ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Andrew Sullivan Says He Was ‘Ambushed’ by ‘Unprofessional’ Jon Stewart in Interview: ‘Foul Race Essentialism.’
The show went predictably sideways after Sullivan made the obvious point that he is not responsible for bad stuff other White people do, especially those who were alive before he was born:
BOND: You know, because quite honestly if White men were going to do something about racism, you had 400 years. You coulda done it.
SULLIVAN: I am 58 years old.
BOND: I’m shutting you down right now.
SULLIVAN: I am not responsible for anyone before me.
BOND: The point is I am so tired of just engaging in this conversation and this deep hurt that Andrew has about talking about racism…. All of us White people do this.
Bond also said she wasn’t there to “argue with another White man.”
Stewart sided with Bond and said Sullivan was “doing a pretty good job” of at least appearing to be racist.
In a Substack post published Friday, Sullivan said he’d been “ambushed” because a booker for The Problem with Jon Stewart told him he’d be the only person on the show. He also reiterated his position on show’s subject matter.
Sullivan stated a booker called him to ask if he wanted to appear on the show to talk about race:
“Why would I go on a show just to be called a racist?” “No, no, no,” she replied. “Nothing like that would happen. This is not a debate. It’s just you talking one-on-one with Jon, and he’d never do that.” I said I’d think about it — especially since they seemed desperate with just 24 hours till taping — and later I called to say sure, if it’s just Jon. “I trust him to be fair.” I hadn’t had time to read the email invites, so I trusted the booker’s word.
Why on earth would anyone do that, given Stewart’s long track record of manipulating guests? Particularly conservative guests — which Sullivan still purports to be. In 2020, Deadline reported that “Jon Stewart Says His Biggest ‘Daily Show’ Regret Is Legacy Of ‘Evisceration Expectation.’” And yet here he is, back in full-on “Jon Stewart destroys Andrew Sullivan!!” mode.
Incidentally, Sullivan’s Substack briefly linked to above by Mediaite, is well worth a read in its entirety: The Problem With Jon Stewart. How painfully, cringingly super-woke must a comedian get to stay relevant?
When I tried to explain that I immigrated in 1984, and that a white man in 2022 cannot possibly be held responsible for something that happened four centuries ago, [Bond] replied: “I’m going to shut you down.” Stewart was enthralled. Then she spelled out exactly what she meant:
All white people do this. I don’t care if we say we’re Abolitionists, I don’t care if we say we’re Progressive, I don’t care if we are literally members of the KKK. Every single white person upholds these systems and structures of white supremacy, and we have got to talk about it.
This is the poisonous heart of CRT: that white people, by virtue of merely existing, are all morally problematic and always will be. Even if all the systems have been repealed. Even if you’d never racially discriminate yourself. Even if you spent your life fighting racism. That is why Bond called the Abolitionist movement indistinguishable in terms of its racism from the KKK! Why? Because whites are only ever whites.
Absorb that for a moment. This foul race essentialism, this view of white Americans as a single, undifferentiated blob of hate existing through the centuries as a force for the oppression of non-whites is simply the inverse of the old racism. It’s replacing hatred of blacks with hatred of whites; it’s replacing discrimination against blacks with discrimination against whites and Asians and others. It’s being used to make even more money for rich white people, to provide some elite whites with a weapon to destroy their career rivals, and to help build a new racial spoils system that leaves any notion of colorblindness or individual rights behind. (And the bigotry is palpable. When I spoke of the need to help a generation hobbled by absent fathers, high crime, and deep poverty, Lisa Bond responded: “Like you care about black kids.” There is no ad hominem these fanatics won’t stoop to.)
Is that a way out of where we are? Or is it, in fact, a fast way back to where we started?
One more thing: the trope of a malign racial force existing through history across time and space is one Jon Stewart might have once recognized before he joined the woke cult. I wonder what he would have said if someone had come on his old show and said, “I did not come on this show to argue with a Jew,” or “every single Jew upholds these systems,” or it doesn’t matter what a Jew’s politics are, he’s still a Jew, and therefore a racist. What if she had bragged that her organization wouldn’t even engage with Jews because they were so toxic. And what if that person had looked straight at a Jewish guest of Stewart’s when she said it? What would he have said?
Somehow I don’t think it would be: “If I could finger snap, I would finger snap right now.”
It’s been quite a ride for a man who was telling his Daily Show viewers in 2010 that their “race card was maxed out.” Or as Sullivan asked his fellow leftists last year: What Happened To You?