Ah, it's a lonely job. Christ, find Obama a brother, shoot in black and white, raise Kruschev from the dead and be done with it! I mean, is there ever a picture of the President in the Oval Office doing the Happy Dance or lighting a fart? #barackobama
They also did the same thing (JFK at Window burdened with leadership, probably during the Missle Crisis) for the opening credits of both West Wing and Commander in Chief . #barackobama
Just a thought--what with the surge in threats against the First Family, maybe they were reluctant to get them vaccinated in case they "accidentally" got the wrong stuff? #barackobama
Oh, yeah. And we really landed on the moon, too. Wake Up, Sheeple! Those were fake vaccines - not the ones concocted by Obama's Nazi/Muslim masters who live within the Hollow Earth! #barackobama
Is that last paragraph supposed to be a sensible rationale, or an excuse. Unless you deal with Sullivan's central point, which you have in no way refuted--only mocked in the way you mock the yahoos who think that when the government gets in the auto business, there might be a hint of socialism involved. (Your premise is that unless a government is absolutely socialist, it is moronic and paranoid to perceive any government activity as socialist.) As for the lack of left-love for Stalin--no, he's not seen as hip and revolutionary, so here's a name that's not exactly verboten in the facutly lounge: Lenin.
This is an example of a reflexive, if oblique, defensive response to those who dare question the sages of the Obama administration. Would it kill you just to say, you know, Sullivan has a point? #glennbeck
The reason he gets so much vitriol is that he's a big fat self-loathing hypocrite who would lick the taint of any righty who would grant him social acceptance. Of course, once he gets such access, he demands that they change to suit him, and then flees into the night when his beer goggles wear off. (And that's just a quote from his barebackcity ad!)
Note how his shameless sucking up to the neocon right and the Roman Catholic Church morphed into support for Obama and (correct) interpretation of the Bible on homosexuality for examples of this.
He thinks Dick Cheney is sexy. He's opposed to public health care, I guess because he can afford it, which is quite a gamble to take when you've got HIV.
@quotidian: No, it wouldn't kill me... if he were actually correct. Sullivan's central point being:
So why is Mao's rancid evil not self-evident for a person like Dunn? Because she retains a double standard for far left totalitarianism over far right totalitarianism.
This is an assumption. Even if I were to agree, then how does that apply to other admirers of Mao like John McCain, George W. Bush, Barry Goldwater, etc? Or are only rightwingers smart enough to recognize that Mao is a pretty awful human being who accomplished things that nobody thought he ever could?
Now if Sullivan's saying that there are far left groups that sympathize with far left totalitarian regimes then yes, that's a self evident truth. Just as far right groups sympathize with far right totalitarian regimes. That's one of the things that makes them the far side.
If Dunn comes out tomorrow as a Mao apologist of some sort, then sure, I'll come right out and agree with Sullivan. I actually like Sullivan and his blog - but that doesn't mean I haven't seen him write plenty of silly things. #glennbeck
@demidan: Someone who doesn't want other people with HIV to have access to health care that might extend their lives is fair game.
Especially since, for Sullivan, it's all about money. "Let 'em all die in a hospice, I can afford my life-extending drugs! And I'll get on barebackcity and take a few more out while I'm at it!"
That's the attitude of the person your defending, bitch! #glennbeck
@Amrita Rajan: Your point about McCain et al may be valid, but I'm not as much concerned about these people, including Dunn, but with Sullivan's larger point, which I do not believe is confined to far left groups. If you're saying Mao and other leftist tyrants don't get much softer treatment from liberals in general, I don't think you're confronting truth. My god, if you read the New York Times, you would think Castro is the legitimately elected president of Cuba. #glennbeck
@quotidian: See, this is where you lose me. What would you have the NYT do? Preface every article that mentions Cuba with a long list of Castro's crimes? Publish an article a day that calls for Castro's ouster to prove they're not dictator lovers? Why stop at Castro then? An article a day about every single dictator / shady person in charge of a country.
If you're reading the NYT rather than giving it cold looks at the newsstand, then you should already know by now how Castro got to be President and who's a dictator where and how bad.
However he got there and however badly he runs it, truth is Castro IS the President of Cuba and that's something even the govt of the US, left or right, has had to deal with. You can hate it as much as you want (and you can't possibly hate it as much as generations of Cubans) but you can't wish it away or protest it away. And it's not being soft on Castro to recognize his title - it's "confronting the truth". #glennbeck
@BettyCrocker: Actually Sullivan is largely supportive of health care reform. I'm not sure where you heard he opposes it, but you've got some bad information.
Also you sound like a raging homophobe. #glennbeck
@Rhayader: Kinda funny, 'cause I = gay, gay, gay. The homophobe here is Sullivan, who does not support governmental health care reform, nor a public option.
