Shots In The Dark: Sullivan Versus Kaus

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Sullivan Versus Kaus

Andrew Sullivan and Mickey Kaus have often clashed on their various websites (AndrewSullivan.com and Slate), particularly about Kaus' reaction to Brokeback Mountain. (He thought straight men wouldn't want to see it, and that was okay.) I've often wondered whether this intellectual jousting was more than that—just how personal it became.

Well, I don't think there's much doubt any more: Andrew Sullivan clearly doesn't like Mickey Kaus.

(He's not so crazy about Ann Coulter either. Good for him.)

For what it's worth, on the question of gay v. straight promiscuity, I'm with Sullivan: I think plenty of straight men would be just as promiscuous as many gay men apparently are...if they could be. The fact that conventional mores and, um, women don't permit men to do that is the greatest check on straight male promiscuity. (And, I hope, the fact that when you're married and have kids, you prioritize those things over sex.)

It's the desire to have sex just as much as gay men want to—and the inability to do that—which leads to perversions like those of Jeffrey Epstein.

¶ 9:09 AM

Comments:

What "inability" are you talking about? Epstein, a billionaire, unable to get sex whenever he wanted it? He could have fed his sex drive easily, simply by hiring prostitutes. The perversion you refer to, I assume, is that of hiring underage girls for sex. That, I suggest, doesn't emanate frrm an inability to get enough sex, but from some internal need of Eptstein's to extend the sex drive beyond "normal" boundaries. This sugggests addiction, and perhaps underlying psychological issues. But it does also suggest one interesting twist on Sullivan's argument: maybe the desire to sleep with young girls, like the desire to have anonymous sex with othe men in bathhouses, stems ultimately from the same source: i.e., testosterone. If that's true, then we -- men -- are at some level all homosexuals, all perverts. Social restraints may bind us now, but if given the chance.....to what lengths would WE go?

# posted by Anonymous : 11:01 AM

Your quote: "It's the desire to have sex just as much as gay men want to—and the inability to do that—which leads to perversions like those of Jeffrey Epstein."

Excuse me, but based on my anecdotal experience, heterosexual men do want to have sex as often and as badly as gay men, and rarely are able to get as much as they want, yet still don't turn to pedophilia. You seem to be suggesting that a heterosexual like Eptstein is perverted because, like gay men, (a) he wants too much sex and (b) is unable to get it the "natural" way. Inevitably he turns to perversion.

In reality you're saying what Kaus and Coulter were saying and contradicting Sullivan's rather perceptive argument, which you purport to embrace. Alcohol may have brought out Mel Gibson's true feelings. Were you perchance drinking when you wrote the above?

# posted by Anonymous : 4:47 PM

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