Excitable Andy did his triple-gainer into the Obama tank for the Times of London on Sunday.  Having noted his rampant hypocrisy last week, I skipped writing about it yesterday.
Daniel Larison, however, took the time to fisk it from his perspective. I am not in total agreement, but must note Larison’s response to Sully’s claim that Obama, by shifitng on Iraq, terrorist surveillance, etc. is undermining every reason to vote for McCain:
That would be clever, except that it is entirely misguided. The reason to vote for Obama, perhaps the only reason, is that he represents something significantly different from McCain in terms of policy. In the absence of that, Obama hasn’t got a lot to offer besides an interesting biography and the odd pretty speech.
Larison must understand that he has come close the real reasons Sully has a mancrush on Obama, which have little or nothing to do with policy:
What does he offer? First and foremost: his face.
Because he has some Kenyan ancestry, which is going to make radical Islamists like us. They did not seem to like the 247 Kenyans who died along with a dozen Americans when al Qaeda bombed the embassy in Nairobi on August 7, 1998, but this escapes Sully’s razor-sharp analysis.
And Sully also cites Obama’s now famous 2002 speech on Iraq:
The other obvious advantage that Obama has in facing the world and our enemies is his record on the Iraq War. He is the only major candidate to have clearly opposed it from the start… and foresaw more clearly than most Americans the baleful consequences of long-term occupation.
Obama’s predicitons with respect to the Arab world and al Qaeda recruitment have not been borne out by subsequent events. Obama’s positions on Iraq were consistently wrong since 2003. Neither matters much — if at all — to Sullivan.
Sully is also a big fan of a June 2007 speech in which Obama described his religious conversion. Sully ignores that Obama was inspired to join Trinity United Church of Christ by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright decrying a society “where white folks’ greed runs a world in need,â€Â clinging instead to the fiction that Obama sat in the pews of Trinity for 20 years without having a discomforting comfort with Wright’s other more loathesome views.
Sully has to mentally blank out quite a bit to be this deeply in the tank for Obama, so what remains? Sully views Obama’s awkward racial experiences as more “like that of a gay teen discovering that he lives in two worlds simultaneously than that of a young African American confronting racism for the first time.” And thus do we arrive at Sully’s narcissism, as documented everywhere from Christianity Today to The Nation.
What does Andrew Sullivan see in Barack Obama? A non-white face and some speeches — but most of all, he sees himself. And to all appearances, that is what Sullivan loves most in all the world.
(h/t Memeorandum.)
Comment by JD on 7/7 @ 7:03 am #
Excitable Andy and Baracky are a match made in heaven.
Comment by McGehee on 7/7 @ 7:08 am #
I did not immediately assume a racial reason for this. I denounce myself, however, for the reason I did assume.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 7/7 @ 7:10 am #
How long has Sullivan declared himself a Catholic without feeling the need to pay the least attention to the teachings of the Catholic church? He’s not letting O! get away with anything he doesn’t accept in himself.
Comment by JD on 7/7 @ 7:17 am #
What does [Obama] offer? First and foremost: his face.
Ewwwww. Just ewwwww. While Excitable Andy jerks the gherkin to thoughts of the Obamessiah …
Comment by Bender Bending Rodriguez on 7/7 @ 7:18 am #
Sully views Obama’s awkward racial experiences as more “like that of a gay teen discovering that he lives in two worlds simultaneously than that of a young African American confronting racism for the first time.â€Â
Totally gay is the new half-black.
Comment by Education Guy on 7/7 @ 7:27 am #
Sullivan is a hack with no solid moral grounding. I doubt there is anything he could find a way to justify if he thought it lead to an end he desired.
Comment by Kirk on 7/7 @ 7:31 am #
Sully for Press Secretary!
That would be a treat.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 7/7 @ 7:38 am #
- Assigning his writing to a secret yearning to polish the royal crank is probably to shallow a view, but damned if his Obama prose, with all the attendant naivetés’ you’d have to grant him to think otherwise, doesn’t sound like love letters by a starry eyed paramour.
- At the very least I refuse to believe he doesn’t know Obama is moving to the center to woo moderates, That he does so, so easily, just reinforces the mancrush idea.
- Wonder if other gays will notice this.
Comment by ProggHero on 7/7 @ 7:38 am #
Why would he even need a press secretary when most of the press is already working for him in an unpaid fashion? I wonder how many will even apply for that job should it become available.
Comment by TaiChiWawa on 7/7 @ 7:39 am #
You’re saying his bias is facially motivated?
Comment by SevenEleventy on 7/7 @ 7:39 am #
Comment by Kirk on 7/7 @ 7:31 am #
Sully for Press Secretary!
That would be a treat.
Yeah, he could cock block himself.
Comment by sashal on 7/7 @ 7:44 am #
1.what Sallivan find in Obama we all know, and will not say in case kids will read this blog,.
2.My friend Daniel Larison is absolutely correct in the Sullivan-Obama case and in many others as well including the Iraq war.
Daniel is conservative and orthodox, I love the guy….
Comment by Rob Crawford on 7/7 @ 7:44 am #
Hmmm… I wonder if the left would be all up in arms over the GAY PORN COCK OF LIES!!! then?
Comment by CArin -BONC on 7/7 @ 7:48 am #
Why would he even need a press secretary when most of the press is already working for him in an unpaid fashion? I wonder how many will even apply for that job should it become available.
This may be my every-Monday-morning question … but did anyone figure out (yet) who’s doing the Proggy?
