Pursuant to last week’s discussion about Andrew Sullivan’s shifting opinion on whether or not Sarah Palin is Trig Palin’s mother (all being done under the aegis of The Atlantic), it seems that Sullivan, having issued a brief forced sounding post saying that Gov. Palin had, in fact, been pregnant with Trig, now seems to be trying to coyly contradict that pose as often as he deems practicable.

To wit, Sullivan first claimed that Palin’s ABC interview provided grounds for the media (including, presumably, David Bradley’s Atlantic) to investigate everything about her entire life. Here’s Sullivan, “She has therefore pulled a Gary Hart in inviting the press to examine her life in full.” More:

when you agree to run for vice-president of the United States, you surrender any zone of privacy. Al Gore’s sometimes wayward son; Dick Cheney’s daughter and now granddaughter; Dan Quayle’s wife; George H. W. Bush’s extensive clan: all these families have been an “open book” to the press. . . .

The Edwards story – showing stunning recklessness in a potential president – legitimized the reporting of the National Enquirer, and made their reporting in this news cycle legit. And the story – subsequently reported and endorsed in the New York Times and every mainstream media source – was less relevant to public life than Palin’s. Because by the time the story broke, Edwards was out of the race. Palin is not just in the race, she’s ahead – and we have six weeks to go. It is, I’d argue, the duty of the press and the blogosphere to ask any factual and fair questions to which there can be clear and factual answers. . . .

In 2008, in mid-September, we are not even allowed to ask questions about Palin’s real and actual life as a mother-as-governor? That notion is as absurd as the Palin candidacy itself, in my judgment.

Of open books, any sincere and legitimate factual question is askable. . . .

Sullivan never actually spells out which factual and answerable question, in specific, he’s driving at. But I think we can make a fair inference. Here’s the kicker:

It seems to me that if you are on record saying that your life is an open book, and you have a state-run web-page about your infant son, and your own children’s travel is paid for by the state, and you presented your infant son at a convention televised across the entire world, and you sent out a press release outing your own daughter’s current pregnancy, then it is not despicable, evil, vile or outrageous for the press to ask factual, answerable questions about Sarah Palin’s experiences as a pregnant and non-pregnant mother and about her marriage and about her parenting of her children.

Hmmmm. I wonder what he means by “non-pregnant”? It’s a term I haven’t seen used before. Perhaps David Bradley knows?

Just for good measure, Sullivan later notes:

Now I begin to understand the intimidation I have been subjected to for simply asking questions. All I can reassure my readers is: I’m now more determined than ever to reveal the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about this dangerous, vindictive Christianist cipher being foisted on the United States.

Shouldn’t someone ask Sullivan exactly what the factual, answerable question about Sarah Palin is that he’s determined to reveal the truth of?

It’s almost as if he’s speaking elliptically in order to hold to the letter of some agreement with someone about a some subject which he isn’t supposed to write about . . .

So other people are noticing it, too: Something happened earlier this week with Sullivan. He stopped writing without notice. Then mysteriously reversed his position on the parentage of Trig Palin, without explanation or retraction of his earlier insistence that there was no reason to believe for certain that Trig was Sarah Palin’s son.

And throughout all of this, Sullivan has been posting “Quotes of the Day” which seemed designed to function as a sort of Greek Chorus. During his period of radio silence, he posted the German “About which one cannot speak, one must be silent.”

Today he publishes a quote reading, “It may be false. It may be true. But nothing has been proved.”

For whatever reason, Sullivan seems to have backed away from smearing Sarah Palin, but his heart just doesn’t seem to be in it. He’s like Col. Nathan Jessep, just dying to tell us exactly who ordered the code red.

Update: Galley Friend Dean Barnett makes a fairly important point:

[The left] smeared Sarah Palin with a host of – um – imaginative charges like she wore a fat suit to fake a pregnancy that had actually visited itself upon her daughter. Even the chief disseminator of that rumor from his perch at the Atlantic has since bethought himself of that smear, publicly crediting Palin for bringing her fifth child to term on Wednesday (although of course neither admitting error nor apologizing for his role in spreading the rumor).

If Sullivan and The Atlantic are now walking back from their charge–and don’t get me wrong, this is a good thing–don’t they need to issue either an explanation or a retraction of the earlier stuff? Otherwise, how are we to know which is the real position?

So it appears that Sullivan’s earlier claim that no one is telling him what he can and can’t write about might not be strictly true. He now posts a “quote of the day” which translates to roughly “About which one cannot speak, one must be silent.”

This suggests that Sullivan has been in some way disciplined by management at The Atlantic. Surely this is enough to interest a mainstream media reporter? Right?

Seriously, is there a more interesting media story out there right now than one of the nation’s oldest journals having an internal dispute over a staffer’s writing, causing said staffer to temporarily cease work, and then post a barely-veiled dissent?

Oh, well, maybe there is. But still! America’s media beat writers must be able to fight two conflicts simultaneously! If they can’t, they’re just daring rogue journalists to behave badly . . .

