I never met Steve, but I did have some run-ins with him over the years, most notably over the Downing Street Memo. I was pushing for blogstorms; Steve thought the whole thing was a waste of time.
In response to the people who disagreed with him about the DSM and a few other issues, Steve wrote an important post titled “Why We Fight.” In it, he exemplified the pugnacious, take-no-prisoners approach to political blogging that made him such a star:
What people have to understand is that we’re going to have a lot of fights, internally, externally and we need to make sure that it’s the other side which doesn’t want to take us on. We have to make sure that when they want to lie on us or attack us unfairly that the world comes down on them.. We have to be a very different kind of liberal/progressive/democrat/leftist, which is to say, we have to be the kind not only willing to stand up for ourselves, but the kind who takes the fight to the opposition effectively.
When I dismissed the Downing Street Memos out of hand, some people were pissed. Well, they missed the point. Congress doesn’t care. They need Bush or think they do, and short of being caught with his dick in Jim Guckert’s mouth, impeachment ain’t gonna happen. People need to take this fight local. To start bringing the war home to the chickenhawk Congressmen and Senators who voted for this war then didn’t support the troops. It means standing outside their local offices questioning their votes. You have to go to them at home, you have to make them squirm. Not talk about memos, but people, their constituents. You have to move from the Beltway to the home district. You have to endanger their seats, not speak nicely to them about something they don’t take seriously.
It’s not about being right, being right is easy. John Kerry was right. It’s about being effective. It’s about getting out your message and stomping the shit out of people who fuck with you. If Carol Darr wants to fuck with Kos, then her mailbox should be flooded. If they want to run their mouths about Dean, not only do they get the same treatment, they find out he’s raising money hand over fist from regular folks.
If some weenie wants to start shit with you, he can be humiliated on two of the most read blogs on the Internet.
This isn’t about agreement. This is about power and using it. We have to basically make people pay a price for starting in with us. Because we know their motives are not about policy. They want us to go away. So we have to show them two things, we’re here to stay and we can hurt them if we have to. And people get squeamish when power is used. Anyone think Kos is making an idle threat? No? Then shit, let’s back his ass up. We agree with him, so let’s act like it for God’s sake. Let’s not play the Judean People’s Front/People’s Front of Judea game,. where we argue over minor differences.
[. . .]
Politics is a hard business and you have to impress upon some people that you can fuck up their plans before they respect you, especially when you can execute your own.
posted by Steve @ 8:10:00 PM
[emphasis added]
Steve understood, before most of us, that Karl Rove and the Bush Administration had changed the playing field. All the heartfelt pieties and rational arguments in the world were moot; we had to learn how to fight, and Steve was the one who taught us how to do it.
Again and again, I’d watch Steve argue with his readers in his comment section. He’d debate them for a while before finally telling them to go start their own damn blogs.
I bet he launched a hundred bloggers that way.
If you want to remember Steve and honor his legacy, get the hell off of my damn blog and go start your own. Then go fuck up the other side’s plans, even if you piss off a few people along the way.
Whatever you do, don’t stop fighting. Steve never did.
Update 3:The News Blog now has a PayPal link up to collect donations to defray expenses for Steve’s funeral.
Update 4: (6/7/07) I knew — or, rather, I hoped — this was coming: the inimitable Driftglass, whose blog took flight under SG’s wing, lays down the best tribute to SG that I’ve seen so far.
In today’s mayoral race, I will be voting for Michael Nutter, and I encourage you to do the same.
Like many others, I’m troubled by Nutter’s “Stop and Frisk” proposal. But I’m voting for him for a few important reasons:
1. As my councilman in the 4th District, he was responsive to constituent concerns.
Nutter showed up on a regular basis to the meetings of my dinky little neighborhood association. He’d listen to concerns voiced by members of the community . . . and then he’d go out and get things done.
2. He has taken tough, and sometimes unpopular, stands.
Pushing on through countless setbacks, Nutter got the votes he needed to pass the smoking ban. And he did so by outmaneuvering his longtime adversary, Mayor Street, into a corner.
