Bartcop had a way of cutting right through the media bullshit to the truth. He was clever, unflinchingly liberal and spawned a generation of liberal bloggers. Atrios, Digby, Avedon and many others cut their teeth in the Bartcop Forum, then went forward to claim their places in the blogo-pantheon.
I patterned my own blog after Bartcop's site.
The tributes to Bartcop are rolling in. It really makes me sad to think there will be no more Bartcop "fixes" to be had.
RIP, Bartcop. Your influence is much stronger than you knew.
Here's a note from Marc Perkel, the current operator of the Church of Reality.
History of how BartCop Started
By Marc Perkel
It was about 18 years ago in 1996 when one day someone forwarded an email from an email publication that Terry was writing called "Rush Limbaugh Lying Nazi Whore - Issue #45.
http://www.bartcop.com/0045.htm
It was so funny I was rolling on the floor trying to breathe.It was during the 1996 presidential election and poor Bob Dole was trying to eak out a win over the Big Dog. This part was the part that put me on the floor.
I have a satellite dish. I caught some audio of Dole after the show. The caterer brought some food in. "Bob Dole wants a diet Coke," he said. "Bob Dole wants a Hot Dog!"I had just put up a web server and was looking for interesting things to publish. So I tracked down the author and called him on the phone. He was somewhat surprised that I found him but I explained that I wanted to take his collection and make web pages out of it. He didn't even know what a web page was at first but he agreed. For the first few years he would just email his list and I would add the page every time I got one of his emails. Eventually he learned just enough to barely put together a web page and started doing it himself.
Someone, maybe a kid serving the food, asked Dole if he wanted mustard on his Hot Dog.
Bob Dole said: "Well, I feel that's it's my view that mustard is certainly one of the options we're looking at. We're looking at a number of options, actually. There's lot of condiments... ketchup, for instance. Some like it, some don't....
That's not up to the federal government to decide. Those decisions are best made locally ...the states. Some people talk about relish, relish... is...
Cheese! Lot of cheese lovers in America..... Perhaps we'll go with mustard, but we haven't made a final determination on that, haven't decided... It might come down to a situation where we have some ketchup and some mustard...we'll know soon..."
Mrs. Dole interrupted and said:
"Bob Dole has always supported mustard on Hot Dogs. Bob Dole has been, and continues to be pro-mustard. Mustard has a friend in Bob Dole."
Bart was one of the first and most successful liberal bloggers. Back then Bart and I were big fish in a small pond. We inspired many other liberal web sites that became far more successful an influential. We became small fish in a big pond. But Bart stayed with it for 18 years swinging the hammer of truth. People who were born the year Bart started are now old enough to vote. He created a community and lots of people know each other through him. I believe he changed history in significant ways that will some day be discovered by supercomputers in the future. But for now we will all miss him.
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Message from Democratic Underground
Back in the days when there was no "liberal blogosphere" or "netroots"; there were only "anti-Bush websites".
Before DU there was Buzzflash, Smirking Chimp, and BartCop.
That was pretty much the entire liberal presence on the internet.
Bart gave DU a prominent link on his homepage, and sent us lots of traffic.
I think it is arguable that he did more for DU than anyone else on the Internet.
Thank you, Bart. RIP.
A link to Bartcop is here. You can read through many of his back issues. It's internet gold.
Ok, George, he stopped. But your sorry ass still belongs in jail!
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