When I started writing my first blog, the people whose voices I liked the most, I didn’t even know their real names. Media Whores Online and Bartcop. What strange fake names. But they always wrote with a passion and humor that I loved reading. I mean, I remember reading Bartcop during the Clinton administration! There weren’t too many voices as strong and as fun back then.
While the late, great, MWO stopped a while ago, it was by choice. Today I learned that recently Bartcop has died [h/t].
If you’ve ever wondered why the lefty blogs are so much funnier than the conservative ones, well, there are a lot of reasons. But Bart blazed a pathway of mixing humor and dead seriousness that so many on the left over the years looked at and thought “shit, I can do that.” Too bad not many of us could as well as him.
And don’t get me wrong, the guy was hardly perfect. He always flirted with 9/11 conspiracy nuts, for example. But he was right more than he was wrong: From Bill Clinton’s impeachment to the Iraq war to trying to legalize marijuana, he got it right more than he got it wrong and at a time most media pontificators were as wrong as wrong could be. He got it right from Oklahoma when so many of us on the coasts couldn’t. He was funny more than he fell flat and decent more than not. 3197 issues and countless side pages and podcasts are a hell of a legacy, and even though he never rose to the same prominence as some other bloggers, he was an original, and he’ll be missed.
I will miss him. He got me through those horrible Bush years when I thought it couldn’t just be me who thought Bush was the “Worst President Ever”, and Reagan wasn’t far behind Bush as Worst Ever.
So yes, RIP Bartcop, may the Spaghetti Monster in the sky bless him.
We still have two of his “Worst President Ever” t-shirts. Will miss him a lot.
Lefty blogs are funny?