Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Because Andrew Sullivan Takes This Sh-t Seriously

Over on the Atlantic blogging pages, Andrew Sullivan let most of the day slip by before posting any kind of update or report. Usually he and his mini-staff of two overworked and underpaid interns update practically every hour to the delight of millions (no, I'm not kidding, Sullivan's one the biggest reads on the 'Net). But Nov. 18th, there was dead silence for most of the day...

He finally posted an apology of sorts.

It seems he and his crew are poring over every word and every sentence in Sarah Palin's 'auto'-biography. Sullivan's seriously examining everything Palin's got on paper now - as a kind of official record - as a means of uncovering lapses (well that would be the more polite term for lying) in her political narrative.

He's caught some flack about this by now, you might have heard about it. He's a bit... obsessive-compulsive with Palin ever since she popped up on the national scene as McCain's VP pick. Like me, and a lot of other Americans, we hadn't really heard much about her. Her reputation at the time was that she was a 'reformer' who stood up to the Alaskan party machines... It wasn't until Sullivan and others started examining that reputation and finding out it was overblown - Palin's challenges to the local GOP elite was because they wouldn't give her the shiny pretty jobs she hoped for - that Sullivan started arguing against what he saw as her lying about her creditials, her background, her politics, her family... even the events surrounding the birth of her baby Trig.

Palin's defenders of course dismiss Sullivan as a hack... and even Sully's readers take him to task from time to time when his arguments cross the line into obsessive crazy talk. But Sullivan was one of the earliest to turn against her pick as Veep... and the disasters she visited on McCain's campaign - especially her horrific interviews that successively showed her getting WORSE handling them - proved him and the other Palin critics absolutely right.

And so, ever since then Sullivan has been keeping a harsh critical eye on Palin. Especially as Palin is promoting herself for an obvious attempt at the Presidency herself in 2012. This biography of hers (I can't call it an autobiography: she clearly has a ghost writer on it, and there's so sign of Palin having any literary skills) is a clear chance for Sullivan to dig as deep as he can without outright forcing her to sit with him on a one-on-one interview.

And so... we wait.

It's not like there was a lot else going on in the political world for Sully to comment upon, other than Sen. Sessions' attempt at a filibuster getting squashed... and Obama's trip to China and Japan... and Obama bowing to the Japanese Emperor and giving the wingnuts back home another excuse to have a collective conniption over a PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE ACT OF PROTOCOL YOU BABIES. Anywho.

At least I'm doing well with NaNoWriMo...

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