Chad Hermann Says Buh-Bye

With an op-ed.

He signed off his own blog with this:

The rest is silence.

I do have to say, however, that it might be a teensy bit melodramatic signing off with Hamlet's dying words. Though symbolically, it's probably better than Iago's last words:

Demand me nothing. What you know, you know./From this time forth I never will speak word.

In any event, it's too bad. Chad's a cool guy (I'm still waiting for the lunch he promised Maria and I. Chad? Anytime there, buddy!) who wrote speeches for Mark DeSantis, another cool guy. Now he writes speeches for Tim Murphy. Not-so-cool. 

UPDATE:  My bad.  I should have dug deeper on this one.  Hermann was a consultant for three months for the Murphy campaign (the confirmation is here).  

Ed Heath comments:

Hermann’s piece on today’s PG’s “Next Page” was absolutely vintage Hermann. He titled it “The Out Post”. I suspect he might have titled it the “Last Post”, but apparently part of the reason he stopped blogging is because he seemed genuinely stung when his flippant criticism of Randy Pausch was so negatively received (he said he received three death threats). The page is laid out in the style of his blog page, complete with the virtual bric a brac on the right (including an “official soundtrack”, an “official muse” and praise from readers).

I think this “Out Post” gives us the quintessential Hermann experience. How he started before everyone else, but not in political blogging. By the time he started, blogging was already a wasteland (he says “Voices rose. Standards fell”). He was begged to ride to our rescue, to open a window to higher culture and thought. He would post to the level of major-paper, op-ed quality. He would not be self-indulgent, but would write every day, “make every word, subject and syllable count”.

Now, anyone who reads my blog knows I have criticized Hermann in the past, but I will confess I enjoyed reading his stuff when he was telling non-political anecdotes. But I have been told a story about how Hermann antagonized a particular political figure during a political event, making whispered comments at this persons back and then feigning innocence when the person turned around. That may neatly capture, for me, the “Hermann” experience.

That last part is correct. I was there. It was very funny. One of the questions posed to Hermann was during that "event" was "Hey, do you want to take this outside?" That's something I would have loved to have seen.

More later...