Bristol Palin seeks full custody; no comment from 'Ricky Hollywood'

Juicy details about Levi "Sex on Skates" Johnston:

Relations between the Palins and Johnston and his family have frequently been strained since the couple broke off their engagement after their son was born in late December 2008.
Johnston denies in court documents that he has avoided his responsibilities. He is seeking shared custody. . . .
Bristol Palin's custody petition calls Johnston's recent nude photo shoot with Playgirl magazine "risque."
The document also notes that Levi's mother, Sherry Johnston, should not be allowed unsupervised visits with the baby following her drug arrest. Sherry Johnston, who is serving out most of her three-year sentence under home confinement, was sentenced last month on a guilty plea to one count of possession with intent to deliver the painkiller OxyContin.
Palin's custody petition also suggested Levi Johnston may have his own issues with substance abuse, saying he made statements about seeking "weed" on Twitter.
Johnston denies making such a statement, saying the Twitter account "is a fraud" and that he doesn't have an account on the popular online social networking site.

Hey, Bristol, look on the bright side: At least Levi didn't put a knife to your throat. Yet. In a related development, Andrew Sullivan is reportedly seeking custody of Sarah Palin's uterus.

Speaking of gay, if Bristol gets custody, will the judge be investigated for homophobic bias? After all, Levi is so proud to be a gay icon.

Adventures of the Anti-Semitism Czar

Actually, Hannah Rosenthal is the Anti-Anti-Semitism Czar, according to Jeffrey Goldberg, who finds himself squabbling with Atlantic Monthly colleague Andrew Sullivan:

Why is an American diplomat criticizing a foreign ambassador for his choice of speaking engagements in America? I asked three people who currently work in the State Department if they could recall an instance in which an official of their department ever criticized a foreign ambassador for such a thing -- or for anything -- and they said no. In fact, the State Department is fairly upset at Rosenthal for speaking at all about the alleged political proclivities of a foreign ambassador, not about her specific criticism.

What this is about: Barely a month after being appointed to a State Department post, Rosenthal slammed Israeli ambassador Michael Oren for turning down an invitation to speak to the liberal Jewish group J Street.

Why Sully stuck his nose into this argument: ?????

My suggestion to Jeffrey Goldberg: Ignore Sully. It's a lot easier than you may think.

UPDATE: Sammy at Yid With Lid has background on the Rosenthal dust-up. Anybody surprised to learn that J Street got its start with funding from . . . George Soros?

Palin as litmus test?

Or perhaps Rorshach test would be the more accurate term. Pro-Palin blogger Joseph Sheppard argues that Sarah Palin's conservative admirers should, as a general policy, ignore anti-Palin bloggers.

Such a policy is wise where it is possible, and preferable to eternal flame-wars. And I say this not merely about the pro-Palin/anti-Palin feud, but as a general principle: If something irritates you, try to avoid it.

Take, as an example, Neil Young. His voice is lousy and he's a mediocre songwriter. As a guitarist, he's not bad, but not good enough to compensate for his deficits, especially as a singer, where he rivals Gordon Lightfoot for the Most Annoying Canadian Vocalist Lifetime Achievment Award. Therefore, whenever Neil Young comes on the radio, I change the station.

But there are occasions when I find myself trapped in a situation -- e.g., old buddies invite me to a dive bar with a jukebox -- where the avoidance strategy is impracticable, and the results can be tragic. Some idiot will drop a dollar in the jukebox and play "Ohio," and I find myself fighting the urge to begin loudly praising the National Guard and shouting imprecations against "hippie peacenik scum."

Is it just politics? No. Jackson Browne is somewhere left of Lenin, but he's a fine singer-songwriter. "Doctor My Eyes" and "The Load Out" are deservedly classics. Green Day are outright Marxists, but "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is nevertheless a catchy tune. R.E.M. are also generally a left-wing outfit, yet they make marvelous music.

No, Neil Young sucks. And if you disagree, we'll just have to avoid talking about it, because you'll only aggravate me. Same thing with Ann Coulter being a Deadhead, or Smitty's inexplicable affection for '80s metal. De gustibus non est disputandum.

Sarah Palin is a potential contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. That fact should not be turning conservative friends into bitter enemies more than two years ahead of the 2012 Iowa caucus.

If you're a Palin fan and the very mention of Rick Moran makes the veins in your neck stand out, stop reading Rick Moran. If you're Andrew Sullivan and the very mention of Sarah Palin makes you start ranting like a madman . . . Well, I don't know. Smoke some dope or something.

Stop obsessing. Chill.

At any rate, Joseph Sheppard has made a useful suggestion. And don't get me started on Neil Young.

Sucky 3-D sci-fi flick = Oscar-bait?

The science is settled: Avatar sucks. Don't tell that to Hollywood, though: It could get nine Oscar nominations!

Speaking of awards, don't forget to vote for me in the 2009 Malkin Awards. Last time I checked, I was in second place behind Glenn Beck.

2009 Malkin Awards: I'm a FINALIST!

Andrew Sullivan has nominated me four times for the prestigious "Malkin Award" and now I see that I am a finalist for the 2009 Malkin. The competition is tough -- I'm up against Erick Erickson, Michael Goldfarb and Glenn Beck, among other worthies -- but let's be honest: None of them can compete with the Greatest Hypothetical Evah!

