Tag: The Dish Model

E-mails and posts are still coming in, so we are going to continue posting cheers and jeers semi-regularly throughout this anniversary week. To say I've been touched by them would be an understatement. Blogging is isolating in many ways, and when most of your interactions are debate-style, you can forget that many of your fellow-jousters actually even like you. In the classic House of Commons, there was a bar for the pols to patch things up after some brutal public fights – or the tea-room, or even the john. This week feels a bit like that – a friendly social truce in an ongoing intellectual argument. Here's Chait's addition:

[Andrew] cares deeply about politics, but politics, appropriately, isn't everything to him. That's a sensibility I've admired and sought to emulate. You can't go through life being angry at people for being wrong.

There's a line from the Godfather Part 2, in which Hyman Roth explains how we swallowed his anger at the murder of his friend Moe Green: "This is the business we've chosen." Opinion journalism isn't la cosa nostra, but it is a contentious business, and especially so opinion journalism blogging. I've always admired Andrew's ability to maintain, alongside his fierce, crusading opinion-mongering, a constant good cheer and capacity to keep his ideological crusades in their proper place. This is the business we've chosen.

I can't say Andrew wielded much of an ideological influence over me. But he influenced something that is more important than ideology.

A reader writes:

After a whole day of reading the Dish blog about itself, I'm starting to see Christine O'Donnell's point about masturbation.

Another writes:

First, happy 10 years. Second, thanks for the toast/roast event, which has led me to some blogs and bloggers that I never have clicked on before, opening my mind up to some other voices. Which is, in some way, the whole point of the Blogosphere, yes?

Another:

While many think of a blog as a wholly new medium, others compare it to a sort of magazine.  I think it is in many ways it is actually a fusion of newspaper, magazine, and TV channel.  The latter is in part due to your ability to show video, but it has more to do with how your posts or "segments," if you will, roll out through the day.  I can follow the Dish during the day in much the same way I would if I left my favorite channel running in the background while I do my work or chores or cooking.  Your posts come to me in time such that there can be a flowing continuity of information, covering many threads, some of which I allow to interrupt my day while I explore them there in the moment. 

Except the Dish is better than a TV channel.  I don't have to find the segments when they air at a scheduled time, because they are presented in a column style interactive newspaper format.  I can catch up on them later and scan in much the way I do a newspaper to see what I've missed that interests me.  This exposes me to more topics than I would otherwise take interest in.

And I follow the Dish's conversations over time, and through endless chains of links out into the rest of the world.  I'm automatically linked into deeper or different information.  Neither magazines nor TV provide that very well.  Linking is like the bibliography of the web, and with the web I finally find a bibliography practical and functional in my everyday life.

Another:

I tried to write something profound to mark your 10th anniversary.   Although I disagree with you regularly, you have posted a few of my emails and are my favorite blog.  Out of all this material, however, the one thing I keep coming back to is your definition of the word “hubris” (= the smell of one's own farts). So I hope you take this as a compliment: I can’t fart without thinking of you. 

Another:

It's very odd to wax sentimental about someone I've never actually met, but I'll give it a go. 

The most wonderful thing about your blog – by far – is that you just don't give a fuck what other people think.  That's exactly how I describe you to friends.  When you write something, it's because you believe it.  You take on issues and causes that many others refuse to touch (Zionism, male circumcision, pot legalization). 

And, even more extraordinarily, you actually post dissenting views and admit when you're wrong.  As one of your readers, I feel like the only audience to whom you feel accountable is us.  That's probably a bit naive, but I don't think I'm too far off.  In a media environment filled with condescension, propaganda, and obfuscation, you actually respect your readers.

In another life, you were the high school teacher that students kept in touch with and asked for advice long after entering adulthood.

Another:

Congratulations on your first decade. Thought you might like to know that I've learned a lot from your work (and the work of your team) about blogging as a medium – what it can do to text and literacy itself – which has helped me become a better English teacher. My students agree: blogging is a cool way to improve one's writing. Many of the tricks I now use to communicate with them, analyze their work, and model my own thinking and writing for them, I picked up from the Dish. Betcha didn't know your work can shape high school pedagogy!

Another:

I'm a college student, and when my communications teacher asked me my primary source of news online, I said the Dish. My teacher seemed a bit surprised, expecting me to say something along the lines of Twitter or HuffPo. But the truth is that anyone can get the story when it's breaking, it takes a true master of journalism to comment only when more context is apparent.

