Salon.com > Andrew Sullivan

Anti-gay marriage: Indefensible

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 11:45:00 +0000

After days spent carefully studying the oral arguments in the two cases currently before the Supreme Court involving gay marriage, and then a nationwide attempt to read Justice Kennedy's mind, we now must wait months to learn what the Court will actually do. The debate has naturally shifted back to our toxic cable news, inane Sunday shows, and stultifying newspaper columns, where the evolution of gay marriage opposition is well underway. Not evolution necessarily to support, but to a politer form of opposition.

At this point it's apparent that every Democrat seeking the presidency in 2016 will be pro-same-sex marriage. If trends hold, a large majority of the country will be with them as well. But it's impossible to say whether and which Republicans running over the next few election cycles will be vocally opposed, supportive or totally noncommittal.

Is Jon Stewart turning off his fan base?

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 19:00:00 +0000

Jon Stewart is known among his fans for speaking truth to power -- see his dismantling of the CNN show “Crossfire,” for instance, or his criticism of President George W. Bush and the “Mess O’Potamia” in Iraq on “The Daily Show.” However, his recent work may have turned some liberals against him.

Stewart defended present-day cinema punching bag “Zero Dark Thirty” as having not been made in cooperation with the government and said the torture it depicts is “difficult,” raising the ire of liberals across the blogosphere. (Andrew Sullivan wrote that “this subject is too important for equivocation or the ‘I'm just a comedian’ cop-out.”)

Then came Stewart's smug dismissal of the “trillion-dollar coin” idea floated in order to stop the debate debacle in Congress. While the idea was not tenable for many reasons (including optics), Stewart’s open mockery and suggestion of alternatives got him in hot water with Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist.

Andrew Sullivan goes indie

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 19:30:00 +0000

Extra! Extra! The Daily Dish is going independent. Andrew Sullivan, blogger extraordinaire, declared today that his venerable, high-profile, prolific blogging operation will no longer depend on the largess of corporate owners like Time, the Atlantic or the Daily Beast to operate. He's going indie, and depending on readers to pay up.

The announcement sent shock waves through Twitter. It's a risky, bold move. Very few people have figured out how to get readers to pay for content on the Web. Sullivan's model is innovative: He plans to eschew advertising altogether. Instead, we get what he has dubbed "freemium-based metering."

Our particular version will be a meter that will be counted every time you hit a "Read on" button to expand or contract a lengthy post. You'll have a limited number of free read-ons a month, before we hit you up for $19.99. Everything else on the Dish will remain free. No link from another blog to us will ever be counted for the meter - so no blogger or writer need ever worry that a link to us will push their readers into a paywall. It won't. Ever. There is no paywall. Just a freemium-based meter. We've tried to maximize what's freely available, while monetizing those parts of the Dish where true Dishheads reside. The only tough love we're offering is the answer to the View From Your Window Contest. You'll have to become a member to find where the place is. Ha!

Andrew Sullivan to leave the Daily Beast, taking The Dish with him

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 18:30:00 +0000

Andrew Sullivan, the preeminent blogger whose platform, the Daily Dish, has been hosted by Time, the Atlantic and, currently, the Daily Beast, is making his boldest move ever: taking the site solo, hoping that readers will pay for content directly. The former New Republic editor and Salon columnist announced today that he, along with the Dish's executive editors, Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner, has signed an agreement forming Dish Publishing LLC, an independent publishing company that will continue to run the Dish without the use of advertising revenue or venture capital.

The move is a gamble that he hopes will one day become the norm within the journalism industry. Recalling the old advertising adage, "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product being sold," he wrote in the announcement, "we felt more and more that getting readers to pay a small amount for content was the only truly solid future for online journalism."

“Zero Dark Thirty” doesn’t celebrate torture!

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 21:09:00 +0000

Zero Dark Thirty doesn't even come out until next week, but Kathryn Bigelow's much-hailed movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden is already provoking outrage in some quarters for allegedly "glorifying" — OK, sometimes "celebrating" — torture. As all too bloody usual, the loudest howls are coming from people who haven't actually seen ZD30, some of whom — yes, Andrew Sullivan, I mean you — really ought to know better. Ginning up controversies about movies without bothering to watch them first is really more Bill Donohue and the Catholic League's sort of thing, and does Sullivan want to be in that company?

Since plenty of other folks apparently do, I hope you won't mind two cents from a lowly movie critic who admires the hell out of Zero Dark Thirty and isn't exactly big on vindicating Dick Cheney's worldview. There are really two separate arguments here, and people shouldn't confuse the two — though they already have. One is about factual accuracy, and worth taking seriously. The other's about Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal's attitude toward the very grim stuff they show us, which is an appalling thing to just guess at sight unseen.

On election night, “Daily Show” fizzles, Colbert shines

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 13:23:00 +0000

Could any Election Day scenario be worse for the creative staff of "The Daily Show" than the one we had last night — a close, hard-fought race covered by the mainstream cable news networks with a modicum of sobriety? Jon Stewart and his staff make the bread-and-butter of their comedy by applying common sense to two species of misbehavior: Cable journalists' efforts to fill the vast, empty hours with ridiculously trumped-up stories and right-wing ravings (i.e., Fox News). When the story is legitimately epochal and the wingnuts are momentarily stunned in disbelief, "The Daily Show" has got, as Stewart is wont to say, nothin'.

Stephen Colbert, on the other hand, can make his own crazy. Having ridden his O'Reilly-esque alter ego to the furthest reaches of conservative delusion in "The Colbert Report," he's free to act out all the petulance and paranoia we can expect to see from the Tea Party crowd over the next few days (not to mention the next four years). Both Comedy Central series mounted live half-hour shows on election night. But while "The Daily Show" dithered around with stale jokes about CNN's fetish for high-tech presentation gizmos and Joe Biden's frattish gaffes, Colbert, ably assisted by guest Andrew Sullivan, presented a beautifully crafted glimpse into the roiling heart of right-wing denial.