He's wondering why the "respectable" right-of-center blogosphere isn't boycotting Andrew Sullivan, who is apparently peddling that silliness about how Sarah Palin is really her last baby's grandmother, not his mother, and how the child was really carried/born by her teenaged daughter.

It's silly stuff, and we all know it. Not just because Palin is on-record as looking pregnant in her third trimester, and not just because her colleagues noticed that she was pregnant toward the end, when her loose clothing just couldn't hide it any more, but because it's simply unheard-of for a teenaged girl to have a child with Down's. The odds of Down's start climbing at around 35, and steeply, too.

They spike when a woman reaches her 40s. And of course they do: we're using up the last of our eggs. The not-very-good ones.

Anyway, Ace says a bunch of stuff about Excitable Andy, which you may read if you care for that sort of thing.

And, as usual, I long for that brief time in history in which it was Off Limits to discuss the children of Presidents (and Presidential aspirants). For the wrong reasons, perhaps. After that infamous "Saturday Night Live" sketch, Hillary Clinton made some phone calls (or so the story goes—perhaps it was Magic Fairy Dust that descended, instead) and the word went down in nearly every studio in Los Angeles that Chelsea was not to be the subject of any parodies. Period.

And I felt that the whole thing was a bit heavy-handed, but I was hoping that it would set a precedent—that we might see some privacy for the offspring of politicians, even if their spouses are normally forced to share the spotlight to some degree.

Yeah, yeah—and I'll be looking for the Great Pumpkin, too, this Halloween. What's it to you? Aren't people basically good? Why is everyone staring at me like that? No, I am not an idiot. Just not terribly bright. There's a distinction to be made, there. I think.

But as for Ace's suggestions:

1) I haven't linked to Sullivan in years. I haven't read him in years, unless it was something in The Atlantic, in long form, that I'd already paid for. (As everyone knows, that is the one magazine I get on paper. At my mail drop. Unless you are going to count the subscription that my mother got me to Prevention, which magically renews itself every year.) I'm on-board with boycotting his blog, and anything he writes online.

I don't see any reason any respectable blogger would link to Sullivan, who has been off his rocker for at least four years now.

So I'm most certainly taking up that suggestion of His Aceship. It will involve zero change in my behavior.

2) But I have no intention of eschewing the other Atlantic bloggers: I love McArdle and Coates, and I'm not giving them up. Nope.

3) The paper edition of The Atlantic also publishes Mark Steyn, as well as Christopher Hitchens, who (despite his still being A Man of the Left) has gone through hell on earth with the literati for being as much of a free-thinker as he is. He's bucked the orthodoxy many times, and paid dearly for it.

The Atlantic publishes Sandra Tsing Loh, who is brilliant, non-doctrinaire in her thinking, and an acquaintance/friend of mine from high school.

And Barbara Wallraff! I couldn't give her up. That would hurt. Physically.

Therefore, my immodest proposals would be:

• Don't bother reading Sullivan—and most certainly not his blog;

• Send a letter to the editors of The Atlantic, expressing your concern over the potentially libelous, patently illogical and almost certainly false allegations he is making about the Governor of Alaska, and (more importantly, of course) her teenaged daughter—who, even if she had born a child out of wedlock, would be entitled to some privacy regarding same.

It hardly makes sense, after all, to get the government out of our bedrooms, only to invite the media into our delivery rooms.

No, no. I won't be boycotting the other Atlanto-bloggers, and you may pry my copy of the magazine (including Wallraff's "Word Court") from my cold, dead fingers.

But I do plan to get in touch with the editors, and tell them that it's time for Sullivan to go—as a blogger, and as a contributor to the magazine. I'll do it on paper, because that's my primary relationship with these folks, and because I own bitchin' stationery I rarely use. You might [a] simply want to go to the online version, and either lodge a "Letter to the Editor" there, or use their contact form.

Or, [b] use Joy's patented "fuddy-duddy" method:

The Atlantic
Editor: James Bennett
600 New Hampshire Ave., Northwest
Washington, D.C. 20037

or [c] try this: letters@theatlantic.com

Ace is right about one thing; Sullivan is out where the buses don't run. So the frustration with him has been building for a while.

I had thought that getting married would settle him down, but, you know: it doesn't work for every man, does it?

Do the right thing.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:55 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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