Dave Weigel is guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan this week and yesterday he used one of his posts to address the criticism he’d received from some for doing so:
From my e-mail I gather Sullivan critics are angry about the other Palin stories he’s posted. I don’t see a huge difference between how he’s covered the odder Palin rumors this and how the rest of the media has covered them. I do see a difference on Trig, and I do think that he’s made a huge mistake by indulging this. Politicians suffer when they’re called out on things they’ve done. They thrive when they’re called out for things they haven’t done, for stories they can call “conspiracy theories,” and for stories they can file under “politics of personal destruction.” Obsessing over Trig, as much as it annoys the Palins — and I see why it does — is one of the best ways of propping her up. It gives her fan base proof that its hero is constantly battling unfair personal attacks that the media won’t debunk. It convinces them that critics focus on this nonsense because they’ve got nothing else to criticize Palin about. She has taken advantage of this impression.
The Trig obsession has also, I’m sad to say, damaged Andrew Sullivan’s reputation. I’m stunned by the anger he’s generating not just among random Tweeters but among people who’ve been online for years, part of the rough-and-tumble of blogging. They know that 99% of what Sullivan writes is challenging, smart, and addictive, and that he’s very capable of honing in on bigger political and philosophical debates. People want him to take a deep breath and stop obsessing over this conspiracy theory. Count me among those people.
Yea, that about sums up how I feel. Sullivan was one of the bloggers I started reading pretty much from the beginning. I didn’t always agree with him but I thought he usually made sound arguments worthy of being considered, and I’m always willing to read an argument that makes me think even if I disagree with him.
When he drifted into this strange obsession with Sarah Palin’s uterus, though, I found it harder to take him seriously. I ended up agreeing with most of his substantive criticisms of Palin, but this obsession over Trig Palin, which continues to this day, is just bizarre and it’s lead him to fall for other bizarre theories, such as last year when he briefly flirted with birtherism.
Sullivan is a smart guy, I think, but he’s let his personal passions lead him down an intellectual black hole to a point where it’s difficult to take him seriously anymore, and that’s unfortunate.