Another:

I'm a medical student and I've dicked away an ungodly number of hours reading your blog in the library rather than studying. I'm happy that I have though, because it's often served as a small window outside of the tiny bubble that this type of specialized schooling can create.

Another:

I started reading you sometime in 2001, before 9/11, when I was a just out-of-college English major laboring away as a reporter for a weekly newspaper. In the near decade since, I've gone through a tremendous number of changes and moves, have seen my entire worldview flipped over several times, and yet somehow the Daily Dish has been with me constantly, whether I was up late at night reading your blog here on the East Coast of the United States or checking in from Africa as a way of staying in touch with "home."

Another:

I'm a Washingtonian, but have lived in Paris for almost the entire time you have been blogging. The Daily Dish is like a daily letter from home (and it makes me a bit homesick, but in a good way). Good luck with getting your green card. I hope our government understands that America has been a great beneficiary of your work.

Another:

You are America's greatest public intellectual, and you're not even an American. (Well, actually, you are. We're just waiting for the paperwork.)

Another:

I want to thank you, actually, for writing The Conservative Soul more than anything else.  In school I was very much the party-line College Republican kid, as unthinking in my positions as I claimed my liberal friends were.  As I grew up and then joined the Army I started to really consider issues for the first time, foremost among them the effects of my own limited knowledge and experience.  And as this veneer of certainty completely melted and so much of my intellectual life changed, it took reading The Conservative Soul to figure out what exactly had happened to me and why and, most importantly, that there was a tradition and philosophy behind what I had come to believe. 

All of this led me back to the Dish, which I had read years before in sporadic bursts but have now consumed daily for over two years, including a truly interminable deployment.

Another:

So glad to see you've made it ten years!  I've been a reader for some time, but never written.  But I wanted to tell you that I really appreciate in particular your columns about your faith, and your ability to document it for us.  Reading a writer who is able to do this as it happens rather than addressing his audience with didactic statements designed to present his religious thought as being fully formed, in spite of new information or events, is a rarity.  That's really helped me, and I'm sure many others, as we've sorted through the Christianity of our parents and grandparents this past decade, which has many times felt like a similar process. 

Another:

The word that comes to mind for the Dish is "catholic," in the best sense of the word: "including a wide variety of things; all-embracing". If the "c" were capitalized, I'm afraid that would categorize, separate and exclude. Many thanks and best wishes for another 10.

Another:

So many of the subjects that you return to over and over have fascinated and informed me like no other blog or person.  As a fellow Catholic struggling with the horror the Church has perpetrated, I cannot tell you how much your posts have meant to me. 

And of course, your fondness for beagles speaks to me!  I KNOW, one day, my faithful beagle is going to appear in your blog. 

Another:

Those reader stories you post (on abortion, cannabis, recession situations, etc) are my favorite feature. Incidentally, I have completely switched my position on gay marriage over the last few years (I was raised by evangelical Christian missionaries, so I had some baggage) and I give your blog most of the credit for that.  So thanks also for showing me the light. Rock on.

Another:

I will admit, I will scroll through some of the posts because I just can’t absorb it all. I’m amazed at the pace and, perversely, at my own impatience on the very rare occasions when I hit “refresh” and nothing new pops up. I don’t know how you do it. But I am grateful that you do. The View from Your Window is such an apt metaphor for your blog. So many views, so many windows.

Another:

I'm probably too late to contribute, but I wanted to at least drop a brief line on the Dish's anniversary.  The first I heard of your work was that "he's the guy who pushed the Bell Curve."  My skin immediately crawled, and surprisingly, still does after typing that (I will go no further, as it is unnecessary after the Dish's comprehensive "Race and Intelligence, Again" thread).  So I read your work with a sneer, to be quite honest.  And leading up to the Iraq War 2.0, I found my general dismissiveness toward you to be completely warranted.

Then, a funny thing happened.  I found myself cocooned circa 2004, the loudest voices on the left making me often question how I was on "the blue team" at all.  And there was the Dish, standing out as a voice unafraid to express something less than certainty; a malleable ball, changing not with the wind, but with the weather.  All done by … Andrew Sullivan?

