I feel like Andrew Sullivan and I are supposed to argue more. Certainly, a Hillary Clinton versus John McCain matchup ought to give us the opportunity as HRC seems to set him off in weird ways. Andrew, for instance, finds this Jonah Goldberg post funny. I only see a kind of witless sexism. Watch Clinton's ad. It's not fantastic, but nothing about it "oozes chick cosmetic unguent infomercial" other than that the person speaking is a woman.
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She's a Woman!
03 Jan 2008 11:18 am
Comments (42)
Q: How many college girls does it take to change a light bulb?
A: It's college women, and that's not funny.
Well, the lighting's a bit soft and there are drapes in the background instead of oak paneling with a flag. But, yeah, it's just the candidate talking, nothing all that cosmetic-like about the deal.
On the other hand, I liked Sullivan's offhand little gibe at Goldberg: "And, yes, I will read his book when I get a second."
I like Andrew and have read him for years, but he clearly has issues with women who aren't his mother or Margaret Thatcher
What an odd discussion to be having on the day that HRC's campaign officially collapsed.
nothing about it "oozes chick cosmetic unguent infomercial" other than that the person speaking is a woman.
Oh yeah, except her tastefully understated makeup, her warm earth tones wardrobe, the soft lighting, and the out-of-focus Pottery Barn domestic background.
I agree that Goldberg's post was stupid. But he's not wrong to realize that there is a skin-cream commercial aesthetic going on here. What I think the reason he's being so snarky is that its rather flattering commercial. My first reaction was: damn, she looks really good. As the commercial wore on, I got a little bored and started waiting for the animation showing skin getting firmer and wrinkles lifting.
stoneyforest:
No, that joke is supposed to be "How many feminists does it take to change a light buld"? Even this feminist knows that!
Fascist unguent!
I suppose if one described a Huckabee commercial as looking like a 5AM Sunday morning slimy televangelist preacher's plea for money, then people would call you anti-Christian?
I may not be a psychologist but even I can see that Sullivan is seriously sick. His writings reveal a conflicted man who is the wife of someone not named Bill Clinton and this makes him insanely jealous of the woman who is the actual wife of Bill Clinton.
There is nothing worse than a man acting out his female neurotic side in public. Sad really.
I followed Sullivan's link, and am glad you responded so bluntly. Yes, Goldberg's post was witless and sexist. The fact that Sullivan found it funny tells you all you need to know about his attitudes towards Clinton.
Grrr, if you want witty sexism there's always the odd South Park episode. I'll just settle for asking Petey if he doesn't feel so fresh.
Sullivan and Goldberg's problem is easy to diagnose. Can you say, "confirmation bias"?
"I may not be a psychologist but even I can see that Sullivan is seriously sick. His writings reveal a conflicted man who is the wife of someone not named Bill Clinton and this makes him insanely jealous of the woman who is the actual wife of Bill Clinton."
Worth noting that Sullivan hates Bill Clinton every bit as much as he hates Hillary Clinton.
His pathology is of the anti-Clinton variety, not some psychosexual one.
I've never liked Sullivan's writing and he's always seemed mentally unbalanced. Jonah Goldberg is just plain stupid and craven. If Hillary gets the nomination (I'm undecided), look for much more idiotic rambling from the two towers of turds.
I agree with Matt. There is nothing remotely chick infomercial about that ad other than it is a woman speaking. I also like Andrew's blog a great deal, but think he is insane about the Clintons, Hillary especially.
When I watched the commercial, I got the distinct impression that she wasn't speaking to me. The earlier post about the clip having a "cosmetic commercial" "feel" resonates with my response. There is also the possibility that, as a male, my impression reveals an ignorant sexism on my part. Who knows. She'll give me the opportunity to think about it some more over the next few months.
I feel like Andrew Sullivan and I are supposed to argue more.
I feel the same way - and am slightly disappointed that you waited until the day of the Iowa caucus to start.
Much more, please.
I enjoy reading his blog, but the fact that he gets all 'black helicopter' over all things Hillary and it goes virtually unchecked on the websites of the Atlantic has been pretty sad.
