Andrew Sullivan

About Andrew Sullivan

Who is it?: Author
Birth Day: August 10, 1963
Birth Place: Godstone, British
Residence: United States
Education: Reigate Grammar School
Alma mater: Magdalen College, Oxford (BA) Harvard University (MPA, PhD)
Occupation: Writer, editor, blogger
Spouse(s): Aaron Tone (m. 2007)
Website: dish.andrewsullivan.com

Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan was born on August 10, 1963 in Godstone, British, is Author. Andrew Michael Sullivan is a writer, editor, political commentator, and one of the world's most widely read bloggers. A pioneer in the field of political blogging, he started his own political blog, andrewsullivan.com's Daily Dish in 2000. He soon developed a large online leadership and became one of the most popular bloggers in the world. The success of his blog spurred him to move it to various publishing platforms including the TheAtlantic.com and TheDailyBeast.com. The influential blogger announced his retirement from blogging in 2015, disappointing millions of his loyal followers. A highly educated man, he began his career with ‘The New Republic’ magazine, eventually becoming its editor, and under his editorship the magazine produced some groundbreaking journalism. Bold, outspoken and sometimes brash, he is as well-known for his penchant for kindling controversies as he is famous for his exceptional literary skills. Openly gay, he identifies himself as a member of the gay "bear community" and is a strong supporter of gay marriage. Diagnosed as HIV-positive in the 1990s, he remains in good health today. Sullivan was born and brought up in England though he has been living in the United States since 1984. For many years he was denied US citizenship because of his HIV-positive status though he was eventually successful in obtaining it.
Andrew Sullivan is a member of Miscellaneous

Does Andrew Sullivan Dead or Alive?

As per our current Database, Andrew Sullivan is still alive (as per Wikipedia, Last update: May 10, 2020).

🎂 Andrew Sullivan - Age, Bio, Faces and Birthday

Currently, Andrew Sullivan is 61 years, 3 months and 11 days old. Andrew Sullivan will celebrate 62rd birthday on a Sunday 10th of August 2025. Below we countdown to Andrew Sullivan upcoming birthday.

Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds
Popular As Andrew Sullivan
Occupation Miscellaneous
Age 61 years old
Zodiac Sign Virgo
Born August 10, 1963 (Godstone, British)
Birthday August 10
Town/City Godstone, British
Nationality British

🌙 Zodiac

Andrew Sullivan’s zodiac sign is Virgo. According to astrologers, Virgos are always paying attention to the smallest details and their deep sense of humanity makes them one of the most careful signs of the zodiac. Their methodical approach to life ensures that nothing is left to chance, and although they are often tender, their heart might be closed for the outer world. This is a sign often misunderstood, not because they lack the ability to express, but because they won’t accept their feelings as valid, true, or even relevant when opposed to reason. The symbolism behind the name speaks well of their nature, born with a feeling they are experiencing everything for the first time.

🌙 Chinese Zodiac Signs

Andrew Sullivan was born in the Year of the Rabbit. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Rabbit enjoy being surrounded by family and friends. They’re popular, compassionate, sincere, and they like to avoid conflict and are sometimes seen as pushovers. Rabbits enjoy home and entertaining at home. Compatible with Goat or Pig.

Some Andrew Sullivan images

Famous Quotes:

[N]eo-conservatism, in large part, is simply about enabling the most irredentist elements in Israel and sustaining a permanent war against anyone or any country who disagrees with the Israeli right [...] But America is not Israel. And once that distinction is made, much of the neoconservative ideology collapses.

Biography/Timeline

1980

From 1980 through 2000, he supported Republican presidential candidates in the United States, with the exception of Bill Clinton, who he supported during his first election campaign in 1992. In 2004, however, he supported the presidential campaign of John Kerry, a Democrat, angered by George W. Bush's support of the Federal Marriage Amendment designed to enshrine in the Constitution marriage as a union between a man and a woman, as well as what he saw as his administration's incompetence over its Iraq War management.

1983

Sullivan was born in South Godstone, Surrey, into a Roman Catholic family of Irish descent, and was brought up in the nearby town of East Grinstead, West Sussex. He was educated at Reigate Grammar School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was awarded a first-class Bachelor of Arts in modern history and modern languages. In his second year, he was elected President of the Oxford Union for Trinity term 1983.