Oh, fuck.  Strange bedfellows, indeed.  So I read.  Then kept reading.  Now the Dish has become ingrained in my daily routine so much that it's nearly a sensory enjoyment, like the smell of coffee each morning.  You mentioned how readers just call you "Andrew," and I find myself doing the same thing, although we've never met.  You've posted a few things I've written to you before (the first was about Buddhism, I think), and responded to an e-mail or two.  That's been the extent of our interaction.  But now that I'm a jaded, divorced, calloused person, you (and by extension, Patrick, Chris, Conor and Zoe) are as long-running a non-familial relationship as I've had.

I don't know what else to say but "thanks."

Another:

One of my happiest moments on the Internet came when I sent you a link to an article I had stumbled upon, and Chris responded with "thanks! will post."  It made me feel like I had contributed in a small way to a truly worthwhile endeavor.  Thanks for all you do.

Another:

What I really like about your blog is the detail, the specificity that displays a real singular consciousness (in interaction with other consciousnesses, Patrick, et al.)  You, a few work colleagues, and my family are the only people with whom I communicate virtually (in both senses) every single day. Keep up the good work, try to cut out the bad, just like we're all doing in our lives, because in the end the Dish is in its way a life, a living thing. It must be nurtured, it lives in community, it has birthed (or at least inspired) other blogs in this great electronic network of minds and ideas.

And a large part of its beauty is that one day, it will die. I think that this ephemeral nature is one of the things that truly makes the blogosphere free, and separates it from all the news media that has come before. The New York Times (theoretically) can go on forever, but the Dish dies when you stop.

— C.B.

We bleg and you deliver. A reader writes:

Andrew Sullivan is a man of ferocious concentration; indeed, whether Sully is raging against church abuse cover ups, torture, or Israeli policy, the only thing that can possibly sidetrack him is South Park.  Or the latest YouTube sensation.  Or anything about beards.  Or windows.  Then probably beards again.  Regardless, when Andrew Sullivan’s attention is fixed and his wrath unleashed, he becomes a sort of “Mama Grizzly,” if you will, hunting his target without relent.

Speaking of Mama Grizzlies, many have questioned his obsession with all things Sarah Palin.  But is it really so odd that our beloved blogger would be so drawn to someone oft-characterized as a bear?  No doubt some smart ass will point out that this joke falters because Sarah Palin is a woman.  Well, I heard, from a very reliable source, that Andrew may have a theory about that issue as well.  But I don’t want to start any rumors.

Another writes:

He looks like a muppet procreated with an egg.

Another:

If you’re going to properly roast him, then you’ll have to go find the video of his double-handed ass-scratch during the closing credits of Real Time several years back.

Another:

OK here I go …

As much as I love Andrew on a blog, I have to say he really sucks on TV.  First of all, his accent is off. It is somewhere in between England and the US and not a good place. It makes him sound like an obsessed fan of William F Buckley who can’t quite get the east coast snobby sound right no matter how much he practices in front of the mirror.

And the beard. OMG.  Talking about the beard on the blog is one thing, but then we all actually saw it that night on Colbert… As Wallace said to Grommit “It’s gone wrong”.  Let.the.beard.go.gray.

And finally the coke spilling episode on Bill Maher. That was just weird. I have not seen anyone do that before or since. All Dish readers were embarrassed that night. It’s not so much the spilling as how totally uncomfortable Andrew was the rest of the show. Clearly a decade of blogging skills do not transfer to TV.

Another:

Although I read Sullivan, and link to him, and appreciate his doggedness about torture and other civil liberties, I feel he’s never made a full, straightforward apology for his “fifth column” remarks, both this one:

The middle part of the country—the great red zone that voted for Bush—is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead—and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.

And where he seems to think he offered some kind of retraction:

I have no reason to believe that even those sharp critics of this war would actually aid and abet the enemy in any more tangible ways than they have done already. And that dissent is part of what we’re fighting for. By fifth column, I meant simply their ambivalence about the outcome of a war on which I believe the future of liberty hangs.

I’ve seen him be full-throated (as he was in yesterday’s essay) about his apology for cheerleading the war. And I’ve seen him vaguely nudge around the edges of pre-judging, like he did in yesterday’s essay as well:

I was wrong – but more than wrong, I was dismissive of those who turned out to be right. Some of those I mocked I did so for the right reasons.

