Dust in the Light points out the inevitable dishonesty in the Republican drag queen’s latest hissy fit: In short, Sullivan is now tarring the Cornerites with the ridiculous equivalence that he, himself, introduced to the issue.
What else is new? Andrew Sullivan chose to render himself irrelevant some time ago, when he wrote that a right to privacy trumps conflict of interest when it comes to ethical journalism. Well, isn’t that interesting! Once my new company rolls out, I’ll be sure to write glowing reviews of it without telling anyone to whom it belongs and be comfortable in the knowledge that Mr. Sullivan considers me a paragon of journalistic ethics. After all, what’s a few bucks compared to your life? I’m ethical, you’re ethical, we’re all ethical relativists now.
On April 22, 2002, I wrote: [Sullivan], like Parkinsons’ victim Michael Kinsley, has taken the astounding position that suffering from a life-threatening illness grants him the right to argue for political action of direct and vital benefit to him without considering it evidence of bias or a conflict of interest. He even writes of Kinsley: “the right to privacy – especially about medical matters – would have and should have trumped that conflict of interest as a factor in ethical journalism.”
I’ve paid zero attention to Mr. Sullivan ever since. He’s a bright guy and not completely clueless, but I simply have too much contempt for his shameless intellectual dishonesty. And since that time, various blogosphere discussions of his wild Clintonian spinning on queer nuptuals would seem to indicate that I was quite right to tune him out. Everyone is wrong, from time to time, but to throw logic and truth out the window every time it violates your personal inclinations is just gauche.