If you can learn anything about a man by looking at his enemies, Fred Thompson is doing all right. We've seen shrill attacks from all quarters, designed to convince conservatives that Thompson is a lying, campaign-finance-supporting, secret fan of abortion, who married a buxom 'trophy-wife' after leading a single life where he dated many gorgeous women.
Since that last one fizzled, his political enemies have now decided to try and convince us of the opposite. If he's not a licentious womanizer, then he must be gay.
The attack is pathetic, ridiculous, and irrelevant. It also demonstrates that liberals do not in the slightest believe their own rhetoric about the privacy of what 'goes on in the bedroom.' They think it's all fit for public consumption -- as long as you're a Republican.
If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, I think I can get along with Fred Thompson just fine.
Hat Tip: ALa
Update: CA Yankee has a classic way to let us know that Fred isn't announcing yet.
Update: Andrew Sullivan has printed a clarification to his original post:Despite some accusations, I never intended the following post defending Fred Thompson's right to a sex life to in any way suggest he's gay (which strikes me as preposterous)...
Wonkette inferred some gay rumor, and then the blogosphere ran with it. Please. All I meant was that Thompson, as a single man, had had a lot of dates with a lot of women, something that strikes me - and a lot of Republicans as well - as completely fine. I have never heard a single gay rumor about Thompson and never intended to be interpreted as spreading one.
Sullivan's comments stand on their own. I read them as I did because Wonkette read it that way, several commenters read it that way, and multiple Lefty blogs are and were printing the rumor contemporaneously with Sullivan's post.
You're welcome to draw your own conclusions.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Thompson Attacks Reach a Nadir
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17 comments:
Typical Sullivan: "Gay's ok for me, but not for thee." What a putz.
I agree completely.
tomdperkins.blogspot.com/2007/07/influence-peddler-says-attacks-on-fred.html
Obviously Sully isn't saying Thompson is gay. Just that Thompson is rumored to have had sex with men, as well as with women. And if he was a little "bi-curious" at one time that's not going to bother you, is it?
Nadir? Hardly.
I'm sure the Donkey Cong will manage to stoop even lower.
I consider myself part of the Draft Fred movement and have loved the idea of his candidacy from the first rumor. I still do. That said, I like him better the more enemies he collects, considering who his enemies are and what they're doing.
You can't not love a guy who generates this much fear and loathing before officially announcing his candidacy.
Fred! Fred! Fred!
Dude, do you even have nominal reading comprehension skills? Sullivan wasn't launching a "shrill attack" on Thompson-- he said Thompson was a strong candidate and that his active sex life wasn't a campaign impediment. And no, he didn't imply Thompson was gay, that's a homophobic inference on your part. Here, he even went so far to explain himself more carefully. Read each word this time, slowly:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/07/just-for-the--1.html
"Sullivan wasn't launching a "shrill attack" on Thompson-- he said Thompson was a strong candidate and that his active sex life wasn't a campaign impediment."
That sure as hell doesn't seem to be the way the people at wonkette are reading it:
http://wonkette.com/politics/supposedly-gay-republicans-dept/fred-thompson-rumor-watch-273843.php
And that's not the way the people who Sullivan includes in his trackback section are reading it:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/06/republicans-and.html
Donkey Cong... HAHAHA! I'm going to use that a LOT, OK?
I think the most important thing to get out of all of this is that Fred is the candidate that the Donkey Cong is the most worried about.
There, I did it.
Wonkette is an obvious transsexual. She made the switch after getting beat up in school one too many times.
Donkey Cong... That's good. And so apropos.
Re Sullivan, he has a follow-up post claiming that he never meant to imply Thompson is gay, rather that he'd been involved with a lot of women. In defense of Sullivan, I'm sure he does believe what he claims.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/07/just-for-the--1.html
My conclusions are that wonkette and sullivan are pigs.
Hmmmm.
With a wife like that who on earth thinks the guy is gay?
Hell if being called gay by Andrew Sullivan would get me a wife like that I'd have to say let's jack that boy up and get him to blogging!
WJA: you wrote,
>Dude, do you even have nominal reading comprehension skills?
Do you?
>no, he didn't imply Thompson was gay, that's a homophobic inference on your part.
Why is an inference about a possible homosexual issue "homophobic"? It's an inference, not an a policy statement.
Duh.
Sullivan is now claiming that he was not saying Fred was "gay". In other words, he was just implying that he was bisexual. He is just playing words games now to try to avoid the fall out of how own hypocrisy.
Look, the leftwing blogs clearly saw what Sullivan was saying. They picked up the "Fred is gay" theme is his article and ran with it. Sullivan had no problem with that and he just smiled. He could have refuted the "misreading" at that point but chose not to- because that was his intent. However, when the rightwing blogs responded to the smear campaign launched by Sullivan and run by others like Wonkette, then and only then did Sullivan change his tune. Its the standard plausible deniability defense. The only problem is that its not plausible- just hypocritical of Sullivan and his gay-baiting friends on the left.
How's this for the liberal bloggers: I am a right-as-you-can get guy and I'd vote for Mr. Thompson even if I found out he slept with more men than Andrew Sullivan.
What is it with you rightards and your affections toward d-grade hollywood actors??!??!
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