Andrew Sullivan

Many people are upset at Andrew Sullivan for deciding to take a blog hiatus. I'm really not one of them.

You see I stopped reading The Daily Dish a long time ago. He could have gone on hiatus months ago and I wouldn't have noticed.

I do feel compelled to say something about the current situation. Many people like Bill at INDC and Michele Malkin are upset at what they view as Sullivan's hucksterism.

I don't look at it as hucksterism. Sullivan asked people to donate so that he could blog full-time. That was my understanding. Sure he may have mentioned bandwidth costs but my understanding was that was always a minor concern. Sullivan seemed upfront that he was looking for income from his blog.

I didn't have a problem with his fund drives. They were annoying but I didn't have to give (and in fact I did not give). The fund drives were not the reason I stopped reading The Daily Dish. I stopped reading Andrew Sullivan because at some point he stopped making sense.

He used to form cogent, cohesive arguments with bits of wit or sarcasm thrown in for good measure. Then it all seemed to change. He became illogical and incoherent based on his past stated beliefs. Some say it was the Defense of Marriage Amendment that fogged his writing and viewpoints. Maybe it was something in his personal life or maybe he was taking meds. Maybe he switched to decaf. All I know is that The Daily Dish was not even worth a weekly glance from me anymore. I stopped reading his stuff and eventually took him off my blogroll even though he was one of the few that originally made up my blogroll.

Andrew Sullivan lost many readers like me. Now he is going to lose many more. Professors complain about "publish or perish" but that is nothing compared to the pressure to produce on the Internet. It may as well be "blog or die" because if you stop posting - people stop clicking. It is like riding an excercycle. It takes the most effort to start the pedals but then you have to keep pumping. If you coast you have to work twice as hard to get back up to speed. If you take a peddling hiatus - then you may as well start from scratch.

My biggest fear is that Sullivan's sudden lurch to the left and his "bitchiness" was not a natural occurrence but more the result of some big donor asking Sullivan to soften or change his views. It would make sense. Among political pundits on the web, at one time Sullivan may have been king. It would also explain what seemed to me to be sudden changes in viewpoint.

I don't feel bad for the people who gave to Sullivan's blog drives. Just as I don't feel any pity for anyone who gave to Bill Clinton's defense fund back when he said a vast Right Wing conspiracy was behind Paula Jones' lawsuit. Money freely given is money freely given. No refunds.

Anyway - I hope Andrew Sullivan has a good time on his hiatus. I just hope he doesn't expect any clicks on his site to come from me.