Andrew Sullivan steps down from daily bloggin'

The timing was interesting. His explanation was understandable on the one hand (the sheer volume of writing he's done for all this time is pretty impressive) and...odd on the other. History is hardly going to stop.

-- Alex in SF (clobberthesauru...) (webmail), February 1st, 2005.

Alex in SF, does Ken Mehlman count?

Like Terry McAuliffe.

Lord knows we wouldn't want the left to be less homogenous! What a horrible thought! *runs away*

Seriously, where DO you draw the line, and won't that line be at a different place for each individual? Call me naive, but I think the rhetorical battle against Dubya could do with less worrying about ideological impurity and more cries of "Strange Bedfellows!"

Sullivan: And I say we're gonna be "BROWNSHIRTS"!
Mehlmen: NO, we're gonna be BLACKSHIRTS!
S: BROWNSHIRTS!
M: BLACKSHIRTS!
S: FUCK YOUR STUPID LITTLE CLUB, I'M OUT!

he's getting a little carried away with the whole palin thing
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/11/to-our-readers.html

A term needs to be invented for when you're so caught up in internet-encouraged monomania that you start to go a little mad.

The mindset is: "Don't worry, my followers. I am skipping meals, cutting myself off from all people and pissing in soda bottles so that not one second of my time will be spent away from my computer, doing the Lord's work."

What's funny is that it can infect normally sane people, too.

I despise Palin and encourage everyone to find out as much dirt on her as possible.

But Sullivan is a dangerous nut.

He seems to be a relatively rational and good-tempered guy, judging from the little I've read from him. Does he go into fits like this regularly?

his obsession with the Clintons, followed by his defense of the intervention in Iraq, then the 180 into supporting Obama are all so wildly unreconciled that the only conclusion is that he's nuts.

I have no memory of starting this thread ~5 years ago. Where has the time gone?

Why do you think Sullivan is a "dangerous nut," Matt?

I only began reading him during the 2008 General Election, and stopped shortly after Obama's win (I was burnt-out on most political blogs). He was certainly obsessed with Palin (and consumed by his dislike for her), but I thought he was smart and well-reasoned.

A term needs to be invented for when you're so caught up in internet-encouraged monomania that you start to go a little mad.

There should be, it's becoming common enough a condition.

I like him. He does get all theatrical from time to time, but to his credit he calms down quickly and returns to a rational view once the issue is decided and the initial passion is burnt out. His stuff on Iran earlier this year was superb.

The stance on Palin is very much the exception, assuming of course that fear and obsessive hatred isn't the rational view here.

He's all id.

He had an interesting post today about how the new GOP has not only abandoned Reagan's approach, but turned against it almost entirely.

And then back to Palin. Which is fine by me.

im loln at dudes like sulllivan and douthat continually tying themselves in knots trying to make a case for true conservatism - you had a prolonged period of conservative rule and look what happened its not a coincidence - deal

Untested idealism and trying to radically alter the world fast isn't conservative though, it's just that's what people call it now. He's for something that's lost its name, like liberalism.

thats what he says but really its just unexamined bullshit fyi

hes for imaginary shit like how hobbitses were traditional but mostly nice and tolerant of shit back in the shire.

plz plz tell me that is not a metaphor and that he really does have a stance on hobbits

conservatism is fine in theory but its never worked in practice

He's got a point though. I mean, liberalism's the best thing in the world, but you tell anyone that and all they hear is "I'd bend over for Osama".

conservatism is an old man who doesnt want u to touch his remote control

conservatism is people who take up two parking spaces and go out of their way to brag about how they don't give money to homeless people.

At its base, conservatism is really "I like things how they are now".

"for me"

parking-hogs give conservatism a bad name is his point

At its base, conservatism is really "I like things how they are now were in 1950".

My view.

("now" in that statement should be read not as literally now but as a specific period of time which then becomes the conservative person's golden age, pushing them towards ideas and policies that attempt to keep society in the same place it was during that golden age)

xp: lol

(My view of conservatism)

imo everyone who writes for the corner, to cite one example, would be advocating segregation if this was 1957

eh i have a long, ill-thought out post in mind about there's an "idea" version of a political party and its "tribal" version, and how the tribal version is basically the real one etc etc but u all know it already. but so what.

conservatism sounds very nice, even true!, "people are bad as well as good," "you can't save them from themselves," "the best things come from the bottom-up, so leave people alone," "society will always have problems that stem from the human character, best not to mess around with things too much to fix them"

...but it's really a right-wing interest movement, not a "political" one. same is true of liberalism! but i'm a liberal, so it's ok.

