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jason's avatar

Tara, thanks for your very nuanced look at Sullivan. It would have been much easier just to slam her for being part of the "elite media." But you have made her "human," even as you disagree with her. If only more of this could happen in all press!

There is something about your look at Sullivan's memoir that reminds me of about Ezra Klein's Why We are Polarized book. Klein writes insightfully about the political "sorting" that has happened in the US, and how it creates "tribes" that hate the other for a sense of identity. But then he overwhelmingly critiques only Republicans for their tribalism - unconsciously illustrating his very point by the lack of self-critique of liberal Democrats. i wonder if the same thing is happening with Sullivan: lamenting polarization, but her own siloing feeds a polarization she cannot see or get out of.

It also makes me grateful for your own work. Very courageously you are trying to remain open to those not in your "tribe" - if, in fact, you still have a tribe - while trying to call your own "people" to account. In religious terms, one would call this having a "prophetic" orientation - not a "prophet" in a demogogical sense, but one that looks at one's own faults first, before obsessing over the faults of the other. In that sense, thanks for being a kind of Canadian version of a prophetic journalist.

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Andy's avatar

This is excellent insight and a necessary reminder why understanding those you don't agree with is so incredibly important.

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