Of course, he isn't writing for free. But he has, in the past!

And I don't think it is that terrible a thing if most journalists start earning less money. I wrote this blog daily for years for nothing because I love what I do. I've been really, really lucky to have landed at the Atlantic but the dirty secret is that I'd do this because I want to know more about the world and bring that information to as many people as possible, to advance those causes I believe are just and expose those lies that I think need exposing.

Hah. Andrew Sullivan had edited The New Republic for five years and had released two books by the time he started his little hobby blog, which he now does indeed get paid money to write. It is actually a lot easier to write for free or for not enough money to live on when you are already pretty comfortable! And for some crazy reason it is always those people who are already pretty comfortable who are just baffled by the idea of paying someone to produce content that someone else profits from!

Isn't that funny, how that works?

Emails, we get emails! Hearst is slashing costs by 20 percent in its supertroubled newspaper division. But the Web future's so bright, its reporters need to wear shades, one Hearsty tells us! "As the newspaper industry experiments with digital-only versions of the traditional newspaper, the piece gives a glimpse that investigative journalism and breaking stories are still indeed possible without the backup of a print product," writes Zoe Stagg, multimedia producer for Hearst digital bigwig Phil Bronstein, the former Mr. Sharon Stone. She's talking about an amazing scoop that the now online-only Seattle Post-Intelligencer got about some soccer player named Fredy Montero (left) allegedly stalking some woman. Neato! Except that the scoop apparently consisted of getting a tip from the police. Here's an example of Seattlepi.com's amazing reporting: "Efforts to locate Montero's contact information were unsuccessful, and he could not be reached." Journalism has not been saved yet, dammit.

The Pacifica Foundation has changed the locks on New York radio station WBAI's transmitter, which has got the indy station's management all aflutter.

FishbowlNY reports that layoffs of six at Woman's Day included two pregnant staffers. What about the children?

New York Times editor Bill Keller tried to explain his NYT-is-bigger-cause-than-Darfur gaffe: "I think it's pretty obviously a reflection of my mild astonishment at the earnest fervor with which some people have suddenly embraced the cause of saving newspapers." He was being ironical, people! We think Keller should start his own blog so he can be this funny all the time.

Speaking of blogging, Andrew Sullivan writes 300-plus blog posts a week for The Atlantic. Then again, he has two assistants. Hunky, hairy, muscular assistants, we hope.

For some reason, the names of all the liberal attendees of Obama's little party have been leaked, but there are ten or so of the righties we still don't know about. But of all the available names, there are only two regular bloggers: Andrew Sullivan and Larry Kudlow. Background from the meeting has already made it into a Kudlow post, and then he gushed about it on TV. As for the liberal breakfast? Sullivan is NOT TALKING. Except for more gushing admiration.

I can say, however, the following: it's hard to express the relief I feel that this man will be the president soon. I realize that's what I feel above all else: relief.

I may disagree with him at times, and criticize him at times, but his great gift is showing that he does not expect people to change their convictions in order to find common areas of agreement.

What kind of blogger attends a breakfast with the president and reports nothing? Why attend? Do you think Obama wanted to be your BFF? We thought this was the kind of clubby old-media DC beltway elite gathering that bloggers were supposed to destroy what with their no rules citizen journalism and all that? No...?

It is worth noting that almost no one else on the list has a blog. Paul Krugman, occasional blogger, turned the invitation down. Because, to be fair, he should probably be invited to speak to the president-elect as a Nobel Prize-winning economist and not as a member of the chattering classes to be briefly appeased with personal attention and flattery.

So it looks like we'll have to wait days—days!—for columns in "newspapers" from Dionne, Dowd, Rich, and everyone else on the list, if any of them are going to reveal anything intersting. Sigh. Peggy Noonan, you're our only hope.

Andrew Sullivan! The gay Catholic conservative British blog-evangelizing Obama-supporter has posted more words investigating the weird circumstances of Sarah Palin's pregnancy than maybe anyone but our own Cajun Boy. Today he has another bombshell: a photo of Sarah Palin looking not that fat three weeks before the birth of Trig!