Sorry, not good enough. Not explicit enough. And he still seems to harbor (“I did so for the right reasons”) disdain for those of us in our enclaves on the coasts who love our country deeply, who cherish the right to call on our government to answer to us when the gravest of steps is taken, who passionately participate in our democracy and our electoral process. We were not ambivalent about the outcome of a war. We were opposed to our steamrolled, clearly obfuscated entry into it. Still, he hides behind the “some of those I mocked I did so for the right reasons.”

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. There was no “right reason” to mock those who turned out to be right, even if he considered them to be silly people and dirty fucking hippies.

Until he fully and explicitly retracts those specific remarks, I don’t think he will have earned the respect he could more easily have claimed as a moral man, flawed and willing to fully admit mistakes when wrong. He has been diminished by those words, and only a wholehearted and specific retraction of them could restore, in my eyes at least, his reputation.

Another:

Andrew Sullivan has, on occasion, apologized at passionate length for his failings. To me, however, Sully has never inflicted worse harm upon his readers than on twice sharing photographs of Vice President/War Criminal Dick Cheney’s own passionate length, here and here. The pic is thankfully hard to find these days, but here it is. God help us; there may be more.

Sully, have you no shame, sir? At long last, have you no shame?

Another:

Well, except from being obstinately religious and politically naive I think one can only hold an overarching emotionalism against Andrew. On the plus side there is an unusual attempt at honesty and an also rare ability (in conservatives) to get enthused about a particular Democratic leader.

Ah but the emotions: one can set the watch for the angry fanfare every time Obama has dealt with LGBT rights in (his usual) cautious demeanor. Same for the torture policy (the non-persecution of the torturers of the previous administration). In both cases I agree with Andrews positions, but in both cases I think his emotions regularly get the better of him, and it does not illuminate the issue.

Another:

What pissed me off most during my years of reading The Dish was the time in the pre-corporate days when Andrew put out a call for donations to support The Dish. I sent off some money and the very next day Andrew announced he was closing up shop and going to P’Town for the month. Well, thank you.

Another:

There’s an old axiom I just made up that states: The internet is 80% porn; the rest is just a waste of time. Within the waste of time spectrum, a full fifth, or 4% of the entire vastness of cyberspace, is occupied by the voluminous and inane ramblings of the time-wastiest blog of all: Andrew Sullivan’s “Daily Dish.”

At first glance Andrew appears to be a man whose head was attached upside down; upon closer inspection it turns out this is merely an unfortunate hair configuration, part personal choice and part no choice whatsoever. A quick perusal of his work, however, reveals that while his head may be right side up, it is clearly also screwed on backwards.

I’m being unfair, of course. Andrew’s blog has been a fountain of personal growth for me. For example, I used to not like the Pet Shop Boys. Now I fucking hate them.

Another:

No one is celebrating the wonderfully degenerate junk-food quality that’s right there in the name of the thing: the Daily Dish. Isn’t it obvious that this blog is one of the Internet’s great soap operas? Of no party or clique, and on good days, all the hissy that’s fit to throw. The Paul Revere bareback rides to warn us all that Sarah Palin and her vagina is coming! The pot bust! The long-suffering husband’s cameos! The Beaches-style beach snapshots! The clarion calls for the arrest of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Yoo, etc. etc.!

And like every other soap opera, no real closure. Ever.

This is a man for whom great art is embodied by the Pet Shop Boys, South Park, and some of the most dreary Sunday-devotional verse and essays ever reduced to fair-use excerpts that don’t violate copyright law. And don’t get me started on the superannuated “awards” and the annoying habit of proclaiming disinterested social isolation while citing Hitch and all those first-name basis bloggers I’ve never heard of because I have a life.

Okay, enough. Time to hit refresh.

Why I love the Daily Dish: I get to publish embarrassing material about my boss and get paid for it.

— C.B.

A reader writes:

It seems the only time I ever see you is when I’m five sheets to the wind at the Diner.  So I figured that I would take an e-opportunity to congratulate you on your 10th anniversary.  Your blog, and books, were vitally important for this young, conservative Catholic political junkie as I was coming out of the closet.  And after you helped me through that, I became a religious reader of your blog and seemingly together you and I came to realize the excesses of this current brand of conservatism. I imagine I'll look back on that period and determine that it was the most important formative part of my adult life, and you and the Dish played a critical role.  I’m eternally grateful for that.