3. He’ll fight against the pay-to-play political culture of Philadelphia
As the Inquirer noted, “Nutter was the stubborn Don Quixote who brought his windmill down, forcing City Hall to confront the shame its chronic corruptions had spawned.”
4. Nutter is the only candidate who has children in the public schools.
This alone, I think, is reason enough to vote for Nutter: he is invested in the city itself, and is committed to solving its problems. Plus, how can you resist this commercial?
5. He is, as Joey notes, the smartest guy in the room.
And isn’t it about time that we had a man of real intellect running this city?
I hope you’ll join me today in voting for Michael Nutter, a candidate who has the vision, experience, character, integrity, and intelligence to lead this city towards a brighter future.
F. Rex’s ribald, allusive, and downright blasphemous graphic novel parodies the excesses of modern capitalist culture as it finds bathos and transcendence in a debased, Vatican-themed Las Vegas casino. With a colorful cast of characters that includes Thomas Carlyle as a down-on-his-luck drunkard, Karl Marx as an overweight vagrant donning a beer helmet, T.S. Eliot as an uptight casino-floor manager, and Jesus as an oppressed janitor, plus a dozen other characters too profane to mention, Vatican City, Las Vegas reads like a version of The Waste Land re-imagined by R. Crumb. Let’s hope that Philly’s slots parlors don’t turn out like this . . . though if they do, they might wind up being a lot more fun.
If, like me, you think that Bill Donohue’s recent intervention in the Edwards’ Campaign constitutes a violation of the nonprofit status of The Catholic League, please read Phoenix Woman’s post on Mercury Rising to find out how you can help bring this matter to the attention of the IRS (via Agitprop).
Also be sure to check out Don Qui-who? on Pandagon.
After all, it’s not as if Donohue has been secretive about his motives or desires. In a recent Women’s Wear Daily profile , Donohue bragged about his ability to manufacture controversy:
BILL DONOHUE: THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE’S ATTACK DOG
In December 2005, a reporter from the Washington Post asked the Catholic League’s president, William Donohue, if he was offended that President Bush’s season’s greetings card did not specifically mention Christmas.
“At first, it didn’t bother me,” Donohue recalled in a recent interview. “I said, ‘So what. All presidents have had cards like this.’”
But when told by the reporter that everyone from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Bill Clinton had at least one Christmas card where they mentioned something religious, Donohue pounced.
The following day, in the Post’s page-one story, Donohue rebuked the most conspicuously Christian president in 25 years for not being Christian enough. “This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture,” he said in the article.
“Good Morning America” booked Donohue for an interview. And the next year, the Catholic League’s president received an invitation to the White House Christmas party.
“Basically, I got rewarded for attacking him,” Donohue happily concluded. “Here at the Catholic League, we’ll give you an opinion on the weather if you want it.”
It’s this ability to manufacture controversy that has brought a moribund advocacy group firmly into the black and turned Donohue into catnip for the press. For talk show bookers and reporters on deadline, he’s a never-ending sideshow who comes ever ready to hurl expressions of indignation and opprobrium at anyone who might have offended him. As prejudice against individual Catholics has receded, Donohue has simply turned up the volume, taking aim at everyone who questions the church’s official positions on homosexuality, abortion and birth control, lapsed Catholics included.
Last year, Donohue urged Sony to put a disclaimer at the beginning of “The Da Vinci Code.” Then came Madonna - “Just when I thought we’d gotten rid of her,” he lamented - who yanked his chain when she decided to sing part of her concert against a cross. Just before Christmas, Donohue chewed out the film producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein yet again for their decision to open the horror film “Black Christmas” on Jesus’ birthday. It’s at least the third time he’s attacked the filmmakers, the others being for the movies “Priest” and “Dogma.”
“It’s not so much the plot of ‘Black Christmas’ that bothers us,” Donohue told the New York Post’s Page Six. “It’s the fact that the Weinstein boys are back again, choosing a title and an opening date to make their latest statement.”
Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesman for the Weinsteins, said of Donohue: “He’s helpful to have. He raises money by getting his name in the paper, the movie gets press and the columnist gets an item. Everyone wins.”
But the same thing that keeps Donohue in the press prevents him from becoming truly respectable within the religious community, where his antics are a source of frequent consternation.
