My father is fond of telling a story that, though possibly apocryphal is, in the old newspaper terminology, too good to check. Apparently Georges Simenon was in Edinburgh and, as you would, asked what the gothic rocket on Princes Street was. On being told it was a monument to Sir Walter Scott the great detective writer was left open-mouthed in astonishment. “You mean they erected that for one of us?” he asked. Well, yes, they did. “Well, why not, he invented us all” Simenon is said to have said. The Scott Monument is quite a thing. One day the blogosphere might have to consider an equivalent monument. And when it does, the chap credited with inventing us all will have to be Andrew Sullivan.
Andrew is by turns perverse, infuriating, stimulating, entertaining, humane, amusing, provocative, admirable, obsessive, generous, contradictory, witty and above all, incorrigable.
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