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# His role model may surprise you
- URL: https://goodoil.news/his-role-model-may-surprise-you/
- Published: 2019-06-13T23:30:01.000Z
- Updated: 2019-07-10T10:36:32.000Z
- Author: Juana Atkins
- Tags: Blog, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-17 04:14

As you all know I am now the editor of *Whaleoil* as Cam is working full time on his rehabilitation since the stroke that hit him like a truck more than 8 months ago.

It occurred to me today that many readers will be unaware of who inspired Cam to build *Whaleoil* into New Zealand’s number one largest and most read blog.

Cam closely followed Andrew Sullivan who started blogging in late 2000\. His blog was called *[The Daily Dish](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2015/06/26/it-is-accomplished/?ref=goodoil.news)*. He considered himself a traditional conservative, which meant fiscal conservatism, limited government, and classic libertarianism on social issues.

In 2007, Sullivan moved his blog from *Time* to *The Atlantic Monthly*, where he had accepted an editorial post. His presence was estimated to have increased the traffic to the website by as much as 30%. It was proof that a traditional conservative viewpoint mixed with classic liberalism on social issues was a real crowd pleaser.

**In 2009, The Daily Dish won the 2008 Weblog Award for Best Blog.**

*Whaleoil* **won Best Blog in 2014 at the Canon Media Awards.** It also won two Best Blog awards from Netguide **winning two years in a row,** 2013 and 2014\. We then stopped entering to give the other blogs a chance as our fan base was such that the number of votes in support of the blog were unbeatable.

In 2011 *Harvard Magazine* called Andrew Sullivan the [World’s Best Blogger](http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/05/worlds-best-blogger?ref=goodoil.news). He left *The Atlantic* to begin blogging at *The Daily Beast* in April 2011 and in 2013, he announced that he was leaving The *Daily Beast* to launch *The Dish* as a stand-alone website funded by a subscription revenue model. As you all know *Whaleoil* followed suit many years later adopting a subscription model as well.

The other day I came across a recent article Sullivan wrote for [*New York* magazine](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/andrew-sullivan-what-democrats-can-learn-from-steve-bannon.html?fbclid=IwAR0hhI9qoeHbjYLgzH-fk4XDFBRS0v0NU6UFveaQXTLauTQhfTRkbGIEfFU&ref=goodoil.news). I realised that some of the things he has experienced are very similar to what Cam has experienced as an editor, writer and blogger.

> “It’s not fun to be called names. But as a cab driver once told me, “Butch it up, honey. It’s gonna be a tough decade.” I’ve been openly gay since 1987 and an openly HIV-positive writer and editor for 23 years. The sheer scale and ferocity of the hatred and abuse — **from right to left** — I have absorbed during that time is hard to describe.   
>  
> There was close to a decade at the Dish when I was emailed almost every day by someone saying I had AIDS dementia. I’ve been called every variety of “faggot” you can imagine, been assaulted in public by a political foe, been picketed, heckled, and am now **routinely described as an anti-Semite, a white supremacist, a eugenicist, a misogynist, a transphobe,** and just the other week was compared to Ernst Röhm, an actual gay Nazi.   
>  
> None of this is pleasant, and there are times, I confess, when it gets me down, as it is intended to. But the idea that I would go running to the big-tech muckety-mucks and try to get my verbal abusers punished or canceled for it? **Not in a million years. I’m a grown man. This is a free country.”**

> “You need to learn how to ignore abuse in the public square; **you need to live with the fact that people will lie about you;** you have to set boundaries and stick to them. I don’t care about what people say about me as long as it isn’t true — and if it is true, and I’ve fucked up in some way, I’ve learned to be grateful for it, even if that takes a while.   
>  
> Maza is young, so maybe this desire to shut down other voices or run crying to the authorities because mere words hurt his feelings will wane. I sure hope so.”  
> I have been lied about for so long, by so-called truth-tellers that I’ve given up caring.  
> I put it down to petty and pretty pathetic jealousy  
> That I and we by extension have a bigger voice than they do.  
>  
> Andrew Sullivan