Last One Singing, Wins

Andrew Sullivan runs the most important political blog in the world. For the second time in a little over a year, he's suspended publication because he's completely distracted by Sarah Palin. This time, he's published a grandiloquent "To Our Readers" flourish saying that he needs to close up shop so he and his colleagues can read and analyze her cheesy memoir.

Over Labor Day weekend in 2008, he republished a shameful lie about Palin and her minor daughter without checking the facts. He's never apologized. Instead, he stubbornly defended his action, and even now he's doing what he can to keep the lie alive. It has become obvious that Sullivan is still desperately hoping to uncover evidence that Palin is not the biological mother of her youngest child. He writes today:

There is a possibility here of such a huge scandal that we would be crazy not to take our time either to debunk it or move it forward for further examination.

Sullivan is coming pretty close to staking his reputation on this. If he were right, it would destroy Palin, not to mention also destroy or harm scores of other people who would've needed to be involved (including, of course, the other Palin children). If he's wrong, which seems glaringly obvious, his reputation won't soon recover. Also, he may yet expose his publisher, the Atlantic Monthly Group, to a libel suit should Palin decide she can show that he has acted with malice (a charge he would seem to invite when he attacks her using sexually-charged language) and with reckless disregard for the truth.

So turn off your cell phones and pagers, and don't rustle your librettos. Sullivan vs. Palin has become an operatic death match.