1984

One of the most important intellectual and political influences on Sullivan is Michael Oakeshott. Sullivan describes Oakeshott's thought as "an anti-ideology, a nonprogramme, a way of looking at the world whose most perfect expression might be called inactivism." He argues "that Oakeshott requires us to systematically discard programmes and ideologies and view each new situation sui generis. Change should only ever be incremental and evolutionary. Oakeshott viewed society as resembling language: it is learned gradually and without us really realising it, and it evolves unconsciously, and for ever." In 1984, he wrote that Oakeshott offered "a conservatism which ends by affirming a radical liberalism." This "anti-ideology" is perhaps the source of accusations that Sullivan "flip-flops" or changes his opinions to suit the whims of the moment. He has written, "A true conservative—who is, above all, an anti-ideologue—will often be attacked for alleged inconsistency, for changing positions, for promising change but not a radical break with the past, for pursuing two objectives—like liberty and authority, or change and continuity—that seem to all ideologues as completely contradictory."

1986

In 1986, Sullivan began his career with The New Republic magazine, serving as its Editor from 1991 to 1996. In that position, he expanded the magazine from its traditional roots in political coverage to cultural issues and the politics surrounding them. During this time, the magazine generated several high-profile controversies.

1988

While completing graduate work at Harvard in 1988, Sullivan published an attack in Spy magazine on Rhodes Scholars, "All Rhodes Lead Nowhere in Particular," which dismissed recipients of the scholarship as "hustling apple-polisher[s]"; "high-profile losers"; "the very best of the second-rate"; and "misfits by the very virtue of their bland, eugenic perfection." "[T]he sad truth is that as a rule," Sullivan wrote, "Rhodies possess none of the charms of the aristocracy and all of the debilities: fecklessness, excessive concern that peasants be aware of their achievement, and a certain hemophilia of character." Author Thomas Schaeper notes that "[i]ronically, Sullivan had first gone to the United States on a Harkness Fellowship, one of many scholarships spawned in emulation of the Rhodes program."

1989

Sullivan, like Marshall Kirk, Hunter Madsen, and Bruce Bawer, has been described by Urvashi Vaid as a proponent of "legitimation", seeing the objective of the gay rights movement as being "mainstreaming gay and lesbian people" rather than "radical social change". Sullivan wrote the first major article in the United States advocating for gay people to be given the right to marry, published in The New Republic in 1989. Many gay rights organisations attacked him for the stance at the time. Many on "the gay left" believed that he was promoting "assimilation" into "straight culture", when the aim of most at that time was to alter codes of sexuality and society as a whole, rather than fitting gays into it. However, his arguments eventually became widely accepted and formed the basis of the modern movement to allow same-sex marriage. In the wake of the United States Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage in 2013 (Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor), New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat suggested that Sullivan might be the most influential political Writer of his generation, writing, "No intellectual that I can think of, writing on a fraught and controversial topic, has seen their once-crankish, outlandish-seeming idea become the conventional wisdom so quickly, and be instantantiated so rapidly in law and custom."

1994

In 1994, Sullivan published excerpts on race and intelligence from Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's controversial The Bell Curve, which argued that some of the measured difference in IQ scores among racially defined groups was a result of genetic inheritance. Almost the entire editorial staff of the magazine threatened to resign if material that they considered racist was published. To appease them, Sullivan included lengthy rebuttals from 19 Writers and contributors. He has continued to speak approvingly of the research and arguments presented in The Bell Curve, writing, "The book ... still holds up as one of the most insightful and careful of the last decade. The fact of human inequality and the subtle and complex differences between various manifestations of being human—gay, straight, male, female, black, Asian—is a subject worth exploring, period." According to Sullivan, this incident was a turning point in his relationship with the magazine's staff and management, which he conceded was already bad because he "was a lousy manager of people". He left the magazine in 1996.

1998

Sullivan began writing for The New York Times Magazine in 1998, but was fired by Editor Adam Moss in 2002. Jack Shafer wrote in Slate magazine that he had asked Moss in an e-mail to explain this decision, but that his e-mails went unanswered, adding that Sullivan was not fully forthcoming on the subject. Sullivan wrote on his blog that the decision had been made by Times executive Editor Howell Raines, who found Sullivan's presence "uncomfortable", but defended Raines's right to fire him. Sullivan suggested that Raines had done so in response to Sullivan's criticism of the Times on his blog, and said he had expected that his criticisms would eventually anger Raines.

2000

In late 2000, Sullivan began his blog, The Daily Dish. The core principle of the blog has been the style of conservatism he views as traditional. This includes fiscal conservatism, limited government, and classic libertarianism on social issues. Sullivan opposes government involvement with respect to sexual and consensual matters between adults, such as the use of marijuana and prostitution. He believes recognition of same-sex marriage is a civil-rights issue but expressed willingness to promote it on a state-by-state legislative federalism basis, rather than trying to judicially impose the change. Most of Sullivan's disputes with other conservatives have been over social issues and the handling of postwar Iraq.

