Opinion: Pete Wilson (no, not that Pete Wilson), R.I.P.

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I’ve been an admirer of Pete Wilson, the ABC-7 news anchorman and KGO radio blabbermouth in San Francisco, and was shocked and saddened to hear of his death Friday. The Bay Area media market is raucous enough to handle some old-school prickly figures who keep the region more dynamic and exciting than its self-regarding cult of niceness would suggest. Wilson was one of those, but his higher-profile gig was in local network TV, where his opinions were at most suggested by a cocked eyebrow or heavy sigh. (Read between the lines of the SF Chron obit above about how annoying Wilson’s fellow TV-news drones actually found his habit of trying to debate issues with them during off-hours: because, you know, why would anybody who works in news ever want to discuss issues of the day at any kind of ideological level?)

To get the real Pete you had to listen to his radio show, where he was a witty and eloquent exponent of a set of political philosophies I never quite nailed down: I’d say it was a sort of free-ranging, cranky, vaguely conservative populist skepticism, but he contained his share of contradictions. The Chron obit contains a bit where he took some shots at my old friend Bevan Dufty for a gay/lesbian reproductive decision. I guess that position could actually square with free-ranging, cranky, vaguely conservative populist skepticism, but he wasn’t much of a values conservative as far as I could tell. To the degree you can know a man by his fans, here are some words from Pete’s.

His death, in a weird heart-attack-during-surgery-for-something-else, seems especially needless and leaves California media much poorer. I’m sorry he’s so unknown down here that the only reaction seems to have been thank god they weren’t saying it was our beloved former governor who died.