Bitch, What Is Your Problem?

Against my better judgement, I was reading the Daily Dish blog. I know I shouldn't have, because it was going to be nothing more than Dr. Sullivan shilling for the Senator from Illinois---how he is in fact Jesus Christ returned, how he will make it a nirvana for gays if he's elected, how Don't Ask Don't Tell will go down the tubes, and lest I forget, how much of an evil cooze Hillary Clinton is. I've been seeing this garbage come from his keyboard for months now, and after his non-stop Obama-gloating after the South Carolina primary, I finally just mentally vomited. I know I'm just a little nobody here, but I feel it is time to say:

Bitch, what is your problem?

If you have paid any attention to Andrew Sullivan over the last 6 months (and I am guessing few of you have), you will notice that his website has devolved into 3 areas--Area One...Obama is Jesus Christ and the world will instantly become better by making him President of the United States and that it would be a glorious symbol for the world; Area Two...Hillary Clinton is an evil old crone who would do or say anything to get elected and every nasty thing the Republicans have ever said about her is true, and here are some more nasty things about her; Area Three...Mike Huckabee and any other person who speaks publicly of faith is a danger to American democracy and they are no different than Islamists in Pakistan. I would ask Dr. Sullivan if I hit all those bases, but let's get real kids--he ain't gonna read this EVER.

Let's take a look at Area One...

If you read the hyperventalationary writing of the Daily Dish (it's in the links under Whores For Obama), the Senator from Illinois is the answer to all the nation's problems and he will be the messiah for gays and lesbians in this country. Hmm--sounds like favorite pretentious British pundit takes too strong a toke before he writes about the Senator (Sullivan is very pro drug legalization). What he writes is NOT reflective of the reality. First off, Sully-boy has never taken the Senator to task for the vagueness in his public speeches. I will admit it--the speeches flow beautifully. Whoever writes them is a true wordsmith, and the Senator gives perfect delivery. The problem is that when you read the speeches, you find out that the Senator has not said anything substantive. It's spun-sugar prose that will melt upon contact with the bucket of cold water called "Reality". Oddly, Dr. Sullivan never mentions that--he's too busy mentally whacking off over "hope" and "bringing us together". "Bringing us together" is not a legislative roadmap. "Bringing us together" doesn't head off the recession that may be approaching. "Bringing us together" doesn't take steps to rectify the trade imbalances we have with East Asian countries. "Bringing us together" doesn't help Hispanic families who are wondering if Grandma is going to be sent back to Honduras because she is an illegal alien.

While it may look nice having a photograph of a black President of the United States on the cover of the international edition of Newsweek, in the end, foreign governments are not going to give a fat rat's ass what color the President's skin is. What they are going to care about is whether or not he or she can make the tough judgement calls and stick by those calls even when the polls say it's not a crowd-winner (say what you want about Bush, but you have to give him credit for sticking to the guts of his positions). That's what being a leader means, and the Senator has a track record of ducking issues because they are not crowd winners--just go look at his voting record in Illinois. The mantra was "Ooh...hot button--can't touch that." Maybe I am harsh and judgemental. Maybe my decade in uniform warped my perceptions, but when someone is wanting to be my leader, then that person damn well better have a gameplan before he or she sets one cleat on the playing field. The Senator went so far as to say recently that he was not a good manager.

Excuse me? You want me to hire you to the top management job in the country and you say to the press you are not a good manager? Who in the hell would hire someone for a position like the one in question after an admission like that? Again, Dr. Sullivan did not mention this. At times, I think his whoring for the Senator is some sort of strange mea culpa for having published "The Bell Curve" in The New Republic back in the 1990s when he was editor. This article stated that blacks were of an inferior intelligence level to whites based on genetics. The article generated a bit of negative feedback for the magazine (and may have been part of the reason why he left it in 1996....but I'm only guessing).

Sully and many of the other Upwardly Mobile Gay White Bloggers (yes, I am talking about you, Chris Crain--his link on the links list is selfrighteous.com) have used countless numbers of bytes of text to put out the message of just how great it will be for us gays when the Senator is elected. Did I miss something? Having a black president is not going to change cultural attitudes towards gays and lesbians in the United States. Just because the Senator says non-threatening things about us does not mean stigmas magically disappear (although a Los Angeles Times columnist did basically refer to him as The Magic Negro...maybe the Senator has some power I am not aware of, but since I am pretty observant, I would have seen it by now). Would a President Obama make state ballot initiatives against gay marriage go away? No--that is a state issue, and the states are going to vote they way they vote. He can put his foot down on monkeying with the federal constitution, but that's it. He can say that civil unions are great, but these days people like Sully are going to whine and say that's not good enough. In many respects, the same goes for Don't Ask Don't Tell. He may be able to ditch the executive order on it, but he can't do shit about the Uniform Code of Military Justice--and the UCMJ still says guy on guy anal sex is still a no-go. Only Congress can change that, and if you think guys like Heath Shuler from North Carolina (he's the freshman Democrat who represents the district my grandparents live in) are going to vote to say "yeah, you fags can serve openly", then you really don't understand the rednecks he represents. The Democrats won the House in 2006 with freshman Democrats from normally red districts, and in a lot of those places, it is still not cool to be gay (not all of America's fags live in DC, New York, and San Francisco, girls)--if you think they are going to shit on the voters who sent them by voting for this, then you are delusional, Sully.