She does look, well, fatter than she did after the birth of Trig, but not as fat as she looked some other time she was pregnant. Sullivan is investigating!

Actually, the Dish went out and interviewed eight of the leading obstetricians in the country and laid out all the facts of the case and asked the experts for their take. While none would say that this pregnancy could not have happened, and none would comment on a case they hadn't examined personally, all of them said it was one of the strangest and unlikeliest series of events they had ever heard of and found Palin's decision to forgo medical help for more than a day after her water broke and risk the life of her unborn child on a log airplane trip to be reckless beyond measure.

We, of course, are as guilty as anyone of devoting unneeded additional attention to this dimwit, but we have one more month of getting paid by pageviews.

Andrew Sullivan also has this choice line, a classic of conspiratorial insinuation: "Maybe I am crazy to even wonder. Or maybe we have witnessed one of the biggest frauds in American political history and the biggest failures among the American media in a very, very long time."

Yes, maybe. And maybe a monkey with Downs Syndrome will fly out of our butt!!

(We're really, really sorry for that.)

Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan was once a very prominent, very influential conservative. As recently as last year, even as he largely abandoned Bush, he was still complimenting McCain. Now, not so much.

Times columnist David Brooks scarcely deserves to be called an intellectual, but as we're using that term strictly to mean "East Coast elitists who write about politics professionally" he'll have to do. This "I'm disappointed in McCain but he'll be a good president" column was but a prelude to Brooks' statement during an interview that Obama was a perceptive intellectual surrounded by impressive people and Sarah Palin is a cancer.

Christopher Buckley was hardly a doctrinaire conservative. As a satirical novelist and a smart-ass, one imagines he's not too pleased with the rise of creationist rubes in his beloved GOP (his dad made that fucking bed, obvs, but that's neither here nor there). And Chris claims he wrote in George H.W. Bush in 2004 rather than vote for the son. But that's far different from explicitly endorsing a Democrat, as he did last week. Once again: Obama's temperament and obvious intelligence sealed the deal.

Charles Krauthammer is basically a reliable party hack, always willing to subvert his own intelligence for the good of the party. But the once-influential psychiatrist can't help but see that his movement is not served by the buffoonery of the McCain campaign. He wrote this mild quasi-endorsement of Obama this month:

Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition — do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.

And, also at The Atlantic, Ross Douthat, who wrote a book about how Republicans can save themselves, finds himself bewildered by McCain's campaign and unimpressed with the Ayers bullshit and Sarah Palin.

So. Is all that a trend? In the way that the closing of the New York Sun was indicative of the slow death of a movement if not necessarily caused by that death, we think we're seeing the further erosion of the always uneasy GOP pact between libertarian true believers, Christan fundamentalist true believers, nationalists, "just keep my taxes low" rich assholes, and the crowd that just likes to hitch their wagons to winners. A reorganization is on the way. Then most of these listed commentators will probably hop back on the bandwagon.

Also this is how we were originally planning on reporting the Hitch endorsement:

BREAKING: HITCH SMOKES TWO PACKS, DRINKS 5TH OF SCOTCH, ENDORSES TERRORIST

"I'm very sorry to say, it's come to this: can you confirm on the record that Trig Palin is Sarah Palin's biological son? . . . Since this is a crazy idea, it should be easy for you or someone to let me know, the most popular one-man political blog site in the world, what the truth is."

HAH. The most popular one-man political blog site in the world wants the truth, Senator!

The McCain campaign did not answer his question. Instead, they forwarded the emails to Washington Post media "critic" or whatever Howard Kurtz! They knew he'd come down hard on Sullivan for such impudence. Or at least they knew he'd print the emails and ask Sullivan for a comment and let them have a comment and then not come to any conclusions about anything, because he's Howard Kurtz.

If we know anything about spotting liars—and we've watched a lot of Columbo—we know now conclusively that Sarah Palin did not give birth to Trig, because they didn't deny or confirm anything and instead attacked the questioner.

