Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan (born 10 August 1963) is an Anglo-American journalist and intellectual, known both for his heterodox personal-political identity (HIV-positive, gay, libertarian/conservative, and Catholic) as well as for his pioneering efforts in the field of weblog journalism. Sullivan has described himself as being a South Park Republican, a phrase he coined in 2001 and which has gained considerable currency since.
In addition, Mr. Sullivan is an important advocate for what he calls the civil rights of gay and lesbian people in the U.S. and elsewhere. He is a popular speaker at major universities and civic organizations in the U.S. and a frequent guest on many national news and political commentary television shows in the United States and Europe.
Biography
Sullivan was born in South Godstone, England, and received a B.A. in modern history from Oxford University (Magdalen College). He went on to earn a masters degree in public administration and a Ph.D. in political science at Harvard, writing his dissertation on conservative British philosopher Michael Oakeshott. In 1986 he began his career with The New Republic magazine, serving as its editor from 1991 to 1996.
In that position, he expanded the magazine from its traditional roots in political coverage to cultural politics and the issues around them. This produced much in the way of groundbreaking journalism, but also courted several high-profile controversies.
Some longtime subscribers, who had never forgiven Sullivan for firing veteran political writer Morton Kondracke when he took over, regularly took umbrage at the articles by Camille Paglia he published. One particular article about Hillary Clinton led to some readers writing letters to Martin Peretz, saying they intended to cancel their subscriptions.
Sullivan decided in 1994 to publish excerpts from Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's controversial The Bell Curve, which argued that African American's lower IQ scores than whites' were the result of genetics. Almost the entire staff of the magazine threatened to resign if material which they considered racist was allowed to be published; when the issue did come out, it ran with lengthy rebuttals from more than a dozen writers and contributors.
Sullivan's departure is also not without controversy. Opinions still differ, even among those who wrote for The New Republic at the time, about whether he was fired or quit after losing a bitter power struggle with Leon Wieseltier, the magazine's literary editor and a longtime friend of Peretz's. In any event, Sullivan had only recently gone public with his HIV status, and was likely to be taking a break for treatment soon.
Later, Sullivan wrote for The New York Times Magazine briefly. He left the magazine in in 2002 — Sullivan describes himself as having been "banned"; some argue he is still bitter about the incident. [1]
Sullivan is often compared to lesbian academic Camille Paglia, another gay intellectual who argues from a non-leftist perspective and who wrote for The New Republic under his leadership.
Scandals
In May 2001, Village Voice columnist Michael Musto revealed that Sullivan had anonymously posted advertisements for "bareback" sex (anal or oral sex without a condom) on America Online and the now-defunct website barebackcity.com. Subsequently, journalist Michelangelo Signorile wrote about the scandal in a front-page article in a New York gay magazine, LGNY, igniting a storm of controversy.
In the advertisements, Sullivan noted that he was HIV-positive. Sullivan's critics have argued that it was hypocritical of Sullivan to engage in this kind of sexual activity while simultaneously arguing against gay sexual promiscuity; they claim that the vision of gay sexuality presented in Sullivan's writing is at odds with the activities he was revealed to be engaging in. They also charge that because Sullivan was HIV-positive, it was unsafe for him to engage in sex without a condom. Sullivan's critics argue that it is unfair for Sullivan to criticize Bill Clinton's sexual indiscretions as "reckless" while engaging in unprotected sex himself.
Sullivan's defenders respond that he only had bareback sex with consenting adults who were also HIV-positive. According to Sullivan, this significantly reduced the risk inherent in his behavior, and he has derided what he called a "thin reed of evidence" of the existence of "reinfection," which, according to some medical experts, heightens the destruction caused by the virus. His supporters have also argued that it was a violation of his privacy to publish information about his sex life. Sullivan has called the scandal "sexual McCarthyism". Sullivan supporters also argue that those who revealed the details about his sex life were motivated by a desire for payback, because they disagreed with his politics and his comments about the gay community. His detractors respond that his hypocrisy was reason enough to publish the stories.
Sullivan's journalistic ethics were called into question, when he announced that he would be accepting a sponsorship to write it from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the lobby for the industry that he credited with saving his life, but which has also been criticized for its practices in AIDS-affected areas of the Third World. The controversy lay in Sullivan's initial refusal to disclose the relationship in writing outside his blog, even though much of that often touches on drug manufacturers and their policies in poor countries. He dropped the sponsorship in the ensuing uproar.
