Sullivanology Finals, With A Greenwald Pop Quiz
I’ve dabbled a little in Sullivan mockery. Make way for a maestro. Professor of Sullivanology Christopher Badeaux, The New Ledger. It’s an academic, footnoted deconstruction of the unprincipled mountebank know as Andrew Sullivan, but like the best of modern scholarship, is highly readable:
Rarely in human history has a gay man been that obsessed with a married woman’s vagina.
If you’ve ever thought this Brit who is periodically touted as the greatest conservative thinker of our time and the most incisive voice on the blogosphere is actually one of the biggest wankers out there on both scores, you’ll want to watch as Badeaux applies his scalpel like a wrecking ball.
I’ve noticed in passing some of the same things Badeaux discusses at graduate seminar level: Why Palin Matters … to Andrew Sullivan. Here’s instructions on setting your Sullivan Watch. War Is Heck describes the alternative universe Sullivan was propelled into by his distaste for Cheneyite Bushism. Here he is having to back off a rant prompted by his erroneous belief that candidate McCain had said “horseshit” in response to some ridiculous misstatement by candidate Obama. (Too bad he didn’t, loud and clear. Probably wouldn’t have helped, though.)
Related, not so different: Back to the drawing board for Glenn Greenwald, who is sort of a thinking man’s Sullivan. Not so much obsessed with genitalia as with himself. More Gumby-like in appearance to Sullivan’s Pillsbury Doughboy, Greenwald’s logic is of a stretchy variety while Sullivan’s is obsessively kneaded into strange shapes. Greenwald likes Helen Thomas in the press conference, asking Obama what is the difference between the video evidence of Iranian government thugs shooting a young woman dead during democracy protests, and Obama’s decision not to release more Abu Ghraib photos. Greenwald, who thinks the Press Cirps is laughing at Thomas and doesn’t get they are just laughing instinctively with their favorite standup guy, the president of the United States, elasticizes that into an argument about “how normalized torture has become, how completely eroded the taboo is in the United States.”
But I’ll take a stab at answering the question, seeing as Obama didn’t, and Greenwald is stuck on it. The people responsible for abuses at Abu Ghraib, which while distasteful and actionable were not torture, were investigated, charged and prosecuted several years ago. It’s over. Meanwhile, we remain are fighting a war with armed, illegal combatants who practice actual torture, not Greenwald’s Gumby-like stretch of a definition of it. Gratuitously handing them propaganda opportunities several years after the fact in order to satisfy political opponents of an administration that is no longer in office is not in our interest.
All of that differs from the murder of Neda Agha Soltan in this way. She was an unarmed non-combatant in a civil demonstration who was deprived of life while demanding suffrage from a regime that tortures its own people and sponsors terrorism elsewhere. That’s going on right now, and her murder happened a few days ago.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:14 am Comments (0) on Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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