Far-right reactionaries aside, the left does sometimes have a laissez-faire double standard when it comes to tyrants of the left. Just as the right doesn't loudly condemn right wing despots (Hitler aside).
In my younger, college days I had many conversations with trust fund Marxists who spoke of Mao in admiring tones. If I pointed out the fact that he was one of the three worst mass murderers in history, and that that might discount whatever political philosophising he did, it was often met with patronizing condescension, like one was speaking to a small child. #glennbeck
@lionel-mandrake: It's not a laissez-faire double standard to note that Castro's revolution in Cuba was way, way different than Hitler's (democratic, btw) rise to power in Germany. The problem is that people on the right would have you believe that a dictator is a dictator is a dictator, when that's clearly not the case. It's one thing to "speak of Mao in admiring tones" (though I think this evidence is far more anecdotal than it should be if we're looking for the demonstration of a real trend), and entirely another to resist the reckless conflation of Mao and Hitler, or Castro and Hitler, or whatever bit of simplistic nonsense the right wants to offer up on any given day. The problem is that resisting this conflation is often written into the record by conservatives as complete, unquestioning approval, when it's not that at all. #glennbeck
@skt.smth: Anecdotal, yes, but my parents and many of their friends owned, and could quote voluminously from, Mao's Little Red Book back in the 60s. It was quite the little revolutionary accessory way back when.
I don't think I'm incorrect in saying that Mao has been, at various points, a hero of some on the left.
I think we can agree, however, that Glenn Beck is a complete and utter loony toons dipshit. #glennbeck
@lionel-mandrake: For some, there is an inherent heroics to revolution. And of course, the reason why revolutionaries--even those who've caused massive human destruction--aren't put on the same plane as Hitler, is because, as Americans, we understand that there is often necessity in revolutionary change, even if the revolution doesn't have ideal outcomes in all areas. Hitler's rise to power was not a revolution, but was instead, from its very inception, based on using social divisions, bigotry, and xenophobia as a means of winning over the public in a democratic manner. There's good reason to find this base perversion of democracy, at its foundation, far more horrific than we find an armed revolution. Again, it's closer to our own context, therefore our perception is far more sharp.
I'd be interested in knowing exactly how much of the Mao (and other commie dictator love) can be chalked up to simple romanticizing, as opposed to full-on belief in every ideal and every act of the regime in question. This is another thing that is routinely glossed over by right-wing nutcases, that I don't have to be behind Mao or Castro or whomever else entirely in order to find something valuable or stirring in what they did. And honestly, the distinctly American insistence that a single bad act nullifies every sensible thing a person might otherwise say or do has really begun to get old.
@skt.smth: But is Mao really "romanticized" outside of Asia? I know he is in China, Nepal, India, etc, but Che seems to be the only enduring commie who captured the popular imagination in the West. And even that couldn't make audiences sit through 4 hours of his biopic.
Maybe The Little Red Book really was the accessory to have in the 60s but The Motorcycle Diaries are it for my generation.
Plus, I don't think they romanticize the same way between East and West - Mao is always presented as a father figure while Che is the bad boy your father disapproves of.
Of course, I have no explanation for Hugo Chavez. Wtf is that about? Portly megalomaniac love? #glennbeck
@Amrita Rajan: Well, it has a lot to do with the fact that Chavez beat a corporatist oligarch in a democratic election. Seriously, anybody who thinks the average Venezuelan is better off with the alternative needs to do some research. #glennbeck
The difference between Mao and Hitler is like the difference between "cracker" and the n-word. Both were evil, but the ways in which we contextualize their varieties of evil in relation to our own history are entirely different.
Should the ways we contextualize Mao and Hitler be different? That's never really the point when we're talking about context. The fact is that they are different. Hitler hits far closer to home, and in a far more indelible way, than Mao ever will.
Anybody else find it telling how wingnuts are always off on a tangent about Mao, Stalin, Castro/Che? It's like they know that the political right will always, in some sense, own Hitler, and so they're trying to build up a stable of left-wing Hitlers to act as a counterbalance or some shit. #glennbeck
@Uncle_Billy_Slumming: @Amrita Rajan: I just realized what Uncle_Billy_Slumming was talking about, and, in case he is not kidding, here is a PSA: in British English corporate names take plural verbs.
Darn. I was hoping for one of those endless meme-threads.
Despite his strict diet, Andrew Sullivan can only handle so many diabetes. #glennbeck
10/28/09
10/28/09
Get on it Souza, you hack! #barackobama
10/28/09
10/28/09
I haven't seen one like this yet... #barackobama
10/28/09
@Lizawithazee: Or this. #barackobama
10/28/09
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10/28/09
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10/28/09
Are you younger than 40? You aren't getting Social Security! #barackobama
10/28/09
10/28/09
10/28/09
This is an example of a reflexive, if oblique, defensive response to those who dare question the sages of the Obama administration. Would it kill you just to say, you know, Sullivan has a point? #glennbeck
10/28/09
The reason he gets so much vitriol is that he's a big fat self-loathing hypocrite who would lick the taint of any righty who would grant him social acceptance. Of course, once he gets such access, he demands that they change to suit him, and then flees into the night when his beer goggles wear off. (And that's just a quote from his barebackcity ad!)
