Bartcop, one of the pioneers of liberal blogging has died.

TBogg pays his respects.

Bartcop was a snarky, no-holds barred, riotous – at times mean-spirited, but never untruthful – oasis of hilarity and vitriol, where politicians and a compliant media  were called out for their bullshit. Along with Media Whores Online (‘The Horse”), no journalist was ever again safe from having their stories fact-checked online and then held up to ridicule.

Bartcop was the brainchild of Terry R. Coppage, based out of his beloved and sometimes mocked Tulsa, Oklahoma home.  Terry was fearless in a way that other media critics couldn’t be for a simple reason: he wasn’t angling to move up the fawning beltway food chain with a guest spot at The Washington Post. He didn’t pull punches and he called bullshit for what it was: “bullshit.”

The site was crude, the graphics sometimes even cruder (I have a special place in my heart for his animated gif of Tim Russert repeating “Clinton’s cock” over and over and over again), but most importantly  it dispensed with the niceties with a wicked grin with a well-placed deflating shiv between the ribs.

Terry Coppage, “Bartcop,” passed away this past Wednesday due to complications from the  flu, pneumonia, and leukemia at the age of 60.

Before Terry passed away he wrote a last post to go up in the event of his passing or inability to write again.  You can read it here.

It’s safe to say that I and a whole lot of other bloggers got their start by reading his work back in 1996 when this new form of expression was just getting started.

I hold him and his family in the Light.