I don't know if you are supposed to argue with Sully more or not. What would be nice though is if you would call him out on his bizarre obsession with HRC and blatant double standards he applies. Not to mention pointing out the very direct role Sully had in creating Clinton Derangement Syndrome.
Since he's too cowardly to accept comments on his blog it would be nice if someone was publicly calling him out on this.
More than most pundits, Sullivan is swayed by persona politics: Hillary is the triangulating Fembot so therefore worthy of contempt; McCain is the war hero so therefore worthy of deification. Sorely lacking from his analysis is any keen sense of either candidate's policy positions or even basic humanity. It's not that Sullivan can't parse policy, it's that it clearly bores him. It's true that he's unhinged about Senator Clinton but he's also a trifle unhinged about McCain, with all that rapturous praise. Sullivan would rather compose an ode to McCain's inherent nobility and principles than to critically examine McCain's flip-flops on taxes and campaign finance reform and habeas corpus; the occasional panders; McCain's walk-backs from immigration reform and gay equality; or even something as trivial as McCain calling a dressmaker's dummy "Hillary." (That McCain would denigrate a twice-elected Senator in such a puerile way says a lot about his "character.")
Here's the deal with Andrew Sullivan: ultimately he believes the Republican party can be redeemed to its Reagan-Thatcher glory days, and that John McCain is the man to do it. The Democratic party, as exemplified by the Clintons, can never be anything other than the party of wealth redistribution so it can never redeem itself. The sorrowful thread in all his writing is how the Republican party -- and conservatism as a philosophy -- has been destroyed by Bush, and how it must be saved. Even when Sullivan votes Democratic or admires certain Democratic figures or supports Democratic policies, he never writes about the Democratic party with the same passion as he does about the GOP, despite its current ugly incarnation.
If it comes down to a choice between Obama or McCain, does anyone doubt that Sullivan would choose McCain?
Why am I not surprised that a nimrod like Andrew Sullivan -- whom I'd never have to hear about if he weren't endlessly referred to -- is impressed by Goldbutt's "humor"?
I agree with SoCal 100%. The things Sullivan says about Hillary that he gets away with are ridiculous. If I read another sentence from him with a stupid question added as if what he's saying can't be contradicted, I'll never read his blog (okay, not true).
For example, if I were Sullivan writing about how everything he says about Hillary is unhinged:
"Andrew really is coming off the tracks, isn't he?"
And I'd write a similar sentence a few posts later about how much he infuriates me. I'd call him "Nixon with a beard" because, hey, I don't like him, so he must be Nixon.
I should say that I do like Andrew's musings on most things uninvolved with his ridiculous treatment of Hillary.
I feel like Andrew Sullivan and I are supposed to argue more.
No.
Sullivan sucks donkeys. And he's an idiot. What you're "supposed to" do more of with respect to darling Andy is, ignore him.
I'd like to report a bug in the Atlantic web-site. There doesn't seem to be a comment field on Sullivan's blog page.
Clearly this is an oversight, since surely he wouldn't be afraid to explain himself to the public.
I've long felt that receiving feedback would give him a chance to learn the use of basic logic and reasoning, and would make him a better writer and would eventually start to save him from repeatedly embarassing himself.
As to the substance of his post, I'll be charitable and assume that Sullivan was laughing at Goldberg, not with him. The codicil about Goldberg's book ("a second", indeed), supports this supposition.
Sullivan's brittle narcissism could never stand a comments section. For one thing, he'd be painfully outclassed by many or most of his readers.
More than most pundits, Sullivan is swayed by persona politics
This is absolutely true, and it explains a lot about him: his unhingedness after 9/11 and his Bush/Iraq war cheerleading being prime examples. He's capable of critical thinking, but he's so dazzled by spectacle and theater that he forgets to apply it. He practically wet his pants over the pageantry of Reagan's funeral.
There is something in Clinton mythos that unhinges opponents of both Bill and Hillary, especially on the right.
The left has beefs with them, but most of the time, of more cerebral nature.
When Hillary was running for Senate, it worked very much in her favor, as her opponent figured some really stupid stunts that thoroughly annoyed the voters. And, remember, there are more "chick" voters than male voters, and "chicks" are much more annoyed by such crass behavior than men are amused.
