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Anyone who knows or has had dealings with Sobran realizes that the man has serious personal "issues", which may be the real root of his anti-Semitic impulses. Apparently Sobran's early family life was a troubled one, particularly his relationship with his father, so it isn't too difficult to see him coming to see Bill Buckley as a sort of surrogate "father".

Trouble is, Sobran stayed on as an editor at National Review way too long. Normally, editorial tenure at NR is like being a writer and bit player for "Saturday Night Live"; it's supposed to be something of a way-station, you stick around for a couple of years and then move on to the next, bigger stage: Brookhiser to scholarly books, Will to a huge syndication deal, etc. (if Jonah Goldberg doesn't move on in another year or so you can peg his career as DOA, by the way, no matter how funny he can be on occasion).

But almost exactly like Al Franken on the SNL staff, Sobran hung around National Review for almost 15 years. Like a prolonged adolescence, in more than one way: people (including myself on one occasion) who encounter Sobran in person are often shocked at his unkempt appearance, with greasy uncombed hair, cheap rumpled suit, and insecure demeanor. If you know anything about adolesecents, you know that eventually there comes the Revolt Against Parental Authority. In Sobran's case, this meant lashing out in sullen rebellion at the surrogate father (Buckley) on a point important to the surrogate father (support for Israel).

So Sobran was kicked out of the house. Today, he is sort of a pseudo-intellectual ne'er-do-well, a crank who can only get his message out on a fairly tawdry website and "newsletter". I'm surprised there are that many people on FR who take him at all seriously. I agree with the poster who suggested he might eventually convert to Islam; he's an angry hater who would fit right in with CAIR types and has come very close to saying that the US got what it deserved on 9/11.

You provide an interesting personal and psychological profile of Sobran, up to and including the greasy hair and rumpled suit. I was the one who suggested he might eventually convert to Islam. He is a purist and an absolutist, unable to accept that the Church is relegated to a secondary and often ineffectual and compromised role in modern society. The theocratic rule of a Muslim state might very well appeal to him. A man who runs a futile presidential campaign as a fourth-or-fifth party candidate has clearly given up hope that his values in all their purity will ever again find widespread acceptance in mainstream American society.