The Rittenhouse Review

A Philadelphia Journal of Politics, Finance, Ethics, and Culture


Saturday, February 22, 2003  

LONDON BRIDGES BURNING DOWN
Sullivan's Professional Suicide Continues Unabated

For his own sake, I hope Andrew Sullivan has stowed away the $80,000 his readers frittered away in his direction, because if he keeps at it he'll never be published anywhere -- at least not anywhere respectable again.

Here's Sullivan, on Thursday, burning yet another of his britches bridges, this one going by the name of Tina Brown:

Imagine if a male writer used similarly sexist language to describe, say, Tina Brown's administration at the New Yorker. Imagine sentences like this: "Wouldn't it be better if there had been more men at the New Yorker in the `90s? And I don't mean Tina's neutered gay male flunkies. Brown's flitty attention span, bouts of editorial PMS, hysterical responses to criticism[,] and general whorishness toward publicists and celebrities made for a very menstrual management style." It would never be written. It should never be written. It's sexist, dumb[,] and almost meaningless. But in all those respects, it's indistinguishable from Tina's latest column.

Yes, let's imagine someone writing sentences like those. It would never happen! It should never happen!

And yet it just did.

But Sullivan was merely establishing a hypothetical, you say. It's not as if he were actually saying those things. Yeah, right. If you buy that I have a used copy of Slander for you. This isn't just his latest bout of the "maidenly vapors." Sullivan ratcheted up the insults using some of the most venomous, bilious, and misogynist language I've encountered in years.

One can't help but wonder what's causing Sullivan's seemingly uncontrolled rage. Could it be . . . ? Nah.

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