
A Note to My Readers - _pius
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2015/01/28/a-note-to-my-readers/
======
stuart78
That is a bummer, makes me wish I hadn't let the unread count from The Dish
grow so large in recent months. Not too many writers who can argue so
eloquently and respectfully on politics.

When I didn't agree with his perspective I always found it extremely useful to
read an honest and solid argument against my own position. I think you can ask
no more from a writer than to challenge your assumptions, improve your
reasoning skills and help foster empathy for those with whom you disagree.

~~~
x0x0
Honest and solid aren't reasonably used to characterize Andrew's writing.

One could start with his obsession with whether Sarah Palin's son Trig was
Sarah's son or grandson.

Or the McCaughey piece widely believed to have helped tank Clinton's health
care reform. An article that later had to be retracted because it was written
by a republican operative and wildly deceptive. But hey, mission accomplished:
health care reform dead for a generation. And the fact that it was completely
incorrect, and contributed to an excess of 45k deaths per year, is just
another trophy in Andrew's case.

Andrew is similarly famous for "are blacks genetically inferior? Let's
discuss! I bet these nazis over here have some insightful opinions on this
question!"

And who can forget the way he treated people opposing the Iraq war -- people
far smarter than Andrew, who grudgingly was forced to admit his stupidity.
Here's a quote for you:

    
    
       "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 what amounts to a fifth column." [1]
    

Yup, I see what you mean by arguing eloquently (yet respectfully!) Americans
who oppose the war in Iraq are traitors!

Finally, read anything Sullivan writes on taxes, and you'll quickly discover
he's an innumerate idiot.

edit: I knew I'd seen these arguments all in one place before; read Mark
Ames's article here [https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/andrew-
sullivan/](https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/andrew-sullivan/)

[1] copied here
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2002/12/al_gore_andrew_sullivan_and_fifth_column.htmlhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2002/12/al_gore_andrew_sullivan_and_fifth_column.html)

------
voidz
> The second is that I am saturated in digital life and I want to return to
> the actual world again.

A very familiar sentiment shared by myself and many of my peers who are in the
technical field. Nostalgic feelings are clearly on the rise, and in fact I
think this might be a good thing... and it reinforces my own feeling that "The
Internet" might one day be regarded as nothing more than a phase that simply
faded in and out of our human evolution.

~~~
puranjay
I spend 12 hours a day before screens. I'm sick of it. I want to work in the
sun and be around people again. But this Tyranny of Screens is hard to escape.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Just to continue on this riff:

Outside, with other people building some tangible thing together. Something
that years later we can point to and say yep, it was tough, but we did that.

Not only are we stuck with our heads stuck up computers, in 50 years
everything we've done will be superceded by something vastly more cool and
interesting. Within 100 years it'll all be gone.

There was an article on HN recently about video game addiction. You don't have
to be addicted to video games to spend your entire life in front of a screen,
being a slave to IM and email, and miss out on all of the important things.

ADD: Instead of 50 and 100 years, make that 20 and 40 years. We'll still be
here when it all vanishes.

~~~
neilc
> 50 years everything we've done will be superceded by something vastly more
> cool and interesting. Within 100 years it'll all be gone.

Which professions don't have that property? Not many. Science and writing/art
give you a chance for that kind of longevity, I suppose -- although even then,
doing something that has any real impact 50+ years later is difficult and very
rare.

~~~
gus_massa
Architecture and Civil Ingeniery. Try to stick to cathedrals and transoceanic
channels (like the Panama channel). They tend to last for centuries and get
well maintained. Just try to avoid the places where a big war is likely.

If you choose for example math, if you are very lucky you will get your own
course in a math degree, like Fourier or Galois. The problem is that "your"
course will cover not only your work but also the improvements of the next
generations, and your exact work will be only a small part. Another problem is
that there are only about 10 places for a full math course with a
mathematician name, so it's a very difficult to enter this club. (It's easier
than building a transoceanic channel, but much difficult than building a
cathedral.)

