I started my original general-interest blog way back in 2002, long enough ago that I need to resort to the Wayback Machine to get a reasonable facsimile of the original. If you look at the blogroll in the sidebar, you won’t see Kevin Drum’s Calpundit, probably because I initially thought it was primarily about California issues, and I’ve never cared all that much about California. By the time I moved to ScienceBlogs, though, it was essential reading. Though maybe he had moved to Washington Monthly by then? I don’t remember the exact timing, and sifting through the smoking detritus where the Golden Age blogosphere used to be is too much hassle.
Whatever the timing, we were aware of each other by 2004, because my email contains comment notifications from him going back that far. He had an amateur interest in physics, and would occasionally post about it, and I would often respond; he wasn’t always right, but was generally pretty chill about being corrected. I’ve also got an email from a colleague in 2007 saying that he learned I’d gotten tenure from a congratulatory post on Drum’s blog, which is hilarious to me. I enjoyed his forays into astrophotography over the years, which have both made me smile and helped convince me that it would be too much work to take that up even if we lived in a place with better weather.
His main thing, of course, was political blogging, first on his own, then at Washington Monthly, then Mother Jones, then back on his own. Throughout the various moves, he was a remarkably consistent voice of moderate liberalism— never going to wild extremes in anything other than the production of scatter plots. And maybe the lead-and-crime thing, he got pretty deep into that. But, you know, everybody needs a hobby (besides astrophotography…).
We met up one time, when he happened to be in New York City on the same weekend in 2011 when we were there visiting family— this was before The Pip came along. We met up at the Bronx Zoo, where SteelyKid was getting a little overheated and I don’t think Kate my parents really understood why I insisted on sticking around until some West Coast blogger showed up to say hi. That’s probably pre-smartphone for me, so the only picture I have of that visit is this one of toddler SteelyKid looking at a llama:
Around a month later, SteelyKid made a guest appearance on Drum’s blog at Mother Jones, advising John Boehner about budgeting, with a little help from PhotoShop. The post he’s referring to is here, again thanks to the Wayback Machine for sifting it out of the smoking detritus of the Golden Age blogosphere. (Man, I would like to go back in time and slap around the idiot consultants who broke all the links at ScienceBlogs…)
Anyway, Kevin Drum died last week. The Facebook page mentioned in that post is here, and you can also find tributes to him from Josh Marshall and Ben Dreyfuss, and I’m sure there are dozens of others that I can’t be bothered to dig up and link to. He was an important voice in the moderate-lefty #discourse, even if he never had a super high profile outside of those circles.
I’m fairly certain, though, that his profile was pretty much exactly where he wanted it to be. People listened to what he said, but also he was free to post whatever he liked, whenever he liked, whether that was trenchant analysis, charts with minimal context, or photos of cats and architecture.
In fact, looking back a bit at my interactions with him over the years, the thing that jumps out is how consistent he was. He was posting indefatigably, cancer be damned, right up until his health took its final bad turn in the last month of two, and to the very end his blog looked like a blog: single author, sidebar links, custom URL, no paywalls, eclectic topics in reverse-chronological order. It’s kind of fitting that he was pretty much the last live feed in my RSS reader… There are still a bunch of bloggers from the Olden Days kicking around, but he was maybe the last one still partying like it was 2009.
So, hail and farewell to the last of the OG bloggers. He was a reassuring and trusted voice, one of the few to be around consistently since the beginning, and I’ll miss him terribly.
I’m honestly a little surprised at how hard this hit me, for someone I only met once. Probably didn’t help that I learned about this on what would’ve been my grandmother’s 100th birthday. Anyway, if for some reason this makes you want to see what I’m like when I’m not maudlin, here’s a button:
And if you have anything to share about Drum and his legacy, the comments will be open:
(I’m tempted to say that comments shitting on him will be summarily deleted, but I’m pretty sure he would’ve rolled his eyes at that idea…)
It's hit me pretty hard too, and I'm just a reader who *never* met Kevin or interacted with him. But reading his blog became part of my routine, and his sanity and sense of proportion were a welcome relief from the howl of modern media. I didn't always agree with him -- and I wouldn't want to, what's the point of reading somebody you always agree with? -- but his take was always worth reading. It sometimes felt like he was keeping a lighthouse in the storm, and now it's gone out.
Goodbye, Kevin. We'll miss you.
Oh wow, I hadn't heard about this until now. I started reading him back in 2003-2004 or thereabouts - probably from either the old Salon message boards or links from Daily Kos. I'm afraid I kind of lost touch with him a few years ago (he probably remained stubbornly centrist while I've gotten more radicalized with nonstop outrage), but this still hurts. He was one of the must-read OG bloggers during the Bush Interregnum. RIP Kevin.