Lovable crazy blogger Andrew Sullivan is not worried about our new digital-age medieval society. He thinks it is probably a good thing that no one is getting paid to write words, anymore. In fact, he would write for free!

Here we go again - Iran's utterly losing it as you read this, and it's way, way worse this time: there's a potential world leader ready for martyrdom, shooting deaths, more rioting, and a possible national strike.

Is your company's Web server hosed again? Give your beleaguered sysadmins and programmers a break and blame hackers. Preferably Iranian hackers. It's all the rage! Just ask The Atlantic and Boing Boing.

Andrew Sullivan, who has been engaged in tireless online coverage of the events in Iran, says he is under a "digital attack," presumably from pro-Ahmedinejad forces in Iran or elsewhere.

If you're like most Americans you spend your summer weekends tuning out the rest of the world. In the event you turned on your computer today and wondered, "What the hell is going on in Iran?"—Here's a summary.

Today's big story was Barack Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of David Souter. Predictably, America's punditry had plenty to say about this. We've sampled some of the prominent voices on the left and the right and compiled them for you.

It's pretty late to post this, but last night The Atlantic held the only sort of media party left: a discussion about the future of media with television producer Michael Hirschorn and blogger Andrew Sullivan.

In your temporarily de-Nolanated Friday media column: Hearst learns that investigations don't require ink, a lefty New York radio station gets locked out, Bill Keller's irony goes unappreciated, and Andrew Sullivan gets some help.

Won't anyone tell us anything interesting about Obama's two picnics with the commentariat? No, because no one fun was invited.

Sarah Palin is a lot like that Simpsons Halloween episode where the advertising characters terrorize Springfield: if we stop paying attention to her, she can't hurt us. But no one's able to let her go. Neither the liberals who are alternately amused by and horrified of her and the conservatives split between idolizing and reviling her can let her just go back to Alaska in peace. The Times is still looking into the clothes thing. Olbermann still replays every public statement she makes every night while demanding to know why people still pay her mind. And guess who's still obsessed with her magical pregnancy?

Noted Bush-supporting former Trotskyite Christopher Hitchens has endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president! In Slate today, the beloved British alcoholic raves about how Obama isn't a sad old man, like McCain, or an offensive joke, like Sarah Palin. Hitch, like a Nader voter, declares that there are no substantial differences between the candidates, but McCain's temperament is too unstable, and Obama's is much more reassuring. This is basically the argument of a number of noted conservative intellectuals who have, in recent weeks, either endorsed Obama, resigned themselves to an Obama presidency, or simply unendorsed McCain. As the intellectual conservatives abandoned Bush, now they find themselves abandoning the GOP. Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan was once a very prominent, very influential conservative. As recently as last year, even as he largely abandoned Bush, he was still complimenting McCain. Now, not so much. Times columnist David Brooks scarcely deserves to be called an intellectual, but as we're using that term strictly to mean "East Coast elitists who write about politics professionally" he'll have to do. This "I'm disappointed in McCain but he'll be a good president" column was but a prelude to Brooks' statement during an interview that Obama was a perceptive intellectual surrounded by impressive people and Sarah Palin is a cancer. Christopher Buckley was hardly a doctrinaire conservative. As a satirical novelist and a smart-ass, one imagines he's not too pleased with the rise of creationist rubes in his beloved GOP (his dad made that fucking bed, obvs, but that's neither here nor there). And Chris claims he wrote in George H.W. Bush in 2004 rather than vote for the son. But that's far different from explicitly endorsing a Democrat, as he did last week. Once again: Obama's temperament and obvious intelligence sealed the deal. Charles Krauthammer is basically a reliable party hack, always willing to subvert his own intelligence for the good of the party. But the once-influential psychiatrist can't help but see that his movement is not served by the buffoonery of the McCain campaign. He wrote this mild quasi-endorsement of Obama this month:

Andrew Sullivan, wow. Just wow. The gay British conservative who over the course of a decade went from proud publisher of racist pseudo-science just for a larf to virulent Obama supporter has spent a month obsessing over everything Sarah Palin has ever said and done and even maybe done. So. He's written some stuff on the bizarre circumstances of the birth of Trig Palin. He defends it (reasonably in our estimation) by arguing that Palin's pro-life position and the politicization of her familial circumstances (special needs kids, son in Iraq, family on stage at convention) makes inquiry into her pregnancy relevant. Sullivan sent this crazy email to the McCain campaign, asking for comment:

Yikes. Media Consortium blogger Brian Beutler was shot in Washington DC last night, a block away from my old apartment. Or pretty much directly in front of Andrew Sullivan's apartment. He is expected to make a full recovery. And next time, thanks to the Supreme Court, he will be able to shoot back. [DCist, Photo]

Atlantic contributor Jeffrey Goldberg started his very first blog this week, with a charmingly naive post mostly about how he knows nothing about blogging but does sit near uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan. "This is almost certainly a mistake," he begins, and it turns out he's 100% right. When the New York Observer's media blogger Matt Haber (the forgotten Gawker Alum!) devoted a post yesterday to basically announcing the existence of Goldberg's blog and needling Goldberg for his initial boneheaded support of the Iraq War, Goldberg blew up with rage. Haber's post was a mugging, he says. Jeffrey, Jeffrey, Jeffrey. We'll show you what a mugging is.

The great fun of Christopher Hitchens is that the commentator so often says things in formal settings you'd expect to hear around the dinner table after many hours of wine and whisky. The Vanity Fair columnist usually pulls this off, in part because a ribald manner is now expected of him, but there's always the risk of pushing it too far, as in the following clip from MSNBC's Tim Russert. Just after Hitchens jokes with pundit Andrew Sullivan to get on with his point and "don't be such a lesbian," he takes a regretful look toward his navel, apparently realizing he may have just put his foot in it. Ah, Hitch, your public expects nothing less. If MSNBC gives you a hard time, the first ten rounds are on us. Video and transcript (via Media Matters) after the jump.

Like you, I'm over this whole commenting, what it says about you, what it says about me and our Internet society at large thing. But there's a Wall Street Journal article on the subject, and it's my beat. Atlantic writer Andrew Sullivan, whose website does not have commenting, recently ran a poll about allowing them. The results will shock you. (How's that for an incentive to click the jump?)

The December Atlantic will have bear-blogger Andrew Sullivan on Barack Obama as its cover. Can you hold your breath until then? Let's hope Sully is as right on Obama as he's historically been on everything from "the end of AIDS" to publishing excerpts from The Bell Curve in The New Republic to his participation in a religion that hates him to his misreadings of Susan Sontag to supporting the war in Iraq to linking the 2001 anthrax mailings somehow to the war to endorsing Bush in 2000! [Folio]

Later that night, at the Vanity Fair party held at Christopher Hitchens' house, The Transom pried loose a few wedding details from Mr. Sullivan's fianc , Eric, an actor (last name withheld at Mr. Sullivan's request): It's going to be a small affair, mostly family, to take place in Provincetown, Mass.

• Though Jessica Simpson's rep denies it, rumors are swirling that her dad Joe wants to svengali up Britney Spears. [R&M]
  

David G. Bradley, the owner of the Atlantic Monthly, today announced in the Washington Post that he seeks to "recruit a cadre of uber-experts to form what he calls the Atlantic Society, 'where we will find 300 of the smartest human beings across the main intellectual terrains we're likely to cover and to go out and ask them, would they be essayists for the Atlantic?'" And if they decline the opportunity, he slits their throats on the spot. We knew things were going to get deliciously freaky over there after they hired that perv Andrew Sullivan away from Time.