skippy the bush kangaroo

Monday, July 02, 2007

his work lives on

julia of sisyphus shrugged lets us know that a compendium of bloggers are carrying on the work of steve gilliard with the group news blog. as lower manhattanite says on the blog:

because as you know...i was a patron, along with many of you at a great "watering hole" called... the news blog. for several years, in fact. and its talented proprietor, the late (goddamn...it hurts, and i cannot get used to saying that--"the late") steve gilliard served 'em up lovely, ya'll--an' ya know that. i have rarely run across a writer whose passion, forcefulness and sheer talent moved me more. i came every goddamn day, just like you, and drank my fill of his words, opinions and analysis of things political, cultural and all about the place. he even let me occasionally pour a wee dram--heh!--like i knew what the fuck i was doing, behind the bar…

during that interim, when the devil and steve pas de deux-ed, a bunch of us tried to step up and carry things along until the big guy got better. how well we did, i don't know. but i do know we tried...because it was the fight for right that steve was about--and we--that bunch of bleary-eyed barflies figured "you know what? he'd want the fight to go on in his absence." so, we did. and painfully for us all, he didn't make it back.

but...we kinda learned some things in the process. the fight has to go on, for one--and secondly, we can all take a little something we learned from the big guy, and maybe do our part to help wage that fight.

that's what for me, this--the group news blog is about.

it's not a continuation of the news blog, for nothing can be that. that bad boy is the uncanny offspring of a supremely talented cat and his aide dé camp, jordan and pippen--steve and jen. we can't fuck with that kind of..well, fuck it--greatness. no, this is a kind of offshoot, wild-assed, cross-pollination, quill-shooting, radioactive mutant, test-tube baby of what happened those last four months at the news blog, where some of us learned about the level and even presence of some of our nutty, hard-to-harness "powers".

but the main thing is--the vision. the natural flow from "we fight back", to "we fight on" as you see in the masthead above. so yeah, it's gonna be political. it's gonna be rough. it's even gonna be fun, and snarky and all that shit at times. but we're gonna try to make it one thing for certain: sucka-free. ain't gonna be about no back-slidin' or half-steppin. i'm a liberal. i'm a progresisve. i'm a dirty fucking hippie--cept' i ain't that dirty, and i like real nice clothes. i'm all the shit that wingnut bastards hate and i'm goddamned proud of it. so rest assured, the fastballs are comin' as usual, hard and portside. and i love beaning slow-reflexed right-wingers. i got notches in my glove for every one.
we are glad to see steve's work and vision continued. and we'll happily put the group news blog on our blog roll.

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posted by skippy at 8:15 AM |

1 Comments:

My guess is that not leaving a comment here doesn't mean that nobody noticed his life or his passing. Steve's voice was so big and so informative that it's intimidating to even comment about him. I never knew him: I never met him, but I read him daily (or more) for several years and I miss his voice a lot. I can't begin to imagine what his loss is like for the people who knew the actual non-virtual man. What a loss for all of us. I hope somebody keeps his posts up for a while, because he did remarkable workk that will be relevant for quite a while.
commented by Anonymous Anonymous, 1:53 AM PDT  

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