Another writes:

Congratulations on your 10th year of the Dish.  I write simply to thank you for helping impact who I am as a person, as a thinker, and as a (hopefully) productive member of society.

I am 28 years old.  When I was in my second or third year of college (around year 2 or 3 of the Dish's existence), attending the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University and studying Political Science, I found your voice on the internet and have been addicted ever since. I was going through my first period of real intellectual reflection at the time, having entered college as a fervent, yet poorly informed, conservative.  Having grown up in an entirely homogenous rural-conservative community, it took a few years in a more diverse environment for my ideas about the world to be sufficiently challenged to a degree where I could question my own beliefs.  I was beginning to accept gays as friends – a thought abhorrent to me when I left home.  I was beginning to question dogmatic Republican principles, a thought that remains abhorrent to many of the people I grew up with. 

It has felt ever since that I have grown with the Dish in learning how to become a fluid thinker – constantly questioning my own views and opinions as the world continually challenges them with new facts and circumstances.

Another:

Most importantly, you've taught me a valuable lesson is disagreeing with someone. I assumed there were two choices: Republican or Democrat. The Democrats were the liberals, the good guys; Republicans were conservatives, the villains (I'm a child of the GW Bush years).  But you've helped me to realize that the tags liberal and conservative have almost no bearing to either the Democrats or Republicans these days. I could see myself proudly identifying as a conservative someday (but as long as the Republican party stays in its same mold, I will never identify as such).

Another:

I'm sure I would never consider myself a conservative if not for you and the Dish. I came of political age in the US and in the Bush era, when 'conservatism' meant what it means now: neoconservatism, fiscal recklessness and social nostalgia. If anything can push a sensible person away from the label 'conservative' it's that. But now whenever someone talks to me about politics, I say, a little apologetically, that I'm a conservative. Usually I'm able to explain it in a way they can understand. And that's all your doing.

Another:

I really wish there were more like you out there to read, but I’ve had some bad experiences trying to read other conservative bloggers.  I come away nauseous, not contemplative.  Although I’m still quite liberal, I do appreciate real conservatism, if for no other reason than as a necessary part of a balance. I know that pendulums really shouldn’t swing too far in either direction!  I suppose I respect real conservatives if I believe they are sincerely motivated by a desire to achieve good things for all (not just themselves).  I really do trust you, and that is saying quite a bit.

I am also the daughter of a Southern Baptist Minister and struggle painfully with faith to this day because of the things that I was immersed (literally) in about religion that I found to be just… well… wrong.  So I’ve loved the elements of your faith that you have shared with us.  One of my favorites is “When Not Seeing is Believing”, and it touched me deeply.  And I consider your coining of the term ‘Christianist’ to be spot on.

Another:

As a Catholic who has serious issues with Benedict's papacy and the politicization of the church in general, I also drew inspiration from the Dish's weekly focus on all things religious and spiritual, the debate with Sam Harris, and the difficulty of remaining within an institution that can simultaneously sear and salvage one's soul.

Another:

This Muslim is always appreciative of your dedication to the truth and your understanding of the fact that not all of us are homophobic, homicidal or just plain nuts! We are capable of poking fun at ourselves, understanding that the future of our religion lies not in the narrow dogma of the past 100 years or so, but in accepting that we live in a beautiful and diverse world that our Creator has provided for all of creation, not a select few. Your spirituality is astoundingly passionate, rather reminds me of my own understanding of Islam. The piety and reverence with which you address the deeply troubling issues confronting the Catholic Church resonate with those of us who seek change and reform within our own religions.

Thank you for provoking my thoughts (and those of my friends!) and earning the gadfly status in my life!

A reader writes:

I worked for many years in radio, and we have a special category of listeners we call "long time listeners/ first time callers." They are 99% of all radio listeners who genuinely enjoy what they hear most every day, but never get around to calling the station. With regard to your blog, it's probably safe to say that 99% of your readers never get around to clicking the "email Andrew" link, yet they read you frequently, possibly multiple times daily. They read, they think; they laugh and cry, and look through the views from your infinite windows. Count me among your long time readers/ first time e-mailers. Kudos to you and your staff on your 10th anniversary, and please know that for many of the 99%ers out here, we can't imagine a day without another helping from the Dish.