It's pretty clear from reading Andrew's blog that he has very little interest in women in general. Check every post he's written in 2008 so far -- the only woman he ever mentions is Hillary with the following exceptions: a quote from a female Episcopalian bishop (on the topic of gay men); negative references to Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter; and a photo of a woman (of course) with some Hillary Clinton stickers (a man holding a male baby is the subject of the Obama supporter photo). And then 100+ posts about men, their writing, their deeds, their desires. Oh, and one post where he references the opinions of four men on abortion. The rest is all about men, the writings of men, the deeds of men, the attitudes of men, and several posts on beards.
Based on the comments Matt, you might want to change the title of this one to "He's a Woman!"
I suspect the reason Matt doesn't argue with Andrew more is because he mostly agrees with him. That might not be the case for all things Hillary, but I'd be surprised if it's that far from the truth.
I do agree that Andrew Sullivan has a huge blind spot about women, lots of hostility. Historically he's often been reactive, his opinions about lots of things driven by what appears to me to be an unexamined emotional world. At times he comes around. Sometimes he doesn't. He means well within this context I think. He just doesn't at times seem to get that he's being very terribly offensive while not being very analytical, like when he talks about race and IQ.
Sullivan is, to his credit, at least somewhat self-aware. He understands that there is a strong element of irrationality (say, 80%) in his hatred for the Clintons, Hillary especially. But it's not a random irrationality, of the sort that would make me decide, for example, to hate the Swiss. Rather, it's part of his running narrative of understanding how he could be so wrong about Bush. He desperately wants to think that it wasn't just him being wrong about a man and a party--no, it was *everyone* being wrong about an allegedly corrosive brand of politics that we didn't recognize as such until Obama showed us a new path! Sullivan, then, was no more wrong than the people who opposed Bush from the start!
He can't handle the truth: even the basest Democratic party hack was more right than Sullivan, because that hack didn't support Bush.
He understands that there is a strong element of irrationality (say, 80%) in his hatred for the Clintons, Hillary especially.
Regardless of the depth of an individual's irrational hatred of Hillary (and, to a lesser extent, Bill) there are too many rational reasons to hate Hillary for the irrational to ever add up to 80%. That stupid "Village" book and her universal pre-K plan are good places to start.
Great comments on this one, so I just want to cheer y'all on. I like Sullivan's blog a lot, lots of content, decent if overwrought writing, tons of buzz. But he's a choleric foaming-mouth nitwit about HRC, as he was about the "fifth column" left after 9/11. Bottom line: if you're a progressive, Sullivan may side with you on certain issues, but he ain't your friend. And it would be nice if reasonably prominent progressive bloggers like MY would call BS on Sullivan's excursions into lunacy. Do it, dude, do it!
I think its good that Andrew sullivan does not have a comment section because even though i passionately disagree with him about Hillary I see too that too many others resort to the ugliest kinds of suggestion and gay slurs about him when they disagree with him any that would be too disturbing.
He obviously reads reader e-mail as he posts some very ripe responses.
I'd like to think he's disturbed about Hillary but then I'd have to be labelled disturbed about Nixon and reagon as fair is fair: rather I choose to believe that we disagree and he has a better platform to broadcast his side: no harm done.
I think its good that Andrew sullivan does not have a comment section because even though i passionately disagree with him about Hillary I see too that too many others resort to the ugliest kinds of suggestion and gay slurs about him when they disagree with him any that would be too disturbing.
He obviously reads reader e-mail as he posts some very ripe responses.
Uh-huh. Yeah. Poor Andy, he of the "leftists must be fifth columnists" logic -- why, his delicate sensibilities just wouldn't be able to cope!
No, ace. He doesn't have a comments section because he'd be outclassed, and deep down, he knows it.
No, ace. He doesn't have a comments section because he'd be outclassed, and deep down, he knows it.
That may or may not be, but more practically I think it's true that if he had a comments section it would attract a huge amount of the worst kind of troglodyte gay-bashing, and it would just be too time-consuming and tedious for anyone to constantly weed that crap out. It's not his sensibilities -- I'm sure he developed a thick skin about that kind of thing a long time ago -- it's just that it would be too much of a hassle. He's easily the highest-profile gay blogger, and he attracts the particular ire of various right-wing types for being either an apostate or a fake conservative in their eyes.
