"Identity Politics" For Me, But Not For Thee

Jeff Goldstein, responding to Andrew Sullivan’s point that reactionary bloggers were yet again gratuitously bringing his sexuality into a political discussion:

Still, with this–his latest attempt to silence his critics by appealing to victim group emotionalism and then playing the implied homophobe card against me–Sullivan has officially earned his progressive merit badge. Congrats, Andrew!

Jeff Goldstein, earlier in the same post:

In fact, Andrew appears to be leaning toward the position that the whole thing was a bit of cynical political theater–a thesis that would require Bush to control Tony Blair, the British press, and MI5 (which, to be fair, is hardly a stretch if the Jews can control the media, Hollywood, and the world economy). Otherwise, how could our rogue nation’s Christianist-in-Chief have gotten the British Labor party leader to go along with his nefarious plan…

So, to summarize the new conservative political correctness, keep the following rules in mind:

• Bringing someone’s sexuality into a discussion apropos of nothing should be entirely beyond criticism, and if you think otherwise you’re a emotional, hysterical drama queen trying to pre-empt debate with your “identity politics.”
• Repeatedly implying that anyone who disagrees with you must be motivated by anti-Semitism or anti-Christian bias with no basis whatsoever: completely acceptable.

The punchline, of course, is that once you burn off the strawman framing of the issue (nobody, including Sullivan, has any doubt that some of the people being detained wanted to engage in acts of terrorism; whether they had the capacity to carry them out, or whether the attacks were imminent, is far more questionable) it seems that even the Blair government itself is in on the conspiracy that apparently makes Sullivan a hysterical anti-Semitic and anti-Christian crank. (And as for the fact that the American and British governments had significant conflicts about the severity of the plots and the timing of arrests, let’s forget about that!) What will the “Tony Blair Democrats” say?