"Swear to God, if they ever want a Gentile prime minister, my first order would be to deploy the IDF in a north-south line, facing east. My second order would be 'forward march' and the order to halt would not be given until it was time for the troops to rinse their bayonets in the Jordan. After a brief rest halt, the order 'about face' would be given, and the next halt would be at the Mediterranean coast."

Sully later made that hypothetical hyperbole the basis of accusing me of advocating genocide(!?!), which of course I was not. Peaceful by nature, I grew up a few miles from the ruins of New Manchester Mill -- burned by Stoneman's cavalry in 1864 -- and therefore have always had a keen understanding of what war really means (cf., Hiroshima).

Fatah, Hamas and Hezbollah recognize only one definition of "peace": Dead Jews. So when they start blowing up buses and firing rockets at civilians, these terrorist monsters are sending out an invitation to war, and they can't complain about getting an RSVP from the IDF.

Notice that this perspective doesn't require playing moral referee between Jews and Palestinians, or settling the historical grievances between them. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the reality that more than 60 years after Israel declared its independence, her terrorist enemies don't even recognize Israel's right to existence, and endlessly foment hatred against Jews. Ergo, Sonny Corleone in Gaza.

However, you don't have to share my idiosyncratic view of geopolitics to vote for me in the Malkin Awards competition. Any accusation of bloodthirsty warmongering based on that particular quote is invalid under that widely recognized codicil of the Blog Ethics Code known as the Glenn Greenwald Rule:

Anything said while ridiculing Glenn Greenwald is OK, because he always deserves it.

Hurry up and vote for me in the Malkin Awards, and be sure to hit my tip jar, because you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of Genesis 12:3.

New depths of sycophancy

Brace for that "just threw up a little in my mouth" reaction:

Andrew has an inhuman ability to write a well-reasoned and beautifully-crafted 700-word blog post in about fifteen minutes.
-- Daily Dish ghostblogger Patrick Appel

(Hat-tip: AmSpecBlog.) Glenn Greenwald's sockpuppets never praised him so effusively. Sharmuta would be embarrassed to say that about Charles Johnson.

Wipe your mouth when you're done, Patrick.

Ace: 'Foam-flecked buffoon' Sullivan doesn't have 'stupid queerbait readers'

Sorry, Ace, I disagree with your walkback. If "queerbait" is a homophobic putdown, it's a putdown that a lot of gay guys employ, generally to describe an ostensibly straight guy who seems . . . well, potentially available.

Like Charlie Crist. Or Rahm Emanuel, so my gay sources tell me. And those same sources say that gay men in Chicago swear there used to be a tall semi-Kenyan guy who was, as we might say, no stranger to the community.

But that stuff is mere gossip, and is not germaine to the question of whether it was fair of you to use "queerbait" to describe Sully's readership. The larger point, I think, is that not all gay people run around looking for excuses to be offended, and are themselves not averse to applying certain pejoratives -- "nelly," "swish" etc. -- to other gay people, especially ones they don't like.

And as for "queerbaits," who doesn't know the type of person described? I just noticed Little Miss Attila referencing a post by Cynthia Yockey about appropriate use of the term "dyke." Well, not all lesbians are dykes, and some women who look or act like dykes are actually straight.

If we didn't all have our insensitivity detectors set on "stun," tiptoeing around in fear of accidentally offending someone, maybe more people would be encouraged to criticize Sullivan's ongoing melodrama -- and the stupid queerbait readers who dig it.

Andrew Sullivan was outed by Michelangelo Signorile and, rather than leading Sully to question the hyper-politicization of sexuality, the experience led him to become SuperGayMan, the caped crusader for same-sex marriage. Sully let himself be trapped in a box, defined by his enemies, taking refuge in a ridiculous more-gay-than-thou stance.

His sexual persona is intrinsic to his politics and vice-versa. You know who he reminds me of? Bill Maher, who hates feminism and Christianity with equal fury because both belief-systems stand opposed to selfish little worms like Bill Maher gettin' some.

So I don't think you should have walked back the "queerbait" putdown, Ace. The rest of your critique of Sully is pure genius.

P.S.: To any readers intrigued by my assertion of familiarity with gay culture: (a) I majored in drama in college, (b) I was once the only straight guy working in the men's wear department of a department store, and (c) I hang out with lots of libertarians. However, (d) my wife and I have been married 20 years with six kids. If I'm overcompensating, I'm doing it right.

P.P.S.: Meredith Baxter gay? That's a big loss for the team. But what about her 15-year marriage to David Birney? Was she just fakin' it? Her inner lesbian straining for release? And why didn't her inner lesbian break free earlier, say about 1982, in a video with Phoebe Cates?

Never mind . . .

Whereas Stacy and I were not bright enough to think of this

by Smitty (h/t Little Miss Attila)

Ace has the details of that whole pesky 'accuracy' problem over at the Daily DogDish.

That mindless 'integrity' thing seems a real disadvantage. When we keep things as accurate as possible, admit fault when it occurs, and seek to spread the credit as much as possible, it really gets in the way of building an air of invincibility.

