Courtesy of Bill from INDC Journal.
I haven't invested myself in this whole brouhaha mainly because it touches upon my ELECTION FREE ZONE rule, but I will say this much: I think Sullivan wasn't being purposefully disingenous, as in I'm
going to say one thing to the gay media, and another thing entirely to
the readers of the Dish because I'm clever that way and they'll never
figure it out. He writes for different audiences all the time. Lileks does the same damn thing. If you only read Lileks' Backfence column in the Strib,
you'd never suspect he also wrote his very political Newshouse column.
It's called being a professional writer. Different magazines look for
different things from their contributors. What Sullivan writes for Time is different from what he writes for The London Times, which is most assuredly different from what he writes for The Advocate.
It's all Sully, but it puts different facets of his brain on display.
Magazines, after all, do have to sell copies. They don't hire people to
spout off simply because they've got a blog. They hire writers for
commentaries because they have something valuable to say, and
they're professional enough to tailor that message so it fits in with
the overall theme of the magazine. You don't hire Safire to write for Mother Jones, in other words. If blogging is, as Sullivan says, "thinking out loud," then which outlet is getting what Sully really
thinks? I think is simply a case of misguided perceptions: he didn't
realize how it would look. I don't think there's some grand conspiracy
here to mislead his readers. And I certainly don't think he's a shill
for Kerry, as some have suggested.
This doesn't mean he hasn't damaged himself. I believe he has. Time
will tell as to how badly he wounded himself with this whole thing. Now
would be as good a time as any for him to clarify just what he's
writing The Dish for, other than just to "think out loud." He's said
before he doesn't need to write The Dish, but he does because he has
serious respect for the medium of blogging. He needs to get his
priorities straight because no one in the blogosphere will take him
seriously if he doesn't resolve the issue between what he's contracted
to write as opposed to what he just lets fly from the top of his head.
It's the same with what he writes for the mainstream media: it's a
credibility issue. And it's one he has to solve as soon as possible.
Just blowing it off isn't going to fix the problem.