Fisk Nick: The Winners!

After hours of painstaking critical analysis, I can finally, and with great and appropriate fanfare, announce the winners of the first (but no doubt not last)...

Fisk Nick Coleman Contest!!!

The winners will receive...a virtual standing ovation.

Ready?

Well, then, click on the link!

First, though, I have to compliment all the contestants, who boldly went where I've gone too many times before. Commenter "Jarhead" summed up my feelings perfectly, mixing the same combination of Coleman Fatigue with the continued inability to stomach the relentless illogic when he said

You know Mitch. Reading Nick (I need to learn my place) Coleman just sucks the life right out of me. I find it amazing that he can just keep droning on paragraph after paragraph, week after week like he does. All I can come up with is...

(Nick, the government is already in charge of buying flu vaccine. What more do you want?)

I feel your pain. Semper Fi.

And Mark Wallace goes beyond fisking to actual correction - which is what we are supposed to do, when Nick Coleman's fragrant illogic hasn't driven us to, I dunno, hosting contests to celebrate his ineptitude:

"but if you weren't in line long before then, you didn't get one of the 150 numbers that were given out."

Instead of freaking out the seniors and trying to support Kerry as the same time, why don't you tell people where they can get the shots. Here's the MN Hlth Dept link:http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/dpc/cgi-bin/fluschedule/fluclinic_process.cgi

By the way, there were many, many excellent entries that rationally explained where Coleman was wrong, and for each of those entries I'm deeply grateful; it shows that at least some people aren't being fooled. However, since this contest is about ridicule more than real education, I've not ranked them among the winners. I hope you all understand, and again, thank you!

Anyhoo - with no further ado, I present the winners! Coleman's original text is italicized.

Fourth Runner-Up - Terry out-theatricizes Coleman - no mean feat:

"It was time to leave the PROFESSIONAL BUILDING. I wished everyone good health and walked out onto Hennepin Avenue. When I looked down the street and squinted, I could almost see Lakewood Cemetery, four blocks away.
The gates were open."

(and the Tall Man from Phantasm was walking through the gates with a coffin under each arm, one made of the cheap pine Minneapolis provides for indigents, and the other piteously small. He wore a Bush/Cheney t-shirt)

Third Runner-Up - Paul Zrimsek found the joke I for which I searched in vain on Thursday:

"I've never been here before, and I'll never come again, either," said the 88-year-old retired Postal Service supervisor from Little Canada
as he got his first taste of what getting health care would be like if he were from Big Canada.

Second Runner-Up - Rex felt that imitation was the sincerest form of fiskery:

Chet Brigm had never read Nick Coleman until Wednesday. He hopes he won't ever need to read him again.

"I've never read such crap before, and I'll never bother again, either," he said. "I had to read the whole thing to find out he didn't know where to get a flu shot, either. I thought he knew stuff."

First Runner-Up - To Chriss, of course, satire is even more sincere:

As he stood shivering in line, John Barnes, an African American (U.S. Navy, retired) muttered, "(Expletive deletive) government should stay out of the vaccine business. Ever since Hillary's bill in 1994 the government is the primary buyer of these vaccines, making it unprofitable for drug companies to produce them, so only a few companies bother to make them. And these are probably the worst companies. It's the story of liberalism: good intentions, bad results because the focus is on feeling good about yourself rather than solving problems."

(Oops, that quotation never made Nick's article. He quickly deleted it from his tape recorder and moved on to a more 'knowledgeable' source.)

And the Winner... - Karen pushes Nick Coleman back through the "fourth wall"

"When my kids get sick they get very sick," she said to no one in particular.

("no one in particular" - why, Nick, you shouldn't be so disingenuously modest!)

Again, thanks to all the entries. If you didn't win this time, rest assured - there'll be another, just a surely as there'll be a Coleman column on Tuesday. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another...

(P.S. - Chumley, of course, is completely in his own class with his fisking. Too big or comprehensive for my contest, but a stitch anyway...)

Posted by Mitch at October 24, 2004 12:20 PM | TrackBack