"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Monday, June 02, 2008

Has it been a year already?
Posted by Jill | 5:42 AM
Perhaps the worst thing about getting older is the rapidly-accelerating pace of time. And here it is, June 2nd, 2008 and Steve Gilliard has been gone a year already.

I don't think there's a progressive blogger out here in Left Blogistan who wasn't in some way influenced by Steve Gilliard. The Great Orange Satan may suck up most of the oxygen in the progressive blogging room, but Gilliard was blogging's heart, and when he passed away a year ago today, it left a gaping, smoking hole where one of the most incisive voices out there used to be.

This is in no way to diminish the extraordinary accoomplishment of Lower Manhattanite, Sara Robinson, Hubris Sonic, and Jesse Wendel -- commenters at The News Blog who stepped up to the plate when Gillard went into the hospital in February 2007 and kept that blog going -- and then quietly and with little fanfare picked up the torch right where Steve Gilliard left it and continued to bring their own brilliant voices to us day after day after day. As they say right there at Group News Blog, they do it because if they didn't, Steve would totally kick their asses.

I never met the man. I wasn't even one of the people who exchanged occasional e-mail. But every day, if there was one blog I made sure not to miss it was The News Blog. Even now, I'll sometimes find myself thinking about what Gilliard would say about something. During the recent Willie Randolph race fracas over at the dump in Flushing occurred, I found myself thinking, "I wonder what Steve would write about this." Certainly the race card being played by the Clinton campaign, the Jeremiah Wright foofarah, the harridan from New York in the YouTube video I posted yesterday shrieking that Obama, a former editor of the Harvard Law Review who went to college on scholarships, is "a mediocre black man" sorely miss his perspective, not to mention John McCain's smackdown of our Iraq veterans and the Bush Administration's rush to war with Iran.

Without diminishing one bit the achievement of the GNB-ers -- damn fine writers who every day make me feel like a slouch -- there's no denying that even a year later, there is still a gaping hole out there where Steve Gilliard's voice used to be.

I put his rallying cry at the top of this blog after he passed away to remind myself, on the days when I wonder why the heck I do this every day, just why I do.

I miss the voice, but there are many others out there with the added grief of missing the man. It's a tough day today for LM and Sara and Jesse and Hubris and their newer co-bloggers. Go over and give them a hug.

And if you've been on Mars for the last five years and have never read his work, here's a good place to start.

And if you're tempted to think that Gilliard would have been an Obamabot, well, suck on this.

And oh yeah. Eff the effing Yankees.

UPDATE: I'll post links to other bloggers' anniversary tributes as I find them:

Des Moines Dem at Bleeding Heartland
More from Jesse at Firedoglake
The Great Driftglass
Jen (with beer can chicken recipe!)

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Monday, December 31, 2007

Everything you ever wanted to know about Steve Gilliard
Posted by Jill | 3:46 PM
Those of you who don't spend your waking non-working hours waist-deep in the Big Muddy that is Lefter Blogtopia may not know why I quote Steve Gilliard in the masthead and why I've posted about him, given that I never met the man, never exchanged e-mails, and was only linked by him once.

It's because everyone who blogs on our side of the fence can trace his/her inspiration back to him, even if indirectly.

For those who don't know what the fuss is about, Jesse Wendel, one of the Four Carriers of the Gilliard Torch, has a compendium of some of his best work. Pour yourself a cup of coffee, start clicking, read and enjoy. And know why although the Group Newsbloggers do their best to channel the man, someone who could blog coherently and in great detail about the history of colonialism and then wax just as eloquently about the foods we eat on Thanksgiving is just plain irreplaceable.

(UPDATE: And still more good stuff on the New York Times Magazine piece from The Gazetteer, James Wolcott, and B@B bud The Galloping Beaver.

And if you're interested in how the Good Christians on the right speak of the dead, you can take a gander at this. There is no doubt about it -- today's right wingers are ugly, ugly, evil people. They have a fetid, ulcerating, suppurating cancer in their souls that no amount of Bible-thumping can possibly heal.

