More embarrassing, he could not be. Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan (or as we like to call him the world’s favorite cyberbegger,) had this to say:

The only source of funding for this site is you.

To the extent that the DailyDish is recycled once a week into the WeeklyDish for the Washington Times, shouldn’t the Reunification Church and Sun Myung Moon also get some credit? As is true of the Sunday Times, printer of articles “inspired by” DailyDish entries.

When you add up the growing expenses

Please give us a moment as we yell obscenities out the window.

Wow, that felt good. Now what did we want to say?

Ah yes:

First, growing expenses? Like what? As we’ve shown before, Sullivan’s traffic is not growing, it is at best stagnating, but more likely declining. That it does so at a high level (compared to Sadly, No! at least) is besides the point. Sullivan wants us to think that more emails means more work, when in fact the more emails he gets the more he posts them as “entries” on his blog. As far as writing work is concerned, that sounds to us like less work, not more. As for costs, as Harry pointed out in the comments to this post, between bandwidth on a text only site and registration costs, Sullivan is being taken for a “colossal ride” if he spends thousands of dollars running the technical side of andrewsullivan.com. (And yes, blogger sucks!)

a blog that reaches well over 400,000 people a month

Wow. Just, simply, wow. As in, well, wow. Such a brazen lie, this spin point could only have been learned from the British government. Sullivan’s numbers are here. In the 21 months for which information is available, how many times did his blog reach well over 400,000? In March of this year (445,150.) This was followed by 340,987 in April, a drop of over 20%. (We won’t count February, because 400,265 is not “well over” 400,000.) [For those who care a lot, Alexa’s numbers are here.]

and the time and energy spent putting it all together, it’s not cheap.

We’ll concede that even Sullivan’s time and energy are worth something, even if what he does with both (e.g. the DailyDish) turns out to be essentially worthless.

In fact, it has largely displaced a large amount of my paid work.

As though (to beat that horse just one more time) all of his paid work isn’t largely derivative of his blog. And as though staying on top of current events (not that he really does that mind you) wouldn’t be expected of a writer in his position whether or not he has a blog. Besides, if we raised $75,000 in a single year, we would not refer to Sadly, No! as unpaid work, as opposed to our other work. (Whatever the hell that is in our case.) But to Sullivan a blog that raises $75,000 in direct contributions, runs ads and sells his books is unpaid work. This is the man that wants your money. (By way of contrast, this is the man much more deserving of your “blog money.”)

If you care about the site, the viability of blogging as a professional enterprise, and want to be a part of it, please throw a little change into the tip-jar.

Hey sparky, do you think we can care about the viability of “blogging as a professional enterprise” without giving you money? If you care about the site (Andy’s that is,) then by all means give him money. If you care about the “viability of blogging as a professional enterprise,” there are lots of things you can do. Helping to maintain Sullivan’s lifestyle isn’t one of those.

And it will keep the site alive for another year.

Promise to stop if we don’t give any more money?