Another writes:

As an outsider looking in, I am very grateful for your blog’s existence. Yours is a sane voice in the midst of all-too-pervasive hysteria, and a sane conservative voice, which as someone to the left, I welcome with all my heart. As someone who loves Americans and loves (mostly) America, I yearn for them to return to civilized, respectful discourse, motivated not by ideology but by pragmatism. A lot of us outside the borders of the United States are hoping and praying that America shows greater unity in the face of some very grave challenges we all are confronting. May America listen to the better angles of its nature. Thank you Andrew, your blog is a bright spot.

Another:

As I do every morning, I woke up, made coffee and opened my window to the sounds and smells of Paris, then settled in to see what you and your team had to say during the night, while I slept. With an RSS feedreader overwhelmed by more than 500 feeds and subsequently abandoned, I've honed down my news and commentary sources to very few, and your blog is one of them. On your 10th anniversary, I'd like to tell you how and why you fit into my life.

I found Blogger in 2006, after almost killing myself trying to fit into corporate America and finally quitting, with no job prospects in sight. I was 50 and I was going to do what I was meant to do: write. I had also been apolitical for most of my life, being raised in a family where compassion for those less fortunate was a weakness and worthy of derision. Christmas cards from Nixon hung proudly on my mother's wall, and her library upstairs was packed with books like Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative (my Canadian mother became a US citizen in order to work for Goldwater's campaign) and currently her coffee table sports books by Malkin and Colter. To my entire family, Limbaugh is a "true patriot." I don't have any idea how I managed, from birth, to be a liberal, but as the youngest of six kids I had to completely disconnect from politics or I would have been shouted down every time I made a liberal squeak.

But George Bush's administration pushed me out of my lethargy and I got so angry that I started educating myself – thus the 500 RSS feeds. I learned about PNAC and neoconservatism, about AIPAC, Israel and Zionism and continue to learn about Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran. But what would I do with all this new information? How could I make analysis and express my opinions? Blogger. It had some magical interface that made it possible for this writer who never could take the time to write to do so.

Here's where you come in. I did not want to fall into the same trap as my family – only reading authors that supported my worldview. I was looking for someone – not of the left – who reflected some of the conservative values that I was still able to hear underneath all the loud derision of my family's discourse. I know, based on my experience working for the US Army and Marine Corps and then a military contractor, that government-run anything is a mess of waste and inefficiency. I have an ingrained respect for entrepreneurship and business – for, dare I say, Capitalism. I believe in a cautious, deliberate approach to policy. These values come from my conservative upbringing, even though they were all trounced upon by Bush's supposedly conservative administration. So, you were the conservative voice I chose to subscribe to.

In addition, and also so very important, you turned me on to The View From Your Window and Blurb. I spent this entire summer traveling through France with my French friend. While she inspected châteaux and B&Bs for her guide book, I took a view-from-your-window picture from every château. (Some day, I'll get around to sending them to you :-) But, having lost access to a fancy New York book agent when I walked away from my formerly-famous journalist boyfriend, Blurb was the answer. It will allow me to form my summer travel adventures into a book that I can self publish. This was a great gift from you.

And if you're still miraculously reading this novel of an email, thank God for the respect and love of you and your team for long-form literature and journalism. There's a place for me, after all.

Yes, we changed it to celebrate the Dish's tenth consecutive year of daily blogging. (It's by the cartoon genius, Terry Colon.) I don't remember to be honest the precise day I started this insane enterprise – but I do remember blogging the 2000 conventions. To be on the safe side, we picked 10/10/10 as our arbitrary birthday, and on Monday, we'll take the holiday for some self-indulgent memories and nostalgia and some toasts and roasts from around the blogosphere.

There have been many times when I thought I would stop. I did once actually promise to in 2005, and then the Pope died and I couldn't help myself. The reason I haven't over all is not because I ever realized the full economic potential of the site – I tried, but failed – and did not have the will to be a businessman; but because of you, the readers, whose constant support and criticism and love and  intimacy moves me every day, and reminds me of the unique joy of this now million-monthly strong community. I'll write a little more on Monday about my feelings after ten years – yes, I was blogging when Clinton was president – and what this daily exposure and intense labor does to the soul and mind and body.

But it is also true that Jessie, my first real aide de blogue, helped me changed the scope of the blog toward a blogazine; Patrick, Chris, Zoe and Conor are not just some of the most decent, smart and kind people I know; but they persuaded me this spring not to give it up, when I had truly decided to do so in the face of some really tough personal and professional pressure. They are why I'm still typing this post this evening.

