AbsurdBeats

I am not a subscriber.

I expect that I’ll become one; I’m kinda surprised and I haven’t ponied up already.

The Daily Dish. I’m talkin’ ’bout Andrew Sullivan’s Dish.

I read it every day, and often click over to one of the sites Sullivan links to. I like very much that he pays his interns and that he provides health insurance to his workers. And given my general “fuck you-pay me” ethos (tho’ that doesn’t quite match the situation, here), it makes sense that when someone whose work I read asks that he be paid for that work, that I pay him.

But I haven’t.

A big part is that I’m still able to read the bulk of his posts without clicking through. I know he reduced the number of free hits from 10 to 5 in any given month, but there’s still a lot that’s free. If he were even stingier with the words, I’d probably already have cracked open my wallet.

There are other reasons for my procrastination. Every time this past year I was thinking, Yeah, I should sign up already, he’d offer up some bullshit post (What’s the big deal with expecting retail/hospitality workers to fawn all over me? I’m so so brave for publishing Charles Murray’s shit-work on race and IQ, etc.) and I’d think “Fuck if I’m rewarding that.”

It’s not that I won’t pay to disagree or that I have to like everything he publishes. I don’t care about beards and his posts on his religious beliefs could be nominated for his own Poseur Alerts, but, whatever. And I do like the shots of his beagles. No, it was more a specific response to a specific post, as if sending electronic cash his way just after he posted something terrible was a kind of reward for that specific terrible post.

That may not make sense, but when you’re lookin’ for reasons to say procrastinate, just about anything’ll do.

Which leads me to my next point: I don’t think he’s a very good political analyst. He can’t separate out his own concerns from those of the candidate or of the exigencies of either a campaign or governance. He kept banging on about the debt and deficit—which, fine: his blog—but in arguing that Obama could make great political gains by tackling D&D he was just. . . wrong.

And, of course, he’s by turns amusing and irritating with his semi-regular emotional collapses  (alternating with the “meep meep” nonsense) regarding the daily fortunes of this president.

Then there’s the–uck–Clinton-spazzing. Jesus Christ. He barely held it together while Hillary was Secretary of State, but now that she’s no longer a part of the Obama administration he’s reverted to Bill&HillAreSatan and already frothing about 2016. *Looooooong sigh*

Finally, I am still deeply, deeply angered over the fact that those who supported and exhorted and castigated on behalf of the Iraq war have paid no price whatsoever. They’ve kept their jobs,  their t.v. gigs, they’ve made money on books and in speaking fees, and they’re still available to opine on the next new thing.

They helped to shove us into disaster and the worst that has happened to any of them is that they’ve had to say “Sorry”.

Sullivan has, of course, said “sorry” and made a great show of repentance—but as you can tell by the way I worded that last phrase, I don’t fully believe him. He says he feels bad, and maybe he does, but that’s because he should. He was part of a terrible venture, and he should carry that until the end of his days.

Oddly, it is in part that anger over his Iraq war advocacy that will lead me to subscribing: I want to read his “Deep Dish” piece on how he got it all wrong. I generally don’t bother with contempt-reading (hence my drawing back from Dreher), but I expect the experience of reading the piece to be grim.

I’m angry just thinking about it.

Still. And so what. Whatever else I think of Sullivan, I do think he’s honest, or at least that he strives for honesty. I like a lot of what he does, dislike some, and skip past the rest with an “Eh”. I don’t know if I’d enjoy sitting down to a meal with him—maybe, maybe not—but I don’t need to be besties with someone to appreciate what they do.

And, for the most part, I do.

So I will—subscribe, that is.

Tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow.