I’ve written before about Andrew Sullivan’s post-Obama retreat into the realm of conservative fan fiction, and appearing on Friday night’s Real Time with Bill Maher he went right back to the well of invoking caricatures of The Left® and The Democrats® and The Mainstream Media® in order to Both Sides The Shit Out Of the most recent Republican political atrocity.
What he basically did was go on a tirade about how badly The Democrats and The Mainstream Media have been behaving and what they’ve been “saying” over the last couple of weeks in connection with the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation, the allegations against him by Christine Blasey Ford and others, and his behavior during the so-called “hearing” on that subject matter that took place on September 27.
As is always the case when conservatives like Sullivan and fans of the GOP (which, it should be pointed out, he is not) talk about what The Left and The Democrats and The Mainstream Media Are Saying, what he’s actually describing is what he and the conservative media imagine the left and the Democrats and the mainstream media must be saying because they are, after all, The Left and The Democrats and The Mainstream Media. The formula remains: 2% fact - 0% context + 98% wishful thinking.
This time, Soledad O’Brien was there to call BS on Andrew’s BS, and did so very well, so of course he got rather testy, his aversion to being challenged exceeded only by his overwhelming need to Both Sides The Shit Out Of everything and, like all Both Siderists and conservative Johnny-come-latelys, congratulate himself for being neutral and independent and Above It All.
Here’s a partial transcript from the main show:
SULLIVAN: [P]olling suggests that part of the reason for this moving up of Republicans, is women in the Republican Party responding to the way the Democrats treated Brett Kavanaugh.
…
A lot of people looked at this process, and they didn’t say they were creating a person offended as a nice father. He seemed to be genuinely upset. Wouldn’t you be genuinely upset, if something you really didn’t believe happened was suddenly, you were suddenly accused? Would you not be genuinely upset, if…
O’BRIEN: And, and…
SULLIVAN: Let me finish, let me finish… if the media accused you of having gang rapes? Of reporters going out asking anybody in his high school, and his college, have you got any dirt on this guy?
O’BRIEN: [crosstalk] It was a job interview. It was a job interview.
SULLIVAN: Do you not have any queasiness about this?
That was for starters. After Maher chimed in with some stuff about how Social Justice Warriors can be crazy (which they can, but which I think Maher exaggerates almost as much as conservatives do) and are now a threat to everyone’s privacy, Sullivan explains What Actually Happened Here™:
Look, what happened is that the Democrats, and I have to say the mainstream media, made this not about Brett Kavanaugh, but about all white men. And how all white men are essentially wanna-be rapists, how all white men are the problem, the way that ordinary regular people…
O’BRIEN: I feel so sorry for you.
SULLIVAN: Why do you feel sorry for me?
O’BRIEN: Because you’re a victim. Clearly, you’re a victim.
SULLIVAN: I’m not.
O’BRIEN: You are. You’re…
SULLIVAN: I’m saying to take one individual, and use that individual to say all white men are this, which was the rhetoric you could hear…
O’BRIEN: No one said … actually, that’s just not true.
SULLIVAN: Absolutely everyone said it.
O’BRIEN: That’s absolute … First of all, everyone did not say it. That is absolutely untrue.
MAHER: Yeah, come on, Andrew…
SULLIVAN: A wave of coverage about how this just shows…
O’BRIEN: Oh, please...
SULLIVAN: ...everything about white male privilege. That’s what’s on trial.
O’BRIEN: Aww, so sad for you; you’re breaking my heart. Absolutely not. That is absolutely untrue. And I don’t think…
SULLIVAN: You don’t think people said that?
O’BRIEN: Your message is that somehow white men are aggrieved here in America…
SULLIVAN: No.
O’BRIEN: It’s bullshit. It’s just not true.
SULLIVAN: I’m saying that when you generalize…
O’BRIEN: It’s not true.
SULLIVAN: I’m not saying that. … I’m saying that when you make a negative generalization…
O’BRIEN: Brett…
SULLIVAN: Let me finish! For goodness’ sake.
O’BRIEN: Carry on.
SULLIVAN: When you take one individual, and you accuse an entire group of people…
O’BRIEN: Which wasn’t done.
SULLIVAN: [pause; annoyed eye-roll]
O’BRIEN: Which wasn’t done. Carry on.
SULLIVAN: ...because of their gender, and because of their…
O’BRIEN: It wasn’t done.
MAHER: Yeah, Andrew…
O’BRIEN: It wasn’t done!
SULLIVAN: Please!
O’BRIEN: It wasn’t done! That’s not true!
Sullivan picks up on this theme a few minutes later, after O’Brien distinguishes a trial from a job interview:
SULLIVAN: It’s not a trial, but there is a culture here in which you give people a fair chance, and I think people felt there was an onslaught against this guy and they reacted defensively, understandably. And look, when you do talk about white men in general, I’m not saying white men don’t have a lot to answer for, I’m saying when you generalize that way, you’re telling every white man in the country you don’t want their vote. You’re telling every one of them, you’re making them feel shitty about who they are.
O’BRIEN: Oh, please.
More, from later in the show; Maher notes that the known facts about what happened to Dr. Ford “allow[] for the possibility that this wasn’t an intended rape”:
O’BRIEN: Absolutely, which is why you have an investigation. An actual investigation.
MAHER: Right. Again, no one arguing with that.
SULLIVAN: No one argued with it. But accusations that he was involved in gang rapes, that kind of stuff then became absolutely open court for anybody to make any accusation.
O’BRIEN: It didn’t at all. It didn’t. None of that happened. I’m sorry. He faced Senators. That’s ridiculous. It’s absurd.
What Sullivan is describing throughout these exchanges is not what any actual Democrats or any actual mainstream-media figures actually said, but what conservatives who don’t read, listen or pay attention to what Democrats or the mainstream media actually say would like to believe they were “saying.” Which in turn is what Republicans and the conservative media tell that audience about what the Democrats and the Mainstream Media “Are Saying.”
I hope that made sense.
The best that can be said about Sullivan’s argument is that he’s probably attributing to The Democrats and The Mainstream Media things that he or other conservatives might have found (or imagine finding) on random blogs or comment threads on the Internet. No one is denying that there are people out there — yes, on Both Sides® — who exaggerate and overstate and use hyperbole and inductive reasoning and confirmation bias to validate their own opinions. But as I’ve written before, only Democrats are held accountable politically and punished electorally for the rhetorical excesses of their anonymous, fringe constituencies.
“[P]eople felt there was an onslaught against this guy” not because there was an onslaught against this guy, but because they were either being told to feel, wished to believe, or both, that there was an “onslaught against this guy” (and against “all white men”), or decided that there must be an “onslaught against this guy” because that’s what The Democrats and The Mainstream Media would be expected to do (because, of course, if the shoe were on the other foot….) And that brings us to the most supreme irony of all, toward the end of the show:
SULLIVAN: Nobody I saw in mainstream media, for a second, thought Kavanaugh could be innocent. Just, for a second. In fact they were eager to prove not only that he was guilty, but that everything he represented needed to be destroyed.
Because Sullivan, like so many of his cohort, totally allowed for the possibility that Kavanaugh could be guilty, that The Left, The Democrats and The Mainstream Media were acting in good faith during this process, and/or opposed Kavanaugh’s confirmation for any good and valid reason(s). As loath as I am to put it that passive-aggressive way, the double standard still, and always, infuriates me.
(For the record, during this process I watched The Rachel Maddow Show on several occasions and heard her explicitly acknowledge, more than once, out loud, that Kavanaugh might well be innocent. So either Sullivan doesn’t watch that show, doesn’t consider Maddow or MSNBC to be part of “the mainstream media,” has a very selective memory, or a very exacting standard as to what language expresses or conveys a “thought [that] Kavanaugh could be innocent”.)
This morning I watched the Overtime segment, when Sullivan said this about the above exchanges which buttons things up rather nicely:
SULLIVAN: We have to talk to each other … and when I was saying earlier, and Soledad, you thought it was absurd, I think, when I look at the media a certain way because I’m still basically right of center, I see and hear things that you may not see and hear. And when I say that I’m hearing those things, it’s useful for you to say, “I hear you,” as opposed to, “It’s absurd, it didn’t happen.”
The only thing I’m more sick of hearing about than how Republican constituencies “feel attacked” by The Left, The Democrats and The Mainstream Media and that’s why they vote for creeps, traitors and monsters, is this idea that calling BS on BS is an “attack” and that we need to stop calling BS on their BS so conservative constituencies won’t “feel attacked” and won’t make irrational political choices like nominating and electing a self-evidently unqualified, vulgar, ignorant, immature, narcissistic, demented racist gangster to the Presidency of the United States.
And what an interesting admission: “I look at the media a certain way because I’m still basically right of center,” therefore “I see and hear things that you may not see and hear.” If that’s not an admission that my facts-minus-context-plus-wishful-thinking hypothesis is entirely correct, I don’t know what is.