Blogging
In late 2000 he began his blog The Daily Dish. In the wake of 9/11, his blog soon became one of the most popular political blogs on the Internet (by the middle of 2003, it was receiving about 300,000 unique visits per month). Between starting his blog and ending his New Republic editorship, Sullivan wrote two works on homosexuality, arguing for its social acceptance on conservative grounds. His writing appears in a number of widely-read publications. He currently serves as the American columnist for The Sunday Times of London.
Sullivan's blog has been characterized by passionate argumentation (some call it stridency), a willingness to admit doubts and entertain changes of mind, and hostility towards The New York Times. The blog's core principals have been fiscal conservatism, limited government, and libertarianism on social issues. Sullivan is against government involvement sexual and consensual matters between adults (such as the use of marijuana). Sullivan believes recognition of gay marriage is a civil rights issue, but is willing to promote it on a state by state legislative federalism basis rather than trying to judicially impose the change.[2] Most of Sullivan's disputes with other conservatives have been over social issues such as these and the handling of postwar Iraq.
Sullivan reluctantly decided to support John Kerry's presidential campaign due to his dissastisfaction with the handling of the post-war situation in Iraq by the Bush administration, their views on gay rights, and their fiscal policy. Sullivan is a supporter of John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger [3] and other fiscally conservative but socially liberal Republicans.
Sullivan also gives out parody "awards" each year on various public statements that mirror those of persons he disagrees with. These awards include: the Sontag Award (for "egregious moral equivalence in the war on terror"), the Derbyshire Award (for "egregious and outlandish comments on gays, women and minorities"), the Begala Award (for extreme liberal hyperbole), the Von Hoffman[4] Award (for "egregiously bad predictions on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars"), the Scowcroft Award (for "continued punditry on Iraq after egregiously bad predictions on Afghanistan"), the Malkin Award [5] (for "cliché-ridden writing from the left and right intended to insult"), and the "Poseur Alert." [6] The Sontag Award was renamed the Moore Award after Sontag's death.
In February 2005 Sullivan decided to go on "hiatus for a few months" after nearly five years of continuous blogging. [7] By this time his blog was receiving over 50,000 visitors a day, and among the most linked-to blogs in the world. Sullivan planned to work on a book, do some traveling, and focus on other projects. His plan is to return to blogging "full steam" in roughly nine months. In the mean time, he still posts occasionally and gains some blog revenue from advertising.
Gay marriage
Sullivan made a conservative case for gay marriage in the 1980's, before the idea had become popular in the LGBT community. In the 2004 election, Sullivan criticized the Republican Party for what he saw as political exploitation of a hated minority:
- "I've been trying to think of what to say about what appears to be the enormous success the Republicans had in using gay couples' rights to gain critical votes in key states. In eight more states now, gay couples have no relationship rights at all. Their legal ability to visit a spouse in hospital, to pass on property, to have legal protections for their children has been gutted. If you are a gay couple living in Alabama, you know one thing: your family has no standing under the law; and it can and will be violated by strangers. I'm not surprised by this. When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses.[8]
War in Iraq
Sullivan strongly supported the decision to go to war in Iraq, and has generally been in favour of the "neoconservative" approach to the war on terror. However, he has harshly criticized the Bush administration for its postwar efforts, especially regarding the numbers of troops, protection of munitions, and torture. Sullivan has been strongly against the use of coercive force against detainees in U.S. custody and has had heated disputes with Heather MacDonald [9] and John Derbyshire on that issue. Sullivan has had disagreements with other political commentators who, while also opposing sanctioned torture, do not think al Qaeda detainees should be treated the same as Geneva Convention POWs. [10] Sullivan counters that "The dozens of inmates abused at Abu Ghraib were part of a random intake that was up to 90 percent innocent." [11] This has caused many disputes with other conservatives, who argue that he is changing his support on the war itself.
Other disputes with Conservatives
Sullivan has caused controversy because he claims to be a conservative himself but frequently attacks other conservatives. In three days he wrote in three different places that "[c]onservatism is a philosophy without a party in America any more. It has been hijacked by zealots and statists;"[12] that "[w]e're getting to the point when conservatism has become a political philosophy that believes that government - at the most distant level - has the right to intervene in almost anything to achieve the right solution. Today's conservatism is becoming yesterday's liberalism;"[13] and that "the only real difference between the Democrats and Republicans at this point is that the Democrats believe in big, solvent government and the Republicans believe in an even bigger, insolvent government"[14].
List of works
- Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality
- Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex and Survival