Andrew Sullivan
Trash Me, Baby!
Buzz Bissinger is the author of the Texas high-school football book Friday Night Lights and Prayer for the City, which is about Philadelphia under former Mayor Ed Rendell. Mr. Bissinger also wrote the Vanity Fair article on which the movie Shattered Glass was based. He is 53 years old, with a wide, almost froglike face and glasses, and on the night of Tuesday, April 29, he participated in a panel discussion on HBO’s Costas Now, hosted by NBC sportscaster Bob Costas, on the subject of sports and the Internet. read more »
Jeffrey Goldberg: Look Who's Blogging
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg—who joined the magazine from The New Yorker last year—has started a blog.
His first entry, which features an endearingly retro Public Enemy reference as its title, begins with the self-effacing words, "This is almost certainly a mistake." Well, it can't be as big a mistake as championing the invasion of Iraq relying (according to Harper's Ken Silverstein), "heavily on administration sources and war hawks (and in at least one crucial case, a fabricator)."
In March, Goldberg offered a mea culpa on Slate:
I wanted very much for the liberation of Iraq to succeed, for many reasons. I wasn't sure there was an alternative to Saddam's removal, in part because the sanctions regime was collapsing. I believed that Saddam's nuclear ambitions posed an almost immediate threat to national security. I believed that Saddam was a supporter of terrorism. read more »
Gay Marriage Legal Impact: Van Capelle v. Louis
One of the more exciting conversational themes in Albany today is Errol Louis' column in the Daily News about gay marriage. In it, he writes that the effort to legalize gay marriage, which passed the state Assembly this week, has provided a template for efforts around the country to legalize polygamy and incest.
Gay marriage advocates have reacted furiously, with a number of them emailing and calling me to express their outrage.
Alan Van Capelle, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, said, “I found it absolutely disgusting.” Capelle pointed out that the sexual deviants Louis cites in his column are actually all straight people.
“So don't drag us down with the bottom of the heterosexual group,” he said.
Louis, when told of Van Capelle’s comments, emailed me to say, “One possible response is dismissive ‘disgust.’ A more serious strategy would be to craft an argument for why stable, consensual, adult same-sex relationships should be recognized by the state but stable, consensual, adult sibling sexual relationships should not.”
The full Van Capelle-Louis exchange is after the jump. read more »
Beltway Bells Are Ringin’! David Geffen Unveils Andrew Sullivan’s Plans to Wed Actor
“Andrew, did you see David?” said authoress and blogger den mother Arianna Huffington to writer Andrew Sullivan read more »
The Afternoon Wrap: Thursday
Elsewhere: Maloney Purges, Rudy Surges, O'Connell Airs
Ben notices an Orwellian purge from the campaign website of Sean Maloney.
Rudy Giuliani will hire more fund-raisers and key staffers in early primary states in an effort to prove he's really running.
Andrew Sullivan wonders if Barack Obama has a James Frey problem.
Sheldon Silver will be attending the February 11 event hosted by a social service organization that received $3.4 million in state funds over the last three years.
Jerry Skurnik remembers another time when a governor appointed a state senator from an opposing party to a cushy state job.
Craig Johnson is a having a fund-raiser with bloggers.
A Democratic lawmaker in Erie County is running for re-election after pleading guilty to tax fraud.
Did Jeanine Pirro's former secretary testify in front of a grand jury?
The Village Voice didn't hear much about Mayor Bloomberg's poverty plans in his state of the city speech yesterday.
DMI has a map showing that hospital closings in New York City tend to happen minority communities.
The Forward looks at how the mayor of Kiryas Joel helped elect Rep. John Hall.
A blogger turns to Billy Martin to explain why he's not getting linked more often.
And above is a commercial for Republican Maureen O'Connell featuring the wife of the Republican state senator whose departure to Spitzerland created the vacancy.
-- Azi PaybarahElsewhere: Thompson, Gore, Ways & Means
Bill Thompson told a local paper he didn't want to replace Alan Hevesi because, basically, he couldn't run for mayor from an office in Albany.
Andrew Sullivan warns against underestimating Al Gore.
Greg Sargent wonders why CNN called Rudy Giuliani a "moderate conservative."
Sue Kelly conceded her race, finally, to John Hall. But she wants the ballot counting to continue for "historic purposes."
Long after Andrea Stewart-Cousins declared victory, Nick Spano also conceded.
Ben says that nobody lost too badly in the Hoyer-Murtha House Leadership race. Which, if true, is a fortunate outcome for Anthony Weiner.
