For the second time in less than two weeks, Andrew Sullivan's ignorance was revealed on national television.
Following George Will and PBS's Gwen Ifill on ABC's This Week last month, MSNBC's sole conservative commentator S.E. Cupp assisted Sullivan with looking like a total moron on HBO's Real Time Friday (video follows with transcript and commentary):
BILL MAHER, HOST: Now Andrew, you said this was the biggest single night for gay victories in electoral politics?
ANDREW SULLIVAN, DAILY BEAST: Yes.
MAHER: Drama queen. And there’s six men, right, six openly gay men? Boy, Barney Frank picked the wrong time to quit the Congress, huh? There's a bisexual woman now. There’s an openly gay woman senator. We’ve pot in two states. We're becoming more like Canada, I mean, and we still have our nukes. Is it so bad that we've become more Canadian on these kinds of things for a modern country?
S.E. CUPP: I don't think we should lump gay marriage and pot together. I think that does gay marriage and the fight for gay marriage a little disservice.
SULLIVAN: Why?
CUPP: I don’t think they’re equivalent.
SULLIVAN: Of course they’re equivalent.
CUPP: They’re not the same thing.
SULLIVAN: Basic individual freedoms.
SULLIVAN: [With arrogant indignation] Do not tell me, do not tell me that I'm diminishing the gay rights movement. Please. From you?
CUPP: It does.
SULLIVAN: From you?
CUPP: I am on your team when it comes to fighting for gay rights, and it’s diminishing that argument.
SULLIVAN: When the Republicans…
CUPP: They are not the same.
SULLIVAN: When the Republican Party…
MAHER: As long as we're dividing up into teams.
SULLIVAN: …stops treating us as if we were pariahs and demons, because your party is controlled by a religious organization not a political one.
CUPP: Okay, now you're sounding crazy. I am on your team. The gay rights fight - and you have two conservatives at this table who are on that fight - is more important and on a different moral equivalency than legalizing pot. And you are going to ruin the message if you try to equate them. They are not the same.
Indeed.
Equating gay rights with legalizing pot is beyond absurd. Fortunately, Cupp was there to expose it.
Brava, S.E.! Brava!
