It’s the end of the year – the time when we look back and reminisce on the year of blogging that’s been.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The Eva Young Trophy For Blatant Link-Whoring<\/strong>: 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.<\/p>\n And the winner is: Sisyphus <\/strong>from Nihilist in Golf Pants, for puckering up for John Hinderaker<\/a>, naming the Powerline blogger “Rock Solid in the Blogosphere” last fall.<\/p>\n The Baghdad Bob Award: <\/strong>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.<\/p>\n And the award this year goes to Minnesota Monitor<\/a>, <\/strong>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<\/a> 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”.<\/p>\n The Sisyphus Memorial Trophy for Trying To Mate Via One’s Blog<\/strong>: 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…<\/p>\n …but to be fair, it was a better idea than that of this year’s winner<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n Blog Post Title of the Year: <\/strong>That’d Go To Learned Foot of Kool Aid Report, for December 13rd’s classic<\/a><\/p>\n Captain’s Quarters Gives No Quarter to Hind Quarters<\/p><\/blockquote>\n …regarding Ed’s reaction<\/a> to Chris Muir’s Thong-Gate crisis of a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n The Thomas Dewey Trophy for Atrocious Prediction<\/strong>: In 1948, the Chicago Tribune’s early edition called the election, in four-foot-high letters, for Dewey. Truman, of course, ended up winning.><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n In that spirit, we honor “Powerliberal”, another prominent local left-leaning rent-a-blog, which called the Sixth District election for Wetterling<\/a> – on October 6. Based on the Minnesota Poll – which always <\/em>calls every <\/em>election for the DFL\/Democrats. Apparently some Democrat bloggers haven’t gotten the word…<\/p>\n The Molly “The Hatchet” Priesmeyer Award For Hatchety-est Hatchet-Job: <\/strong>This award is named in honor of the work of the eponymous Ms. Priesmeyer, whose riveting 2004 expose of conservatives eating dinner<\/a> was so chock-full of facile stereotypes one assumes Ms. Prisemeyer was on the payroll of the Cliche Anti-Defamation League.<\/p>\n >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<\/a>. 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”<\/a>. 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)<\/p>\n The Charles Townsend Award<\/strong> – In 1765, British parliamentarian Charles Townsend, in noting the Colonies’ protests against the Stamp Act, said:<\/p>\n “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?”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n And this year’s winner is: Growth for Justice<\/strong>. The group – led by former far-left-leaning Strib editor Joel Kramer – took out an ad in the Strib<\/a> 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.<\/em>”<\/p>\n The Kevin McKay Award For Protesting Too Much<\/strong> – McKay was (and might still be) a local leftyblogger famous for his spittle-flecked, thud-witted, sour-grapeolicious snivelling<\/a> about what angry. thud-witted, sour-grapeolicious people conservative bloggers were.<\/p>\n And this years’ award goes to… this snivelling infant<\/a>.<\/p>\n And finally, the Kate Perry “We Will Tell You What the Facts Are” Award<\/strong>, given to the mainstream journalist or story that most grossly manipulates or conceals facts, and then rationalizes it away later.<\/p>\n This year, no contest – the Strib, from Anders Gyllenhall on down, for Rochelle Olson’s hatchet piece on Alan Fine<\/a> – which took 35 column inches to explain the inner details<\/a> of a 12 year old domestic abuse record – but didn’t bother to mention that the arrest record was expunged<\/a>, 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.\u00a0 But Kate Perry said there was no problem, so there must not be a problem.\u00a0 Natch. 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitch","category-narn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThat’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…<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"