Since you’re reading this

Longtime political commentary blogger BartCop signs off with one last request

“Since you’re reading this, I’m either gone or I’m too sick to get to my computer.”

Before he died on March 5, Terry Coppage, aged 53, wrote one last letter to his readers. It was a just-in-case letter – in case he didn’t survive his 13-year battle with leukemia.

In this letter, Coppage, aka BartCop – an outspoken pioneer in political blogging and media watchdogging – asked his readers to help him with one last request.

Before this final post, he wrote 18 years’ worth of salvos – thousands of listserv emails, web radio shows, online issues. Before that, Coppage rattled down vending-machine delivery routes between Tulsa and Forth Smith, from Tulsa to Joplin, his stripped backseat stuffed with toys for the claw machines, candy, and chips. He spent the early ‘90s in a one-seater Subaru with only an AM radio for company, the car tinny with hours and hours of bombastic Rush Limbaugh guffaws.

This was pre-AOL, pre-Daily Kos, pre-Salon, pre-Media Matters, pre-email, pre-Apple chic, pre-24-hour news cycle. In 1996, dial-up Prodigy offered a way to communicate with other frustrated progressives. Coppage started a daily listserv – an early mass-email subscription apparatus – that he dubbed “Rush Limba: Lying Nazi Whore.”

Subtle, he was not. As the listserv became more popular, Coppage hooked his longtime friend Kurt Wise into learning website design and then teaching it to him. The resulting 1997-era website, still largely unchanged since DSL, remains an endearing relic of the prehistoric Internet, with BartCop’s trademark red circle with a hammer inside still emblazoned on the home page.

With “a modem, a smart mouth and the truth,” Coppage became BartCop. Name origin: his cat, “Bart,” and the first three letters of his last name.

During the Lewinsky scandal and in the wake of the 2000 election, more and more web surfers turned to BartCop as he delivered salient strikes against Rush and his dittoheads, against propaganda about a so-called liberal media.

“I’d like to thank everyone for reading, especially the pillars who allowed me to quit working at that little car lot and turn my rage on the illegal Bush thugs full time,” Coppage wrote.

Terry became a full-time political blogger before the word “blog” was invented. He called BartCop.com a “political humor page,” Wise said. He added his musings on his favorite liquor, and he posted some about poker and cute girls. But mostly, Coppage stuck to politics.

Terry was prolific, publishing to the site a half-dozen issues like small, online-newspaper editions, packed with signature BartCop content every week.

“His ability was not just in being able to explain something or to have an opinion,” Wise said. “It was in being able to skillfully articulate something everyone was feeling but couldn’t find
the words.”

“But I have a favor to ask and it’s a big one. I left Mrs. Bart with a mortgage that she can’t handle by herself,” Coppage wrote. “When the doctors told me I wasn’t going to reach old age, my first thoughts were worry about Mrs. Bart and how she was going to make it without me and my income. So if you can help her out, I’d appreciate it.”

Bart and Mrs. Bart were Mizzou college sweethearts. The couple moved to Tulsa after graduating from the University of Missouri. Coppage and his wife were married 37 years. Mrs. Coppage remained a staunch, loving supporter of her husband and his mission while she worked a full-time job to provide extra income and health insurance for the family. He was always protective of her privacy. They had no children, but kept cats.

At his memorial service, Wise played a mixtape for his longtime friend and inspiration, which included some of Coppage’s favorite bootlegged U2 and Led Zeppelin songs, plus a little Pearl Jam and Pink Floyd.

“People say, ‘I never would’ve survived the Bush years without BartCop,’” Wise said. “I never would’ve survived the Reagan years without Terry.”