Wednesday IBR Recap

[daddytodd]

A dozen early IBR arrivals wound up eating at a Chinese place a couple blocks from the hotel last night; Carousel Gourmet, I believe it was called. It was cheap, and not bad. Oh, and did I mention it was cheap?

Sat in the lobby before dinner and talked at length with Stevo Harris of "A Bear's Life" magazine. He told me about his interview with Andrew Sullivan, which will be in the next issue (out in a couple weeks.) He said Sullivan was genuinely contrite about having carried water for the Bush Regime, and honestly sorry... that Sullivan became quite emotional talking about it. I asked if Sullivan seemed sincere, or if he was just doing bullshit damage control to salvage a wrecked reputation with the LGBT community. Stevo believes Sullivan to be sincere in his regrets. I'm not yet convinced; I'd need to ask Andrew my own set of questions before I believed his repentance, but I did start to get a sense of Sullivan as a man, and not as PURE EVIL, which is, quite frankly, how I have perceived him since 1999 or so, when I first became aware of him.

So I said to Stevo, "Please, don't  humanize Andrew Sullivan! I don't want my villains humanized. I don't want to know that Hannibal Lecter is just a misunderstood little boy, or that Darth Vader was an adorable moppet!" But alas, I fear I might have to approach Sullivan as a flawed (deeply flawed, from my perspective) human being, and not as the essence of quisling backstabber, willing to sacrifice his LGBT brothers and sisters for a tiny shred of political glory and financial gain.

Hmmm, not sure I'm ready to abandon that last bit. It's gonna take some time before I can see Andrew Sullivan as anything but  "a deeply flawed, though human, quisling backstabber willing to sacrifice his LGBT brothers and sisters for a tiny shred of political glory and financial gain." Yeah, that works!

I hadn't intended to talk so much about politics.

So, after dinner, we went over to the Lone Star for a couple hours. It was slow at first, but got busier by 11pm or so. John was having a great time, getting all kinds of attention from handsome daddies and bears. Yay John!

Comments

[tyreseus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hate when my real life villains turn out to be people, too. Curse you, Larry Miller! At least there's no danger of Karl Rove, Condie Rice or Ann Coulter turning out to be human.

[tyreseus.livejournal.com]

p.s. It's kind of funny that we're swapping towns for the weekend.

[bluebear2.livejournal.com]

Hey, why wouldn't they be human? It's a real shame that Hollywood has made us think that things that are bad are only done by people who are obviously evil when in fact we're all capable of doing things that harm others. We can even do harmful things to others while all the while believing that we are doing something good for them.

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

Sullivan wasn't on my radar screen until '03 or so, while most of what got people so upset seemed to have been written before that.

His writings before the '04 election did rile me up a good bit, and he does strike me as overly credulous. But more than any annoyance at him, I've been disturbed by the way he's casually bludgeoned, on an ongoing basis, in discussions entirely unrelated to him or his views. Nobody deserves that treatment for his opinions, however misguided or even obnoxious they may be. It's left me with the impression that there really is a gay political mafia, bent on eternal vengeance against anyone who questions commonly-held values or makes an error in judgment.

And that has left me feeling much less safe discussing politics in general, and has done more than any single thing to undermine the sense of political allegiance I have (had?) with the gay community. The level of viciousness just astounds me, and I'm not going to have anything to do with that, period.

[daddytodd.livejournal.com]

Ann Coulter is a self-loathing drag queen. EVERYBODY knows it!

[daddytodd.livejournal.com]

Well, I was using some hyperbole.

In fact, in certain ways Sullivan is far more evil than Lecter and Vader, for they are fictional characters who haven't actually caused anyone's death. Sullivan, in helping package and sell Bush's phony war, is a direct contributor to the deaths of over 3000 US troops, and who know haw many thousand Iraqis.

[daddytodd.livejournal.com]

does my post constitute one of those casual bludgeonings? Cause I think it's precisely because of his views, his writings and opinions, that he deserves a metaphorical bludgeoning. This isn't about his fashion sense or whether or not he loves his mommy; this is about his political views.

He blindly did the bidding of a regime that cravenly used LGBT equality as a wedge issue to energize their base. That alone, in my humble opinion, should deprive them of ANY support from LGBT people. I honestly can't understand how a single gay person could've voted for Bush in 2004. Yet apparently 1 on 4 of us did. That I find unfathomable. It's like a Jew voting for Hitler. And Sullivan provided many of them with a rationale that allowed them to vote for a regime dedicated to their annihilation.

So until Sullivan can make me believe that "Gay Republican" isn't the moral equivalent of "Jewish Nazi," I will continue to think him an evil man.

[daddytodd.livejournal.com]

Enjoy SLC! I wanna talk to you some time about Utah Pride stuff. Can I call you? Not this weekend, but maybe next week?

Reality check—Stevo has no grounds for issuing assessments of sincerity

[danthered.livejournal.com]

Stevo believes Sullivan to be sincere

Uh...

...yeah.

This puts me in mind of the rare and elusive Clangbird, which flies around and around in concentric circles of ever-smaller radius until it flies up its own ass with a resounding "Clang!".

That would be the same Stevo who puts "I'm a down-to-earth guy" in his profile and yet behaves as he behaved at Fiesta...right?

As for Mr. Sullivan's precious little crocodile-tears schtick, I find it very convenient that he claims to be sorry now there's nothing that can be done about it.

