Andrew Sullivan

Friday

Cockburn

Cockburn’s Christmas party chronicles

Shaker Heights, Ohio This year, Cockburn’s annual call for Christmas party invitations took him all over the country: DC, New York, even to one to “the longest-running libertarian-hosted Christmas party in Ohio.” What type of libertarians were these? he wondered, as visions of a drug-laced hors d'oeuvre platter and laissez-faire lovemaking danced in his head. “The party has spawned one marriage and three children,” Cockburn’s invitation said, confirming his suspicion (and hope) that all libertarians are also libertines. The Ohio party was advertised as “multi-generational,” and Cockburn’s would-be hosts helpfully added, “We managed to kill no one attending during Covid years.

christmas party

Monday

Zoe Strimpel

Andrew Sullivan searches for spirituality

It was daunting preparing to meet Andrew Sullivan, considered one of the cleverest, most fearless journalists of his generation. There is the academic pedigree: the scholarship at Oxford — where he was also president of the union and a celebrated actor — followed by the PhD in political theory at Harvard, where he produced an iconic treatise on the work of British mid-century philosopher Michael Oakeshott, performed the entirety of Hamlet all by himself — "a whacked-out mid-1980s" version — and modeled for Gap. And there is the journalistic firepower. At twenty-eight, in 1991, Sullivan became the youngest ever editor of the New Republic, America's most august political magazine.

Wednesday

Cockburn

Cockburn cruises the DC Christmas party scene

Cockburn entered the Christmas party fray with two ironclad rules in mind: don’t mix drinks and make sure you eat something. He managed to break both on Tuesday night as he stumbled across the nation’s capital. His first port of call was the Breitbart Christmas drinks at Blackfinn. Guests including various GOP Hill staffers took advantage of a free bar towards the back of the venue and were treated to a brief appearance from petite former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer. The talk of the event was the forthcoming DC newsletter Breitbart are set to launch in the coming weeks.

christmas

Saturday

Jesse Singal

Substack changed the business of journalism

When a tech guy named Hamish McKenzie first reached out to me in early 2018 to see if I would try out his new newsletter platform Substack, because he thought I could make some money from it, I was skeptical. When I finally wrote him back, in May that year, I said, ‘I’m slightly leery of devoting much time to anything that won’t guarantee pay — I know that sounds somehow crude, but it’s just the reality of being a freelance writer. My book has forced me to do less freelancing than I would have otherwise, and while I’m fine for now, I do need to make sure to budget my time in a responsible way.’ A few years later, I’m exceptionally grateful that I took the plunge. I’m also a bit worried about where it’s nudging me as a writer and a thinker.

substack

Saturday

Ben Sixsmith

Substack attack

The online platform Substack has attracted thousands of writers seeking an independent home for their ramblings in the past year. Finding a freelance writer without a Substack account is like finding a businessman who does not know the meaning of the word ‘LinkedIn’. On Substack, you can publish your writing for free or offer readers exclusive essays and podcasts in exchange for paid subscriptions. Substack has also offered sizable advances to some notable writers to tempt them to the platform. (To declare an interest, I have a Substack but I have not been paid directly by the company. If Substack felt so inclined, I take cash, check or bank transfer...

substack

Wednesday

Will Lloyd

Extra, extra — read all about us!

Instead of telling us about America, or even the world outside, American journalists now tell us about other American journalists. The dirty laundry of America’s journalists is aired hourly on Twitter, where it stinks the place out. None of it is news and nobody will remember any of it in 10 months, let alone 10 years. It’s amazing to watch adults setting their emotional temperatures by palace intrigues at the New York Times. A series of laughably esoteric conflicts have consumed the industry in recent days. Each has generated thousands of self-referential tweets, articles, think pieces and podcast episodes.

manhattan journalism

Friday

Cockburn

Why isn’t Andrew Sullivan allowed to write his column?

What has happened to New York media? Just as the New York Times was experiencing its own Inner Mongolia Moment over the now notorious Sen. Tom Cotton ‘Send in the Troops’ op-ed, the Maoists at New York magazine were going after their best columnist, Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan revealed on Twitter yesterday that his column wouldn't be appearing. The reason? His editors are not allowing him to write about the riots. https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1268564124423933953 Presumably Sullivan’s editors are frightened that he might make the radically bourgeois point that looting and violence are wrong.

andrew sullivan

Monday

Will Lloyd

Democrats, not Republicans, will dismantle Obama’s legacy

Last week Barack Obama, grayer, wearier and older in every way, was in Berlin at one of his foundation’s conferences for ‘emerging leaders’ in Berlin. After wheeling out a few cringe-inducing platitudes like ‘I don’t have a regular meditation practice’ Obama did say something genuinely interesting about where the Democrats are heading going into 2020. He warned that elements of the party were becoming a ‘circular firing squad’ who targeted those ‘straying from purity’ on a variety of issues.

obama’s legacy

Wednesday

Roger Kimball

Andrew Sullivan’s false gods

Reading Andrew Sullivan reminds me of a Latin tag the novelist Iris Murdoch favored: corruptio optimi pessima: the corruption of the best is the worst. Sullivan is an intelligent and well educated man. He is capable of writing quite movingly about religion, especially about the challenges our media-saturated age — we really are, as T. S. Eliot put it, ‘distracted from distraction by distraction’ — pose to that reservoir of quiet thoughtfulness that any spiritual life worth the name requires. Back in 2012, Sullivan wrote a little paean to St Francis, a well-to-do young man, who sold everything he had and devoted himself to a life of poverty and renunciation, practices that Sullivan described as the ‘core’ of Jesus’s message.

andrew sullivan