Life is hell for a gay catholic chickenhawk

Atrios started out the Andrew Sullivan vivisection this morning here and here, but James Walcott, as usual, has the best take.

......A similar condition bedevils Andrew Sullivan, whose sensible name badges a multicar pileup of identity conflict. He's a gay British Catholic Tory conservative "eagle" who deplores the etiolated patriotism and willpower of the coastal elites but resides in the blue lagoons of Washington, DC and Provincetown. His sympathies keeps tugging him in so many different directions that he intellectually resembles Steve Martin in All of Me, herkily-jerkily battling with himself as if being yanked by an invisible leash. (Read his graf today about the nomination of Albert Gonzalez for A.G. and watch him tug himself back and forth.) Sullivan seemed to take forever to recognize what was apparent to the statues on Easter Island statues, that the Republican Party is hostile to gay marriage and gay identity, eager to support homophobia for political gain, and that the only gays it's comfortable with are white men and women who look like wedding-cake couples and stay discreetly in the closet. He kept holding out hope that because Bush, based on anecdotal evidence, was personally comfortable with gay people, he wouldn't push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Then came the inevitable disappointment. One by one the inevitable disappointments succeed one another, like a line of tumbling dominos, and each day Sullivan returns to his little fort, ready to give the Bushies the benefit of the doubt yet again.

For all of his lofty rhetoric, which catches the tailwind of Tony Blair's, Sullivan gets a little peckish when the lower ranks forget their place and question their duties. Atrios today provides several prize examples. I will only note Sullivan's interesting choice of words in the following:

"I'm sorry but I pay for those soldiers to fight in a volunteer army. They are servants of people like me who will never fight. Yes, servants of civil masters."

Servants? Masters? Some Brits just can't let go of the remains of the day.

He may have been critical of Bush but don't forget Andrew Sullivan remains a pompous feudal imperialist. The party where he used to hang his ideological hat has found it necessary to adopt all of the 16th century religious mythology to stay in power. That leaves Sully without a hat rack.