Andrew Sullivan giving himself whiplash on Obama

posted at 11:14 am on May 14, 2009 by Karl

Is the thrill is gone for Excitable Andy? Yesterday, he turned on Our President with a lengthy screed on the issue of — wait for it — gay rights:

Here we are, in the summer of 2009, with gay servicemembers still being fired for the fact of their orientation. Here we are, with marriage rights spreading through the country and world and a president who cannot bring himself even to acknowledge these breakthroughs in civil rights, and having no plan in any distant future to do anything about it at a federal level. Here I am, facing a looming deadline to be forced to leave my American husband for good, and relocate abroad because the HIV travel and immigration ban remains in force and I have slowly run out of options (unlike most non-Americans with HIV who have no options at all). (Emphasis mine.)

(Apparently, someone left the “for better or worse” out of his gay marriage vows. But I digress.)

Anyway, that was posted on May 13, 2009, at 12:07 p.m. Approximately one hour later, Sully was ripping Obama’s decision to fight the release of detainee photos, summarily dismissing the notion that their release would endanger the troops. A half-hour later, he was calling Obama the “Neocon In Chief.” An hour and a half later, he was attacking Obama’s decision to curtail intelligence-sharing if the British High Court discloses new details of the treatment of a former Guantanamo detainee, writing “those of us who have tried to give Obama the benefit of the doubt must concede that there is no longer any benefit or any doubt.”

Just a day before his deportation diatribe, he was defending Obama’s decision to curtail intelligence-sharing. What a difference a day makes.

When Sullivan turned on the Bush Administration with a vengeance, many said it was due to Pres. Bush deciding to publicly support a Constitutional amendment which would have limited marriage in the US to unions of one man and one woman. Sullivan denied this, claiming that Abu Ghraib was what turned him. Yet we now see him turn on Pres. Obama less than four months into his presidency, and it is just sheer coincidence that Sullivan is filled with personal pique over Obama’s failure to save Sullivan’s gay marriage.

Sullivan likely realized how bad this looked (or got one of his famed e-mails tipping him to it), as he has since suggested that “it’s too early to write Obama off” on gay rights and that a “real judgment will be possible as his first term comes to an end.” But considering that Obama is unlikely to be impeached over any of Sullivan’s hobby horses, what option does Sullivan really have? It’s a non-concession concession.

Meanwhile, Sullivan is spending one day warning Obama that “covering up war crimes, refusing to proscute them, promoting those associated with them, and suppressing evidence of them are themselves violations of Geneva and the UN Convention,” while the next day defending Obama, arguing that our “soldiers deserve a chance to do their astonishingly difficult job without inflaming those who might be inspired to kill and attack them.” He sees “no reason to suspect that Obama is not genuine” about someday divulging all info on the interrogations, though there is every reason to suspect Obama and Sullivan are not genuine about it, given that Sullivan excuses Obama’s renditions policy. Apparently, it has not occurred to Sullivan that Obama may simply be caving to the CIA to protect himself and his party from damaging releases of information about their complicity in the interrogations.

I recognize that posts about the unhinged Sullivan usually prompt a smattering of comments wondering why anyone should care about his little rants. Thus, it is worth noting that he has one of the biggest blogs on the Internet. He accounts for well over half the traffic to The Atlantic’s website, which implies that he has hundreds of thousands of readers daily. He is still taken seriously by the establishment media, despite trafficking in bizarre conspiracy theories for years. And Pres. Obama reads his blog — and gets misinformed by it. Indeed, for all we know, Sullivan may be desperately bidding for attention in the hopes that Obama or one of his flunkies will exert influence regarding his immigration status. Regardless, it is worth noting the enabling of the Internet’s version of a sandwich board-wearing lunatic, spewing nonsense at random pedestrians.

Cross-posted to Patterico.

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