2003

Sullivan supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and was initially hawkish in the war on terror, arguing that weakness would embolden terrorists. He was "one of the most militant" supporters of the Bush administration's counter-terrorism strategy immediately following the September 11 attacks in 2001; in an essay for The Sunday Times, he stated, "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." Eric Alterman wrote in 2002 that Sullivan had "set himself up as a one-man House Un-American Activities Committee" running an "inquisition" to unmask "anti-war Democrats", "basing his argument less on the words these politicians speak than on the thoughts he knows them to be holding in secret".

2005

He expressed concern about the election of Pope Benedict XVI in an article in Time Magazine on 24 April 2005, titled "The Vicar of Orthodoxy". He wrote that Benedict was opposed to the modern world and women's rights, and considered gays and lesbians innately disposed to evil. Sullivan has, however, agreed with Benedict's assertion that reason is an integral element of faith.

2006

On the edition of 27 October 2006 of Real Time with Bill Maher, he described conservatives and Republicans who refused to admit they had been wrong to support the Iraq War as "cowards." On 26 February 2008, he wrote on his blog: "After 9/11, I was clearly blinded by fear of al Qaeda and deluded by the overwhelming military superiority of the US and the ease of democratic transitions in Eastern Europe into thinking we could simply fight our way to victory against Islamist terror. I wasn't alone. But I was surely wrong." His Reversal on the Iraq issue and his increasing attacks on the Bush administration caused a severe backlash from many hawkish conservatives, who accused him of not being a "real" conservative.

2007

In February 2007, Sullivan moved his blog from Time to The Atlantic Monthly, where he had accepted an editorial post. His presence was estimated to have contributed as much as 30% of the subsequent traffic increase for The Atlantic's website.

2008

Sullivan endorsed Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 United States presidential election, and Representative Ron Paul for the Republican nomination. He eventually endorsed Obama for President, largely because he believed that he would restore "the rule of law and Constitutional balance"; he also argued that Obama represented a more realistic prospect for "bringing America back to fiscal reason", and expressed a hope that Obama would be able to "get us past the culture war." Sullivan has continued to maintain that Obama is the best choice for President from a conservative point of view. During the 2012 election campaign, he wrote, "Against a radical right, reckless, populist insurgency, Obama is the conservative option, dealing with emergent problems with pragmatic calm and modest innovation. He seeks as a good Oakeshottian would to reform the country's policies in order to regain the country's past virtues. What could possibly be more conservative than that?"

2009

In 2009, The Daily Dish won the 2008 Weblog Award for Best Blog.

2010

In February 2010, Leon Wieseltier suggested in The New Republic that Sullivan, a former friend and colleague, had a "venomous hostility toward Israel and Jews" and was "either a bigot, or just moronically insensitive" toward the Jewish people. Sullivan rejected the accusation and was defended by some Writers, while others at least partly supported Wieseltier.

2011

Sullivan left The Atlantic to begin blogging at The Daily Beast in April 2011. In 2013, he announced that he was leaving The Daily Beast to launch The Dish as a stand-alone website, charging subscribers $20 a year.

2012

Sullivan describes himself as a conservative and is the author of The Conservative Soul. He has supported a number of traditional libertarian positions, favouring limited government and opposing interventionist measures such as affirmative action. However, on a number of controversial public issues, including same-sex marriage, social security, progressive taxation, anti-discrimination laws, the Affordable Care Act, the United States government's use of torture, and capital punishment, he has taken positions not typically shared by conservatives in the United States. In July 2012, Sullivan said that "the catastrophe of the Bush-Cheney years ... all but exploded the logic of neoconservatism and its domestic partner-in-crime, supply-side economics."

2014

Later, Sullivan criticised the Bush administration for its prosecution of the war, especially regarding the numbers of troops, protection of munitions, and treatment of prisoners, including the use of torture against detainees in United States custody. Though he argues that enemy combatants in the war on terror should not be given status as prisoners of war because "terrorists are not soldiers", he believes that the US government must abide by the rules of war—in particular, Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions—when dealing with such detainees. In retrospect, Sullivan said that the torture and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had jolted him back to "sanity". Of his early support for the invasion of Iraq, he said, "I was terribly wrong. In the shock and trauma of 9/11, I forgot the principles of scepticism and doubt towards utopian schemes that I had learned."

2015

In a note posted on The Dish on 28 January 2015, Sullivan announced his decision to retire from blogging. He posted his final blog entry on 6 February 2015. On 26 June 2015, he posted an additional piece in reaction to Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage in the United States.

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