[danthered.livejournal.com]

Nobody deserves that treatment for his opinions

Hold yer horses, Tony. I believe you are setting up a bit of a strawman in couching this as a simple matter of freedom to hold whatever opinion one will. In fact, Mr. Sullivan actively works to promulgate his views under a representational banner many gay people do not willingly cede to him. That he does so for personal gain and aggrandisement at the expense of others makes it more odious, but is a secondary point. The main point, as I see it, is that Sullivan is well on the other side of the line between thinking whatever one will, and acting upon those thoughts.

If that argument holds no water for you, try this one: For better and/or worse, public figures' views—even their private ones—are routinely scrutinised, critiqued and lambasted in public. Sullivan has deliberately set himself up as a public figure, and regularly makes especial effort to make his views very public. As a direct result, he cannot reasonably expect to hold views that hurt others and not be blasted for it by a lot of people on a regular basis. It simply goes with the territory.

[danthered.livejournal.com]

because of his views, his writings and opinions, that he deserves a metaphorical bludgeoning. This isn't about his fashion sense or whether or not he loves his mommy; this is about his political views.

Yes. His very public, very harmful political views. Exactly.

So until Sullivan can make me believe that "Gay Republican" isn't the moral equivalent of "Jewish Nazi," I will continue to think him an evil man.

Amen. *clink*

Re: Reality check—Stevo has no grounds for issuing assessments of sincerity

[daddytodd.livejournal.com]

Regarding Sullivan: He claims he's sorry now at the exact moment it might buy him a few more picoseconds of the media spotlight.

Regarding Stevo: We need to talk. I'll call you after the weekend, OK?

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

Your post was not casual; you are actually thinking about the issue rather than reacting or getting on a bandwagon. I would be pleased if others were as deliberate and thoughtful.

I thought about what you wrote for a while, and I guess what doesn't work for me is the very notion of evil itself. The category simply makes no sense to me, viscerally or intellectually. I see politics as an ecosystem, full of pathologies that are unremarkable simply because they are so common.

I also don't think that Sullivan has done anything "blindly". He made the deliberate decision that the policies Bush promised in '00 were more important than his tactical games with the gay community. And that deliberateness, perhaps, is what made it so galling to so many gay people. I've developed enough of an understanding of gay Republicans that this does not particularly alarm me; although this particular choice turned out especially badly, I can't call the principles behind it inherently wrong.

There was a definitely time when I felt differently, and you have me wondering what has changed. I suppose that with homophobia facing a demographic dead-end, the Xtian right on the edge of self-destruction, and greater self-assurance and personal comfort with the homophobes themselves, it's a lot easier to ignore the Republican duplicity on this issue.

Re: Reality check—Stevo has no grounds for issuing assessments of sincerity

[danthered.livejournal.com]

Surely! I'll be glad to talk with you after IBR. Do you have my Canadian phone number?

I agree with you 100% on what Sullivan's doing.

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

For better and/or worse, public figures' views—even their private ones—are routinely scrutinised, critiqued and lambasted in public.

Oh, I fully support that kind of thing. The more the merrier. What I don't like to see is to have someone used as a human pinata, subject to unexplained and gleeful whacking for no obvious purpose.

I would be curious to know how you think his views hurt others.

[danthered.livejournal.com]

Welp, I must not be seeing or hearing the piñata party. Most of the criticisms I've seen of Sullivan have been solidly based in stuff he actually said and did.

I am sure your curiosity regarding my thoughts is genuine, but it is a discussion I would rather not have right now, sorry.

Re: Reality check—Stevo has no grounds for issuing assessments of sincerity

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

Actually, I also think Sullivan is sincere. I think he is. I've given this question some thought, and I think I'm a reasonably good judge of character, even from a blog. And that is my best guess.

But in so saying, I find myself thinking more carefully than ought to be necessary about exactly what "sincere" means. He tries. I think some of the characterizations offered in comments to my recent post are right on the mark, and they explain a lot.

[daddytodd.livejournal.com]

"I suppose that with homophobia facing a demographic dead-end..."

Come to Utah if you would care to be disabused of this notion post-haste. That's not the reality of "Flyover Country."

[daddytodd.livejournal.com]

So, you believe that Sullivan KNEW that the rationale for war in Iraq was completely false? Or that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfield would do an appallingly inept job prosecuting the war?

That's the "blindness" that I'm referring to; the willful acceptance of clearly fraudulent evidence of Saddams's WMDs (or whatever the rationale du jour) and Bush/Cheney competence in order to get the war underway.

The alternative -- that Sullivan KNEW it was all cooked evidence, but went along with it for political expedience -- paints a far worse portrait of Sullivan's depravity than even I care to ascribe to him.

[that-dang-otter.livejournal.com]

I think that Sullivan had reservations about the war but genuinely believed that it was a good idea based on what he thought was reasonable evidence. Colin Powell's presentation to the UN had a lot of credibility at the time.

I remember it like yesterday, and had a serious discussion with my partner about what he said. My gut reaction was, Powell is a reasonable guy and if he's laying it out like that, it's probably true. It took about a week for the "but wait a minute..." thoughts to become more apparent. Sullivan had a much closer view, but from what I think I understand of this administration, I can't call that mistake the result of blindness.

I was myself an agnostic. I found the arguments in favor of war significant, but not compelling enough to cast a vote in support of it. If Sullivan was 70% in favor of the war, I was only 35% in favor. But I can easily imagine where an extra 35% might have come from.

I also wonder if my attitude towards him is affected by having never seen him on television.

[bendawg.livejournal.com]

I am very jealous. Bleh.

My next-door neighbor, ckluv76 is apparently getting to go courtesy of david_seavers.

If you have any problems, discretely figure out how to reach Jonathan/kleme at the "central San Francisco reservations center" - hopefully he'll really get to visit sometime.