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June 2, 2007

rips steve

One of my favorite bloggers ever, Steve Gilliard, just passed away after a long fight with complications following heart surgery. I feel the need to write: "I didn't know Steve personally," but what the fuck is that supposed to mean? I never met him IRL, didn't have a clue what he looked like until he was dead, but I also sought his writing out every day for 2 or 3 years, worried over "what might Steve blog?" when I wrote, his thinking seeping into my own process as invaluable touchstone and jumping off point. I have live friends I have know for decades whose minds are a mystery to me in comparison.

I knew he was in trouble after his operation but I was shocked to read he was only 41 when he died. In my head Steve was a big brother: older, stronger, more solid. He was part of a class of under-50 black men who I guess you could shorthand as "old souls," except that the tagline doesn't quite give you a sense of the funny, self-assured, playful juggling-act involved in being a youngish man with a well-honed Stanley Crouch growl. Steve was kind of a grouch really, but he was too incisive for the pat, cloying sobriquet of "lovable," and he also came without the free-floating Crouch-ian belligerence or the hackneyed neocon nostalgia. He struck me as the kind of man other men fantasized about being buds with because his approval was proof of their mettle, while I would bet a ton of women found his written persona endlessly charming for similar reasons of gendered fantasy. Its unfashionable to talk about things in terms of manhood without the obligatory post-post disclaimer, but Steve hated hypocrisy and dishonor in a way that I found incredibly instructive when it came to my own thinking about how to be a grown man. His entire worldview seemed a vigorous assertion that the so-called rank-and-file, everyday working stiffs of New York City were fundamentally decent and brave, and he himself seemed like the kind of cat who was liable to end up on TV someday for intervening in a mugging on the subway. I think there is a sense in which his blogging adds up to a slow motion version of such an intervention. Steve was merciless in his mockery of conservative bloggers who believed that "those who blog also serve," but if there was ever a case in which such a thing might be true, it was his.

rips Steve and condolences to your family and loved ones, especially your co-blogger on the The News Blog, Jen. Although people talk about "Steve Gilliard's blog" his site was a two-person operation and his partner Jen was, as I think he put it more than once, his blogging better half. She soldiered on with an impressive amount of strength and grace after he took ill, and I can't begin to imagine the depth of her sadness and loss.

Posted by ebogjonson in blogish, memory, on June 2, 2007 2:45 PM