My impressions watching that Hillary commercial was that the director of photography and make-up person did a remarkable job. I was so amazed and intranced that they managed to smooth every wrinkle and light her so she absolutely glowed that I completely lost track of what she was saying -- not that I care to listen to her anymore...
That may or may not be, but more practically I think it's true that if he had a comments section it would attract a huge amount of the worst kind of troglodyte gay-bashing, and it would just be too time-consuming and tedious for anyone to constantly weed that crap out.
Sorry, I don't buy it. Americablog is run by an openly gay man, as are plenty of other liberal sites. The reality is that Andrew, for all the supposed uniqueness of his views, is actually a very typical DC Insider. He is liberal on social issues, conservative on economic issues, and sympathetic to neoconservatism (if somewhat chastened by Iraq). Tell me how, exactly, this differs from the views of someone like Chris Matthews.
Andrew is the kind of guy who would love a Mike Bloomberg candidacy. As such, he represents a very narrow kind of inside the beltway thinking most of the time, outside of his few pet issues (torture, gay rights, entitlements) where he goes in different directions. Like most DC Insiders, he has no idea that his worldview is incredibly unpopular. He prefers to think that all of the hostility comes from him being a "moderate" - and taking heat from "extremists" on both sides.
No, the reason Andrew doesn't have comments isn't the gay bashing. It's because so few people agree with him. He'd get slaughtered. The homophopic comments could easily be removed. The stinging attacks on the substance of his blog posts? Not so much.
Don't get me wrong, I think Andrew is an entertaining writer, and important bellweather for a certain kind of DC Insider CW. But he'd get cut to pieces if he opened up the comments. He too wrong about too many things too often.
Speaking of Chris Matthews, it boggles my mind that he even allows Sullivan to opine on HRC on his weekly show (not Hardball). The show ostensibly brings on journalists who set aside their personal biases to offer insights, but Sullivan is so clearly incapable of speaking objectively about anything Hillary-related. You can practically feel his spittle on your face when he makes his seething observations about her campaign, etc. It undermines his credibility and the credibility of the show.
On a different note, I once emailed him to disagree (quite civilly) with one of his postings. He responded that I could just stop reading his blog if I disagreed. Very mature and very revealing.
And very effective--I have stopped reading him.
Speaking of Chris Matthews, it boggles my mind that he even allows Sullivan to opine on HRC on his weekly show (not Hardball). The show ostensibly brings on journalists who set aside their personal biases to offer insights, but Sullivan is so clearly incapable of speaking objectively about anything Hillary-related. You can practically feel his spittle on your face when he makes his seething observations about her campaign, etc. It undermines his credibility and the credibility of the show.
On a different note, I once emailed him to disagree (quite civilly) with one of his postings. He responded that I could just stop reading his blog if I disagreed. Very mature and very revealing.
And very effective--I have stopped reading him.
Some serious makeup work done there - she looked better than I've seen her in any picture for years.
I'd do her! (And she desperately needs somebody to, since she damn sure ain't getting any from Bill.)
But she was spouting the same bullshit every politician spouts.
The bit about people "whispering their problems to me" was a bit much. What are you, Hillary, my mother? You're clearly trying to be - but that doesn't cut it.
If I didn't know this woman's history, I'm sure I'd be impressed.
But then I remember that it could have been Ivanka Trump reading that same teleprompter - and I would be much more impressed (as well as more aroused).
(Trump is about the most articulate female, other than maybe Jodie Foster, I've ever heard speak.)
Would be interesting to compare all the candidate videos and see who was the biggest flake or said the most bullshit.
Andy is notoriously brittle in his email ripostes -- and I have the hastily scribed, ad-hominem-soaked replies to my polite queries to Andy to prove it. The gay-bashing defense against an open comments policy on Sullivan's site is a dodge, and a weak one at that; he's a big boy, and can probably deal better with rank ignorance and bigotry than he could with, y'know, having his opinions challenged and defeated in a public forum.
Yes, he is that insecure. Yes, he is that much of a a simpleton, despite his occasionally graceful prose.
Comments closed January 17, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Got any examples of witty sexism you'd like to share?
Posted by grrr! | January 3, 2008 11:40 AM