Say what you want about McChrystal’s four-point “leadership” system, but it obviously works long after he’s no longer even a leader. In fact, there’s probably no one who has proven to be better at monetizing failure than Stan the Man!

You can chart the money and stock options flowing in as he sits on the board of directors of Jet Blue and MRAP super-manufacturer Navistar . Don’t forget his gig with Siemens Government, a firm perhaps best known for a bribery scandal one wonders if McChrystal’s cachet now shall scrub clean.

There’s also his McChrystal Group, now a client of AOL. And the fact that he’s in the top tier of gets on the national speakers’ tour, perhaps netting tens of thousands of dollars for each engagement.

Not only does a less expensive suit cost less, it is also a far less precious thing. You might not bicycle to work in a $1,700 suit, but one that cost $450? When the cost of a suit is on par with a fancy dress shirt and a pair of premium jeans, the possibilities for wearing it open up considerably. Brunching! Gallery-going! Walking the dog! Even Mike Rowe, the hunky, muddy star of “Dirty Jobs,” might wear one to work.

The Apple guys seemed genuinely surprised that I knew as much as I did about computer hardware. I’m not trying to insult iPeople, at least not in this article, but during both mediation and the trial, I realized that Apple has a strong expectation that their users not be tech-savvy and, as such, Apple seems used to infantilizing and bamboozling their customers with silly and nonsensical explanations of highly technical matters.

Celebrity sightings were common, too. “I brought the whole cast of ‘From Here to Eternity’ to Hawaii,” he said, rattling off the list of stars that included Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, Montgomery Clift and Deborah Kerr. “I made her bed in the stateroom. That was exciting,” he added. “Burt Lancaster had 12 or 13 martinis, then came and bartended with me as if he hadn’t had one.

But Andrew [Sullivan]’s writing is not and never has been much about making sense in this way. Andrew is a man of enormous feeling capable of reacting to public figures with ferocious hostility or flushed adoration. His reactions are often completely unhinged, wildly inapposite, and rarely stable over time. Andrew falls in and out of love like a bipolar fourteen year-old diarist. Yet he proceeds — and this is as maddening as it is riveting — as if he were not an overheated, fickle instrument, as if his vehement mutable passions about public persons made perfect sense, were the unimpeachable output of a judicious internal process of cool analysis sensitive only to the objective features his subjects. But just when Andrew’s infuriating audacity or blindness or whatever it is has you ready to punch your laptop, he teases you with fluent erudition, penetrating insight, subtle analysis and measured intellectual judgment. This mix is fascinating. It can be addictive. No, it does not make sense.