Stacy, should we consider a bout of cretinism, for purely scientific purposes? It worked for Al Gore, didn't it? Maybe this fetishing of fact is foolishness.

UPDATE: Credit Where Credit Is Due
By Robert Stacy McCain
Last night Aleister at American Glob called me to talk blogging and during the course of our conversation, I mentioned that Ace of Spades and Allahpundit were the two bloggers whom I most strived to emulate when I began blogging.

It's the irreverence toward Big Shots, see? Also, the self-deprecating humor, the running jokes, and the knowing attitude toward the interests of the readership. Beyond the value of the news aggregation and commentary, there is a shtick, so that regular readers feel themselves part of the gang, sharing the inside jokes.

Blogging is by its nature a collaborative effort. No blog is an island, and to pretend that one blogger is omniscient and omnicompetent is a pretense that won't fool anybody who pays attention.

Did I notice Patrick Appel's response to complaints from Sullivan's readers about the guest-blogging situation? Yes, it was briefly noted here Tuesday morning.

Did I give it the Mother Of All Fiskings that Ace has provided? No, I didn't. And considering that he actually beat me to it by three hours or so, thanks to Smitty for giving Ace props for making the most of the motherlode:

Because like a lot of people who never had any particular talent, Sullivan was endlessly promoted far beyond his abilities, and now that he is a "name," he intends to sell the only thing of any value he has -- that name -- and simply pay some hacks intern-level wages to ghost-blog for him while he conducts in-depth examinations of Sarah Palin's upper fallopian tubes.

Among the Daily Dish hacks paid intern-level wages? Conor Friedersdorf. Just sayin' . . .

And just sayin' is, of course, also stolen from Ace. The hacks here are unpaid, not even intern-level wages.

Radical dangers and Ashley the whore

Andrew Sullivan Michelle Malkin was right about those right-wing left-wing mobs in Kentucky Berkeley:

Eight people were in custody Saturday after a crowd of angry protesters broke windows and threw burning torches at UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau's campus residence in protest of fee hikes and budget cuts, authorities said. . . .
The crowd, including a man taken into custody in a university protest a day earlier, chanted, "No justice, no peace," and began smashing planters, windows and lights.

Just as no sane person would take political advice from Andrew Sullivan, no one should take romantic advice from a hooker who does Democrats:

Sure, she's made some mistakes. But now Ashley Dupre, the former escort who brought down Gov. Eliot Spitzer, is sharing what she's learned in her new sex, love and relationship column -- exclusively in the New York Post.

(Hat-tip: Newsbusters.) Wonder if the New York Post would give me an advice column to balance the Ashley Dupre column? I'd call it, "Shut Up, You Stupid Whore."

Now, if only the Atlantic Monthly would give me a blog to balance Sully . . . well, let the reader imagine what I'd call that.

UPDATE: "Forget effigy . . . just go for straight-up martydom," says one blogger of the angry mob at Berkeley.

Understand that I have nothing against angry mobs, per se. Heck, I nearly got trampled when I was front of the line to buy tickets for Prince's "Purple Rain" tour, so I understand both mobs and anger.

However, it matters very much what you're angry about, and what your mob actually does. University of Alabama fans once burnt Bear Bryant in effigy after the coach benched Joe Namath for the Orange Bowl. That was understandable.

But "no justice, no peace" and attempted arson because of a tuition increase? Where's the Ohio National Guard when we really need them?

EATEN BY WOLVES?

Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs Calendar is now available -- just five easy payments of $39.95! Featuring brilliant anti-fascist photography and yummy scientific recipes, including Andrew Sullivan's "custard surprise."

ORDER TODAY!

UPDATE (Smitty): Yeah, we'll just be adding a screencap of that one...

Stacy was heard to scream "I was told this was a dancing lessonnnnn!"

UPDATE II: Rave reviews for the LGF calendar:

"Wonderfully vicious and delicious!"
-- Vanderleun

"It was bound to happen!"
-- Paleo Pat

ORDER NOW!

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?

That other 'climate of hate'

Not the Tea Party "rage" hyped up by the Defamation League. Not the phony "Southern populist terrorism" scare that made Andrew Sullivan hysterical with fear. And not the Boston Globe's bogus claim that President Obama has been targeted by a record number of threats.

No, I'm talking about the climate of hate in the real world where, Michelle Malkin reports, police are being gunned down in cold blood:

The Left's police-hating chickens are coming home to roost. While partisan liberals have gone out of their way to blame conservative media and the Tea Party movement for creating a "climate of hate," they are silent on the cultural and literal war on cops that has raged for decades – and escalated tragically this year.
The total number of law enforcement officers shot and killed this year is up 19 percent over last year, according to the Christian Science Monitor. More officers have died in ambush incidents this year than any other since 2000. . . .
Clemmons had told numerous friends and family members to “watch the TV” before the massacre because he was going to “kill a bunch of cops.” The witnesses did worse than nothing. Several have been arrested for actively aiding and abetting Clemmons – with shelter, food, money, and medical aid — before he was discovered in Seattle early Tuesday morning and shot after threatening a patrol officer investigating Clemmons’ stolen vehicle. . . .

Read the whole thing.

And the 2009 'Strange New Respect' Award goes to . .

. . . Charles Johnson, for whom Andrew Sullivan performs the obligatory baptism-by-tongue-bath that initiates the Green One into the Obama cult.