Update: The great Ace is all over this, with a comment from a tipster who claims to work at The Atlantic. (Ace has no idea if the tipster is genuine, fyi.)

Update 2: Sullivan seems to be back posting at The Atlantic, but has yet to mention Sarah Palin. I’m sure some industrious reader could tell me how many times he’s posted about her since her nomination. We can then see how long he goes until mentioning her again.

Update 3: Big news! Sullivan is back on the Trig Palin story and he must have uncovered some new evidence, because he’s now certain that Trig is Sarah Palin’s child:

Say all you want about Sarah Palin’s non-existent record on foreign policy, series of public lies, non-existent vetting and absurd, unprecedented shielding from the press. At least we know this for sure: she went through the psychological, emotional and spiritual test of eight months of pregnancy and a painful, difficult, endless labor for a cause she believes in.

Did he get a gander at the hospital records during his time out off?

Following last week’s meltdown, Andrew Sullivan floated another unfounded smear against Sarah Palin from his perch over at The Atlantic over the weekend. Dean Barnett has the rundown.

Even MSNBC is reevaluating its HR decisions. Shouldn’t David Bradley be doing the same? How long does it take to tear down a century-old reputation?

Update: Galley Friend A.W. sends in another example of Sullivan’s shoddy reporting/analysis. Here’s A.W.:

Sullivan, referring to “Troopergate,” links to an ABC News video and concludes, “Palin clearly lied.”

But if you watch the video, you find two things:

(1) Accusations from the fired state official that he believes he was fired because of the brother-in-law; and

(2) Audio recordings that literally include no reference to Palin intending to fire the police commissioner.

It’s funny that Sullivan would call this, in effect, a “slam dunk.” There’s no evidence there! And Sullivan never hesitates to (1) bemoan the Bush administration’s reliance on thin evidence in the run-up to the war, or (2) remind us all that “true” conservatives are skeptics.

Update 2: A little Kremlinology: So last night Sullivan posts what reads like a semi-CYA post saying that he really does admire Sarah Palin quite a lot.* Then he posts a nonsensical bit about the NYT Trig Palin story, which somehow suggests that the story was an “exposé” (as per Drudge’s promise). (The story wasn’t, by-the-by.)

And since then: silence. Well, not total silence, just one wordless picture out a window. People have been emailing me all afternoon speculating that management over at the National Journal group may be dealing with the Sullivan problem in some way. My guess is that he’s just in transit somewhere. We’ll see.

* A close reading of that semi-endorsement of Palin, however, shows that Sullivan is still peddling the smear that Trig isn’t the governor’s baby. Look very carefully at Sullivan’s wording. He says, “I want to go on record again as saying that the decision to bring up a child with Down Syndrome is one of the most noble, beautiful and admirable decisions any person can make. That Sarah Palin is doing that says a huge amount in favor of her.” [emphasis added]

Is it coincidence that Sullivan merely credits Palin with “bringing up” the baby, instead of, you know, “bearing him” or “having him” or “giving birth to him”? I don’t think so. It seems pretty clear that even as late as last night, Sullivan was still hinting to readers of The Atlantic that Palin’s youngest child isn’t actually hers.

Update 3: Other writers for The Atlantic are beginning to address the question of Sullivan’s disappearance. Ta-Nehisi Coates has now forbidden commenters from speculating about Sullivan, saying, “Frankly, I have no clue what the situation is–and neither do you.”

That sounds kind of ominous. Marc Ambinder says “Lots of e-mails asking about Andrew’s whereabouts. I checked in with him; he’s fine. He’s taking a few days off.”

Does this mean that David Bradley has finally stepped in to take control of his magazine? Doesn’t this, finally, serve as enough of a hook to get some media reporters to start making phone calls?

Update 4: More speculation. It would be nice to have some actual reporting, though. Romenesko? Kurtz? Anyone?

Update 5: Sullivan speaks! “I’m absolutely fine, nothing has changed with this blog, no one is pressuring me to write or not write anything . . .” Not quite a total denial that there is some friction with management. After all, he’d be free to write anything he wanted at andrewsullivan.com–and he could do it without embarrassing The Atlantic Monthly.

I hate to be so stuck on politics, but I’ve been on the road for two weeks at the conventions so it’s kind of what’s in front of me.

To that end, I’ve done a little item for First Things trying to explore what it is about Sarah Palin that has so enraged the left, “Why They Hate Her.”

Not to worry, though. The Dark Knight will come out on Blu-Ray some time in February and this site will then revert to its previous all-Dark Knight, all-the-time incarnation. I’m sure you’re counting down the minutes . . .

Note: I’m just going to keep updating this thread, so keep checking back.

Double Note: I’m moving what was the final post up to the top, as it seems to be more useful as an into to this discussion, rather than a footer. Here it is:

Final Update of Convention Week: Believe me, I’m more relieved about that than you are. A friend sends along an email with this link and the subject header “Why David Bradley Doesn’t Care.” I’ll spare you the click: It’s Sullivan informing readers that his site has gotten 2 million views over the last two days.

