As you know, pundit Andrew Sullivan was one of the failed “experts” who provided the intellectual edifice for the war, also inspiring impressionable young men and women to sacrifice their lives and limbs to the insatiable Iraq Moloch.
To be fair, Sullivan distinguished himself from the rest of the nation’s philosopher-kings in that he did recant. Deep in a Time Magazine column he buried an expression of “a real sense of shame and sorrow that so many have died because of errors made by their superiors, and by writers like me.” This alone makes him infinitely nobler than most other teletwits who’re shoved down the collective gullet by media, and who were all wrong all along about the invasion of Iraq, and many other grave matters.
Of course, the media is every bit as mired in moral and intellectual confusion as the pundits they feature . If they exposed their failed experts, they’d be exposing their own moral and intellectual flabbiness. They’d be beaching themselves, which is how they all ought to end up—beached.
The same Sullivan, wrong for so long on such a crucial matter, appeared on Meet the Press, April 6, intoxicated—drunk with love not for war, this time, but for Obama. Bami is absolutely sincere about everything he says, Sullivan almost sobbed. Thankfully, a wry Christopher Hitchens was there to provide a counterweight to Sullivan’s emotional effusing.
“Richly revealing was the way Obama tarred his maternal (white) grandma with the taint of racism,” not once, by mistake, but repeatedly. You’ll all agree that was quite something to behold. Hitchens certainly thought so. He smiled and said something to the effect that never before had he seen put into practice the expression throwing granny to the wolves. Or throwing granny under the bus. Obama’s outing of his infirm, 86-year-old grandma as a racist, fit to be lumped with the vile Rev. Wright—that was a first for to Hitchens. (And to me; most good people show respect to their grandparents.)
In response, Sullivan oozed denials, the sum total of which amounted to, “Leave him alone, you nasty man; Bami didn’t mean it that way.” Andy dominated the remainder of the conversation with “arguments” of a similar caliber.
I paraphrase the gist of what Dr. Thomas Szasz once said to me: Hitchens may be wrong on many issues, but at least he’s highly intelligent.
Back to my main point: Crunchy con Sullivan should not be listened to when he prostrates himself at the feet of Obama and asks that we do the same. For too long he’s dished out dollops of ahistoric, unintuitive, and reckless verbiage on some pretty defining issues. Isn’t it time his status as “experts” for whom public goodwill runs eternal be revoked? At least Hitchens, unlike Sullivan, didn’t vow that he had looked into a candidate’s eyes and seen his soul.