This business of Andrew praising someone's "courage" as a way of celebrating his own heroic courageousness -- standing up to those homophobic haters! -- is an interesting thing to watch, once you learn to suppress your gag reflex.

If you can't stand to click to Sully's, try Ace of Spades HQ, where I'm sure they'll be rolling in the aisles over this one.

Paging Dr. Helen...

by Smitty

Ed Driscoll quotes Andrew Sullivan on his favorite politician:

"The lies of Sarah Palin are different from any other politicians'. They are different because they assert things that are demonstrably, empirically untrue..."

Possibly Dr. Helen could explore whether Andrew thinks he is the Climate Research Institute and Governor Palin is Global Warming. This abnormal psychology theory is wild, I admit, but there is nothing wrong with the theory or the subject that a bit of hockey stick to the noggin can't calibrate.

The vindication of Clay County, Ky.

Y'all remember Morgan Bowling, right? Well, she gave me a call yesterday afternoon from Kentucky, and so I mentioned her in my American Spectator column:

Thanks to an anonymous source in an Associated Press story and a flurry of speculation by bloggers, however, this quiet community was imagined to be a seething cauldron of hatred stoked by Fox News, talk radio and Republican politicians. Clay County's state Sen. Robert Stivers told the Lexington Herald-Leader that "many in the media owe the county an apology." As Morgan Bowling said Tuesday afternoon, at times it seemed as if pundits were trying to turn Bill Sparkman into a "sacrificial lamb for ObamaCare."
At the height of the national media glare, the Manchester Enterprise's young editor received an e-mail from New York: "What are you people, backwoods ignorant freaks?" the e-mailer wrote. "This crime is a reflection of all the residents of Clay County. . . . You are all disgusting pigs, and if one could level a curse at a community, then I curse the whole lot of you."
Morgan Bowling is only a few months into her journalism career, but she got a crash course about what can happen when irresponsible reporting leads to unfounded speculation.

You can read the whole thing. And you should also read Michelle Malkin's rejoinder to Andrew Sullivan.

UPDATE: Well played, Charles Johnson!

Since this news came out, I've received several angry emails demanding that I apologize for saying Sparkman had been murdered by a right wing extremist.
The problem is, I never wrote anything like that. For the record, this was my post when the story broke, and I don't apologize for a single word:
"There's not enough information yet to say for sure what was behind this killing, so let's not jump to conclusions. But the description of the circumstances and the timing (around the time of the Washington DC tea party) raises a strong suspicion that anti-government sentiment may have been the motivation."

Right. And the connnection between the two phenomena -- the murder and the 9/12 March on D.C. -- was entirely imaginary, so long as we assume that Bill Sparkman didn't have something like that in mind in choosing the date of his demise.

Nevertheless, don't apologize for your suspicion that the Tea Party movement represented the sort of "anti-government sentiment" that could motivate a murder.

By the way, Tea Party: The Documentary Film will have its Washington premiere next Wednesday, Dec. 2, at the Ronald Reagan Center.

UPDATE II: Perhaps it would help to explain that my interest in the Sparkman case -- what inspired my spur-of-the-moment urge Sept. 26 to light out for Kentucky -- was not so much a matter of ideology as of people.

Some have seen the debunking of the "right-wing lynching" meme as a vindication of conservatism, but I see it as the vindication of the people of Clay County. Having worked for 10 years as a journalist in the small towns of north Georgia, I was all too familiar with the yawning chasm between the perception and reality of such places and such people. Go back to my Sept. 29 American Spectator article:

MANCHESTER, Kentucky -- Rodney Miller has lived nearly all his 56 years in Clay County, the only exception being when, as a young man, he moved to Indianapolis. He lived in the big city for two years without ever knowing his neighbors' names.
"The best people in the world live here," says Miller, sitting in the office of the Manchester Enterprise, where he directs advertising sales. "Down here, everybody knows everybody else." . . .

Those are the kind of small-town people I know. It was their good names, and the reputation of an entire community, that were being smeared by the implication that they were a bunch of hateful yahoos who had lynched Bill Sparkman.

The good people of Clay County have been vindicated, and their know-it-all accusers (inter alia, the Harvard-educated Andrew Sullivan) have been exposed as credulous fools.

UPDATE III: Speaking of people who have been vindicated, this is as good a time as any -- on the eve of Thanksgiving -- to express my gratitude to our readers, especially those who have contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund.

Several people -- including Da Tech Guy -- have expressed congratulaions to me on the denouement of the Sparkman case, validating the reporting I did here, at the American Spectator and in the Hot Air Greenroom, but I would never have been able to do that reporting without the generosity of the tip-jar hitters. When I got the wild notion of traveling to Kentucky to cover the Sparkman case, I wrote:

Figure 1,200 miles travel round-trip, at 25 cents per mile, that's $300. Five meals at $5/each, that's another $25. A carton of smokes, $50; ten cups of coffee, $20. If you add $125/night for a hotel room, I could make it a two-day trip for $500. . . .
So if the tip jar contributions between now and Sunday evening reach $300, I'll take it for granted that the rest will come through while I'm on the road. I could be filing reports with a Kentucky dateline by Monday noon.

