Andrew Sullivan, schmuck

Over at The Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan has recently been basking in the adulation of his blogging peers on the occasion of his tenth year of blogging. And really, I don't have any trouble with this. His blog is among the most influential and widely-read, and it would be churlish to begrudge him the praise he is due for building it. (Lord knows, I was over the moon when he once linked to a piece I had written.) It's also a bit ridiculous for me, a blogger with literally tens of readers, to hurl brickbats at a blogger of his stature.

However, Sully is not without his... eccentricities. His thing for beards is probably something best kept private. His over-heated rhetoric on the subject of male circumcision is tiresome. And his (probably not entirely non-sexual) attention to Levi Johnston was something from which I wanted to avert my eyes.

That last had a lot to do with Johnston's very public falling out with his erstwhile potential mother-in-law, Sarah Palin. Sully haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaates Sarah Palin. And while I think she may possibly be the worst thing to happen to American public discourse since I started being aware of it, even I find his unalloyed loathing hard to take.

But before he hated Palin, he hated Hillary Clinton. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaated her, in a manner that bordered on the unhinged.

His latest salvo makes me ill. Sec. Clinton, whatever you may think of her, has recorded a video message as part of the It Gets Better project. This project, allied with The Trevor Project, is meant to reach out to gay and lesbian teens who are contemplating suicide as a result of bullying and depression. In it, both celebrities and non-famous folk record videos to encourage suicidal teens to hang on, and tell them that it gets better. Because it does. (The Better Half and I are considering doing one ourselves.) Sec. Clinton's video is below. [I can't view video from the computer I'm using just now; someone let me know in comments if there's viewing trouble.]



Want to know Sully's final thought on this?

I also can't help wondering if it's part of a campaign to solidify her hold over gay voters in 2016. (Bad Sully. No pot pie!) [italics in original]

"Hold over gay voters"? Because we're so damned impressionable that a web video recorded six years earlier will sway our vote in 2016?

What a despicable lack of class. How about this, Andrew? Maybe a person you hate did something nice. Maybe she did it for reasons having nothing to do with your reasons for hating her. Maybe she did it because she thought it was the right thing to do. And maybe only an utter horse's ass would fail to see that.

Oh, and also your cutsie-poo italicized pseudo-self-admonishment only makes your attack more galling.

Kudos to Sec. Clinton for taking the time to post this video. It was the right and decent thing to do, as is being grateful for her effort.