erik lundegaard

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Friday July 17, 2020

He Says Goodbye, And He Says Hello

“What has happened, I think, is relatively simple: A critical mass of the staff and management at New York Magazine and Vox Media no longer want to associate with me, and, in a time of ever tightening budgets, I'm a luxury item they don't want to afford. And that's entirely their prerogative. They seem to believe, and this is increasingly the orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to critical theory in questions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity is actively, physically harming co-workers merely by existing in the same virtual space. Actually attacking, and even mocking, critical theory's ideas and methods, as I have done continually in this space, is therefore out of sync with the values of Vox Media. That, to the best of my understanding, is why I'm out of here. ...

”And maybe it's worth pointing out that ‘conservative’ in my case means that I have passionately opposed Donald J. Trump and pioneered marriage equality, that I support legalized drugs, criminal-justice reform, more redistribution of wealth, aggressive action against climate change, police reform, a realist foreign policy, and laws to protect transgender people from discrimination. I was one of the first journalists in established media to come out. I was a major and early supporter of Barack Obama. I intend to vote for Biden in November.

“It seems to me that if this conservatism is so foul that many of my peers are embarrassed to be working at the same magazine, then I have no idea what version of conservatism could ever be tolerated.”

— Andrew Sullivan, in his final New York magazine column, “See Ya Next Friday: A Farewell Letter,” in which he also announces that he's restarting his blog, The Dish, but on a weekly basis rather than daily. (The daily one nearly killed him.) I‘ve already subscribed. And I doubt I’ll renew my online subscription to New York magazine, if the story he tells above is in fact the story; if that's who and what they've become. 

Posted at 05:14 PM on Friday July 17, 2020 in category Media