That $300 threshold was reached within a matter of hours, and it is to you people -- too numerous to name, lest anyone be omitted from the honor roll -- whom the congratulations are owed. The honor roll can be extended to include all the bloggers who have linked my reports on the Kentucky case, and to Smitty, whose labors and skills deserve so much praise.

You who have contributed should are invited to take a bow in the comments, and you who have not yet hit the tip jar -- well, what the heck are you waiting for?

My wife just spent $90 at the grocery store, including $12 for a turkey. We've got six kids to feed, including 17-year-old twin boys, and you know how teenage boys can eat. You know those $4 frozen pizzas? Last night our family ate four of those -- that's $16 worth for one meal.

Now try to imagine feeding this brood three times a day, 365 days a year. Like they say: Do the math. And the Christmas shopping season starts Friday.

When I came up with this blogging idea, my wife told me I was crazy -- and my wife is always right. But somehow crazy has always worked for me. So I am thankful for being crazy, and thankful that there are so many of you who (like Mrs. Other McCain) actually like my craziness. God bless you!

Kentucky Census right-wing lynching fake hate-crime suicide schadenfreude update

Let's start with this: If Bill Sparkman really did commit suicide and stage it to look like he was murdered by demented right-wing Kentuckians, he's a bigger loser than Andrew Sullivan. And that's quite an achievement.

So now that conservatives are in the post-vindication gloat zone, we ought to at least pause to reflect on the tragic dimension of Sparkman's death. There have been many fake hate-crimes over the years, including the Sharpton-abetted Tawana Brawley hoax, but to kill yourself in pursuit of politically-correct glory . . . well, this is truly sad.

High fives, anyone?

UPDATE: If you expected Sully to be gracious and admit he got carried away with his "Southern populist terrorism" rant. . . well, think again:

Notice Malkin's formulation: "pointed his finger" or "immediately fingered." I said the "possibility" remained real and that "we'll see." How can you finger someone when you simultaneously say we do not yet know what happened for sure?

This, from a post entitled "Correcting Michelle Malkin," as if Malkin -- who was right all along about the Sparkman case -- needs corrections from Dr. Andrew Sullivan, M.D., OB-GYN. Tell you what: We'll let Sarah Palin's Uterus be the arbiter here. We're not laughing with you, Sully, we're laughing at you.

UPDATE II: One thing that made the "right-wing crazies run amok" angle credible to the national media was the setting in the rural South, and Old Reb reminds us that the MSM relied on the usual suspects:

Both the Department of Homeland Security and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have warned of a dramatic spike in antigovernment militia activity.

Lower Glennbeckistan gets a shout-out from that dangerous redneck Michael Moynihan at Reason, who quotes some of the original lefty fear-mongering:

If conservative politicians and opinion leaders keep stoking fears about the government using census data to steal from or perhaps even round up law-abiding citizens, I am concerned that mentally unstable individuals will commit further acts of violence against census-takers next year. Republicans should condemn the hatemongers and make clear that the census is not only permitted, but required under the Constitution.
MyDD

The gruesome lynching of this Census worker seems to bear a disturbing similarity to some of the worst hate crimes committed across this country. Regardless of what the motive for the killing may have been, why would a murderer(s) take such pains to so blatantly convey anger, fear, and vitriol towards a Census employee? Perhaps because some on the right have created an impression that Census employees are terrifying.
Earlier this summer, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) waged a high-profile, wildly-dishonest campaign against the Census.
ThinkProgress

Others, namely the type to kill a Census worker and string up his body as message to the government, may call it a retraining camp run by the "Feds."
This is the kind of violent event that emerges from a culture of paranoia and unsubstantiated attacks.
Huffington Post

From this profile of the cancer survivor and volunteer, it appears suicide is unlikely. We'll find out. But at some point, unhinged hostility to the federal government, whipped up by the Becks, can become violence. That's what Pelosi was worried about.
Andrew Sullivan

Send the body to Glenn Beck…Is it possible that the time has come for the FCC to consider exactly what constitutes screaming fire over the publicly owned airwaves? And what if Mr. Sparkman’s murderer(s) is never found? How many other lunatics will be emboldened to make their own anti-government statement as the voices of Beck, Limbaugh and Dobbs echo in their ears?
Nobody ever intended our public airwaves to be turned over to irresponsible voices. Maybe the time has come for the FCC to worry a bit less about wardrobe malfunctions and a whole lot more about those who would use our airwaves to make a name for themselves at the expense of the public they are suppose to serve–particularly when the expense comes in the form of blood.
True/Slant

We'll keep this in mind, next time the lefties accuse conservatives of fomenting paranoia.

UPDATE III: Donald Douglas at American Power calls out some lefty fearmongers, including the genuinely demented Larisa Alexandrovna, who seems to be trying to cheat Sully out of his Batsh*t Crazy Blogger Of The Year honors.

UPDATE IV: Bob Belvedere has a roundup at Camp of the Saints, and Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom links a McClatchy story that gets it wrong:

The bizarre details of the death caused a firestorm of media coverage and widespread speculation on the Internet, including that someone angry at the federal government attacked Sparkman as he went door to door, gathering census information.

