The Gist

Jim Capozzola, RIP

Though he'd not been very active online for a while, Jim Capozzola was one of the early progressive bloggers and it blows my mind to note that he has died at the age of 44. His Rittenhouse Review, along with Duncan Black's Eschaton and others, were a lifeline for me in those fear-gripped months following 9/11, showing that there were indeed people stirring the pot and that we could all bond together.

And Jim did it with grace and wit, such a great writer. I was a columnist at the time, not blogging at all, but, as Jim wrote a couple of times, they considered me an honorary blogger and I was thrilled to be a part of something so dynamic, particularly with people like Jim. He was a gay liberal who skillfully took apart the arguments of certain people on the gay right, and boy did we have many a phone conversation -- and a zillion emails -- about that! I hadn't connected with him in more than a year, but he'd apparently been ill for a long time.