Note how his shameless sucking up to the neocon right and the Roman Catholic Church morphed into support for Obama and (correct) interpretation of the Bible on homosexuality for examples of this.
He thinks Dick Cheney is sexy. He's opposed to public health care, I guess because he can afford it, which is quite a gamble to take when you've got HIV.
Yuck. #glennbeck
10/28/09
10/28/09
So why is Mao's rancid evil not self-evident for a person like Dunn? Because she retains a double standard for far left totalitarianism over far right totalitarianism.
This is an assumption. Even if I were to agree, then how does that apply to other admirers of Mao like John McCain, George W. Bush, Barry Goldwater, etc? Or are only rightwingers smart enough to recognize that Mao is a pretty awful human being who accomplished things that nobody thought he ever could?
Now if Sullivan's saying that there are far left groups that sympathize with far left totalitarian regimes then yes, that's a self evident truth. Just as far right groups sympathize with far right totalitarian regimes. That's one of the things that makes them the far side.
If Dunn comes out tomorrow as a Mao apologist of some sort, then sure, I'll come right out and agree with Sullivan. I actually like Sullivan and his blog - but that doesn't mean I haven't seen him write plenty of silly things. #glennbeck
10/28/09
Especially since, for Sullivan, it's all about money. "Let 'em all die in a hospice, I can afford my life-extending drugs! And I'll get on barebackcity and take a few more out while I'm at it!"
That's the attitude of the person your defending, bitch! #glennbeck
10/28/09
10/28/09
If you're reading the NYT rather than giving it cold looks at the newsstand, then you should already know by now how Castro got to be President and who's a dictator where and how bad.
However he got there and however badly he runs it, truth is Castro IS the President of Cuba and that's something even the govt of the US, left or right, has had to deal with. You can hate it as much as you want (and you can't possibly hate it as much as generations of Cubans) but you can't wish it away or protest it away. And it's not being soft on Castro to recognize his title - it's "confronting the truth". #glennbeck
10/29/09
Also you sound like a raging homophobe. #glennbeck
10/29/09
Unless he changed his mind again. #glennbeck
10/28/09
In my younger, college days I had many conversations with trust fund Marxists who spoke of Mao in admiring tones. If I pointed out the fact that he was one of the three worst mass murderers in history, and that that might discount whatever political philosophising he did, it was often met with patronizing condescension, like one was speaking to a small child. #glennbeck
10/28/09
10/28/09
I don't think I'm incorrect in saying that Mao has been, at various points, a hero of some on the left.
I think we can agree, however, that Glenn Beck is a complete and utter loony toons dipshit. #glennbeck
10/28/09
I'd be interested in knowing exactly how much of the Mao (and other commie dictator love) can be chalked up to simple romanticizing, as opposed to full-on belief in every ideal and every act of the regime in question. This is another thing that is routinely glossed over by right-wing nutcases, that I don't have to be behind Mao or Castro or whomever else entirely in order to find something valuable or stirring in what they did. And honestly, the distinctly American insistence that a single bad act nullifies every sensible thing a person might otherwise say or do has really begun to get old.
10/28/09
Maybe The Little Red Book really was the accessory to have in the 60s but The Motorcycle Diaries are it for my generation.
Plus, I don't think they romanticize the same way between East and West - Mao is always presented as a father figure while Che is the bad boy your father disapproves of.
Of course, I have no explanation for Hugo Chavez. Wtf is that about? Portly megalomaniac love? #glennbeck
10/28/09
10/28/09
Should the ways we contextualize Mao and Hitler be different? That's never really the point when we're talking about context. The fact is that they are different. Hitler hits far closer to home, and in a far more indelible way, than Mao ever will.
Anybody else find it telling how wingnuts are always off on a tangent about Mao, Stalin, Castro/Che? It's like they know that the political right will always, in some sense, own Hitler, and so they're trying to build up a stable of left-wing Hitlers to act as a counterbalance or some shit. #glennbeck
10/28/09
[andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com] #glennbeck
10/28/09
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10/28/09
Darn. I was hoping for one of those endless meme-threads.
Despite his strict diet, Andrew Sullivan can only handle so many diabetes. #glennbeck
10/28/09
10/23/09
Not if pay czar Ken Feinberg has anything to do with it. #annieleibovitz
10/23/09
10/23/09
Yeah, and isn't he black and white? He would have fit right in.
It's a lovely image. #annieleibovitz