Conservative Blog Reaction to Steve Gilliard's Death

The Good

Dean Barnett at Hugh Hewitt's Townhall blog:

Most of you have probably never heard of Steve Gilliard. Steve was a Daily Kos front-pager, and then when his time there expired he formed his own blog. I always thought he was the most gifted wordsmith in the left half of the blogosphere. I don’t mean that as a damning-with-faint-praise backhanded compliment. The guy could write, even though I virtually never agreed with what he wrote.

Steve Gilliard died yesterday. The eulogy of Steve that appeared in the Daily Kos referred to him as “hard-nosed, independent, (and) acerbic. Steve often pissed off the same readers he wowed with his take-no-prisoners style.” I read Gilliard every day, and I can attest to the accuracy of this summation. He wowed me, and he pissed me off, usually multiple times in the same post. As I made my daily virtual stroll through the lefty blogs, I always looked forward to hitting his site. He was profane, angry and offensive, but also intelligent and still somehow fun.

Steve was 41 years old. I’ll miss him. My condolences to his family and his thousands of friends.

That was not just good, that was great. 

Armed Liberal at Winds of Change:

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.

Pajamasmedia:

"I say what I mean and mean what I say." -- Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, has passed away at the age of 41. Tributes abound across the Blogosphere.

Von:

I have certainly had my differences with Steve, but my thoughts this week are with his family, friends, and readers.

The Bad

Baldilocks:

When one's ideological opponent dies, it's sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to say nice things about him/her. However, the nicest thing that I can say about Steve is that I wish that he hadn't died so young and suffered so much along the way.

Go with God (hopefully), Steve.

Instahack:

STEVE GILLIARD has died.

The Ugly

Good Lt. at Jawa Report:

Hmm. I could say several really mean and vile things right now. But I'm not a liberal wingnut blogger.

So condolences. Hope his family will be all right.

The comments there are uglier.

Update 2 a.m.:

The Nothing

People with whom Steve had beefs but haven't even mentioned his death, which I just think is strange:

Jeff Jarvis, Malkin, Ed Morrisey, RedState, PowerLine. Nothing. If an ideological opponent and prominent, frequent critic of mine died, I'd say something. Wouldn't you? It's just weird not to. Inhuman.

Update December 29, 2007: The NYTimes has a tribute. Jarvis, Malkin, Morrisey, RedState and Powerline still have not even mentioned his death (per a google search of those sites.)

Comments

[JohnnyBravo]

I didn't know Steve or his writing very well, so I won't claim that I'm certain that the following suggestion would be a fitting tribute to him, but it certainly SEEMS like it would:

The next time some wingnut decides to lecture ANYONE on the left about anything even remotely related to civility, the comments on that RacistSlurReport post should be thrown right in their faces. It's got the whole package: racism, eliminationism, clash-of-civilizations bullshit.

[baldilocks]

I don't see what's bad about what I said. I didn't like what I knew of the man, so I refuse to be hypocritical. However, I certainly didn't want him to die, especially the way he did.

Additionally, I did not read his blog enough to know whether he believed in God, hence the adverb 'hopefully'--as in, regardless of our Earthly disagreements, I hope that Steve is in Heaven.

I don't think what I said was that difficult to understand.

[Michele]

Nothing like a death to bring out the class in other people.

[Mithras]

baldi-
I didn't like what I knew of the man, so I refuse to be hypocritical.

Fine. I didn't call it ugly. It's just unnecessary to preface the "sorry he suffered" with "he sucked."

[Anono]

It's just unnecessary to preface the "sorry he suffered" with "he sucked."

Which is something that liberal blogs never did on the death of Jerry Falwell.

[Mithras]

Which is something that liberal blogs never did on the death of Jerry Falwell.

Jerry Falwell wasn't a blogger with whom people had conversations and debates. When you interact with a person, even in an adversarial way, for a long time, usually - you know, for humans - there is more respect generated.

[baldilocks]

I didn't say that he "sucked." Not liking what I knew of him is different that saying that he was a horrible person. As a matter of fact, the phrase "what I knew of him" implicitly acknowledges that I didn't know everything about him.

[baldilocks]

Additional in my lack of knowledge of the man that was Mr. Gilliard, was that I didn't know whether he believed in Christianity or not. Hence my *hope* that he did and is with God right now.

I'd have a much harder time having that hope for someone whom I believed to have "sucked"--say a terrorist or some other demonstrably evil person, which Steve was not.