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Patrick Appel stands in for Andrew Sullivan and promptly calls attention to Sully’s misleading witterings on ths subject of Palin.

The Daily Dish In Defense Of Sarah Palin

Andrew Sullivan’s mad collapse continues. Today, he writes:

Here’s a fascinating glimpse into how the rest of the world is reacting to the Sarah Palin selection. It’s from a classic and peerless British weekly radio panel discussion show, called “Any Questions.”

Bea Campbell:

Let’s imagine that governor Palin was indeed a man. He wouldn’t be interesting. He’d be outrageous. She is outrageous, actually.

Andrew Sullivan, What The Brits Think Of Palin

Perhaps Sullivan has been too long away from the UK to remember who Bea Campbell is, or to grasp that she has been the subject of scorn and ridicule at least since her enthusiastic promulgation of the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic in cahoots with her partner, Judith Jones, who just happened to be the leader of Nottingham Social Services Team Four. It mightn’t have taken so long for Ms Campbell to settle into the slot reserved for harmless eccentrics if she had in fact been harmless – as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain she excused the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.

This is a little inadequate even as an informal polling method. From where I sit, in the UK, those Brits – MSM journos aside – paying any attention at all to the Republican VP nomination have taken to Palin in the same way people in the US have welcomed her.

Is it true that Sullivan can’t become a US citizen just because he’s HIV positive? If so, that’s absolutely disgraceful. Some knee-jerk twattery that accidentally made it into law. Repeal it.

Might explain why he wants the Dems to win.

Let’s put aside for the moment Sullivan’s recent hurricane of innuendo. Let’s look just at his weirdness today:

[John] Edwards was a national figure …Palin has been several time zones away in the Alaskan wilderness

Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic, A New Paradigm?

Is Andy really trying to insinuate Palin’s unreadiness because of geography? Such an early adopter of blogging and the immediate worldwide reach of communications might think twice before mentally consigning anyone living outside the Beltway to a frightening terra incognita, populated by the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, and hockey moms and all the other people trying to live lives without too much time spent thinking about their betters in DC.

This outsider meme will come back to bite Mr Sullivan on his enthusiastically-employed arse. If change is what’s wanted then why not look away from Washington?

There has been some rash speculation about the cause of Andrew Sullivan’s recent blizzard of Daily Kos-style posts, including a suggestion of dementia – which, given Sullivan’s medical condition, is a possibility I suppose. Whatever. His latest:

Did I just see Cindy holding Trig? I mean: can we have it one way or the other? Either the family is out of bounds or it is in the spotlight. Brandishing a child with Down Syndrome as a campaign statement is daring the press to ask questions about him.

Andrew Sullivan, Parading the Baby

Not parading, Andrew, holding. In the audience. Very unlike Michelle Obama and her two children appearing on stage at the DNC. Remember?

Some evangelicals tout Obama’s family values. The contrast with the once-philandering, adulterous divorcé running for the GOP goes unstated:

Andrew Sullivan, Christianists For Obama

Sullivan usually has little time for evangelicals interfering in politics, despite his own obsession with politics and Catholicism. When it comes to evangelicals for Obama, though, Sullivan repeats their snide insinuations and adds his own bile.

The phrase used to describe McCain – a once-philandering, adulterous divorcé – is Sullivan’s alone but what could be Sullivan’s objection to a reformed philanderer? For Sullivan, who is so adamant that the Church of the famously hedonistic and sexually licentious Augustine can encompass his own homosexuality, objecting to McCain in this way invites clichéd responses about motes and beams and casting stones. It’s not only in his own sexual life that Sullivan finds himself at odds with his faith’s traditions and teaching.