The city got $650 million to build schools.
Wikkipedia is no longer blocked in China.
The face of Alarming News's Karol Sheinin is revealed.
Joe Crowley and Greg Meeks both want a seat on the Ways and Means Committee.
And pictured above may be one of the last times we see a ballot on a mechanical voting machine. Thank you WFP. read more »
-- Azi PaybarahElsewhere: Elections!
Real Clear Politics says that Democrats will pick up 19 seats (slightly less than the 25 they predicted earlier).
Andrew Sullivan wonders about the turnout among young voters.
Don Imus voted for Eliot Spitzer.Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island smells some hypocrisy in Bill Clinton's attacks on his position on Iraq.
Ben gets his hands on an unusual ad from John Spencer.
If Democrats win today, they'll owe a lot to organized labor, says TNR.
Mystery Pollster has a history of exit polls, which or may not be available today.
BlueJersey has some early (and partisan) exit poll numbers, with Bob Menendez leading Tom Kean, Jr.
Tom Reynolds and his opponent are not campaigning much today.
For poll numbers on some of the closets races, and a steady, late-into-the-evening Politicker feed, check out the Observer's action-packed homepage. read more »
And pictured above, from the Wall Street Journal's blog about blogs, is the ballot Connecticut voters are seeing today, which has Joe Lieberman listed all the way at the bottom.
-- Azi PaybarahNewsweek Launches Politics Blog
The weekly magazine's reporters will write the daily items, according to senior editor Weston Kosova, who is one of the blog's editors.
"We've been kicking it around for a while," said Mr. Kosova. "With the elections, it seemed like a good time to do it."
But was Newsweek's decision motivated at all by developments over at Time? Over the past year, Newsweek's rival has hired star political bloggers like Andrew Sullivan (Daily Dish) and former Wonkette editor Ana Marie Cox (Political Bite).
"It really wasn't," said Mr. Kosova. "It seems like such an obvious thing to do. Everyone in the universe has one. We didn't feel a push from [Time]."
And the name?
"It's kind of a Washington expression for reporters," said Mr. Kosova. The idea was "to come up with something that said 'politics,' was catchy, and hadn't been used by someone else," he said.
- Michael CalderoneAndrew Sullivan Sees Straight in New 'Out' Editor
While that idea fits nicely with Mr. Sullivan's theories on the continued blurring of straight and gay culture and identity, it doesn't quite deliver, as Out's new editor, Aaron Hicklin, is actually not a heterosexual.
Mr. Hicklin and Mr. Sullivan have never met, although Mr. Sullivan did once write approvingly of a review by Mr. Hicklin in Gear magazine of a Moby album.
"He's going to be very disappointed when he sees my first issue devoted to Judy Garland," Mr. Hicklin said from the Black Book offices. "And the Cher issue!"
Mr. Hicklin is staying at Black Book long enough to close the June/July issue; he will then immediately transfer to Out, without a break.
—Choire SichaHillary's Rough Week
Chitty Chitty Bang, Rent
Hillary's Unhappy Ghost
"I do have some insight into Hillary and it makes me dislike her. A couple of years ago I had an office over a clothing store in my small town and the woman in the office next door was ghostwriting Hillary's memoir, of all things. She started out all excited and impressed. Hillary's so 'down to earth' and so on. (She took an immediate dislike to Bill, who struck her as a narcissistic snake.)
"Then she went to Washington. She was away for a long time, but on each occasion she came back to Montana I could see her spirit dimming. The problem, the woman said, was Hillary's people, who were ghostwriting the ghostwriting, angling every anecdote for effect and literally rejiggering their heroine's life. I was there in the woman's house the day the book arrived and the first thing she did with her copy was angrily hurl it against a wall.
"Why? Because she'd discovered that there was no Hillary, really, just a creature concocted by her people who was happy to be a concoction of her people. Oddly, my friend, a deep-down liberal, considered Hillary a conservative, basically, with a lot of goody-goody suburban attitudes and pretty conventional good-government views. Another class president type, in other words."
That Hillary's memoir was ghosted is hardly a shocker; little more that it was scrubbed of character.
But if this is what it appears to be, it's one of those rarer and rarer indiscretions out of Hillaryland. And a reminder of how little can be seen through the bubble in which Hillary has lived for a decade and a half. read more »
Oh, and of the three women who get ghost-like credits in Living History, one, Maryanne Vollers, is described here as living in the same Montana town as Kirn.
