Award Time

It’s the end of the year – the time when we look back and reminisce on the year of blogging that’s been.

And thus it’s a perfect time for the first annual “Shootie” awards, given by the editorial board at Shot In The Dark for contributions advancing regional blogging.

The Eva Young Trophy For Blatant Link-Whoring: This award is given to the regional blogger who best exemplifies the bloggers’ ideal for getting traffic; suck up to bloggers bigger than you as relentlessly as possible.

And the winner is: Sisyphus from Nihilist in Golf Pants, for puckering up for John Hinderaker, naming the Powerline blogger “Rock Solid in the Blogosphere” last fall.

The Baghdad Bob Award: The lineage of this coveted trophy is fairly obvious – and goes to the local blogger or bloggers who insist the facts we see before our faces don’t really exist.

And the award this year goes to Minnesota Monitor, a groupblog in which a group of local leftybloggers were paid a montly stipend in the low four digits (reportedly $1,500) to dab an “ethics statement” on top of modesly polished leftyblogging. When it was pointed out that the Center for Independent Media shared office space with George Soros’ “Media Matters for America”, and that it appeared there might be a connection between the country-destabilizing ultraliberal plutocrat and the local rent-a-bloggers, the resopnse was “Yo Momma”.

The Sisyphus Memorial Trophy for Trying To Mate Via One’s Blog: This award is named in honor of Sisyphus from Nih[i]list in Golf Pants, in honor of his game attempt to woo Mary Katherine Ham by naming her “Rock Solid in the Blogosphere” last summer. It didn’t work well…

…but to be fair, it was a better idea than that of this year’s winner, who used his LiveJournal to find out if a self-described “goofy looking dude and his goofy looking friend could wander into the scene and begin making out with some slutty collegey-looking babes with minimal effort”, and if so, where.

Blog Post Title of the Year: That’d Go To Learned Foot of Kool Aid Report, for December 13rd’s classic

Captain’s Quarters Gives No Quarter to Hind Quarters

…regarding Ed’s reaction to Chris Muir’s Thong-Gate crisis of a few weeks ago.

The Thomas Dewey Trophy for Atrocious Prediction: In 1948, the Chicago Tribune’s early edition called the election, in four-foot-high letters, for Dewey. Truman, of course, ended up winning.>

Previous winners include local rent-a-blogger Jeff Fecke, who called the ’04 presidential election for Howard Dean. Then Wesley Clark. Then Hillary Clinton. Then Hillary Duff. Then John Kerry. Before the ’04 All-Star break.

In that spirit, we honor “Powerliberal”, another prominent local left-leaning rent-a-blog, which called the Sixth District election for Wetterling – on October 6. Based on the Minnesota Poll – which always calls every election for the DFL/Democrats. Apparently some Democrat bloggers haven’t gotten the word…

The Molly “The Hatchet” Priesmeyer Award For Hatchety-est Hatchet-Job: This award is named in honor of the work of the eponymous Ms. Priesmeyer, whose riveting 2004 expose of conservatives eating dinner was so chock-full of facile stereotypes one assumes Ms. Prisemeyer was on the payroll of the Cliche Anti-Defamation League.

>And for the ninth year in ten, the award goes right back to the City Pages, for their election-night “coverage” of the GOP “victory” party that wasn’t. So chock-full of smug cliches was this piece that the Cliche Anti-Defamation league actually sent City Pages’ editor Steve “Not The Journey Guy” Perry a cease and desist order. (The CP’s only loss in this category in recent memory came, ironically, in ’04 – to a Twin Cities exile Jen Vogel’s classic tantrum, “F*ck the Suburbs”. But Vogel’s piece appeared in a paper so similar to City Pages, it’s close enough for Ramsey County work – or, given the tone of Vogel’s piece, perhaps “close enough for Oaxacan mystery meat” would fit better)

The Charles Townsend Award – In 1765, British parliamentarian Charles Townsend, in noting the Colonies’ protests against the Stamp Act, said:

“And now will these Americans, Children planted by our Care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a Degree of Strength & Opulence, and protected by our Arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”

And this year’s winner is: Growth for Justice. The group – led by former far-left-leaning Strib editor Joel Kramer – took out an ad in the Strib last summer, signed by 203 wealthy liberals demanding that we all get happy and pay for a better Minnesota, by bankrolling (with taxes, as opposed to their own largesse) to the tune of two billion dollars a plan by a group of their “experts” to revive the state (which has a throbbing, thriving economy, by the way). Funnier still, they advertised themselves as “bipartisan” – the add said “Growth & Justice has a board of directors of 24 distinguished Minnesotans, including Democrats, Independents and Republicans…” – even though our blogswarm showed that 95% of their contributions went to Democrat/DFL causes; as I noted back then, the signatories “gave a total of $4,782,724 to DFL and national Democrat campaigns – 95.63% of the total. The GOP netted $188,580, for 3.77% of the total. Other parties/campaigns – mostly Greens, if you look at the spreadsheet – snagged $29,800, less than a percent of the total.

The Kevin McKay Award For Protesting Too Much – McKay was (and might still be) a local leftyblogger famous for his spittle-flecked, thud-witted, sour-grapeolicious snivelling about what angry. thud-witted, sour-grapeolicious people conservative bloggers were.

And this years’ award goes to… this snivelling infant.

And finally, the Kate Perry “We Will Tell You What the Facts Are” Award, given to the mainstream journalist or story that most grossly manipulates or conceals facts, and then rationalizes it away later.

This year, no contest – the Strib, from Anders Gyllenhall on down, for Rochelle Olson’s hatchet piece on Alan Fine – which took 35 column inches to explain the inner details of a 12 year old domestic abuse record – but didn’t bother to mention that the arrest record was expunged, that the case never went to trial, that there was no physical evidence of Fine’s guilt, or that the ex-wife that brought the original charges was eventually charged with domestic abuse herself – seemingly validating Fine’s claim about the original incident.  But Kate Perry said there was no problem, so there must not be a problem.  Natch.
That’s it for this year. But we’ll be back in 2007 with the next edition of the Shooties! Goodness knows there’ll be material…

8 thoughts on “Award Time

  1. Mitch: Nails 2002 Goober and Senate Races almost to the vote; gets 2004 Presidential race to within 10 electoral votes; nails the ’04 Congressional races to a T; nails the CD6 race to the percentage point, the CD2, 3, 5 and 7 races closer than just about anyone and,  just for the fun of it, was two days off on Hussein’s execution on a prediction made in December of ’03.

    Jeff: the same Senate prediction he’d have made even if the DFL had nominated a bassett hound (and the same Goober prediction I made).

    Yep. SO jealous.

  2. Two? I only count one…

    …unless you’re really Jeff Fecke or Kevin McKay or that dolt from MnPact, too.

    Come to think of it, I’ve never seen any of those other “guys”.

    Hmm…

  3. Pingback: Shot in the Dark » Blog Archive » The 2007 Shootie Awards

  4. Cheers! Just stopped by to pick up my award.

    Don’t mind me…I saw it here earlier today. Very nice of you, thank you. Yes, I saw it in my list of referrers. It will look good on my mantle. No, you don’t have to put it in a bag-I’ll carry it out to my car as is.

    Award, you say? You remember; the one you gave me for standing up to City Pages. Maybe it fell behind something.

    I’ll wait. No, it’s no bother.

    La da da dee dee dum… Ahem.

  5. Pingback: Happy Patriots Day! | Shot in the Dark

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.