Andrew Sullivan: evaluation

Transcript context

…Your nongay friends you think are in some ways more conformist than your gay friends, issues of sex aside? There’s a sense in which simply — No, because my nongay friends — it’s also true that my nongay friends who are not part of the elite are also similar to that. They have a different perspective. But yes, I find them to be often more questioning, more curious, and more capable of asking basic questions and not taking things for granted than many of my peers, which makes them better, which is why I think journalists are better off coming from ordinary people — like working-class journalists who knew people, who knew reality, weren’t caught up in ideology or orthodoxy or have any interest in their social peers, and were just interested in getting to a story or breaking a story or finding something out, regardless of the consequences. That’s the kind of journalism I like, and finding a way to make yourself popular among certain elites is just not something I ever wanted to do. I’ll tell you this: I’m also just not that big a socializing person. I tend to have friends that are very individual, one on one. I tend to hang out with small groups of people. I don’t have parties; I don’t go to parties. I’m just not a clubbable person. I’ve never easily fit in to any institution that I belong to, and that’s just my personality. Putting aside issues of sex, but how do your conversations with your gay friends differ from those with your nongay friends?…

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