March 12th, 2010
Jeffrey Goldberg deserves some credit for pushing back against Andrew Sullivan instead of just going along to get along. But he adds a curious addendum:
UPDATE: When I implied above that a magazine with standards would not allow Andrew to misinterpret history, I should have stated that the Atlantic’s website has no fact-checking standards, and not that it has no standards at all.
In all seriousness, what standards are those? They allow profanity, misrepresentation, public criticism of fellow employees, the endorsement of criminal activity, descriptions of sex, and truly pornographic use of the first-person. What is explicitly ruled out-of-bounds by TheAtlantic.com’s Standards & Practices Handbook?
Update: Goldberg now says that he simply isn’t going to respond to Sullivan anymore. Well, okay. That’s one way to do it. Go along, get along it is!
-
You forgot to mention his endorsement of illegal drugs. In the "descriptions of sex" column, Sullivan says this:"But I know nothing that God has given us – save psilocybin – that gives us this divine, if fleeting, parole from a vale of tears."First of all, that's a bizarre, off-balance phrase: "divine, if fleeting, parole from a vale of tears." Mixing metaphors is generally pretty confusing, but he's taking the Jackson Pollack approach there. He's not even trying to mix them so much as just splash them randomly around the page.More importantly, Psilocybin is the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms. Maybe it's just me, but I think it might be slightly irresponsible to suggest in a public magazine that life's horrible except when you're on shrooms.
-
GOD I am going to miss him when he bites the bucket. Sullivan takes the place of DOZENS of other comedians and public spectacles.
denbeste March 13, 2010 at 4:44 am
What's ruled out? Saying nice things about Republicans.