Mark Silk, director of the Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College said, “He’s a thug. He reverts to bullying because he thinks that’s what the job entails.”
Rev. Mark Massa, a Jesuit priest and co-director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University, accused Donohue of being unable to differentiate between healthy debate and real religious bigotry. “Not everyone who criticizes the church is anti-Catholic,” he said.
The editors at the Catholic weekly magazine America seem to agree. In 2000, they chastised Donohue for denouncing movies he hadn’t even watched. “While being first may increase one’s chances of attracting media attention, there is a danger that the Catholic League reinforces the stereotype that the Catholic Church is at best unreflective and at worst unfairly biased and paranoid,” wrote Rev. James Martin. “In the long run, this may do more harm to the church’s reputation than a short-lived movie or play.”
Bitch Ph.D. argues that Donohue’s bullying tactics constitute abuse, and I’m inclined to agree: this episode has all the trappings of a Salem witch-hunt.
At the Frameshop Jeffrey Feldman has some specific suggestions about what we can do to prevent this from happening again the future:
Effective immediately, Frameshop is calling for the following actions to be taken against Bill Donohue and his followers:
All Democratic and Republican Party leaders should jointly condemn the threats to sodomize, rape and murder of Amanda Marcotte by Bill Donohue and his followers.
The IRS should immediately investigate the non-profit status of Bill Donohue’s Catholic League under the suspicion that his organization has violated its 501(c)(3) status.
The Attorney General of the City of the New York should immediately inquire as to the connection between Bill Donohue’s and his followers who threatened to sodomize, rape and murder Amanda Marcotte.
The FBI should track down the men who issued the threats to sodomize, rape and murder Amanda Marcotte .
All media outlets must cease to invite Bill Donohue on the air.
As Richard Blair points out at The All-Spin Zone, “Republican smear attacks against one Democratic candidate are attacks against all Democratic candidates.”
That this particular attack involved a widespread, misleading, defamatory personal campaign of harassment against two women whose positions Donohue routinely distorted, and that mass media outlets publicized without correction or contextualization, is an outrage.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great [wo]man is [s]he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Despite all appearances to the contrary, I have not abandoned this blog. I’ve just been busy, as I’m sure you’ve guessed.
However, with the Super Bowl coming up tomorrow, and Peyton Manning’s smiling mug staring out from the top of the fold, I want to be clear about one thing: like Atrios, I am rooting for the Bears.
“This in some ways signals a huge new day for us in the city of Philadelphia,” said Mayor Street, saying the casinos will be “a huge boost to the waterfront.”
Of course, everything depends on what the meaning of “us” is.
They include some of the most powerful people in Pennsylvania, one of entertainment’s most accomplished artists, and a former state Supreme Court justice.
And now they are the owners of Philadelphia’s two newly licensed slots casinos: SugarHouse Casino and Foxwoods Casino Philadelphia, both on the Delaware River.
Some say their political connections helped them best three other competitors for two available licenses in Philadelphia; others say their individual accomplishments are enough to stand on their own.
Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board chairman Tad Decker said it didn’t matter who the investors were, as long as everyone cleared a background check.
“It was the projects that won, not the individuals,” Decker said yesterday, a day after Wednesday’s decision. “Once they passed character suitability, it didn’t matter at that point who they were.”
Now, each ownership group stands to make about $75 million in profits a year, based on their own revenue projections and assuming a 20 percent profit margin - a fair estimate for the gambling industry, said John O’Neill, assistant professor of hospitality management at the Pennsylvania State University.
Both ownership groups had strong local connections; Joey Sweeney, writing at Philebrity, cuts around the festering wound in City Hall with this short commentary:
For Philly politics wonks, yesterday was like a double-decker taco: Thick and gooey — some might even say, uh, slimy — on the outside, crunchy and heartburn-producing on the inside. The crunch, of course, is that Sugar House and Foxwoods are now realities and no longer merely psychic boner bills for those that wish to destroy us, and our way of life. And holy God, that burns like hell. However, the oft-underappreciated goo in yesterday’s crazy-crazy was the sound of two men shitting their pants yesterday for decidedly different (though casino-related) reasons: Frank DiCicco, City Councilman for the First District, and Vern Anastasio, the dude who wants to take his job, and in point of fact, well could. These are the differences: DiCicco is old-style Philly City Council all the way. Is he dirty? Meh, who cares, everybody’s dirty, it’s what makes this the last great city in Russia, because that’s not even the point.
