katamari Damassi wrote:
Why I hate him:
His Catholicism and defense of Catholicism.
There's a wonderful on-line debate between Sullivan and Sam Harris in which Harris eventually concludes that Sullivan is in no meaningful way religious let alone Catholic. It's really worth looking up if only as a great model of reasonable intellectual discourse.
I personally find Sullivan's Catholicism unfathomable. Being a gay Catholic in recent years has seemed akin to being a Jewish Nazi.
He destroyed The New Republic Magazine. Then when its publisher Marty Peretz(a loathsome man himself) wanted to fire him, Sullivan used his HIV status to extort generous compensation from him.
Well, as currently constituted TNR needs destroying. Having said that, I don't know enough about this episode to comment further.
He's an advocate for Murray and Hernstein's book The Bell Curve.
Don't know enough about this either (and I probably should).
In the 90's he was a constant scold to gay men because of their promiscuous ways, was later caught posting personal ads on a website Bareback City looking to take as many "milky loads" as he could, although he at least had the decency to post his HIV status.
I am aware of this saga and I think you have a fair point. I also think that Sullivan has more or less admitted that you have one too.
In the mid 90's when the first effective HIV drugs came on the market, he published an essay in the NYT called When Plagues End; telling gay men that they didn't have to be concerned about AIDS anymore.
Strikes me as highly intemperate in that he assumes everyone has the same resources with which to acquire those drugs.
When he was young and twinkish he wrote an article scorning gay bear culture, telling bears they should get their fat asses to the gym. When he got older and fatter he wrote an article praising bear culture.
Meh. People's sexual tastes and mores change with time. No big deal.
He was a supporter of G.W.B and for the Iraq war. He even wrote that liberals against the war had to be watched because they might "mount a potential fifth column" against the USA.
When he was faced with overwhelming contrary evidence he changed his position. That's surely a point in his favor and a reasonable litmus test for a skeptic.
When he switched sides in 2008 he became obsessed with this conspiracy theory that Sarah Palin's downs syndrome baby was really the first child of Bristol Palin.
He "changed sides" long before 2008. He supported John Kerry in 2004. On the Clintons he's been equivocal. He gushed (frothed?) over Bill's performance at the 2008 DNC.
Rather than claiming Trig was Bristol's child, Sullivan rather pointed out that no reasonable person could believe any of Sarah's various outlandish accounts of the birth (I agree with him) and asked for evidence to prove otherwise. Said evidence has not been forthcoming.
I'm sure there's more, but that's all off the top of my head right now.
I understand some of your reservations but none of them put him anywhere near Roy Cohn, with possible exception of the "fifth column" quote.
To me, he's one of the more principled voices for a conservatism free of fundamentalism and fanaticism be it of the Christian or Randian variety.