That is wrong. It wasn't the "bizare details" that caused the "widespread circulation," it was an anonymous source -- an unauthorized federal law enforcement official -- who fed the "anti-government sentiment" meme to Devlin Barrett of the Associated Press D.C. bureau.

The Sept. 23 AP article (lead byline for Barrett, with Jeffrey McMurray reporting from Kentucky) was the spark that ignited the "media firestorm," and if the Associated Press doesn't name the source of that bogus leak, maybe Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell can call for a congressional investigation.

The First Amendment doesn't grant federal officials the right to lie to reporters. A good reporter never burns his sources, but a good source never burns a reporter, and this unauthorized leaker fed Barrett a lie.

UPDATE V: Drew M. at AOSHQ accurately predicted the liberal blog reaction:

They'll pretend it never happened or better yet they knew it all along and this is just a rightwing attempt to smear them. The poor dears are always correct and the victims.

Dave Weigel linked me (good) but couldn't resist taking another shot at Michelle Bachmann (bad).

Clayton Cramer kept his powder dry. Reaganite Republican says the left was actually "hoping for a case of reactionary violence against a federal employee to exploit for propaganda purposes."

Exactly. Democrats wanted Bill Sparkman to be to Fox News what Matthew Shepard was to homophobia -- a symbolic victim of right-wing media to justify re-implementation of the Fairness Doctrine.

Of course, you'll never get them to admit that, but we know it's true, in the same way the Left knew that Glenn Beck and the 9/12ers were responsible for Sparkman's death.

UPDATE VI: Da Tech Guy mentions the ugliest thought about this sad story:

Mr. Sparkman was counting on the media blaming the right for his death for his scam to work. He intentionally tried to frame us for his murder!
As a rule it isn't proper to speak ill of the dead, but I'm just amazed that the dead was trying to speak ill of us. What a dishonorable act!

Stop the ACLU has a round-up and I'm pushing deadline for the American Spectator, so let's let a Clay County resident have the last word:

Many people felt the speculation and coverage of the death played on Appalachian stereotypes and gave Clay County an undeserved black eye.
"Everybody was saying, 'It's bad, but why are they saying this without letting the investigation go forward?' " said state Sen. Robert Stivers, a Republican who lives in the county.
Many in the media owe the county an apology, Stivers said.

Good luck collecting that apology, senator. Being liberal means never having to say you're sorry.

NEWS ALERT: Kentucky State Police Will Announce Sparkman Investigation Result UPDATE: Official: It Was Suicide

UPDATE 2:15 p.m.: It's now official: Bill Sparkman committed suicide. So much for "Southern populist terrorism" -- and the credibility of Andrew Sullivan. So much for "Send the body to Glenn Beck" -- and the credibility of Rick Ungar.

UPDATE 2:40 p.m.: The official report:

Frankfort, Ky.) -- The Kentucky State Police Post 11 in London, with the assistance of the FBI, the U.S. Forest Service, the State Medical Examiner's Office and the Clay County Coroner's Office, has concluded the investigation into the death of William E. Sparkman, Jr.
The investigation, based upon evidence and witness testimony, has concluded that Mr. Sparkman died during an intentional, self-inflicted act that was staged to appear as a homicide. While all the details of the investigation will not be released at this time, the unusual level of attention and speculation attributed to Mr. Sparkman's death necessitates this release of information.
The investigation indicates that Mr. Sparkman died of asphyxiation/strangulation at the same location where he was discovered in Clay County, Ky.
Despite the fact that Mr. Sparkman was found hands, feet and mouth bound with duct tape, rope around his neck and the word "FED" written on his chest, analysis of the evidence determined Mr. Sparkman's death was self-inflicted. A thorough examination of evidence from the scene, to include DNA testing, as well as examination of his vehicle and his residence resulted in the determination that Mr. Sparkman, alone, handled the key pieces of evidence with no indications of any other persons involved.
Witness statements, which are deemed credible, indicate Mr. Sparkman discussed ending his own life and these discussions matched details discovered during the course of the investigation. It was learned that Mr. Sparkman had discussed recent federal investigations and the perceived negative attitudes toward federal entities by some residents of Clay County. It was also discovered during the investigation that Mr. Sparkman had recently secured two life insurance policies for which payment for suicide was precluded.
All tips and leads, including those from the public, were thoroughly investigated but were found to be inconsistent with any known facts or evidence.
It is the conclusion of the Kentucky State Police, the FBI, the U.S. Forest Service, the State Medical Examiner's Office, and the Clay County Coroner's Office that Mr. Sparkman died in an intentional, self-inflicted act that was staged to appear as a homicide.

UPDATE 2:50 p.m.: Michelle Malkin hasn't forgotten, and Dan Riehl says Sparkman may even have faked cancer.

UPDATE 5:30 p.m.: With perfect consistency, Allahpundit (a) arrives three hours late to the story and (b) doesn't link me, even though (c) I filed a 4,000-word article about my Kentucky trip in the Hot Air Green Room.

That report, you'll note, was intended to be Part 1 of a series, but I never finished the second part. Why? Because under no circumstance will Allah ever headline or front-page anything I do in the Green Room. At some point, the perpetual non-linkage sends a message: "Don't even bother trying."

Allah Hates Me. Because I Suck.

