ndrew Sullivan, neo-conservative
author, openly gay practicing Roman Catholic and unconscious
collaborator with anti-gay bigots, pontificated last Tuesday, much to
his own detriment, about a teenager’s murder. He spoke on ABC-TV’s
World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
A British ex-patriot, Mr. Sullivan has been a frequent guest
on major network talk shows due to his former standing as an openly gay
editor-in-chief of The New Republic, a political journal.
Growing numbers of activists today have regularly expressed their
exasperation with Sullivan’s self-deprecating views on these talk shows,
which often show him to be, they say, a well-intentioned but misdirected
traitor to the struggle for lesbian and gay civil rights.
Sullivan, erroneously viewed by the popular press as a gay
strategist, shamelessly supported claims, now being made by virulently
anti-gay groups, that the media’s disinclination to cover the murder of
a 13-year old Arkansas boy, Jesse Dirkhising, by two pedophiles, is
evidence of American journalism’s political correctness when it comes to
addressing male-on-male sex crimes.
One of the pedophiles, in fact, had also planned to murder a
girl, a 10-year-old neighbor according to ABC. He might
better, many say, have been described as a pedophile with
murderous predilections.
Peter Jennings of ABC’s World NewsTonight
rightly explained that "there are many journalists, including people on
this broadcast, who feel that this (Dirkhising)
case, in itself, did not merit national attention."
Mr. Sullivan, who represents, in this reporter’s opinion, a
terribly flawed moral judgment, would momentarily be shown disagreeing
with and defaming the work of his many colleagues in the media.
Mr. Jennings next noted how anti-gay groups throughout the
country have been focused for months on the national media’s
disinclination to publicize Dirkhising’s murder, but that their
far-right claims had been ignored untiltheir position "was embraced by one of the country’s most provocative gay
writers…Andrew Sullivan."
Sullivan, in advance, had proudly promoted his ABC
Dirkhising debut on his Web site. He was featured on WorldNews Tonight giving his opinion of the teen’s killing:
"I think there’s clearly evidence that many people in the
media decided, ‘Well, we’re not going to go there because we know it
will feed anti-gay prejudice.’ "
According to Aaron Brown of ABC News New York:
"The fuel propelling this (Sullivan) argument (asks) why so much (media)
coverage for (Matthew) Shepard and so little for (Jesse) Dirkhising?"
This unseemly comparison between pedophiles’ rape and murder
and a horrendous hate crime highlights the confusion of the moral issues
involved. By voicing such sentiments Sullivan appears to have undermined
any stature he once enjoyed as a legitimate GLBT community
representative.
Ms. Martha Moore, of USA Today was chosen by ABC to reply to Sullivan’s tripe. She said:
"For a crime story or a murder—even a horrific or sad one like
Jesse Dirkhising’s, I think there has to be an issue of larger social
significance attached to it."
The ABC news reporter backed up Ms. Moore’s
journalistic stance. He said:
"In Shepard, the issue was hate crime laws and whether they
should extend to gays.
In Dirkhising, the media saw a terrible crime, but no greater
issue."
While Mr. Brown admitted that such a decision might seem cold,
he also explained:
"Countless rapes and murders—gay and straight—go unreported
all the time exactly for that reason."
Thus, for most of the national media, including the
Washington Post, USA Today and World News
Tonight, said the ABC report, the decision to
avoid the Dirkhising murder was "easy, logical and routine."
Sadly, Andrew Sullivan approached it instead as a gay misdeed
deliberately ignored. A Sunday New York Times
Magazine article was written last year by Sullivan, celebrating
how he’d found anti-gay fundamentalist religionists—in groups-- to be
likable people. It figures.
Some say the nation’s media ought now to re-think Andrew
Sullivan and, perhaps, to ignore him.
Jack Nichols is the author of The Gay Agenda: Talking
Back to the Fundamentalists (Prometheus Books, 1996) Of Men’s
Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin Books, 1975) and
of Welcome to Fire Island: Visions of Cherry Grove andThe Pines
(St. Martin’s Press, 1976)
Scared Straight: Why It’s So
Hard to Accept Gay People
and Why It’s So Hard to be Human, Story
Do Jerry Falwell
& Pat Robertson
Speak for God? Story
Rodger
Streitmatter, Ph.D. is Professor of Journalism at American University. Story
The Big Republican Lie about a Liberal Media Story
Analyzing last
week’s interview with celebrity culture critic, Camille Paglia, opens cans
of peculiar worms Story
Interview:
Camille Paglia: Building
Her Wall Between Art & Life Story
Speech on Men’s
Liberation delivered to Sociologists for Women in Society at the Annual
Meeting of the American Sociological Association—New York Hilton, August
30, 1976. Story
How
a prominent Republican congressman compromised the United States military
by conducting a wrongful effort to increase the number of Republican votes
in Florida Story
ndrew Sullivan, neo-conservative
author, openly gay practicing Roman Catholic and unconscious
collaborator with anti-gay bigots, pontificated last Tuesday, much to
his own detriment, about a teenager’s murder. He spoke on ABC-TV’s
World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
