ANDREW SULLIVAN - WITCHFINDER GENERAL...

So I came across this piece yesterday, in which the saga of Sarah Palin becomes the theatre of the absurd. Apparently Sullivan sent two emails to the McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb, in order to enquire if Trig, Palin’s son, is her biological offspring!

It was a perfectly proper query to make in the circumstances, he claims, and one is to read no sinister connotations into it. A thought which might have been spared the perfidy of utterance! Not surprisingly, then, that quest was ignored. Not only that, but both his emails, equally unsurprisingly, found their way into the Washington Post. And here is injured righteousness:

“I asked a question in private. But it has now been made public by Goldfarb and Kurtz...”

Well, if you asked the question “in private,” the answer lies on the
tip of my tongue: Bollocks! No one promotes this private aspect of the
electioneering campaign more publicly than yours truly:

"I'm very sorry to say, it's come to this: can you confirm on the
record that Trig Palin is Sarah Palin's biological son? . . . Since this is a
crazy idea, it should be easy for you or someone to let me know, the most
popular one-man political blog site in the world, what the truth is."

Some people might say that a gift for impudence is the sign of a
malicious personality. In his case it is an example of the spectacular, if
self-defeating, callousness he can display for the feelings and emotions of
others. For worse is to come:

“They won't. They cannot take the time to confirm on the record that
Trig is Sarah's biological son, but they will try to smear the person asking.
What does that tell you?”

Well, what it tells me, Sir - and I may not be alone in this - is that the journalist is never so disingenuous as when he is being “ingenuous”. Though your reasoning is pervers, the facts are not in dispute. The slinger of mud feels maligned when it ends up on his face.

The sheer nerve of it!

I have never claimed, of course, that I first met Andrew Sullivan in
October 1999, when he called upon me in Washington, unannounced, at the Library
of Congress where I worked as the director of research. Or that it was an
eye-opener for me (and would have been for most of the Washington hacks with
whom he then associated). In fact, I have gone to enormous lengths never to say
that. All I will say is that you cannot malign a political party on the basis of
prejudice alone. His record speaks for itself - duly taking cognisance of the
fact that Sarah Palin appears to have no gay friends.:

“Finding these individuals has been difficult.“

Obviously, a man's judgement can change according to whether his spouse
is a man or a woman. A point not recognized in law, but surely compelling in the
emotional loyalties of this particular individual. For Andrew, as we all know,
is married to a male. So tell me, Andrew, if none of my friends are French, does
that make me a Francophobe?

Sarah Palin, he then points out, has been asking God to protect her
from witchcraft - a skill he practises with prolific zeal. Well, Andrew, under
the circumstances, like the good people of Salem in the year of
sixteen-hundred-ninety-two, that is precisely what I would do...


Dreamy