Blog Post 2 - Andrew Sullivan

In Sullivan’s article “Why I Blog”, he gives many reasons for the value of blogging as a form of writing. He puts down both advantages and disadvantages of blogging clearly. Sullivan shows the negative side of blogging in detail. He writes, “No columnist or reporter or novelist will have his minute shifts or constant small contradictions exposed as mercilessly as a blogger’s are. A columnist can ignore or duck a subject less noticeably than a blogger committing thoughts to pixels several times a day.” He explains more of how every word of a blogger’s is dissected – even more than how an editor corrects a novel or a newspaper. Sullivan also talks about the negative side seen when bloggers publish posts that were done in a fit of rage and instantly regret doing something like that.

However, in spite of these and more negative aspects to blogging, Andrew Sullivan promotes blogging will all heart. He gives many reasons for doing so. He says that blogging a form of writing like no other. He emphasizes that blogging “is the spontaneous expression of instant thought” – something no edited newspaper or magazine can express. He says that blogging is “more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud”. Now, even though this written expression of thoughts and feelings lacks what a newspaper can give (a completely validated, objective view of events – something someone can trust as soon as they read it), Sullivan argues that blogging gives a reader something more – the instant feelings associated by the blogger (and any normal human) to specific events.

This is the crux of why Sullivan says he blogs. A blog can be extremely personal and yet give an accurate view of events – a view not seen in any other form of writing. For example, Sullivan writes, “On my blog, my readers and I experienced 9/11 together, in real time. I can look back and see not just how I responded to the event, but how I responded to it at 3:47 that afternoon. And at 9:46 that night. There is vividness to this immediacy that cannot be rivaled by print. The same goes for the 2000 recount, the Iraq War, the revelations of Abu Ghraib, the death of John Paul II, or any of the other history-making events of the past decade. There is simply no way to write about them in real time without revealing a huge amount about yourself. And the intimate bond this creates with readers is unlike the bond that the The Times, say, develops with its readers through the same events. Alone in front of a computer, at any moment, are two people: a blogger and a reader. The proximity is palpable, the moment human—whatever authority a blogger has is derived not from the institution he works for but from the humanness he conveys. This is writing with emotion not just under but always breaking through the surface. It renders a writer and a reader not just connected but linked in a visceral, personal way. The only term that really describes this is friendship. And it is a relatively new thing to write for thousands and thousands of friends.”

This is why Sullivan blogs. To receive and send personal and instant emotions and feelings along with events on a whim – without someone removing everything except the event – something that makes blogging a unique, revolutionary and great form of writing.