R.I.P. – Jazz Shaw, Blogger for Hot Air, a Gentleman and a Friend

R.I.P. – Jazz Shaw, Blogger for Hot Air, a Gentleman and a Friend

Jazz Shaw, a blogger and editor for Hot Air passed away this week at the age of 65. Jazz was a friend of the Legal Insurrection blog and many others in the conservative blogoshpere. We are going to miss him.

In addition to being a great writer who always offered interesting analysis of the day’s events, Jazz was very accessible and anyone who met him was sure to like him. He was friendly, warm, and loved to have a good time.

When I was at CPAC in 2015, one night I found myself at a bar having a beer and chatting with a guy who just happened to be standing near me. When we finally introduced ourselves to each other, Jazz and I were stunned to learn we were both talking to someone who we already knew online.

We ended up meeting later that evening in the hotel bar to have drinks with a few other people, including Professor Jacobson, who Jazz really wanted to meet.

I ended up taking this picture of Jazz and another blogger named Jimmy Bise.

Over the years, Jazz and I would often tag each other on Twitter and communicate in DMs. Jazz was big on news about aliens and UFOs and I loved to tease him by attributing various news and events to aliens.

My Legal Insurrection colleague Mary Chastain was also friendly with Jazz and writes:

My heart is broken. The conservative sphere lost a great person, but humanity did as well. Jazz Shaw was authentic, kind, and intelligent. What you saw is what you got. If I needed help with a piece, I’d check if Jazz had written on the same subject. His critical thinking skills and writing abilities made me a better writer. Jazz was also humble. I would thank and give him credit, but he’d brush it aside. “I’m sure you’d think of the same thing.” One of my favorite interactions with him included the late Doug Mataconis, who just didn’t get along with anyone…except Jazz and me. LOL. Jazz and I joked about that a lot. He contacted me via DM when we lost Doug, sharing memories with lots of laughs. I know Doug and Jazz are happy with each other. I’ll miss you, Jazz. Please hug Doug for me.

Professor Jacobson comments:

“Jazz Shaw was one of the ‘good guys’ of the conservative blogopshere. He was someone with tremendous humor and wit, and the ability to pump out quality content, which if you know blogging, is a thing. My email records say I first emailed with him in 2011, but I’m sure we communicated almost since the start of Legal Insurrection in 2008. His passing reminds me how things have changed, and how that sense of shared mission and cooperation has also passed. The last time I saw him was several years ago at his favorite Italian restaurant in Whitney Point, NY, and he and his wife were full of good cheer. I’ll miss him.”

Stephen Green, AKA Vodkapundit of PJ Media has written a nice piece about Jazz:

Jazz Shaw, Rest in Peace

Jazz Shaw, one of Hot Air’s finest voices, has been silenced by illness, as you may have read today at his site, on X, or Instapundit. Regular readers may think they knew Jazz just as well as any of us here at the Townhall digital empire who worked with him. There’s truth to that, too. Jazz’s writing voice was every bit him — direct, without pretense, and with a knowing friendliness that made readers everywhere feel like he’d brought you into his living room for a chat about whatever was on his mind.

There is perhaps no one in the blogging world who knew Jazz better than Ed Morrissey, who worked with him every day at Hot Air:

I got to know Jazz 20 years ago or so, when we both began blogging. At the time, he co-blogged at a fun site called the Middle Earth Journal with the late Ron Beasley, who passed away several years ago. It’s only fitting that we began our friendship by sharply disagreeing with each other over politics on our respective blogs. We got into a habit of picking out topics for debate and doing a back-and-forth, where we always took each other’s point of view with respect — even while disagreeing.

It didn’t take long for us to become fast friends. I feel as though I am telescoping that process too much, although I don’t know if I could ever do it justice. The more we learned about each other, the closer we got, and the more fun we had with each other. After I moved to Hot Air, we continued to banter, both in print and in conversations, sometimes live on air and sometimes in private. When I had the opportunity to get him into the mix at Hot Air, I never hesitated — and it has been an absolute dream ever since to work with him on a daily basis.

Jazz was not afraid to go into hostile territory. He once appeared on the Daily Show on Comedy Central and although that video is no longer available, we do have a clip of the time he appeared on Morning Joe on MSNBC, back in the more sane days of 2014:

Rest in peace, sir. You will not be forgotten.

Featured image via YouTube.

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