Agenda Bender gets his digs in at homophobic me.
He makes one good point:
"Atrios defended his repost of the witless scurrilities from Datalounge by suggesting it can't really be homophobia since it's homos making the jokes. Ignoring the timeless truth that insults repeated are owned in their entirety by those who repeat them"
Fair enough.
But the rest of it ignores the reality of Sullivan and his detractors.
First of all, the charges of hypocrisy against Sullivan have nothing to do with his being a "gay Uncle Tom." Sullivan is charged with hypocrisy because he's, well, a hypocrite. In his earlier incarnation, before he restyled himself as Joe McCarthy for the new century, part of his schtick was chastising participants in certain elements of gay (sub)culture, including but not limited to promiscuity. He's a hypocrite for embracing a lifestyle (and getting caught) that he had wasted no small amount of ink condemning. To claim this:
To hold Sullivan up as an exemplar of sexual hypocrisy is so thoroughly perverse given Sullivan's record of honesty about both his sexuality and his HIV status that only the truly clueless can indulge in it.
requires a rather selective reading of the collected works of Andy. I think many would take issue with the characterization of him having a 'record of honesty' on either his sexuality or his HIV status.
Which brings is to the next point. As Sully Watch points out, Sullivan is quite the bully. His blog is filled with incredibly mean-spirited attacks on a multitude of people. He's accused practically everyone to the left of Rush Limbaugh of being terrorist sympathizers, so it's silly to be despaired by the fact that people get a little mean-spirited back, whatever their motive. Andy has accused my "ilk" of wishing death on Americans and supporting the abuses of brutal oppressive regimes, quite seriously. Because of this, when someone hyperbolically accuses Andy of, for example, wishing death on all Africans due to his support for the pharmaceutical industry's drug pricing policies, I don't think he can cry fowl.
As for the accusation of there being too much of a focus on Andrew's sexuality - well, as far as I can remember I rarely focus on Andrew's sex life so this is also an unfair charge. As Pandagon has pointed out, Andy's sexuality is a part of his political persona, so it can't be claimed that it is completely off limits. More importantly, however, although the list of book titles in question does make an issue of his sexuality, it was a direct response to Sullivan's own focus on someone's sex life. Turnabout is fair play, no? I have said a number of times that if Sullivan hadn't just written a column about hypothetical future Clinton sex scandals, I probably would've been on the side of those who thought that the whole "bareback" scandal was nothing more than malicious gossip. But, his own focus on the sex life of others - both within the gay community and of course his pathological obsession with Clinton's sex life - fairly leaves him open to the charge of hypocrisy. The protestations of Joan Walsh not withstanding, this is something from which moralizing pundits should not be exempt.
As for what was perhaps the "worst" book title that Agenda Bender highlights (leaving aside the silly misspelling issue - it's a typo!) :
Homosexuals are HIV spreading perverts, and I'm living proof. By Andy Sullivan
This is cruel, no doubt, but it is clearly a (very harsh) parody of Andy's writings and worldview, as described best by SullyWatch here:
"We’re all making fun of him because, after writing a book or two about the commendable position that marriage and monogamous relationships were what gays should aspire to have, and looking scornfully upon the culture of promiscuity, he turned out to be indulging in it somewhat less than privately (his protestations to the contrary).
Cruel? Sure. But so is Andy.