Comment by Rob Crawford on 7/7 @ 7:48 am #
Yeah, sashal, we know you’re in the tank for anyone who would have left the Iraqis enslaved. And for people like Sullivan, who argued for it until he got his fee-fees hurt and is now all for abandoning people we as a nation agreed to help.
We got your point months ago. You’re a twat; we get it.
Comment by ProggHero on 7/7 @ 7:50 am #
Carin even a proggressive can notice that actual reporters, not editors, have a brutal love affair with Obama. I mean you have heard Clinton supporters figure that one out too haven’t you?
Comment by CArin -BONC on 7/7 @ 7:51 am #
Rob, we need to stop spending money in Iraq so Michelle can buy fruit. How hard is that to understand?
Comment by SevenEleventy on 7/7 @ 7:52 am #
This may be my every-Monday-morning question … but did anyone figure out (yet) who’s doing the Proggy?
Never got that picture of him in a Che t-shirt yet?
Comment by CArin -BONC on 7/7 @ 7:52 am #
Yes, but Proggy, the other day you were arguing that the media was biased toward McCain. Look, I told you before, you email me, and I’ll keep your identity secret.
Cairinose@sbcglobal.net.
Comment by BumperStickerist on 7/7 @ 7:55 am #
For your consideration - the “Audacity of Hope” speech that Barack Obama cites as causing his Road to Damascus moment.
http://www.preachingtoday.com/sermons/sermons/audacityofhope.html
-
Here’s a critique of the sermon:
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/wrights-sermon-the-audacity-to-hope
Given the misdiscription of the painting and Obama’s misrememberance of the text of Wright’s sermon, perhaps this is more accurately described as “Sermon of the Mountebank”.
Comment by SevenEleventy on 7/7 @ 7:57 am #
Hey PH, how come you’re not over at the DU? Did you get tired of them ripping each other apart over O!’s policy changes? It’s fucking hysterical to read the comments, especially about religion.
Comment by BumperStickerist on 7/7 @ 8:00 am #
fwiw, I follow Jesus’s injunction to pray for my enemies, et cetera. It’s therapeutic and, perhaps, beneficial.
However, I checked the New Testament a couple of times and decided that I was on solid ground to add a caveat that if the Lord felt like smiting my enemies, I’m okay with that, too.
Comment by ProggHero on 7/7 @ 8:01 am #
The stories are biased toward McCain because we had 4 weeks of Wright coverage when he is not running for president. McCain was given a free pass up until now since the story was all about Obama and still is.
Actual reporters however are swooning over the guy, hence you get “tingly legs” and “it is hard to stay objective comments.
Comment by psycho... will not say "loads" on 7/7 @ 8:05 am #
The particles that made Nostradamus sterile.
Comment by BumperStickerist on 7/7 @ 8:08 am #
ProggH-
The Wright stories were less about Wright and his work than Obama’s decision to attend that particular church. If you don’t understand the distinction, you’re a Democrat.
Comment by SevenEleventy on 7/7 @ 8:14 am #
perfesser caric finds Sully and homophobia in a Nostradamus quatrain, and blames it on Karl.
Comment by xerock on 7/7 @ 8:28 am #
who gives voice to Andrew Sullivan? why does anyone anywhere ever pay attention to a word he says?
Comment by SarahW on 7/7 @ 8:54 am #
Narcissists are interesting head cases. I guess I see Sully as a sort of talking pickled punk.
That is the extent of my interest in anything he has ever had to say.
Karl does have his number.
Comment by SevenEleventy on 7/7 @ 8:59 am #
Karl does have his number.
Care to re-phrase that?
Comment by happyfeet on 7/7 @ 9:08 am #
when the world never seems
to be livin’ up to your dreams
and suddenly you’re finding out
the facts of life are all about you
Comment by Education Guy on 7/7 @ 9:14 am #
Blair/Tooty ‘08
Comment by alppuccino on 7/7 @ 9:15 am #
George Clooney got his start on The Facts of Live
Comment by Education Guy on 7/7 @ 9:20 am #
Later Clooney went on to win an Oscar. So you can see the power of that show.
Comment by JD on 7/7 @ 9:29 am #
Later Clooney went on to win an Oscar, and become a batshit crazy moonbat. Fixed that for ya’
Comment by Karl on 7/7 @ 9:49 am #
Blair might be a theocon, y’know.
Comment by Jeff G. on 7/7 @ 10:52 am #
True conservative Andrew Sullivan’s last two presidential endorsements: John Kerry and Barack Obama.
Think it’s maybe time somebody forcibly ripped the “conservative” appellation out of Sully’s opportunistic little fistclench?
Comment by happyfeet on 7/7 @ 11:04 am #
If Baracky wins though Andy will have lots of opportunity to display his conservative bona fides and intellectual honesty and stuff. Downright contrarian he’ll be, and saucy. For real this is how things work in Andy Land.
Comment by ushie on 7/7 @ 11:05 am #
Sully views Obama’s awkward racial experiences as more “like that of a gay teen discovering that he lives in two worlds simultaneously than that of a young African American confronting racism for the first time.â€Â
Being gay in America = being black in America. Oh, yeah, publicize that and see a great many blacks go “ew!”
Comment by doubleplusundead on 7/7 @ 11:31 am #
What does Andrew Sullivan see in Barack Obama?
His cock.
Comment by Merovign on 7/7 @ 12:12 pm #
Sully’s about as conservative as a purple Zoot suit with blaze orange stripes.
And Proggie makes about as much sense as a gelatin fishhook.
Comment by mojo on 7/7 @ 12:46 pm #
“Oh, it’s TWUE, it’s TWUE!”
– Andy, excited
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