Tuesday, October 15, 2002

Howler takes a jab at Crazy Andy.


SMEAR BOY: We occasionally think we’ve seen it all from Andrew Sullivan, our nastiest current smear boy. But Sullivan outdid his own ugly precedents in yesterday’s work on his website. First, he craftily made it sound like Al Gore is anti-Semitic. Then he slimed treasured target Robert Fisk in this nasty, moronic presentation:

SULLIVAN (10/14/02):
THE TERROR SPIN: If you were the p.r. spokesman for al Qaeda, what would you have to say about the Bali massacre? I think you’d say it was payback for Australians’ support for President Bush’s war on terror. Funny, that’s just what Robert Fisk has just written. Fisk goes on to warn the Brits that they’re next, among others, if they don’t stop backing Bush…
Try to follow Smear Boy’s “logic.” According to Smear Boy, if you asked al Qaeda, they would say that the Bali attacks were retribution aimed at Australia. If Smear Boy is right in that judgment, then Fisk is simply making an accurate statement when he presents the same point. But Smear Boy is skillful at slimy attacks; in this case, he makes it sound like Fisk is defending these attacks. Of course, if you actually link to the Fisk piece, you will find him, in his very first sentence, describing the Bali attacks as a “crime against humanity.” And you will also find Fisk, in his very first sentence, referring to “the atrocities of September 11.”

[...]
This slimy man shows no sign of stopping—all who stand in his way must be smeared. Andrew Sullivan keeps emerging as one of the nastiest characters in our public discourse. There’s nothing so stupid that Smear Boy won’t say it; no insinuation so slimy he won’t toss it out. It’s amazing to think that so ugly a man was editor of one of our great publications. Socrates warned about people like this. Why, oh why, does the insider press corps keep taking this small man so seriously?