Kurtz: "Sullivan, one of the earliest bloggers, has been on a tear about Palin lately, calling her 'a compulsive, repetitive, demonstrable liar.'" Then of course instead of listing a single example of one of those lies and saying whether or not it counts as a lie Kurtz moves on entirely to documenting a "veiled debate" between Sullivan and Ross Douthat. Howard Kurtz, everyone! (This is why we're never invited on his show.)

Baby Talk [WP]

• We think it's kind of tacky to mock a Parkinson's patient for writing a doddering, fogeyish column about the Internet. So we'll let Wonkette do it. Anyway, our guess as to the mystery journalist is Kaus. [Slate]
  
• Boo hoo hoo, Washington Post reporters now have to go through the same appraisal system everyone else in the white collar world goes through annually. [NYO]
  
• Allison Benedikt officially named Voice film editor. [The Reeler]
  
• Military fantasist/departing Cond Nast Steve Florio to open a restaurant. Damn it, Graydon, see what you started? [NYP]
  
• Tribune wants to delay its buyout, presumably because no one was dumb enough to pay the premium on what they're selling. [LAT]
  
• "Tomato-haired beauty" Maureen Dowd "has the greatest job in America." Also, she is not Tony Dungy. There's a reason some stuff is only published on the Web. [The Nation]
  
• Jon Friedman is the meat in a Julia Allison/Melissa Lafsky sandwich. Yes, there's a reason we didn't throw the picture up here. [ETP]
  
• We're just gonna quote Romenesko on this one: "Dobbs overdose." [Mother Jones]
  
• What we need more of is Tory Burch profiles. Thanks for making that dream come true, Vanity Fair. [WWD]
  
• Portfolio should just buy the Wall Street Journal and be done with it. [NYP]
  
• "Fuck IvyGate." [NYO]
  
• Correction of the Day: "An article and headline on Saturday about the Staten Island Museum, which is celebrating it's 125th anniversary, referred incorrectly to one item in the museum's collection of curiosities. It is a four-legged - not four-headed - chicken." [NYT]
  
• Bonus Correction: "An article last Wednesday about Jim Leff, a founder of the Internet discussion group www.chowhound.com, misstated the number of continents on which the food writer Mimi Sheraton has searched for bialys. It is five, not two." [NYT]

I was visiting New York City last week and noticed something I'd never thought I'd say about the big city. Yes, nightlife is pretty much dead (and I'm in no way the first to notice that).

Bastard!

That's the last time we invite you over and listen to you go on and on about how you can squat 385 pounds, jerk!

Society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld [Times.uk]
Team Party Crash: Pundits on Parade

Apparently, he is not. However, Michelle Malkin did appear as "Cheerleader # 4" in Toni Basil's "Mickey" video.

Actually, come to think of it, she did not.

Know Your Bears: The Case of Sullivan vs. Babydaddy [Wonkette]

As Sully himself puts it:

Much as I would like to do everything, I've been unable to give the blog my full attention and make any progress on a book (and I'm two years behind). It's not so much the time as the mindset. The ability to keep on top of almost everything on a daily and hourly basis just isn't compatible with the time and space to mull over some difficult issues in a leisurely and deliberate manner.

Feeling, please grab him! We just don't know if we can go on if you don't.
THE DISH AS YOU'VE KNOWN IT [Andrew Sullivan]
[Crying Pop via Old Men Crying]

Apparently Sullivan suffers from sleep apnea. Funny, we thought only liberals had trouble sleeping at night in these new dark days.

Anyway, watch as CNN's Wolf Blitzer bullies Sullivan into talking with the mask on. Anyone else getting a Pulp Fiction vibe off this?
Andrew Sullivan's Bedtime Headgear [Wonkette]
Pulp Fiction 'Bring out the gimp' T-Shirts [Amazon]

From the The Provincetown Banner, page 23, Nov, 18, 2004.

So, what happened to the $6K a month in blog income? See also: "After start-up costs for even snazzy sites, most income is profit." [A Blogger Manifesto, AndrewSullivan.com]