It is a werewolf-style mutation that has not gone unnoticed by former friends and colleagues. Sullivan has gone from “wild-eyed Zionist to vitriolic Israel-basher,” the influential journalist Jeffrey Goldberg has written, adding that Sullivan sometimes uses his blog “to disseminate calumnies that can cause hatred of Jews and of Israel.”

Leon Wieseltier, one of Sullivan’s former editors at The New Republic and an ex-personal friend of the writer, has accused Sullivan of “intellectual shabbiness” and “venomous hostility toward Israel and Jews.”

Less commented upon, however, is the bitterness and general absence of nuance that have characterized much of Sullivan’s writing from the beginning of his career. The reckless ferocity of his ire and the rapid-fire expression of his views, quotes, and links without forethought show that blogging provides Sullivan with a convenient veil behind which he can hide—the misplaced link and the crude superficiality is in the nature of the form—and a editor-free platform that suits his angry, convulsive writing.

This is not just the case of the one feeding the other—that belligerent rhetoric and lack of curiosity can lead to shifting madly from pole to pole on Israel and the Palestinian question. Rather, it is that these deplorable characteristics manifest themselves in more insidious and troublesome ways; ways that corrupt a writer’s work and call his motives into question.