PREVIOUSLY (1:05 p.m.): A 2 p.m. press conference has been announced. It is believed that KSP and FBI have concluded that census worker Bill Sparkman's death was suicide. My friend Morgan Bowling of the Manchester (Ky.) Enterprise, who has covered this story from the beginning, sent me the KSP press release.

UPDATE 1:27 p.m.: Associated Press and CBS report the press conference, without mentioning how their own irresponsible reporting effectively libeled Clay County, Ky., as a dangerous hotbed of right-wing violence:

An Associated Press report said the FBI was "investigating whether anti-government sentiment" played a role in Sparkman's death. Law enforcement officials criticized that story, but the liberal blogosphere seized on it as proving that conservatives had fomented a killing rage among the yokels.
"Send the body to Glenn Beck," Internet pundit Rick Ungar proclaimed Thursday, also indicting Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann (a Republican who had warned that census data could be abused) among right-wingers presumed complicit in Sparkman's murder.
Saturday, the Atlantic Monthly's Andrew Sullivan fretted over "the most worrying possibility," namely that Sparkman's death was "Southern populist terrorism whipped up by the GOP and its Fox and talk radio cohorts."

Well, you biased bastards, I have not forgotten the perfidious role you played here, and you will not escape blame for your journalistic malpractice.

UPDATE 2 p.m.: Yes, we remember all those headlines at Memeorandum. Yes, Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Ungar we remember all your irresponsible speculation. The people of Clay County, Ky., await your apologies.

Is Andrew Sullivan an anti-Semite?

I certainly don't think so, and consider it terribly unfortunate that Sullivan has exposed himself to this damaging accusation through his reflexive enthusiasm for all things Obama -- just as he once was denounced as a "neocon" because of his reflexive enthusiasm for all things Bush.

Sullivan got over his unrequited Dubya man-crush, and maybe his current see-no-evil attitude toward Israel's enemies will fade if Sullivan discovers that his new presidential idol also has feet of clay. So while I have called Sullivan a menace to society and advocated his deportation, he's probably not a Holocaust denier or a peddler of blood libel.

My friend Dan Riehl called attention to this accusation against Sullivan, by way of firing a shot at Conor Friedersdorf. I've fired my share of shots at Conor, but I certainly would never accuse him of Jew-hating. The extremely toxic nature of the "anti-Semite" label is such that I am extremely hesitant to apply it.

Consider the case of Taki Theodoracopulos, for example. Taki has been called an anti-Semite so often that some people accept the accusation at face value. But when National Review published David Frum's "Unpatriotic Conservatives" -- one of many ill-advised editorial decisions in the erratic career of Rich Lowry -- Taki responded in memorable fashion:

If this bum Frum thinks he's the only one who cannot see a belt without hitting below it, he's got another thing coming. . . . He is a cheap Canadian careerist who jumped on the neocon bandwagon and is now using anti-Semitism as a stick to beat us with. Mind you, to be called "unpatriotic" and an "anti-Semite" by this shameless publicity hound has to be a compliment.

Because Taki is independently wealthy, he has no need to fear that his career will be damaged by these accusations, and so he seldom even bothers to notice the charges and only rarely responds to them. This has, unfortunately, resulted in Taki's name being used -- as my own name has sometimes been used -- as a sort of Rosetta Stone that allows liberal mind-readers to decrypt the otherwise Secret Code Of Hate that allegedly unites the Right.

This business of liberals trying to tell conservatives who is "acceptable" has bothered me for years, and I don't like it any better when conservatives play the same game. Despite Frum's misguided centrist tendencies, for example, I have risked my populist street-cred by continuing to be his friend (unlike David Brooks, who is the Living Embodiment Of All Things Unholy.) If I can be Frum's friend, shall I allow him to say that Taki is "unacceptable"?

My own indirect connection with Taki has horrified some of my friends, though the explanation is innocent enough. A couple years ago, I was invited to speak about media bias in a panel discussion of the Duke lacrosse rape hoax, where Duke graduate student Richard Spencer was one of my fellow panelists. Spencer subsequently became editor of Taki's Magazine.

When I got an itch to write about "Melissa Beech," who boasted in a Daily Beast column about being a rich man's mistress, it seemed a good time to accept Spencer's longstanding invitation to publish at Taki's (whose proprietor is reputed to have had many mistresses). That first article led to my writing a series a columns about love, sex and marriage at Taki's, a series I hope to continue now that election season is over.

Did I fear the accusation that, by publishing at Taki's Magazine, I was thereby endorsing the alleged anti-Semitism of Taki or some of his magazine's other contributors? Of course not. My philo-Semitic bona fides are so impregnable that I rather suspect Taki and Spencer have caught more grief than I have: "How dare you publish that Jew-loving Zionist fanatic?"

My Zionist fanaticism -- Netanyahu is a pacifist squish by comparison -- once led me to advance a bit of strategic military advice for the IDF, a war-game scenario contingent upon the hypothetical event of my becoming the first Gentile prime minister of Israel.

You might suppose that a thought-experiment so farfetched would be immune to misinterpretation -- as fools often misinterpret hypotheticals -- as wishful thinking, but you would be wrong. Andrew Sullivan gave me a Malkin Award nomination (my third such honor, though I may have lost count) and Sully has subsequently accused me of advocating genocide of the Palestinians.

