says.

God help us all.







17 comments:

karen said...

Still a twat after all those years. Thanks for alway pointing out that fact.

I am skint in April will donate in May, Mr. d.

Pablo in the Gazebo said...

Have you ever watched American Pickers? I enjoy the program because it is always relaxing to watch an authentic character display his life's collection and set it up to be bargained for. Sometimes they are reluctant to sell, but finally do. They make up their mind and strike a deal over and over again, smiling each time. Me too, I made a smiling deal with myself. I made an oath during the recent appearance of Ann Coulter on Tweety's show that I would never watch it again. Instead I watch American Pickers. It is one of my better decisions. This proves it.

Unknown said...

People say Ted Cruz has the most punchable face in America, but I think he has competition between Andrew Sullivan and David "Fucking" Brooks...

Unknown said...

Spiro Agnew coined "effete intellectual snobs" in deriding the left. Using that as a template for Sullivan, I just need to add pseudo- in front of intellectual. Luckily, I never watch any corporate news, only read linked NY mag articles that are of interest, so I won't have to see or listen to this pompous asshole.

Unknown said...

Apparently (I didn't see it, praise the flying spaghetti monster) in his MSNBC teevee appearance yesterday, The Innumerate Tory Douche ponied up a heaping dose of his special brand of Clinton Derangement Syndrome and suggested that the best remaining candidate for president was none other than Tailgunner Ted Cruz, also known as the biggest fucking asshole on the planet.

I was saying from the moment it looked like HRC would run again, before Sullivan quit blogging, that Sullivan would find a pathetic, logically tortured reason to endorse the Republican over HRC, despite the fact that Hillary would be unabashedly running for (Sullivan's hero) Obama's third term while whichever hairball the GOP primaries coughed up would be running on the most regressive, braindead platform in modern history.

But at that point I thought the GOP still had enough control over their rabble to nominate a purportedly sane person like Jeb, Rubio, or Kasich. I didn't think they'd be stuck choosing between the Short-fingered Vulgarian and Tailgunner Ted. And I didn't think even Sullivan hated Hillary enough to go for one of those unhinged lunatics over Hillary. I appear to have given the Innumerate Tory Douche far too much credit. What a fucking dunce. Even David f'ing Brooks might, MIGHT, find it necessary to at least abstain from supporting the GOP lunatic this time. Et tu, Tory Douche?

Dave McCarthy said...

@keith... I'll bet that Safire wrote that for Agnew...

dinthebeast said...

I got about halfway through his hysterical horse shit and bailed, thinking this is much too painful, and Driftglass will write about it anyway...
And you did. So thank you again.

-Doug in Oakland

Robt said...

If Andrew must return.
Can Morning Joey add an extra booster chair for Andrew as a 3 way.?

It works for me since I do not watch the Joey at any time.

I really do not know how Andrew returning from the wilderness of his living rooms thick pile rug. To save me and my soul from Trump and the present day sins. Today's rabble indulges.
This heathen will be just fine minus the Sullivan sermon..

Fritz Strand said...

Look's like another zombie has escaped from the quarry.

Jimbo said...

Clearly, it appears that MSNBC has decided to challenge Fox for having the most useless hacks on their network (with the lonely exceptions of Hayes and Doc Maddow; Tweety long ago traded in sensible thought for very loud shouting). And, yes, William Safire wrote "effete intellectual snobs" and my personal favorite: "nattering nabobs of negativism" both of those (and others) for Spiro Agnew to mouth because Agnew was as dumb as a bag of rocks. I was thinking that Sully maybe doesn't get it because he came to the USA as an adult but Alexis de Toqueville nailed the new America just as a visitor. Sully's just stupid and self-absorbed. Period. And boring. Putting meaningless labels like neo-Marxism on America's structural racism is just pseudo-intellectual hackery and isn't even "conservatism" whatever that even means in today's America.

Robt said...

Yeah, what Jimbo said,,,

The Hew Hewitt that gets to burp up "Obama fault" as an explanation. For all the "snakes and snails and Puppy dog tails".

Always with this story of,
A conservative got a flat tire 2 days ago, because Obama!
That in itself is not bad enough, but he was on his way to the hospital to get life saving operation and missed his surgery appointment. He died without that surgery and the vapor trails run straight to Obama.

Does another network really think this will increase their ratings? More like advertisers will see more dupes they can sell crap to?


Unknown said...

Another note on the Innumerate Tory Douche. It appears that the only thing that motivated him to say the Reasonable Things Andrew Sullivan Says was the mountain of pushback he got from Dish readers who would patiently explain to him why he was being a total fucking idiot on this or that topic. Sullivan has JUST ENOUGH self-awareness to realize he's wrong once it's pointed out to him by hundreds of people who are less dense than he is.

Without the Dish readers checking his worst impulses, he just jumps into the deep end of the clueless dipshittery pool without a life preserver.

RUKidding said...

Neo Marism?? WTF is THAT?? Never mind. Just another douchebag who learns a few buzz words and thinks it shows how smart he is or something.

Easily bought off to fellate white supremacists. Way to go.

Pinku-Sensei said...

Sullivan said the same things about Ta-Nahesi Coates and cultural Marxism on Bill Maher's show the Friday before. At that time, I could hope it was an April Fools joke. Now that he's repeated it on Tweety's show, I know it's not.

SHOON said...

Fluffy Oakeshott McChesterton has returned with all his ticks intact.

However, without unequivocal clarification, it could be neo groucho marxism?!

Ed Cooper said...

Well done ! Mike and Frank are oustanding

James said...

The funniest part of this is that you're calling Andrew Sullivan hysterical without irony. All of this melodrama and melodrama because one guy said a few things on TV? Check out some of your commenters, too.