Discussion for article #232878
Please wait whilst I wipe away my flowing tears. Not because of Andrew Sullivan. I just happen to be dicing onions for my fried potatoes
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“The middle part of the country - the great red zone that voted for Bush - is clearly ready for war. The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead -and may well mount a fifth column.”
Wanker.
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Who?
The last week has been little Andy telling us how great he is, how much his readers love him, sharing their emotional overwrought emails (apparently his regular readers write like…well…him) telling us how he changed the face of journalism. And now he tells us the site just can’t continue without him. A fitting coda.
Now that Sarah Palin has been successfully removed as a mainstream republicant our mission is accomplished.
I kid, Andrew. Your evolution is quite a thing to behold.
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I’ll miss Andrew Sullivan’s political analysis. It was the only reliable source for figuring out what sort of emotional state Andrew Sullivan was experiencing on any given day.
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Where’s my refund? Or do I get a 10% voucher for his next “book” (I think they’re called that).
Here’s a view from my window.
Just kidding…I stole it off the internets.
Adieu.
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Just before I came to TPM I was reading “The Onion.” This piece would have fit right in there. “Area man will eat his last potato chip on Friday.”
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Hah…and I was afraid I’d be the only person moved to comment “who cares?”.
I am a Dan Savage fan, despite his similar (ly puzzling) endorsement of the Neo-con con, but am tired of him referencing Sullivan. The tortured logic employed by Sullivan in dancing around changes in course without issuing simple, direct mea-culpas is tiresome.
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I’m a huge Sullivan fan – I’ve been reading him since the Condit story. Beyond that, I’m fond of him as a human being, or at least as fond as you can be of someone you don’t actually know in reality.
I was genuinely broken up when I heard the blog was ending. I’m on the site all the time, and have been for years and years. He seems like a friend, even though that’s probably an illusion created by reading his stuff for years.
Those posts over the past week came at the end of 15 years of intensive work. They were a summary of it, from his perspective. But really, they were for people like me, who have been along for the ride. It’s like when someone retires, and they give him a gold watch. They say nice things.
I was kind of surprised that so many people here hate him. I can understand disagreeing with him. I disagree with him on all sorts of stuff. I think he’s still, after all of those Krugman columns, still more or less on board with deficit reduction. I think he’s just flat out wrong about the Pauls.
But I kind of feel that if someone hates him, and can’t get into a dialog with him, that’s more on that person than on Sullivan. I think he engages people, I think he argues in good faith, and I think he’s open to argument and to changing his mind.
Again, there’s lots of places where he’s wrong. From his perspective, there would be lots of places I’m wrong. I think there are places where Josh is wrong. There are big issues on which I disagree with the President. But politics is about working stuff out with people who have different ideas.
I guess my question for people who hate Sullivan is: Are there any people with whom you have substantive disagreements who you don’t hate? Any conservative you’d say, “He’s wrong, but he’s an OK guy?” Or do all of the heretics have to be burned?
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Oh just fucking go, already. Jesus, the goodbye just keeps going on and on like a Cher farewell tour.
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SRfromGR, you are a comedy genius.
Some of us having a hard time getting over the vicious hysterical cheering for the Iraq War and neo-McCarthyite attacks on opponents. Others have a hard time forgiving the fluffing of Charles Murray’s racism.
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Who said I hate him? I don’t. Anytime I’ve seen hm on TV he usually seems like an okay guy. And I like that he loves dogs. But his writing is too histrionic for me to be effective, even if he happens to be writing on a position I agree with. Yes, the infamous “The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead - and may well mount a fifth column.” during his love letters to Bush and daily cheering for war was disgraceful, he was rightly mocked for it, and he even much later somewhat apologized for it when he saw how much damage it did to his reputation, but it’s not even that nonsense. It’s the preening, the look at me, the overwrought breathless posts, and it’s been really evident in his love letters to himself in the last week. And your comment sort of demonstrates what I was saying about his regular readers. Breathe deeply, I think you will survive just fine without him.
Those were low moments indeed – but not the sum total of the man or his contribution. I will miss The Dish immensely. I quite appreciated TNC’s take: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/andrew-sullivan-and-the-importance-of-error/385071/
(And I should add that it was Sullivan who directed my attention to the work of both Coates and TPM – among many others.)
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I will miss his blog. He infuriated the hell out of me during the run up to the Iraq war with his rah rah, pro-Bush, pro-war proselytizing. He did a full 180 during the course of the war and aftermath, recognizing the insanity of the neocons and the christianist/corporatist coup within the republican party. He took responsibility for his misguided stance.
He wrote eloquently and sometimes too eruditely for my taste but he took strong positions with which I agree against the tea party, anti-choice, anti-feminist, anti-science, anti-reason, homophobic, anti-democratic, racist, mega-corporate meddling forces gaining footholds in the governing tenets of the republican party.
His forums on torture, rape, abortion, marijuana, suicide, child sexual abuse by priests and a host of other topics offered a depth of coverage unrivaled by any other publication.
I often disagreed with him but I appreciated the fact that he encouraged dissenting opinions and routinely published them.
LD
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Pro- Iraq War. Referred to those opposing it as traitors. So my general impression is, not really very intelligent, and not very civil either. Hardly someone to be admired or, frankly, even tolerated.
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So, 100,000 innocents dead. Thousands of American troops dead. Festering open sore in the heart of the middle east. Who could have predicted? Other than us decadent coastal fifth-columnists, I mean. So, you know, oops.
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