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The Sixties Redux with Andrew Sullivan
America’s best known conservative Catholic gay journalist discovers, as though no one had ever gone around this carousel before, the Sixties, in the person of—you got it—that fun-loving, guitar-playing man of the people, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Calling for a “cultural revolution” against the Republican party, whom he describes as “uptight … joyless, paranoid scolds,” Andrew Sullivan argues that Arnold’s election “would do an enormous amount” (here comes the shade of every Sixties prophet) “to ameliorate the disconnect between culture and politics in this country.” A Schwarzenegger win, Sullivan continues (echoing Norman Mailer’s touting of John Kennedy in the 1960 election), would be “a sign of a tectonic plate shifting in the culture.” He concludes: “I hope [Arnold] wins—not least to warm up the frigid soul of the Republican party.” What’s next for Sullivan, one wonders? Norman O. Brown and Love’s Body? How about The Politics of Experience?
None of this should be a surprise. Given that Sullivan’s central political concern is the liberation and recognition of homosexuality, once he realized to his dismay (as if there was any excuse for not knowing it from the beginning) that many conservatives actually disapprove of homosexuality, it was inevitable that the need to break down people’s “uptightness” would become his organizing rhetorical trope. And so, perhaps without even realizing it, he has started speaking in the “revolutionary” though hackneyed phrases of the Sixties. Back to the Future! Comments
Sullivan is fundamentally dishonest. His whole purpose in adopting “conservative” positions at all is to find Hegelian Mambo dance partners on homosexuality. Touche, Matt. Sullivan in a nutshell. HRS Posted by: Howard Sutherland on October 7, 2003 9:38 AMIt is a testament to the effectiveness of the “Cha! Cha! Cha!” that Sullivan can do it so overtly and obviously without being completely discredited. Obviously lots of ostensible conservatives want to dance. Posted by: Matt on October 7, 2003 9:52 AMStress on ostensible. HRS Posted by: Howard Sutherland on October 7, 2003 9:55 AMTo be fair to Sullivan, I must admit there is a smidgeon of truth in his criticisms of some Republicans as excessively rigid. For example, I feel that Alan Keyes’s and Joseph Farah’s call for Arnold’s defeat based on the groping charges is wrong, not because the behavior is not a legitimate issue in itself among conservatives and Republicans (the Dems of course have NO standing to raise this issue at all given their record on Clinton), but because those charges have been made as part of a pure smear to kill Arnold’s candidacy at the last minute, without him having time to respond or for the truth of the charges to emerge. Though I don’t support Arnold, that misuse of the media by the left was infinitely more dangerous to our system than the election of a candidate who in past years as an actor and body builder had grabbed women by the breast; and conservatives should have been attacking the leftist media over their “banana republic” conduct instead of turning against Arnold over the groping business. At lucianne.com, there was much anger at McClintock over his statement that Arnold should withdraw from the race if the groping charges were true. Many who said they had liked McClintock before, now said they would never vote for him. Here’s the comment that I posted there: If these revelations about Arnold had come out several weeks ago, when there was time to sift through them and tell the true from the false and so on, then McClintock’s statement wouldn’t have been so outrageous. But these charges in the L.A Times were not made in any responsible way; they were a pure “hit job” against Arnold on the weekend before the election, with no time to discuss them and put them in perspective. Their only purpose was to take the election from Arnold at the last second. For McClintock to legitimize this brutal attack by the vicious left shows incredibly bad judgment on his part and throws into question his suitability as a leader. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on October 7, 2003 11:46 AMSullivan makes lots of valid points. His apparent purpose in doing so is to collect Mambo partners on the issue of homosexuality. So the right thing to do with Sullivan is the same as the right thing to do with neocons: acknowledge the valid points as valid, and don’t be fooled for a minute about where they want them to take us. Keyes’ article was really a catalog of Arnold’s numerous liberal positions ranging from abortion to gun control. His chief complaint was against the alleged conservatives who want to give the actor a free pass on the groping charges which of course leaves them with no basis for having attacked Bill Clinton apart from blind partisanship. Keyes seemed to be instinctively resisting the Hagelian mambo exemplified by Republicans like Schwarzenegger. No real mention of the big unmentionable (immigration) though. Posted by: Carl on October 7, 2003 12:52 PMCarl, Alan Keyes, and other moral conservatives ignore the fact that there’s some history here, that the rules have been changed. The liberals, who control the ground rules for public discourse, established that this was not legitmate grounds for criticizing a public official. Second, substantively, the cases are entirely different. Arnold’s behavior was mostly decades ago as a body builder and actor, he was not a public official, there was no intimidation, no coercion, no use of state troopers, no bringing a young woman into a gubernatorial hotel suite and dropping his pants, no sodomistic use of a 21 year old secertary in the office of the president, no rape in a Little Rock hotel room followed by “put ice on that.” Arnold’s behavior seems more that of a boisterous boy. A lady friend tells me she doubts whether any women were really traumatized by his conduct. But the most important thing is that to jump on Arnold for this NOW is to legitimize the “hit-job” journalism practiced by the L.A. Times. Remember, they didn’t bring out this story to inform the public. They brought out this story in order to kill Arnold’s election at the last minute. They even informed the Davis campaign when the story would be coming out, so that Davis would be ready with his own attacks on Arnold last Thursday. To let the left get away with this is to let them have a potent weapon that they can use at any time to destroy their political enemies, namely us, even as they remain immune to the same charges. As I said, this political misuse of the media is far more dangerous to our political system than a governor who when he was an actor playfully grabbed women on a movie set. For the facts of what the L.A. Times did, see this incredible story from the L.A. Weekly: http://www.laweekly.com/ink/03/46/news-bradley17.php Posted by: Lawrence Auster on October 7, 2003 1:19 PMAnd this is to say nothing of the way the L.A. Times has apparently overlooked the misbehavior of Gov. Davis, as charged in this WND article, “Columnist: Davis attacked female workers.” http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34946 Posted by: Joel LeFevre on October 7, 2003 1:48 PMI’ve expanded my above comment into a new article (and sent it to everyone in my address book): http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/archives/001795.html Posted by: Lawrence Auster on October 7, 2003 2:14 PMSullivan favors Schwarzenegger because Arnold is the candidate Andrew most wants to be groped by. Posted by: Steve Sailer on October 7, 2003 9:53 PMI guess he’ll be sashaying off to Sacramento for a gubernatorial audience soon, then. HRS Posted by: Howard Sutherland on October 8, 2003 9:54 AM |