The News Blog is very much a kind of Bizzaro Winds of Change; it’s a progressive, antiwar site with an eye toward serious military knowledge. While we disagreed deeply on many many issues, it was a place where I went to see what smart antiwar people who weren’t clueless about war had to say.
This weekend, Steve Gilliard, the founder of The News Blog died. He’d been profoundly ill for some time, and it was sad to go over and see what his co-bloggers were saying as his condition deteriorated.
We seldom agreed, never spoke or even emailed, but my world is smaller because he’s gone.
Here’s a “Steve Gilliard post on 9/11”:http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/09/10/thoughts-on-911/ from last September. I find it a good touchstone for where I agree, and disagree, with people like him.
Reading the comments to that post, I wonder if I didn’t have more in common with Gilliard than many of his fellow proggies did. I wonder what he would have thought about the DKos post on the busted JFK terror plot, in which the poster and the comments were virtually unanimous in their conviction that the entire thing is contrived.
RIP.
As a liberal vet with a lot of friends at the Pentagon I can say that the majority of the Pentagon were avid readers of his thoughts.
Most in the Pentagon know the output of the OVP and Rumfeld are ravings of truly damaged humans, even more insane than any terrorist.
Thank you for the mention, I feel Steve was a resource that placed my feelings in context. The loss is incalcuable. Sometimes he was wrong, but, unlike the stereotypical rightwing nutsoid, Steve could admit in a very public manner that he was, indeed, wrong. A quality I find missing in the rightwing blogosphere. Weaseling out of excuses seems a rightwing trait.
The rightwing is not Republican, nor is the Republican, rightwing. I harken to the Eisenhower Republican who would be aghast at the depths the party has sunk. This latter day Republican Party is the most socialist idealology I have ever seen, with spending that would blush any Democratic cheek, for centuries. Their entitlement programs for defective corporations is legion. Whining that they are entitled to government monies because they are monopolies seems a great ploy to “get respect” from the present Republican party. Steve pointed that dicotomy out many times.
Thank you for recognizing genius.
Most in the Pentagon know the output of the OVP and Rumfeld are ravings of truly damaged humans, even more insane than any terrorist.
Speak for yourself, bud. Your generalization about “most in the Pentagon” is flat wrong, based on my own first-hand experience.
Well, perhaps at the time.
But there’s no doubting the fact now is there?
C’mon Sky Ho…I think an apology for your ideological hijack would be really appropriate here. “Typical rightwing nutso…” …sheesh, if you don’t get it that this is the wrong thread for that…
Thank you for your decency. 99% percent of the time, the right and left reason from a common set of human values — in different proportions maybe — and colored by different fears and symbols, but a shared basic foundation. Your willingness to acknowledge the talent and the goodwill of one of our most celebrated and acerbic voices is outstanding testimony to this.
Thank you (ya no good wing nut).
I thought Sky-Ho’s posting was very much to the point. Those of you who can’t stand it when others don’t drink the same Kool-ade you do should get a life. Learn to deal with the fact that many folks do not always agree on everything, and that a thread talking about a man who wrote well, who was apt and to the point, and maybe was not always your cup of tea, but helped you see things in a different light, is a great place to point out exactly what Gilly would have pointed out about the current spate of extremists: some folks are nutjobs with no grip on reality. Thanks to them (including the rightwing whiny-ass titty babies who don’t respect others’ rights to speak and think as they will), this country is becoming LESS free, not more.
RIP Gilly. I didnt’ always agree either, but you made me think.
dejah – is that as opposed to the leftwing lame-ass titty-babies who actually suppress free speech while complaining that they are victims of oppression??
Ever read any Bertrand Russell?
A.L.
Refresh my memory isn’t this the man who liked to protray people in blackface if he disagreed with their opinions?
Yeah, nice guy.