So perhaps I should make a little more explicit why I’ve been so worked up about this whole thing.

I have no particular aversion to the smearing of political figures; or rather, no aversion greater than that of the average reasonable person. I find it ugly and distasteful, but I realize that it’s part of the rough and tumble of politics. It has always happened. It will continue to happen. That’s why you’ll note that I haven’t written a single word about what sites such as Daily Kos, Democrats.com, or Democratic Underground have said about her.

And I hold no particular brief for Sarah Palin, per se. As I’ve written elsewhere, there are reasonable criticisms of her both as a governor and as a vice presidential candidate. I don’t think anything I’ve written about her would count as boosterism. (Although I do make the case that she was the best strategic pick available to McCain, as an analytical matter.)

What’s caught my attention here, then is The Atlantic. I am, and always have been, an enormous booster for the Old Media, and smarty-pants general-interest magazines in particular. What’s so notable in this whole affair isn’t the tarring of Palin but the fact that The Atlantic Monthly is the vehicle for the irresponsible spreading of smears about Palin and speculation so inane that it can’t be counted, by any reasonable measure, as analysis. (Here, I’m thinking of Sullivan’s claim that he thought it possible both Palin and McCain would relinquish their nominations.)

If Andrew Sullivan were to have written everything he wrote this week at his own website, I wouldn’t have said a word about it. The real scandal here isn’t Sullivan: It’s what The Atlantic has become by publishing him.

As for Sullivan’s page views, I sincerely hope that David Bradley isn’t making his editorial decisions based solely on eyeballs and dollars. Were that so, you could simply give The Atlantic‘s pages over to Perez Hilton or Slashdot or Matt Drudge or any other number of content formats. But the point of The Atlantic, like other great journals, is to be something different–to be a stage in the world of ideas, even if it’s not the most profitable thing.

I find the prospect of The Atlantic devolving into some version of Free Republic or Daily Kos to be immensely worrisome. Hopefully David Bradley will do something to put his house in order. Soon.

Now back to the original thread.

After demanding that he be allowed to inspect Trig Palin’s placenta all day yesterday, Andrew Sullivan is now suggesting that he thinks John McCain might withdraw from the election.

Yes, that’s right. There’s some serious political analysis from one of the nation’s most prestigious general interest magazines.

I wonder what the other folks on the masthead think about having their credibility linked with Sullivan’s.

Update 1: National Review, another of America’s venerable journals, tries to save The Atlantic from Sullivan:

Once a respectable journalist, The Atlantic’s self-declared champion of respect for privacy and of civil discourse now obsesses over Miss Palin, airing baseless and abhorrent questions about the motherhood of Trig, Gov. Palin’s infant son, born this year with Down syndrome. One wonders if David Bradley bought The Atlantic — a venerable institution that once published Mark Twain and Martin Luther King — so that he could associate it with the most despicable ravings of the left-wing blogosphere. What price in reputation is Bradley willing to pay for increased unique-visitor numbers from among the fever swamps?

Sullivan has become a media story in himself. Howard Kurtz and Jim Romenesko should be taking note. There’s dissension in the ranks at The Atlantic. Surely this is worth a reporter’s call to David Bradley to ask if he stands by Sullivan?

Update 2: Ross Douthat courageously breaks into open warfare against Sullivan:

I think the coverage of Sarah Palin to date – by colleagues I used to respect and publications I normally admire – at least partially vindicates this theory about the reception that would greet the kind of GOP I’d like to see.

Other Atlantic colleagues seem close to doing the same. As I said above, Sullivan’s coverage of Palin is becoming a media story in itself. Someone–Jack Shafer, Howard Kurtz, E&P, the NY Observer–should start poking around The Atlantic to see if Sullivan’s tenure is sustainable.

Update 3: A friend writes in to ask whether or not the Sullivan taint really does spread to the magazine, since he is, after all, just a blogger. I’d argue that having “The Atlantic” in giant letters at the top of every one of his posts is pretty damaging to the brand. But then there’s also this:

Sullivan’s reaction to Palin puts his gushing cover story on Obama in an entirely new light. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. Neither view is good for The Atlantic.

Update 4: Sullivan continues to demand to know the “details” of Trig’s birth. And now he has new justification: Because Trig was present at the convention. Here he his, mere moments into Palin’s speech:

Brandishing a Down Syndrome child as a campaign statement is daring the press to ask questions about him. And if you are going to hold the baby in front of the cameras, how can you say that the details of his birth cannot even be discussed?

Yes, we’re now six days after Palin’s announcement and Sullivan is still insinuating that Trig Palin is not Sarah Palin’s child on the web-pages of The Atlantic Monthly.

Update 5: Ace of Spades finds another bit of Trig Palin obsessing from Sullivan. He also gets that Sullivan is single-handedly destroying the reputation of The Atlantic.

Update 6: Now Sullivan responds to Ross Douthat, meaning we have an open, ongoing conflict between writers at The Atlantic.

Update 7: Reason takes note.

So hot.

A brief piece on Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible over at the new, and very excellent, Culture 11.

There will not be a quiz.