Bartender, I'll Have An Old-Fashioned
Two springs ago Billmon won a Koufax Award when the place he calls Whiskey Bar was voted the best-written lefty blog in America. He won a second that year when this piece of hunting-and-gathering was judged the single strongest post. It listed the chronology of official misstatements about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Today the place seems pretty dry. The words are coming less often and in shorter bursts for the Philadelphia-based political essayist/blogger.
He's a little burned out, he says, a little depressed. He's wondering if this is a natural cycle with blogging -- something that saps so much of your being. He's threatening to launch something completely different. Maybe a blog on the history of travel.
"When you are doing it, it really is quite addictive," he said the other day. "When I'm not doing it, I don't want to go back. I feel like Mr. Mole in "The Wind in the Willows." Once he walked out of his hole in the ground and discovered the world, he didn't go back for months."
This is a shame because for months this has been my favorite blog, anywhere. (For a sense of what he's about, read what he wrote yesterday - a classic, long pour.)
Whiskey Bar is written anonymously, and the 47-year-old blogger who goes by the pen name Billmon gave an interview on the condition that I not write what I know about him, because the publicity could hurt his blogging or his job. Let's leave it at this: he works in corporate marketing in the Philadelphia area.
He's also an ex-financial journalist, which he likens to being an ex-cop – "you never lose your instincts, you never lose the world view. I am privileged to take a certain attitude about the world, which is usually one of bemused contempt. It's a wonderful way to make a living – if you can find the right organization."
The blog has offered him opportunity to write without editors or pressure from advertisers or anyone saying 'you can't do that.' "It's a wonderful medium," he says, "as long as you're willing to accept the fact you won't get paid for it."
He'd long been a watcher of politics - a lot like he was a fan of baseball – he just didn't follow the off-season. Then came Bush v Gore and then 9-11 – and "politics became a lot more serious. Dead serious." As the administration took up its war on terror, he began commenting as "Billmon" on the Daily Kos site, and became increasingly known in the blog world. Right after the 2002 congressional elections, he was invited to write a guest spot on that blog. He liked it.
"It became kind of obsessive," he says. By April, a few days after the fall of Baghdad, he'd bought a domain name and called his own space Whiskey Bar after a lyric from a Doors' song. (Yes, he knows it was originally a Brecht lyric; he acted in a Brecht play in college.)
For the next three and a half years he showed many the way, writing lyrical essays, but with fact-finding skills learned from many years of pouring through murky financial forms. Then in the fall of 2004, he sort of stopped. "Disgust with the political system and the world," he says. "I started writing again in the spring, experimenting with blogging without writing, taking posts and pictures I saw on the web and putting them up in collage fashion. Then I started writing again. I was blogging pretty heavily."
But by last fall, he felt he had "lost my mojo," as he put it. "I haven't really gotten it back. I've been posting half-heartedly over the winter. I find it very difficult to really get back into the swing of it. I have a full-time job, kids, a mortgage, a backyard. All those things have to be taken care of. The first couple of years, I was stealing time. I was consciously avoiding responsibility. My kids let me know it."
At first, he says, it's exhilarating – "not having to kow tow to anybody. Not having to worry about am I going to piss off the advertisers. After a couple years, you start to realize how much work it is."
With the let up came a frightening realization for one who worked in the moment. While he never received the amount of hits of an Atrios, Daily Kos or Instapundit, his name carried weight in blog and political circles. "Now I am coming across more and more people who have never heard of me. The Internet moves 10 or 20 times the speed of regular time. Unless you're really on top of things, the world forgets about you really fast. It's hyper-true in the Blogosphere.
"If you're not independently wealthy, paid for it, or staying at home with mom in the basement and typing away in your slippers, it's hard to keep up."
He's had an interesting vantage on the debate between journalists and bloggers, the journalists thinking bloggers are undisciplined and the bloggers thinking journalists are hacks who don't know their stuff.
"My current opinion is that they are both right," he says. "I see lot of legitimate grievances from each camp. It's interesting how bloggers are being absorbed – they're hooking up with the mainstream media, which is kind of ironic. Michele Malkin and Glenn Reynolds fulminate against the MSM while they write for it. And the left is hooking up with the Democratic party and becoming political operatives. There is a blurring of the boundaries. One thing about me I am completely out of touch with that. ...
"I'm just an old-fashioned blogger who really only exists in cyberspace."
He's the best, bar none. Even his silence has voice. And despite what he says here, I don't think he will ever be forgotten. Nice interview, Dan.
Maybe Whisky Bar could get into podcasting? or maybe he should hook up with newer lefty bloggers and mentor us a little bit which s/he feeds off our newish exuberance. with regards to the koufax... Yeah, congrats and hats off. The cool thing about the blog-o-sphere is that the best one usually gets the cheese. Which makes it a meritcracy. which makes the blogging cool. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Jay Rosen
Thanks, Dan. Really good piece about a fascinating character.
Hey Dan, I would like to include a link to this post for my Weeks Helpful Links. I hope you don't mind, I will only use a description that I write, no quotes or copy-paste. Let me know if you have any problems with linking. I would just like to showcase the artice since my blog is working at home on the internet, and blogging is a big part of my site. Thanks, Joe If you do have a problem, please E-mail me at mcbsconsulting(at)hotmail(dot)com and I will delete the link if you (or the lawyers)want. J.
Sorry, "Billmon", your anonymity completely undermines your credibility.
Sorry, "D F," your obscurity completely undermines your validity.
Bingo, Bingo!
Billmon is the most wickedly funny blogger out there. Almost every week he has me laughing out loud at some savage skewering of Bush/Cheney lunacy. His writing is brilliant but ever so dark. I really think he's the blogging equivalent of Jonathan Swift, another dyspeptic, darkly depressive soul who was perhaps the world's greatest satirist.
"Today the place seems pretty dry." Not only this, seems like the Whisky Bar is closed: "Site Temporarily Unavailable" Too bad. Billmon used to be one of my favorite bloggers. But, he's right, there is another world beside the blogosphere. I hope he's ok, spending more time with his family. His reasonable opinions and distinct writing will be missed, though...
Billmon got me through some of my worst days during this bush regime. His was the first blog I read when I got home from work. I'm now going through the grieving stage of denial, googling his site daily even though I know it's been removed. I wish we had his insights again as bush's "new" plan for Iraq has reignited our anger.
Billmon - simply the best. When we need him, he'll return
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