I also want to remember and thank the man who made this all possible in the first place, my friend who introduced me to Blogger.com all those years ago and maintained this site for six years, Robert Cameron. Without him, the Dish simply wouldn't have existed for the six years we did it together alone. He was a genius and visionary and one of the most brilliant men I have ever met. He and I together knew from the start that this was the beginning of a media revolution, and together, we played our part in making it happen. Now, it's everywhere. Back then, I spent year after year trying to explain to people what a blog was.

But without you, it wouldn't have taken flight. Without you, it would not be what it is. More on Monday.

Now, as that memo on the wall says, back to work ….

I'm going off-grid for my annual bloggatical. Aaron has forbidden me to blog or write in this period, and for good reason, so, with apologies to my colleague and friend, Jeffrey Goldberg, and his challenging and chilling piece, I won't respond until I return. Maybe that will also allow me to respond to it with less immediacy and more perspective. The debate about it is, however, already in full swing and the Dish will be covering that in detail in my absence.

Meanwhile, for the first time in ten years, the blogazine will need no guest-bloggers. We finally have a team who can carry the Dish on their own for three weeks. Executive editors Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner will be running the show, with blog posts from them and senior editor Conor Friedersdorf and associate editor Zoe Pollock. And, of course, you. See you after Labor Day, when we will have a full team to take the Dish forward into its second decade.

Have a lovely end of summer.

(Photo by Nicholas Hendrickx)

A reader writes:

I am a Presbyterian Pastor, and your blog archive has become a go-to resource for sermon illustrations. For example, this week my sermon touched on the issue of suffering – and sure enough, a search of your archives (via Google, not the dismal Atlantic site search function) pointed me to a several posts on Bart Ehrman and the role of suffering in his journey from faith to agnosticism. It provided a relevant, real-time example of the struggle with suffering and the role of the cross in God's response to a suffering world.

It's worth mentioning that a straight Google search of "suffering" turns up a cluttered mess. Your choice of blog posts serves as a human filter of the flood of information on the internet that no quant equation can compete with. The internet is a grand experiment in unintended consequences and I thought you'd be interested in one more example of how it is changing our relationship to information and narrative.

We are chuffed. And we hope soon to begin to compile pages of Dish links and posts on various subjects and collect various threads together to make this process more possible. I find the Dish a resource as well. For my other writing and thinking, or just researching, there is almost always something in the Dish archives that can help. That's not just because of our editing. It's because we've come to see this blogazine as an efficient way to congregate the thoughts and knowledge of an increasingly impressive collective mind.

That would be you.

That would be you. Just reading the in-tray can be a magical tour of free association. A reader writes:

Eminem's observation reminds me of this 2004 Michael Shaw cartoon in The New Yorker. 

Another:

I found your latest "Creepy Ad Watch" for fart control medicine hilarious, but something kept tickling my brain about the soundtrack. It isn't "cheezy background porn music" … it's Vangelis' "Love Theme" track from Blade Runner!  To my mind this makes the whole thing even more gloriously weird.

Another:

Here is a super creepy ad for you. Four out of five BP execs recommend it.

Another:

Not sure if you've already seen this, but these ads are unintentionally funny. Listen carefully at the end.

A reader writes:

I would like to add my voice to what I suspect is a very large crowd, urging you to do whatever it takes, for as long as you can, to keep sharing your voice with us.  If you need to never write another word on the weekends, so be it.  If you need to work from 10:00 to 4:00 pm and never live-blog at night, go for it.  Just don’t be silent.  I dig all over the internet for decent, good faith analysis of current events, culture and miscellaneous “stuff” of interest.  No one does what you do, and if your blog were to go away, it would be an incalculable loss.  There are a host of good writers, and I love them all, but your brand of grit and passion and abilities to assimilate information are unique.  For good or ill, reading your take every day on the events of the world helps me keep things straight in my mind.

Another writes:

Because the page jumps usually didn't have much more material on them, I assumed that the jumps were used to gauge reader-interest in particular topics. Without the jumps you really don't know what people are reading (though I suppose the volume of email would give you a hint).

Another:

I assume the page-jump within this post was a joke.  I chuckled, anyway.