This thing is pulp noir all the way — even the guys fighting the casinos are knee-deep in the shit. Meanwhile, the rich get richer, and the poor die tryin’. Good thing we’ve got a David Goodis conference coming up.
So I Guess the Casino Hearings Were a Complete Sham After All
I’ve been an activist and a reporter in various capacities for about 15 years now. In other words, I have spent the last 15 years of my life trying to stop rich people from screwing over poor people.
One of the things I have learned is that there are an incredible number of ways that rich, powerful people screw over poor people. They cheat us. They steal from us. They sue us. They take our homes. They pollute our air and water. They lie to us. They lay us off. They fire us from our jobs if we try to unionize. They scare us into thinking we have no power. They control us any way they can.
There are, in fact, an infinite number of ways by which rich people screw over poor people. But never, ever, once, in the last 15 years, have I seen anything as egregious as what happened this week.
The awarding of two slots licenses to Foxwoods and Sugarhouse over the most extreme community objection, the worst and most haphazard planning and design, criminal penalties levied against Foxwoods for illegal campaign contributions, and on and on, meant one thing and one thing only: that the rich and the powerful do not give a damn about the people who live on the Delaware River, and they never have, and they were lying to us along when they pretended to be listening.
Like many of the other people who worked on this, I spent hours in Gaming Board hearings, organizing protests, getting signatures, etc. Although all the casinos had powerful political interests connected to them, there were degrees. By far, the two most directly tied to State Sen. Fumo – who wrote the gaming law – were Foxwoods and Sugarhouse.
It was great that we had all those nice hearings.
It was great to see all the fantastic work done by NABR and the ILA and Anne Dicker and Vern and Mike and Matt and PennPraxis and Inga Saffron and the homeowners of Pennsport and the homeowners of Fishtown and the Trump architects who redesigned their entire casino to accomodate community input and that one amazing Pinnacle architect from some unknown European country who very obviously had no idea how dirty our politics are and thought this was actually a … merit selection process.
It was great. Really fun.
We had yet another great big happy civic debate that was completely irrelevant, because our politicians just don’t care.
They were going to do it no matter what we said.
What the Gaming Board said on Wednesday is that they are going to built slots parlors on the river whether we like it or not. They are going to take our homes from us under eminent domain whether we like it or not. They are going to build a new onramp to 95 right at the corner of Reed and Delaware whether we like it or not.
It was rumored that Frankie Dicicco told one of the South Philly civic associations a long time ago that it was going to be Foxwoods and Sugarhouse, a done deal. I don’t know if Frankie actually said this, but I think for many many months a lot of us were afraid that the rumor was true (since he would know) - that it really was a done deal all along.
The people who live in these neighborhoods don’t have a lot. Most of us, if we own anything, we own our homes, and the connections to our neighborhood and our families.
[. . .]
If any of us have learned anything from the casino battle, there has been one horrible, miserable, aching truth that overrides it all.
It is that the people who are supposed to be protecting our city have betrayed us, and do not care about the wishes, hopes, future, or needs of the people who live here.
The people of Philadelphia were completely alone in our fight against the casinos. Our elected officials did not care about us.
Our city council.
Our state delegation.
Our mayor! Our mayor!!!!
None of these politicians stood up against the casinos.
These people, corrupt and wizened and greedy as they are at the top of whatever towers they live in, feel not the burden of responsibility – they feel not the desire to serve – they lack even the most basic human emotion that holds us here with our families and our friends – they have turned their back on their own home, and sold out their family, and betrayed their own people.
They are unfit to serve. They are unworthy of this city. They have betrayed us all.
And as far as I am concerned, they are no longer Philadelphians.
They should just pack up and go.
But people like that don’t leave easily.
We’re going to have to run them out of town.
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“Fallen Into Darkness,” by 