Y'know, fuck Andrew Sullivan. I don't want him on my side. I see no reason to forgive him for the page space he gave to Charles Murray and Betsy McCaughey, or for the "fifth column" bs he spouted during the buildup to Iraq, and I don't see what good his Trig birth conspiracy mongering does anyone either. He's intellectually irresponsible, and the fact that reasonable left-of-center folks are even giving him the time of day makes me sad.

this is america, land of the 2nd chance and redemption

land of the bald gay blogger

Thing is, it's not like he's gotten any smarter. It's just that his glib generalizations about Obama ending the culture wars are more palatable to liberals now.

yeah I don't really have any time for him

And no, he doesn't get to play the "but that's not REAL conservatism!!" card either. Modern U.S. conservatism has been quite upfront about its beliefs and goals, and no one who thought GWB would magically transform into Edmund Burke deserves to be taken seriously in 2009.

Sorry, just needed to get all that out.

it's ok, this is a safe place

i started reading sully/dish relatively late in the game so i missed his murray boostering and even the iraq war cheerleading, so that's probably why i am more inclined to like the pot-smoking, pet shop boys-loving guy who writes it now. altho his inability to back the fuq up on murray is just kinda >:/ for me

Getting Massachusetts and Alabama to agree on a deep moral issue is almost impossible. And I remain a conservative who wants to see necessary change occur as far as possible with as broad a consensus as possible and who believes that decisions made closest to the ground are the least worst ways of avoiding massive errors or hideous unintended consequences. This means that injustice will remain longer than it should in an ideal world. But we live in a real world. And that distinction between theory and practice matters to an Oakeshottian like myself. But it also means that justice when it arrives is real, more durable and can more easily become part of the fabric of a society.

oic.

You'd think a troo conservative would accept that Roe is settled law, a precedent of 35+ years. But in AS's world, it's only radical to take a step that *increases* human rights. Not to mention the fact that the federal govt. is designed to act as a conservative check on the passions of the electorate, esp. wrt to individual rights.

Also, only a blinkered ideologue would overlook the fact that historically the states are ALWAYS WRONG when it comes to equal rights.

i feel youre just not understanding how to appreciate andrew correctly - not that i particularly disagree w/anything youve said but

i like his writing on catholicism recently. i think there IS overlap between people who have mostly traditional religious beliefs and practices and people who oppose the church's political positioning and stance on sexuality, but 95% of the time people talk as if it's either-or, you must pick one and abandon the other. i appreciate that he attempts to talk to people on both sides about why and how he holds these seemingly contradictory opinions (even though it seems like at this point he's mostly talking to atheists or disaffected catholics, and nobody on the conservative religious side is listening).

the palin stuff is...well, i'm waiting for that to cool down a little bit before i go back to his blog.

JoshuaGreen
Sad news: Andrew Sullivan is leaving the Atlantic :(
5 minutes ago

huh

prob the weed editor for bill simmons new site idk

i suppose he'll keep blogging elsewhere? i only read him occasionally
(ta-nehisi coates blog is the best thing @ atlantic, maybe on the whole internets)

ezraklein Ezra Klein
Ratings plummet for 2011 #oscars as America hunts desperately for Andrew Sullivan news.
26 seconds ago

shit is getting mad real^^

oh he's off to join the newsbeast (i wonder why??)

if i were sullivan id set up my own shop, make mad dough

tho if thats true abt newsbeast they prob paying him weight, out of pure desperation needless to say

Coates and Sully are keeping The Atlantic afloat.

would be curious to see a breakdown of their traffic, they have lots of 'stuff' in there

thegarance Garance Franke-Ruta
To answer the follow-up q, Andrew Sullivan and team are leaving @TheAtlantic to join Newsweek/Daily Beast.
4 minutes ago

i know daria already said it but official tweet fwiw

tnc is reading a lot of jane austen right now, it's great -
http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2011/02/jane-austen-just-dissed-you/71437/

sully is huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge for them, bigger than anything/anyone else on the site by miles--(but) they essentially created the atlantic wire as a contingency plan for sullys departure.

the atlantic will be fine, lots of smart people working there who know the internet and execute well... tdb, even with sully, im not so sure

god bless sully and his intensity but it is unfortunate how frequently full of shit he is. you know, i'm with him on the palin thing. and i was not with him on the clinton thing. but he gets ideas that he will fanatically drive into the ground, then, if wrong, will trumpet his admission of such as evidence of his reasonableness.

i guess it's cool that he's willing to admit mistakes -- unlike our other conservatives -- but jeez. at the very least, larison is less of an egomaniac.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-02-27/andrew-sullivan-joins-the-daily-beast
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/02/home-news.html

first decent thing i've read by andy since the dish's heyday

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/yes-im-dependent-on-weed.html

And daily use of weed is around three times as common as daily use of booze.

whaaaaaaat

That has to be as a percentage of users rather than overall.

I know it's a Sunday but I figured somebody would have made the "Andrew Sullivan gets down about daily tokin'" joke already