Annals of the Daily Ditch

The Daily Ditch is my preferred name for Andrew Sullivan’s Atlantic blog. You can visit our collected annals of the Daily Ditch via our Google search engine.
Sullivan’s almost unbelievable ignorance of history was my central theme in “Obama veers into the Daily Ditch.” Like Falstaff in reverse, he is not only witless, he is the cause of witlessness in others — others including President Obama. It is, In its own way, quite an accomplishment.
From inside the asylum Atlantic national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg noted Sullivan’s reality-is-optional approach to commentary in “Andrew Sullivan revises history (again).” The topic sentence of Goldberg’s lead paragraph said it all: “Andrew Sullivan should be thankful that The Atlantic’s fact-checking department has no purview over the magazine’s website.” Indeed.
Yesterday Sullivan took note of my post “Judging Chris Christie.” In the post I expressed disappointment in Governor Christie’s appointment of Sohail Mohammed to the New Jersey state court bench. I noted that Mohammed was a member of the board of the American Muslim Union, which I believe can fairly be described as a pillar of the Islamist establishment. John commented on Sullivan’s post in an update that I thought might be of interest to readers who would otherwise miss it:

It’s an interesting question–who is the dimmest-witted of all the pundits of whom some people have actually heard? There are many candidates–Richard Cohen and Frank Rich come immediately to mind. But Andrew Sullivan may take the crown. He linked to this post and nominated it for the “Malkin Award”–he apparently thinks that is an insult–but attributed it to “Scott Hinderaker.” After all these years, Andrew still can’t keep us straight! As a matter of basic journalistic competence, if you’re going to attack someone you should at least get his name right. Beyond that, Sullivan is dishonest as usual: “The judge’s flaw? Defending those innocents swept up in the police sweep after 9/11.”
This is ridiculous. None of the linked articles criticizes Mohammed for “defending innocents” who were “swept up in the police sweep after 9/11.” Instead, they raise serious questions about Mohammed and the American Muslim Union and their ties to Islamic extremism. The only legal representation that was criticized in any of the linked articles was that of Mohammed Qatanani, who, far from being an “innocent” who was “swept up in [a] police sweep,” was a member of Hamas who lied on his application for permanent residency, which was prepared with the assistance of Mohammed’s law firm.
Of course, it is easy to understand why Sullivan doesn’t have time to get his facts straight. He is way too busy obsessing over the Palin family to bother with minor topics like terrorism. (How’s your investigation of Trig going, Andrew?) Instead of bothering to get his facts right about Scott’s post, Sullivan was writing this: “Bristol may have been engaging in hyperbole when she said she’d changed Tripp’s last name to Palin. The evidence shows that Tripp is still a Johnston. But stay tuned …”
Yeah, we’re all waiting breathlessly for your next update, Andrew. Keep up the great work!

Sullivan really ought to stick to blowing the lid off the mysterious case of Tripp Johnston, Trig Palin and the rest of the Palin family. In it Sullivan has found the true calling for the exercise of his gifts.

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