And now, Area Two....

One of the more abhorrent things about the Daily Dish these days is the truly repellent manner in which Sully-boy refers to Hillary Clinton. After a decade in uniform, I can say that I have encountered a lot of female officers who behave in the same way that Hillary Clinton's public persona has been drawn over the last 20 years. That's why I can take or leave her--I can accept she may have a chip on her shoulder and that she feels she has something to prove. Bitchy girls don't bother me, but for some reason, they seem to bother Dr. Sullivan. He seems to take great delight in writing about her in the most juvenile manner. He gets verbal diarrhea going on and on about her alleged vices (and the Senator's divine virtues). I used to think that the New York Times' Dried-Up-Hag-In-Residence Maureen Dowd was the most gratuitously bitchy documenter of Hillary Clinton---turns out I was wrong. Andrew Sullivan has snatched the tiara and slapped it on his massive bald melon.

What gets me is the level of hatefulness he indulges in towards Mrs. Clinton. I could understand it if she had done something to him personally, but as far as I can tell, he has never met her. Those other two Irish pseudo-Catholic blowhards Dowd and Chris Matthews at least have met her, so they can base their venom on personal (I use that term loosely) experience. In Dr. Sullivan's case, he's talking shit about a woman it seems he's never met, yet feels fully justified in dragging through the mud. If anyone is going to question the personal ethics (and by extension, morals) of Hillary Clinton, then Andrew M. Sullivan is the very last person on earth to be doing it (google "Andrew Sullivan" and "bareback" and then get back to me if you think he has a leg to stand on). If you are going to trash someone else's house, then your house better have floors so spotless I can serve a wedding feast on them.

If you don't like the woman, then good for you. America is a place where a plethora of opinions are encouraged. Speaking one's mind is something to be both encouraged and celebrated. The only caveat on that is that if you are going to blow your intellectual wad, do it in a manner that makes you sound somewhat intelligent and doesn't scrape the bottom of the intellectual gutter. It is a sad day when Patrick J. Buchanan can provide a better intellectual argument against Hillary Clinton than Sully-boy can.

Finally, Area Three...

For a man who has professed to be a believing Roman Catholic (he is ethnic Irish, after all...even atheists in Ireland believe in God, at least socially), I have yet to understand the shrill hostility Sully-boy has toward people expressing spiritual faith in a higher power in public. Go and read the Daily Dish and see what he's said about Huckabee--he's said everything possible about him short of calling the man a "Jesus Freak". I try to square this with the online debate he had with noted atheist writer Sam Harris on the nature of religious faith, and something just doesn't compute.

Sometimes, I wonder if it is just an anti-Protestant bias, since the primary victim of his "Christianist" shrieks are Evangelical Protestants (occasionally, he'll trash the Pope, but mostly it's Protestants), but then the shrillness of it just makes me gag (although I have a strong gag reflex, so it's not that hard to do). I'm not the best Catholic out there, but I don't become pants-crappingly hysterical when a public figure drops the G-word. So Huckabee talks about God--big deal. So Huckabee doesn't buy the evolution argument--big deal. So he believes their is a spiritual component to public life--big deal. It's nice to know he believes in something. Maybe it's just me, but I like the fact that a public figure would acknowledge a higher existence--even if it is a different perspective than my own. Live and let live.

Not Sully-boy, though. In one of his "Christianist" rants, he accused John McCain of being a stooge of theirs. John McCain is a lot of things--stubborn, testy, hardnosed, funny...but not a tool of Southern Baptists. He lacks the stomach for the Grade A horseshit they fling about the room. I used to be one, so I know what they can be like...and they are not McCain's sort of people.

Sorry for the Sullivan post so soon after the other one, but his Obama-gloating just torqued me off, and I had to vent. He once was an interesting writer--now, much like Margaret Cho, Ann Coulter, and Arianna Huffington, he just some tiresome old bore.

Just a thought or two......