"Peace Through Genocide" might be profitably marketed as the title of a comic novel by Chris Buckley, or as one of those ironic T-shirt slogans beloved by clever university students, but it clearly has shortcomings as a serious policy proposal.

It should therefore be unnecessary for me to deny that I am advocate of Palestinian genocide but, alas, there is the problem of the irony-impaired Andrew Sullivan, who has spent 15 months fomenting bizarre speculations about Sarah Palin's uterus. To be accused of genocidal hatred by such a notorious fool is an accusation that requires no denial.

Having been slimed by Sully for the indulgence of a far-fetched hypothetical, let me take another wild risk:

If Conor Friedersdorf were a wealthy Greek shipping magnate, so that he could speak his mind without fear of career repercussion, what would he say about Jews?

Nothing bad, I hope, and so I gladly stipulate that Conor Friedersdorf is no more a Jew-hater than Taki.

Or Pat Buchanan. Or Joe Sobran. Or Paul Gottfried. IYKWIMAITYD. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.

UPDATE: Ann Altstein Altberg Althouse calls Sully a liar. Sarah Palin's Uterus agrees. Yehuda reveals that Palin's uterus is . . . the Mossad!

Reaganite Republican suspects the Learned Elders of Sullivanism have fomented this blog-war.

You'll pay for this, Jules Crittenden!

In writing about Andrew Sullivan, the city editor of a Boston newspaper manages to use two painfully suggestive terms, "bottomless" and "cavernous." I'm billing him for two cases of industrial-strength brain bleach.

Meanwhile, I previously overlooked the latest not-to-be-missed Ace beatdown on Sully's latest excursion to insanity. And Michelle Malkin is moved to mercy:

Perhaps the publisher and editors of the august Atlantic magazine should consider giving the man an extended sick leave.
Or at least some Zyprexa.

About three bottles of Zyprexa ought to do the trick, if washed down with enough whiskey. Mercy.

Sullivan promises to be 'normal' today

Of course, he's made a career of being abnormal, but . . .

This Dish will resume as normal tomorrow morning. We apologize for the lacuna. . . .

(Also we apologize for the "hiatus," but too many non-Harvard types know that word and "wankathon" is a bit too specific, so "lacuna" it is!)

And I suppose some will say we've gotten this book and the issues it raises out of perspective. But since the last campaign, we have raised many questions about Palin to which we have been given no incontestable answers (and still haven't) and the only real evidence we have are news stories, interviews and now, critically this book.

(Her uterus! She has a uterus! And she doesn't include a single sonogram of her uterus in the book! What is she trying to hide? Shriek! Shriek!)

In his hagiography of Palin, Matt Continetti accuses yours truly of earnestness about all this. I am grateful for his not accusing me of cynicism.

"Earnestness"? You complain about being accused of earnestness, you demented poofter? After you've spent more than 15 months pushing that lunatic Trig Truther nonsense?

You are a dope-smoking, contagion-spreading menace to society, Andrew Sullivan, and you ought to be immediately deported. I think even Tom Tancredo, Pat Buchanan and Peter Brimelow would agree that your deportation is a matter of national security far more important than sending ICE to hassle a few hundred illegal Mexican poultry-plant workers in North Carolina.

Let me tell you, Sully, I've got in-laws in Columbus, Ohio, who are hoping to go to Sarah's book event there Friday (6 p.m. at Borders), and if I have anything to do with it, they'll be waving a big sign for the cameras:

DEPORT ANDREW SULLIVAN!

You sick freak.

UPDATE: Welcome, Conservatives For Palin, where our British friend David Riddick warns you should "be prepared to blush." Ah, but Mr. Riddick of South Godstone doesn't realize that British idioms like "wank" and "poofter" don't quite have the same shock-value over here in the colonies. And there is no need to explain why the Fleet Street tabloid fellows enjoy writing headlines about Bristol for the benefit of their poetic Cockney readers, eh?

One of the grand pleasures of my career is the occasional opportunity to indulge my schoolboy love of the double-entendre, or to allude to some cultural obscurity like the scene in which the instructor chastises young Watson: "What's wrong with a kiss, boy? Hmm? Why not start her off with a nice kiss?"

No ignorant reader could be offended, while the informed reader is wiping coffee-spew off his laptop. But the same cannot be said for the ribald work of that notorious Irish scoundrel, Patrick O'Leary Gallagher McCain, a distant kinsman who guest-blogged here on St. Patrick's Day. You have been warned . . .

UPDATE II: Unlike the Other McCain, the Atlantic Monthly is a journal devoted to serious issues. And, as Professor Douglas points out, Andrew Sullivan certainly has serious issues.

With breathless anticipation, the blogosphere now awaits the reaction of Ace of Spades. Brace yourself for a classic, my friends. BTW, we've now got a Memeorandum thread, so our blogging buddies should feel free to indulge some Rule 3/Rule 2 action.

UPDATE III: Dan Riehl sympathetically opposes Sully's deportation. As an aside, while awaiting the coffee-spew classic from Ace, I'll say that despite my complete disdain of Freudianism, one of the commenters references the Lovecraftian horror that Sully exhibits toward the Cthulu-like aspect of womanhood. Just sayin' . . .