The USS Clueless departs the Grey Havens and sails and into the West
After what seemed the longest time, I finally discovered the reason why Steven Den Beste quit blogging. He’s ill with a currently incurable degenerative disease.
Steve is one of my main inspirations to begin blogging.
I discovered the blogosphere in the early fall of 2002. I was living in Manila and saw Andrew Sullivan debating Christopher Hitchens on C-SPAN. (Yes, you can see C-SPAN in the Philippines if you subscribe to the right cable TV package.) During this debate C-SPAN occasionally showed the URL for Sullivan’s blog. I assumed the URL was to a conventional website. I had never heard of a blog before.
Anyway, later I had just begun poking around on Sullivan’s site—I still didn’t understand that his site was a blog or what the idea of a blog was—when I noticed that Sullivan was frequently referring to things he called blogs.
Not having any idea what he was talking about I did what I usually do when I need to learn about something: I googled it.
Of course googling the word “blog” yielded something like several million hits; not something I anticipated. By trial and error I eventually worked out the notions of blogs and blogosphere and so on. Starting from Sullivan’s blog I followed links to other blogs and quickly established a huge list of “favorite” bookmarked sites.
Of course, not all favorites are equal. One of early—and lasting—favorite sites was USS Clueless, which was run by Steven Den Beste. I was completely impressed with Steve’s essay style, his command of subject matter and his Jacksonian outlook.
The run up to the U.S.’ invasion of Iraq was winding up during Autumn of 2002. Discovering the blogosphere at this time means I walked into it when discussions were at a fever pitch. Arguments, debates and food-fights over this impending war, the weasels, the UN, Bush, Saddam, Turkey were everywhere. I could feel the blogosphere’s power hum.
I was hooked. I discovered more information about the impending war, faster, via the blogosphere than I ever could have before. Events ignored by the MSM, say, for example, some of the weasels' antics, were analyzed, parsed, and discussed and generally beaten into the ground by the blogs. I basically lost most of my interest in trying to learn anything from the news media; by the time I watched the news I had already seen most of their stories, in more detail, from several sources, in the blogosphere.
Steven Den Beste's commentary and analysis was as good as anybody's and better than most. I believe that was better informed on the Iraq war—on several levels—because of Steven.
Time passed. I returned to the U.S. and I continued to enjoy reading Steve’s essays. Then, in August 2004, Steve announced that he didn’t want to post any longer. The reason he offered was that he was fed up with the nitpicking emails and he just decided to stop the emails by stopping posting.
I didn’t appreciate why emails were getting to him down but it was his blog and it's a free country. Steven stopped blogging and that was that.
Occasionally there was a Den Beste sighting in various places on the Internet, in all cases it was a comment posted on another blog. I kept hoping that after a long rest he might get bored and—what the hell—start blogging again. Then Steve posted a comment that explained why he stopped and why he wasn’t coming back:
Well that reset my understanding of what was going on with Steve.
There’s literally nothing left to say except: All the best Steve. Continue taking care of your self, you will be in my thoughts.
Postscript:
The title of this post was inspired by rumpy doppelganger's comment on the thread where Steve explained why he quit political blogging.
Hat tip to Glen
Steve is one of my main inspirations to begin blogging.
I discovered the blogosphere in the early fall of 2002. I was living in Manila and saw Andrew Sullivan debating Christopher Hitchens on C-SPAN. (Yes, you can see C-SPAN in the Philippines if you subscribe to the right cable TV package.) During this debate C-SPAN occasionally showed the URL for Sullivan’s blog. I assumed the URL was to a conventional website. I had never heard of a blog before.
Anyway, later I had just begun poking around on Sullivan’s site—I still didn’t understand that his site was a blog or what the idea of a blog was—when I noticed that Sullivan was frequently referring to things he called blogs.
Not having any idea what he was talking about I did what I usually do when I need to learn about something: I googled it.
Of course googling the word “blog” yielded something like several million hits; not something I anticipated. By trial and error I eventually worked out the notions of blogs and blogosphere and so on. Starting from Sullivan’s blog I followed links to other blogs and quickly established a huge list of “favorite” bookmarked sites.
Of course, not all favorites are equal. One of early—and lasting—favorite sites was USS Clueless, which was run by Steven Den Beste. I was completely impressed with Steve’s essay style, his command of subject matter and his Jacksonian outlook.
The run up to the U.S.’ invasion of Iraq was winding up during Autumn of 2002. Discovering the blogosphere at this time means I walked into it when discussions were at a fever pitch. Arguments, debates and food-fights over this impending war, the weasels, the UN, Bush, Saddam, Turkey were everywhere. I could feel the blogosphere’s power hum.
I was hooked. I discovered more information about the impending war, faster, via the blogosphere than I ever could have before. Events ignored by the MSM, say, for example, some of the weasels' antics, were analyzed, parsed, and discussed and generally beaten into the ground by the blogs. I basically lost most of my interest in trying to learn anything from the news media; by the time I watched the news I had already seen most of their stories, in more detail, from several sources, in the blogosphere.
Steven Den Beste's commentary and analysis was as good as anybody's and better than most. I believe that was better informed on the Iraq war—on several levels—because of Steven.
Time passed. I returned to the U.S. and I continued to enjoy reading Steve’s essays. Then, in August 2004, Steve announced that he didn’t want to post any longer. The reason he offered was that he was fed up with the nitpicking emails and he just decided to stop the emails by stopping posting.
I didn’t appreciate why emails were getting to him down but it was his blog and it's a free country. Steven stopped blogging and that was that.
Occasionally there was a Den Beste sighting in various places on the Internet, in all cases it was a comment posted on another blog. I kept hoping that after a long rest he might get bored and—what the hell—start blogging again. Then Steve posted a comment that explained why he stopped and why he wasn’t coming back:
You can forget it. It's not going to happen. I've been suffering for years from a genetically-caused degenerative disease. For the last year or so, the only way I was able to continue posting was by taking increasing doses of very powerful stimulants. (Understand that they were palliative; there's no cure or treatment for the underlying disease, and no one knows what causes it. The only reason it's known to be genetic is because it is found in family lines. In my case it was my father's family.)Those prescription drugs have serious side effects which I put up with in order to be able to keep writing for the site. But as that year went on, my enjoyment in writing for the site drained away.
Well that reset my understanding of what was going on with Steve.
There’s literally nothing left to say except: All the best Steve. Continue taking care of your self, you will be in my thoughts.
Postscript:
The title of this post was inspired by rumpy doppelganger's comment on the thread where Steve explained why he quit political blogging.
Hat tip to Glen
posted by johnh | 4:17 PM
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