In this week’s Rolling Stone, President Obama takes the cover story … again. The piece is a long interview, and it’s a gushing profile of Obama. This time, however, he steps in it by endorsing Trig Palin birther and The Atlantic columnist Andrew Sullivan:
I read all of the New York Times columnists. Krugman’s obviously one of the smartest economic reporters out there, but I also read some of the conservative columnists, just to get a sense of where those arguments are going. There are a handful of blogs, Andrew Sullivan’s on the Daily Beast being an example, that combine thoughtful analysis with a sampling of lots of essays that are out there. The New Yorker and The Atlantic still do terrific work. Every once in a while, I sneak in a novel or a nonfiction book.
Sullivan, of course, is the same charming fellow who maintains that Trig Palin, Sarah Palin’s son, is actually the child of Bristol Palin; Sarah Palin, he said, claimed the child as her own in a giant cover-up. Sullivan isn’t just one of Obama’s favorite columnists, he also visited the White House for a state dinner last month.
Obama also ladled spoonfuls of praise on Jon Stewart, his lackey at Comedy Central:
I like The Daily Show, so sometimes if I’m home late at night, I’ll catch snippets of that. I think Jon Stewart’s brilliant. It’s amazing to me the degree to which he’s able to cut through a bunch of the nonsense – for young people in particular, where I think he ends up having more credibility than a lot of more conventional news programs do.
Stewart has credibility? On what basis? For Obama, the basis is clear: Stewart backs Obama to the hilt.