Lewis Grizzard
Rich Hailey of Shots Across the Bow nominates a well-known, but highly dead, author for the Croix de Grits:

[From Grizzard's biography]Grizzard likened the pressure to top oneself day after day in print to "being married to a nymphomaniac... it's a whole lot of fun for the first week."

Every blogger that's been around more than two weeks knows exactly what Lewis meant.

That was Lewis' gift; he knew us, and could talk to us and about us.

My first exposure to Lewis was the book When my Love Returns from the Ladies room, Will I be too Old to Care? I was a young man, just starting out dating a lovely young lady, and this issue was at the forefront of our relationship. What does a man do when his date has left the table to go to the ladies room? You're sitting there, feeling awkward with nothing to do and no-one to talk to. You would welcome the return of the waitress who couldn't stay away from your table long enough to allow you to finish a single bite of your meal without interrupting you to ask if everything was OK, but she is bound by Female Law 137.2 to stay away from your table while you wait for the eventual return of your date. When I saw Lewis's book, I knew that I had found my master, the man who could explain everything about women and the world. Of course, as I read, I found out that Lewis was just as befuddled as I was, but it didn't seem to matter. Instead of a master, I had found something even better; a friend walking the same road I was.

The Croix de Grits is intended to be something to mark the accomplishments of contemporary living folks, mainly because I figured if we started adding in all the dearly departed, we would have way yonder more folks than we could handle. Also, notification and correspondence with the eventual winner will not require the use of a spirit medium, but the use of the only slightly more reliable digital medium.

But we all recognize that Faulker is right and that here in the South, not only is the past not dead, it's not even past. So, in order to placate the spirit world, after the living world chooses the first recipient of the Croix de Grits, we will establish yet another award for worthy, yet thoroughly dead, contributors to the goodness of the South. We have not yet picked out a suitable title for this award yet, but I imagine it will by necessity have to include the word "haint."
posted by Terry at 9:58:00 AM