Andrew Sullivan, the once prominent editor, columnist, talking head, and pundit who now is part of an ever-growing community of amateur “webloggers,” has had some rough weeks of late, what with trying to defend the most egregious behavior of various greedy and deceptive Bush administration officials, while at the same time trying to pass all the blame for these presumably alleged acts onto any Democrat who has raised his ire over the past 10 or 15 years.

With this particularly partisan stance in mind -- Andrew Sullivan, Model Republican -- we were fascinated to read a not-so-old piece from the Washington Post by none other than Sullivan’s good friend Howard, or “Howie,” as “Andy” calls him, Kurtz.

Kurtz’s article, dated April 19, 2001, and written, as best we can tell, on his knees, is so flagrantly fawning as to make a mockery of the very notion of a free and critical press.

And yet, here and there, we find a revealing quote or remark, an insight into Sullivan’s bizarre psyche that makes all of our hypotheses and, well, suspicions, fall into place.

To cite just one example:

“He’s a tremendous hater,” says Oxford [University] professor Niall Ferguson, one of Sullivan’s oldest friends. “He is quite strongly motivated by hatred of an extraordinarily wide range of people. He really cannot stand them. He’s really a misanthropic person in some ways.”

Yeah. Either that, or he’s just a bitter old queen whose job prospects dissipate day by day.