Happy Anniversary to us! This week marks one year since I yielded to temptation, unretired from the commentariat, started scratching my mind for insights….and asking you to endure them. You’ve responded marvelously—the Sanity Tribe is now more than 4000 strong. And indeed, Sanity seems to have become a brand, though a tiny one in an era of relentless, dangerous foolishness.
And so, I have two offers for you. First, here’s the great Bill Maher, parsing what is sane from what is not:
(By the way, that’s my old pal Andrew Sullivan, laughing in the cutaways.)
And here’s another, a special anniversary discount offer:
It costs $$$ to produce the Night Owls podcast with John Ellis…and to subscribe to the various news sources out there…and I still hope to add a researcher to the Sanity crew—which, for now, consists of me, the occasional admonitions of Sanity Goddess, artwork by Silvia Santos Klein, and other friends (I’m looking at you, copy editor extraodinaire, Jan Freeman). I appreciate your eyes, dear readers, but it would be nice if the fraction of paid subscribers was augmented in the coming year. Ain’t too proud to beg.
Special thanks to the aforementioned Mr. Ellis, whose daily News Items is a constant source of inspiration.
And also to Mr. Dish, the aforementioned Andrew Sullivan, whose opinions are ever fresh and provocative.
A special thank you and Godspeed to Charlie Sykes, who is abandoning his Morning Shots podium—it must have been exhausting to do that every day—and the rest of the crew at The Bulwark, an outpost of Sanity in a cruel, cruel world. Happily, Bill Kristol—an old jousting foe turned compatriot—will be taking over for Charlie, starting next week. I look forward, as always, to what he has to say.
And thanks to the following commentarians for the enlightenment they regularly provide: Peggy Noonan, Bill Galston, Karl Rove, Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal; Colbert King, David Ignatius, E.J. Dionne and George Will of The Washington Post; Pamela Paul, Tom Friedman, Bret Stephens, David Sanger and Maggie Haberman (and her cohorts) at the New York Times. Ruy Teixeira of The Liberal Patriot. The crew at Morning Joe. And apologies to the others—unmentioned here, because they have temporarily slipped my aging mind. And to those readers who take the time to comment, intelligently, on what I’ve written…and to those readers who don’t.
And once again, obnoxiously, my special offer:
Joe, we love our weekly jolts of Sanity here in Orange County, NY. Keep 'em coming!
It’s an intriguing notion - the idea that one of the things that has been plaguing those of us on the non-polarized extremes is the lack of a good descriptor. Both “moderates” and “centrists” are a bit too limiting and do not make room in the tent for such people as Ellis, Krugman, Will, Sykes, Applbaum, Pamela Paul and so many others. A major requirement of this coalition of the sane, after all, is to agree to disagree on a lot of the details, while coming together to defeat the excesses of the right, left, and whatever RFK, Jr. represents (the down?). So, Sanity it is! On to Year Two, in which all we have to lose is this great nation of ours!