The Crimson and the Pink

Andrew Sullivan starts out a post today expressing pity for internment advocate Michelle Malkin and the abuse she receives, but it soon becomes clear that his real meaning is, as Dr Dre might have said "when you diss Michelle, you diss myself." Because when he quotes from one of the abusive e-mails, it turns out that there's another target:

Andy Sullivan, the laughing stock of the blogosphere, even Jonah Goldberg and Glen Reynolds are sick of you [note* -- he's already switched to himself as the victim]. Excitable Andy Sullivan. HIV.

Now as Sullywatch notes, there's a laughable element to Sully's followup complaint of hearing the abusive "faggot" word in Provincetown (or Adams-Morgan), given that either is surely on the other end of spectrum of that classic line from Heathers "this is Ohio, if you don't have a brewski in your hand, you might as well be wearing a dress."

But anyway, we were struck by a choice of word by Sully's enraged e-mailer. Where exactly did he get the idea of labelling Sully as "excitable?" Because there's only one person we can think of who's using that word about him these days, and that would be Sully's good friend Mickey Kaus. Google found us 5 separate examples of the usage, such as:

Just an excitable boy: Andrew Sullivan ... Andrew Sullivan's a friend of mine, but he's too excitable! ... I've called Andrew Sullivan "excitable," but Cole makes Sullivan look like Brian Lamb. ...

We've wondered just what exactly Kaus ever meant by that, but it looks like at least one of his readers saw the code right away.

*UPDATE: post adjusted to reflect the fact that Sully had switched to abusive e-mail that he, not Malkin, had received.
FURTHER UPDATE Jan 21: Sullywatch wonders if there's a Kaus-Sully feud.