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Saturday, December 29, 2007

Awesome.
Posted by Jill | 3:48 PM
Not that I would have known it if Melina hadn't sent me the link (because my fucking New York Times delivery guy hasn't delivered the Goddamn paper on Saturday since he got his Christmas tip and what's the point of home delivery if you don't get the fun sections a day early?), but the Grey Lady pays tribute to the late, great Steve Gilliard in its annual "Lives they Lived" edition of the Magazine.

Not, however, that this makes up for them bringing on WILLIAM FUCKING KRISTOL as a columnist....

And of course it would be even more awesome if Steve Gilliard were still here, but kudos to the Times for recognize how important he was to the blogging community. Now if they only got it right about his life. Group News Blogger Jesse Wendel sets the record straight. I never even knew the man and I miss him every day, though not as much as I would if the GNB-ers weren't doing such a fine job carrying on his legacy.

More from Driftglass, Liberty Street USA, Tom Watson, Barbara O'Brian at Mahablog, BlueGal at Crooks and Liars, Lindsay Beyerstein, Matt Browner-Hamlin, Kevin Hayden, Pachacutec at FDL, and the usual suspects.

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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Channelling Steve Gilliard
Posted by Jill | 7:44 PM
If you, like me, made a point every day of seeing what Steve Gilliard had to say, go read Lower Manhattanite's post on John McCain's Dead Man Walking campaign. It'll give you chills -- as if it were all just a bad dream and Steve and Jen had just changed their blog colors. It's channelling, I tell ya.

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Wednesday, June 06, 2007

NYT does the right thing
Posted by Jill | 7:23 AM
They must have had to swallow a lot of bile to do this, but they did it.

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Sunday, June 03, 2007

Around the blogroll and elsewhere: Special Steve Gilliard Memorial Edition
Posted by Jill | 9:47 AM
Sara at Orcinus has another moving tribute to Steve Gilliard. And Jon Swift compiles all of them.

The more recent posts at the News Blog's dedicated domain can only be found through Google, but the archive blog is still up. So if you want to know why Steve Gilliard was so important to bloggers, here's why:

Back in January of this year, Steve nails the problem with Hillary.

Steve on the history of Colonialism.

Steve on being a Fighting Liberal. Barack Obama, take note.

Steve on how Iraq could devolve into civil war.

Steve on how to keep your family from killing each other during the holidays.

Steve at Netslaves in 2003 on surviving in New York's Silicon Alley.

Steve at Daily Kos in 2003 on how the right abuses history.

Steve speaks for Mets fans everywhere in 2005 about Kris Benson's wife.

Steve on why blogs work.

Just one of Steve's terrific pieces in which he showed why he should have been Salon's advice columnist instead of Cary Tennis.

Steve exhorting a dispirited blogosphere to continue fighting after the 2004 election.

And there's so much more -- far more than I can ever link to here. So before it's taken down, go over to the News Blog archives and find out why this is such a sad weekend.

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Saturday, June 02, 2007

Steve Gilliard, 1966-2007
Posted by Jill | 4:27 PM
As one of the unwashed rabble of lesser blogtopia, I never had the privilege of meeting Steve Gilliard in person. But The News Blog has been, from the time I first started blogging, one of the sites I made a point of visiting every day. Whether it was a post about the perfect macaroni and cheese, or an analysis of why George W. Bush's latest Iraq "strategery" wouldn't work, his knowledgeable perspective of racial issues such as the New York City police shooting of Sean Bell, or his predictions for the New York Mets, there was no other blogger who could speak as knowledgeably about as many topics as Steve could.

Until Steve's family put a stop to it, his friend Jen kept the many, many thousands of Steve's "virtual friends" informed about his condition. And while his worsening condition made today's news less of a surprise, it still comes as a shock.

Steve Gilliard was only forty-one years old and should have had many, many more years of writing and of living in front of him.

Thank you, Steve Gilliard -- for your knowledge, for your recipes, for the contributions you made to the nascent and maturing world of blogging.

And oh yeah:

FUCK THE FUCKING YANKEES.

(UPDATE: For a far more eloquent tribute than this one, from someone who did know Steve Gilliard, read Jane Hamsher's remembrance here.)

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