From The Very Sad To The Pathetic

Two pieces of news to do with the state of journalism. The very sad one was first: Doug Case, AKA Doghouse Riley, gone quite suddenly, at just 59.

... I didn't know much more about him than he chose to reveal on his own blog. But I knew he could write -- something which was obvious to anyone who read his posts and comments -- and hey, a soupçon of literary mystique never hurt B. Traven. Perhaps the biggest mystery (or maybe, considering the state of the modern media, just the greatest injustice) is why people like David Brooks and Ross Douthat had sinecures at the New York Times, and Doghouse didn't.

A real writer, with much to say; so different from what Charles Pierce's remembrance calls "cowardly, masthead-climbing pissants."

Pierce particularly valued Case's blog for this—

Mr. Riley was the go-to source if you needed material to deflate the national pretensions of Indiana's value-sized governor, Mitch Daniels, who managed to fool national pundits, fools, and David Brooks, but I repeat myself twice. ...

Here's the official obituary, ironically from the Indianapolis Star, which the redoubtable Doghouse used to serve up en brochette a couple of times a week. But if you seek his monument, look to Purdue University, where Mitch Daniels, onetime presidential timber, is reduced to doing his best Mel Gabler imitation on the subject of Howard Zinn. Every day that this squirt isn't president is testimony to the warm heart and good works of J. B.S. (Doghouse) Riley, man of the blogs.

With the death of local news in most places, the loss of a voice like Case's makes that vacuum greater.

I mainly saw his work in comments, especially as one of the alicuati. mortimer's comment gets at what I missed.

I'm going to miss Doghouse for all the reasons given here and then some: the breadth of his knowledge about history, his lawyerly skill at building perfect arguments, and because, like our genial host, he could also be screamingly funny. Whether tossing off a perfect one-liner to caption a picture of Michael Douglas: "The good news is that we know ass-kissing doesn't cause cancer, else there'd be fewer Americans now than in the 15th century," or a tour de force of pure stand-up on the Bush Museum, his generous wit generated LOLs like it was a public service. Hell, the only way I could get through a David Brooks column was knowing that I might get to read Doghouse shredding it to pieces later -- there's no way I can do it solo now.

But for all that, and his blistering rants on Indiana politics, he came across to me as a guy with a big heart in the right place. I can't find it at the moment, but a few years back he wrote a post (or two) about a student in his wife's school who died for lack of a working heater (IIRC) that was righteous, angry, and terribly moving. Despite having never met Douglas Case or corresponded with him, I feel like I just lost someone who was great to know, which is a sad but marvelous thing on these Internets. I'm glad I got to "know" him.

About a week later, and the world of big money media was in a tizzy. When the WaPo's editorial page can't sink much farther, it's hard to care much about this.

On the other hand, Pierce had a very funny update next day. Among comments—

Pat Healy
I put a WaPo editorial page into a bird cage, and the bird complained that I'd made his cage dirtier.

Tom Klee adds this, from America's Finest News Source (once again channeling an alternate, just world)—

"Following yesterday's announcement that Amazon.com founder Jeffrey Bezos would be purchasing daily newspaper The Washington Post, sources confirmed today that Post associate editor and legendary investigative journalist Bob Woodward had already been repositioned at a new staff position in one of Amazon's main warehouses just outside of Seattle.

Amazon.com sources say that Woodward, who is reportedly now a junior warehouse associate at the web company's Bellevue-based warehouse, will be primarily responsible for stocking the factory shelves, tracking and packaging online orders, and several other daily tasks related to the location's inventory."