Jacob Heilbrunn on Andrew Sullivan:

There are many figures on the present stage who epitomize this slide, but none better than Sullivan. The critic Lee Siegel asserted in Harper’s in 2001 that Sullivan’s mental clutch slipped after the September 11 attacks, when he had written that the left in its “enclaves” posed the threat of a “fifth column.” Siegel ridiculed the notion that “the scattered lunacies of the Chomskyan left, out of whose pathetic powerlessness [Sullivan] has constructed a threat to national security,” rose to the status of a fifth column. In any case, as the war in Iraq faltered and questions of torture by U.S. troops and authorities arose, Sullivan jumped ship and declared that conservatism had lost its way. By November 2006, Sullivan was asserting that President Bush, whom he had previously praised as a new Churchill, had “lost his mind.” He has since moved on to penning fawning tributes to Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy.

Sullivan is not the topic of Heilbrunn’s article.  It’s just a very accurate shot.  The actual topic is the curious creature known as the public intellectual, who suffers today in comparison to those of the past.  The entire piece is worth your time.

In order to not receive nasty messages from Ken anymore (and to ensure that I always have more entries than Jesse), I decided to think my thoughts here rather than other places. Well, I already thought them there. But other people feel more free to criticize them there. And here, I have the power to prevent non-conformist thought. So there it is then.

My tale is one of “WTF happened to me?”, or to be more accurate – “How can I blame this on Smoove_B?”. I would refer to him as Mike, but apparently his stupid worm chronicles didn’t rate well enough to get him invited here. Chump.

Let’s start with where I am now. Much to my surprise, I find myself positively giddy at the prospect of being able to vote for Sen. Barack Obama, even if my only opportunity is going to be next Tuesday when the awful State of New Jersey holds it’s primary (which isn’t really a primary, since they aren’t choosing delegates until June or something retarded like that). To understand the gravity of this, you have to understand that just 8 short years ago, I was little more than a hack Sean Hannity clone. Conservative to the core, and one of those guys, that only cared about winning.

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