Andrew Sullivan: But in this country the biggest selling book is the Left Behind series, the biggest selling series.
Christopher Hitchens: But I’m sure the least read. It’s totally unreadable.
Andrew Sullivan: I can honestly testify to seeing people reading it on planes, in airports,
Christopher Hitchens: Do you see them turning the pages?
Andrew Sullivan: (Laughs) Yes!
Christopher Hitchens: Are they holding it the right side up?
Saw Sully speak last week. It was great, but nothing he dropped was as good as this duo’s conversation.
In the above clip, Andrew Sullivan explains why he feels he has “blood on my hands” due to the Iraq War. “That’s a high-drama, melodramatic, queeny kind of thing to say,” he explains. “But … (long pause) … it’s true.” Sullivan was very hawkish at the beginning but later recanted the stance.
Greatest comment in Tumblr history right here. (original post here)
And I’ll repeat: if you provide value to people, they’ll pay for it.
Awesome.
Whether this is the way to go for the industry at large, you have to admit this is awesome promotion for TinyPass, which I bet you most people didn’t know about until today. Only issue I can see? Sully has a staff, and he needs more than just six figures to pay their salaries. It it was just him, this would be solid, though.
And so, as we contemplated the end of our contract with the Beast at the end of 2012, we faced a decision. As usual, we sought your input and the blogosphere’s - hence the not-terribly subtle thread that explored whether online readers will ever pay for content, and how. The answer is: no one really knows. But as we debated and discussed that unknowable future, we felt more and more that getting readers to pay a small amount for content was the only truly solid future for online journalism. And since the Dish has, from its beginnings, attempted to pioneer exactly such a solid future for web journalism, we also felt we almost had a duty to try and see if we could help break some new ground.
The only completely clear and transparent way to do this, we concluded, was to become totally independent of other media entities and rely entirely on you for our salaries, health insurance, and legal, technological and accounting expenses.
Sullivan and his staff are striking it out on their own. “And so last week, the three of us signed an agreement setting up an independent company called Dish Publishing LLC, and agreed to strike out on our own with no safety net below us but you.” Boom.
It’s been a long long slog these past five years of backing the skinny guy with the funny name. But this election, to my mind, is immensely more important than the breakthrough of 2008, after the catastrophe of Bush-Cheney. What it has done is rip open the complete epistemic closure on the Republican right about what America now is. It has revealed that Fox News, Drudge, and the rest have been engaged in a massive propaganda campaign to create an alternative reality and get the rest of us to go along.
But this president has never been a radical; he has always been a moderate; he has been immensely skilled at foreign policy, ended one war and won another, killed Osama bin Laden and saved the American auto industry, deflected a Second Great Depression and initated universal access to healthcare. He has presided over a civil rights revolution and the beginning of the end of prohibition of marijuana. He has created the new and durable coalition that was once Karl Rove’s dream.
Americans saw this. They were not fooled. And they made the right call, as they usually do. What was defeated tonight was not just Romney, a hollow cynic, but a whole mountain of mendacity and delusion. That sound you hear is the cognitive dissonance ringing in the ears of ideologues and cynics. Any true conservative longs for that sound, the sound of reality arriving to pierce through fantasy and fanaticism.
We are the ones we have been waiting for. And now we have entrenched it deeply in the history of America and the world. That matters. May the next four years make it matter even more.
That said, the reaction by Ace of Spades HQ was pretty rich.
The daily gossip: Russell Crowe and Danielle Spencer split up, Crowe grows massive breakup beard.
This is the Ernest “Andrew Sullivan” Hemingway look.
The Onion’s Biden is absent. This is a calm, strong forensic refusal to accept any of the bullshit being delivered by the congressman. But he shouldn’t laugh at Ryan’s flim-flam. He should do what he just did: calmly, relentlessly expose it.Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan seems to have gotten a grip on his breakdown.
New Twitter Account: @CalmSully
Currently working on a script to a film titled “My Dinner With Andrew” in which I hear Sully bitch about how much he hates NYC for two hours. It’s a horror film.
Andrew Sullivan has had a long week, guys.
meltdown is putting it lightly
Though you have to admit, his response to the article was pretty spot-on. “Buzzfeed has some fun. I deserve it.” I think Sullivan’s a legend at the blogging game, but they totally nailed this and created what’s probably their best article all week.
I can’t add much to what’s already been (and will be) ...
One of the perks of being an early employee...
Over the last 90 days, the Digg...
#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
Thanks. I guess my thoughts are as follows:
1. I think...
Two Months Ago I set out to interview the principal cast...
When Drudge Is A Genius
Is when you’re still up at 2 in the morning, alone in an empty apartment on a mattress, half-empty coke zero bottles scattered around the room, and sneakers inches away from your face that are beginning to smell like Chinese food, and you click on Drudge and you get that photo lay-out he has right now.
Sully
Andrew Sullivan gets at least half credit for this. That sentence is sublime.
I have always been very open and honest about this part of my life with my friends, my family, and my colleagues. In a perfect world, I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business, but I do think there is value in standing up and being counted. I’m not an activist, but I am a human being and I don’t give that up by being a journalist.The key quote from Anderson Cooper’s letter to Andrew Sullivan where he admits that he’s gay.
Here’s the start of Andrew Sullivan’s cover story on Obama coming around to gay marriage equality. You should read the whole thing—especially if you’re prone to judge a book by its cover.
It was the spring of 2007, back when Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency seemed quixotic at best….
Bad cover, perhaps: But what about the article?
![theatlantic:
Robert Wright on Gay Marriage, Barack Obama, and Andrew Sullivan
I was at the New Republic in 1989 when Andrew Sullivan published his pathbreaking cover story “The Case for Gay Marriage.” There are two things about the experience that may be hard to convey to people younger than 25, maybe even 30:
1) What a radical idea this seemed like at the time. I’m not sure I’d ever heard anyone mention gay marriage, and I’d certainly never seen a written defense of it.
2) How important a single magazine could be in pre-internet days. Mike Kinsley, who for my money is the most amazing editor of his generation, had during the 1980s made the New Republic the magazine in Washington.
The combination of these two things was potent. When you take an off-the-charts idea and unveil it on the most prominent stage in Washington, it gets people talking. Yesterday, when President Obama embraced gay marriage, this was a kind of culmination of the conversation that Andrew, more than any other person, started.
Read more. [Image: The New Republic]
Worth keeping in mind that the guy who wrote this cover story also wrote this one.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3t8t56kQf1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
Robert Wright on Gay Marriage, Barack Obama, and Andrew Sullivan
I was at the New Republic in 1989 when Andrew Sullivan published his pathbreaking cover story “The Case for Gay Marriage.” There are two things about the experience that may be hard to convey to people younger than 25, maybe even 30:
1) What a radical idea this seemed like at the time. I’m not sure I’d ever heard anyone mention gay marriage, and I’d certainly never seen a written defense of it.
2) How important a single magazine could be in pre-internet days. Mike Kinsley, who for my money is the most amazing editor of his generation, had during the 1980s made the New Republic the magazine in Washington.
The combination of these two things was potent. When you take an off-the-charts idea and unveil it on the most prominent stage in Washington, it gets people talking. Yesterday, when President Obama embraced gay marriage, this was a kind of culmination of the conversation that Andrew, more than any other person, started.
Read more. [Image: The New Republic]
Worth keeping in mind that the guy who wrote this cover story also wrote this one.
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