Andy and the Amazing Astonishing Tale

In his most recent attack on Sarah Palin, Sully recycles one of his favorite themes:

On the return flight from Dallas to Alaska, which she says she boarded despite having contractions at eight months . . . the flight attendants on the plane at the time, according to a contemporaneous account in the ADN, had no idea she was even pregnant, let alone in labor of some kind. The questions about this astonishing story are not a function of conspiracy theories and never were. They require no elaborate theory of whose child Trig may actually be. They are simply basic questions anyone would ask of a person who had recounted such an amazing tale. And yet not a single journalist has done so.

How many times has Sully made these claims? And how many times have other journalists said they looked into it and found nothing worthy of further investigation?

Sully calls Palin's account of her labor "astonishing" and "amazing." Palin's book has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and the majority of those buyers were women. Do any of them find anything suspicious about Palin's version of giving birth to her fifth child?

Some of Palin's critics have found fault with her for traveling to Dallas when she was so near her due date, and have criticized her decision to fly back to Alaska when labor began, rather than to seek treatment in Dallas. Yet there are many other women who react to that story differently: For obvious reasons, any woman would prefer to be treated by her own OB-GYN, rather than seek treatment in an emergency room in a distant city. Palin's urge to return to Alaska for her childbirth doesn't seem remotely "astonishing" or "amazing" to them.

That Andrew Sullivan lacks understanding and empathy toward women is old news. And his lack of understanding and empathy toward reporters is also a familiar theme of Sullivan's career. A commenter on a previous post brought up the fact that, in 2003, Sullivan was chief among those demanding that Rick Bragg should be fired. At the time, Craig Henry wrote:

Can someone please explain why Andrew Sullivan is getting a free pass as he rages against Howell Raines and Rick Bragg? He is sitting in judgment and passing harsh sentences. Yet he never mentions that as editor of the New Republic he was conned by both Ruth Shalit (plagiarism) and Stephen Glass (mean spirited fabulist).

Bingo. Why would anyone trust Sullivan's judgement of what constitutes sound reporting? As far as I'm aware, the man has never worked as a news reporter, never so much as covered a school-board meeting or a barn fire.

Now, however, Sully insists that any reporter who isn't demanding access to Sarah Palin's obstetric records is, in effect, part of a conspiracy to suppress The Awful Truth -- whatever that is. Sullivan tends to be a bit nebulous about the shadowy secrets he alleges to be hidden in those files locked away in the offices of Palin's OB-GYN.

While Sully continues playing Javert, let me step into the role of Sherlock Holmes in this mystery, and call attention to the curious incident of the dog that did not bark: Katrina Vanden Heuvel.

The editor of the Nation rushed into print, under the purposefully deceptive title "Going Rouge" a collection of hit-pieces on Palin. Yet despite her obvious political anthipathy to Palin, Katrina Vanden Heuvel has not joined Andrew Sullivan's Trig Truther wild-goose chase, nor do I think she will.

Marxist subversive though she is, Katrina Vanden Heuvel is also a woman and a mother and, as she made clear in her Nov. 24 item "Last Column About Sarah Palin --Ever," she doesn't like the unsubtle misogyny displayed by some of Palin's other enemies.

That column also made oblique reference to "assorted pushers of quackery and psychobabble." C'mon, Katrina: Name names.

No irony could possibly be more delicious than if Katrina Vanden Heuvel were to throw Sully and his Trig Truther posse under the Left's bus.

Sullivan claims to be a conservative, if only as a pretext for denouncing conservatives as deviating from the True Faith practiced by dope-smoking gay Catholics. Why shouldn't the Nation take Sully at his word and denounce him as they would any other conservative?