------
hacknat
Oh this makes me sad. There are very few modern American voices on politics
that usually make as much sense and are as well thought out as Andrew
Sullivan's. It will be a loss not to hear his opinion everyday. His reasons
for leaving are, of course, understandable.

I feel like Ta-Nehisi Coates Matthew Yglesias, and Johnathan Chait are the
only other voices that come close.

~~~
juliangregorian
Matt Taibbi comes to mind.

~~~
tptacek
Matt Taibbi is fun to read, but also shrill, predictable, and at times pretty
clearly underinformed. I really like his political writing, though I don't
always agree with his conclusions, but his writing on finance has often been
just one or two notches more credible than ZeroHedge.

I generally always feel like Taibbi is deliberately writing to get a rise out
of people. I didn't particularly like Sullivan --- my opinions of him hardened
during the first term of Bush II --- but I did feel like he was trying to be
careful.

I dispute the idea that it's hard to find similarly careful journalists today.
What's perhaps hard is to find blogospheric gravity wells like Sullivan. This
thread compared him to Ta-Nahisi Coates and Matt Yglesias, but neither
perfectly fit Sullivan's mold. Coates doesn't cover politics, and Yglesias is
an econ reporter. You have to assemble a Sullivan out of parts now, but I
think those parts are of higher quality than Sullivan's (say) 2005
competition.

------
natecarroll
I've seen several other journalists/bloggers/media-people react to this news
as if Andrew's decision was clearly driven by structural economic factors
rather than a more benign desire to step away from blogging as his primary
form of writing. Ben Smith--of, yes, Buzzfeed--seemed to interpret this as the
death knell of independent internet commentary.

What's going on here? I think we can agree we're all sad Andrew Sullivan is
quitting The Dish, but are we symbolically sad over what that blog represented
which will now never exist again, or are we just sad that a pretty great
blogger won't be blogging any more?

~~~
na85
I think twitter shows us that independent internet commentary is fine and
well.

Long-form blogs are perhaps less suited to the mobile era, but who can say for
sure?

~~~
frostmatthew
People read entire _books_ on their phone - I don't think the "mobile era"
means the death of long-form blogs.

------
b1daly
I've been a reader of the Dish for 15 years. I've always been astounded at
both the quality and quantity of writing Andrew produces. I wouldn't be
surprised if wrote more than any other blogger (among those who are actually
read).

One thing I've admired him for was he was one of the few high profile
supporters of the Iraq war who changed his mind and publicly announced it.

I can't say I'm surprised, his announcement is perfectly understandable!

------
jordanpg
One of the biggest values I got from the Dish was as a news aggregation
service that I _trust_ , and that is the thing that might put me in the wind
looking for a replacement for some time.

Andrew identifies as a conservative of some flavor, which I certainly am not.
As a result, on the days that I only have 20 minutes to spend on current
events, getting the news from his site made me feel like I am doing something
right.

What other comparable resources exist?

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industriousthou
Man, this sucks. I'm hoping, out of loyalty to his staff and readers, he'll
keep the thing going but maybe take a back seat. When he took a month off a
while back, his guest bloggers did a pretty good job and his full-time staff
does a great job of finding interesting content. This is a model of journalism
that I can really get behind and it would be such a waste to let the whole
thing just fade away.

------
bootload
_"... I am saturated in digital life and I want to return to the actual world
again. ..."_

Is this an increasing trend?

~~~
lmm
No. It's something people do as they get old, so when you look at your own
peer group it _looks_ like an increasing trend, because your friends are
getting older.

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nevergetenglish
Knowing nothing about this person I thought It was a woman: "I want to spend
some real time with my parents, while I still have them, with my husband ...".

He/She wants to write a book and has time for his family and take care of his
health.

The writer seems to be very good: A world of mass intimacy with their reader,
he loves them, he cares and that is the reason I find so hard to go away.

------
kylebgorman
Could we get a more informative title?

