Since Andrew is all riled up, I suppose he's going to take his balls and go home.
Like I've been saying for a while now, Andrew Sullivan's militant activism on gay marriage, which seems to be driving his decision to hate Bush, is making it difficult to distinguish his thoughts and opinions from those of Bob Shrum, James Carville, Paul Begala, Michael Moore and, in some cases, even the denizens of DU. Make no mistake, Andrew Sullivan doesn't just oppose President George W. Bush now, he has become a Bush hater.
IMHO, Andrew is wrong on many fronts here, but the most egregious for someone of his intellect is the idea that he can just sit this one out because he may not be able to support either candidate. Come on Andrew, not making a choice is in and of itself making a choice, albeit allowing it to be made for you. Please spare me the utopian self-righteousness that allows you to imagine yourself above the fray of the lesser of two evils.
I'm not saying or implying that anyone has to support Bush to be fair and resonable -- far from it. But seeing his descent into rhetoric and a worldview that is only distinguishable from that of the foul-mouthed, know-nothing Bush=Hitler crowd by its literacy, correct spelling, and good grammer has been very distressing. Mr. Sullivan is displaying an odd combination of manic-depressive and obsessive-compulsive behaviour the last six months or so. He has either been very high or very low on Bush, with almost no middle ground, while applying his considerable writing skills to rationalizing his feelings at whichever extreme he finds himself. I honestly wonder if there may not be something more tragic going on in Andrew's life which has so poisoned his perspective on politics. I sincerely hope not and patiently look forward to him returning to the land of the reasonable, whether he returns to supporting, or even tolerating, President George W. Bush or not.
Andrew Sullivan is far too clever and talented to be dismissed quickly and casually because I find myself in profound disagreement with him of late. I'm not presumptious enough to imagine that he would ever read or respond to this, but I would hope that the brighter lights of the blogosphere may be able to get through to him. While Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds are a little late to the party, I wish them luck with their intervention, if that's what it is.
I can't be the only one to regard the gay-marriage thing as a MEGO (my eyes glaze over) topic. I appreciate it's very important to some people, but as for me, I couldn't give a rat's ass. Maybe I should, but I just can't summon the enthusiasm. As far as I'm concerned, it's why God gave us scroll wheels on our mice. I'm not gay and I'm not married, so it affects me not one iota.
Sullivan's become a little bit unhinged on this, as all single-issue-fanatics do eventually. Perhaps he should be reminded that our enemies seem to think it a good idea to push walls on top of homosexuals. I mean, I'm thinking big-picture here, OK?
Posted by: David Gillies at 02:13 PMI stopped visiting Sullivan's site about 6 weeks ago. I don't care about gay marriage, or if I do, I oppose it, so there is nothing there for me. I never really bought into his conservative "bona fides" anyhoo.
Posted by: David W at 09:45 AMI wish Andrew would just create a new blog for gay marraige and put it all there. I used to read him regularly, but now its just boring and repetative.
Posted by: gabriel chapman at 07:59 PM