RIP Kevin Drum — a scatblogging roundup tribute

I heard earlier this evening of the passing of Drum, whose most recent journalism home had been Mother Jones, which posted his obit.

As I said when sharing it on Shitter (hold on to that word) and Substack, he was too much of a BlueAnon squish for me. But, he was more personable by far, at least through the online prism, than other big names of early 2000s liberal blogging. Like Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos. Atrios? I don't have a read on Duncan Black from way back then. Josh Marshall? As lucky as Kos, and more so than Black or Drum. Plus, Kos banned me for from the site there for being too Green and Josh? Way too Zionist, even if Oct. 7, 2023 has forced him to smell a tiny bit of coffee — or largely ignore Middle East affairs. (Markos seemed early on like a political operative at bottom line and Black like he would be a slightly less fastidious, but not much less, lawyer version of Niles Crane. Beyond the big political disagreement with Marshall, he also came off as too didactic.)

I did note one other thing.

It was about part of Kevin's non-political blogging.

Riffing on the "Friday catblogging" that Drum had already been doing, at least occasionally, at Calpundit and then brought to Washington Monthly, starting in 2008, for a period of roughly three years, into 2011, I did semi-regular Friday SCATblogging. Yes, scatblogging; that's the tag for it if you click that link.

It was often about animal scat, though not always.

The most popular, by eyeballs, was tracing coyote scat in Cook County, aka metro Chicago.

Second most popular? Scat you don't want to see, as in fresh grizzly scat while out hiking. 

Third was ecological, but also about a big critter — tracking expanding moose populations by scat.

The fourth most popular was also about a cat, for better riffing on Drum — a cougar wandering the Twin Cities that was also tracked into Wisconsin by its scat.

Fifth was back to big animals, with a San Diego Zoo subsidiary creatively dealing with elephant scat.

Other scatblogging about cats included Macho, er jaguar Macho B scatblogging, with a follow-up on a criminal case over his death.

I blogged about other things that fit "scat" as well, like riffing on a giveaway by Sarasota County Area Transit (since renamed).

The most popular there? Metaphorical scat — a San Francisco activist trying to get a new city sewer plant named after Shrub Bush.

Another? Scat-singing.

As noted, I was riffing on Drum. And on people who followed in his wake.

About a month after starting it, I explained why — I said it was in reaction to things like a catblogger writing about giving a cat antidepressants.

My opening post? I actually used the word "crapblogging," not "scatblogging," but it was about archaeologists using human coprolites in the Americas as one avenue of support for "before Clovis." Not long after, I wrote about a dinosaur coprolite selling for nearly $1,000.

I eventually got the reaction to catblogging out of my system. I think the "I can has cheezeburger" meme "triggered" me as much or more than Kevin. (I do read Bruce Schneier's Friday squidblogging semi-regularly today, I'll add.) 

Unlike the person wanting to put their cat on Elavil, though, Kevin never shoved cats in your face. Nor did he shove obnoxious cat memes in your face. This, too, he kept personable.

NOTE: I have no doubt you'll hit a lot of broken links. The blog posts show a lot of broken picture links.

Anyway, condolences to Kevin's family, A kudo to Mother Jones for linking to Kevin's piece about death with dignity, which is what it is. Briefly a one-time adjunct professor, I taught a course on issues in death and dying — at the time of Jack Kevorkian's first trial, and in Michigan no less.