OK, he's not dead. But Andrew Sullivan is closing up shop. New features will be up each week, and he'll still post occasionally. And he claims he'll be back "full-steam" in 9 months, but he sounds tired:
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. Others might be able to do it. But I've tried and failed. Besides, this is my fifth year of daily blogging - I was doing this when Clinton was president and Osama bin Laden was largely unknown - and I've always thought it's a good idea to quit something after around five years or so. Before it becomes a chore. Before you become numb.
It's a well-deserved break, and even if he never comes back full-time--my money's against it--Sullivan's done more to legitimize blogging than anyone else. AndrewSullivan.com isn't the biggest blog out there anymore--at about 430,000 visitors a week these days, he's running well behind Daily Kos (2.3 million weekly visitors), Instapundit (1.3 million), Little Green Footballs (750,000), PowerLine (670,000), Talking Points Memo (650,000), Eschaton (630,000), and even Wonkette (460,000). (And these are only the Blogads numbers for political blogs--I'm not even counting bigfoot bloggers like Mickey Kaus, Kevin Drum, or Jeff Jarvis, whose readerships have probably also surpassed Sullivan's as well.)
But all of them owe a debt to Sullivan. And it's not just his advocacy of the medium--he's also blazed a path for people like myself who don't feel particularly well-represented by the reigning ideologies on the Right or the Left.
Sullivan's a social liberal who takes courageous stands for personal freedom but refuses to mouth PC platitudes; he's a champion in the fight for liberty and against terrorism who never shrinks from holding the Bush Administration to account; he voted for Kerry but had no illusions about the man's gross shortcomings; and he's just a sassy, snarky writer with a keen bullshit detector, and we always need more of those.
He'll be missed. (It better be a damn good book, Andrew.)
