With seven candidates commanding between 10 and 14 percent of the vote, the 2011 Malkin Award is among the closest races in Dish Award history. Click on the names of the nominees to see what they were nominated for and cast your vote!
Click here to vote on the other entries. (Note: Poseur Alerts and Hewitt Awards are not being voted on this year because there were not enough solid entries.)
Andrew Hartman is unimpressed by TFA's record:
After twenty years of sending academically gifted but untrained college graduates into the nation’s toughest schools, the evidence regarding TFA corps member effectiveness is in, and it is decidedly mixed. Professors of education Julian Vasquez Heilig and Su Jin Jez, in the most thorough survey of such research yet, found that TFA corps members tend to perform equal to teachers in similar situations—that is, they do as well as new teachers lacking formal training assigned to impoverished schools. Sometimes they do better, particularly in math instruction. Yet “the students of novice TFA teachers perform significantly less well,” Vasquez Heilig and Jin Jez discovered, “than those of credentialed beginning teachers.” It seems clear that TFA’s vaunted thirty-day summer institute—TFA “boot camp”—is no replacement for the preparation given future teachers at traditional colleges of education.
Click the following links to vote for the 2011 Malkin Award, Moore Award, Yglesias Award, Von Hoffmann Award. Voting is also open for the Chart Of The Year, the Hathos Alert Of The Year, the Mental Health Break Of The Year, and the Face Of The Year.
Among the various contenders for the prizes, a roster of the big names in political and cultural discourse: Newt Gingrich, Jonathan Chait, David Frum, Jon Huntsman, a Crested Black Macaque Monkey, Michael Moore, Herman Cain, Donald Trump, Kathryn Jean Lopez, John Yoo, Roseanne Barr, Dan Savage, Cornel West, Jennifer Rubin and … Andrew Sullivan.
We're giving readers a week to pick the winners for these prestigious prizes. The polls will close on Thursday evening, December 29th, at midnight. Winners will be announced the next day. You picked many of the entries; we just marshalled the very best/worst for your selection.
Vote early. Vote often.
The Daily Dish Awards Glossary
Click here to vote for the 2011 Malkin Award!
Click here to vote for the 2011 Moore Award!
Click here to vote for the 2011 Von Hoffmann Award!
Click here to vote for the 2011 Yglesias Award!
Click here to vote for the 2011 Chart Of The Year!
Click here to vote for the 2011 Face Of The Year!
Click here to vote for the 2011 Hathos Alert!
Click here to vote for the 2011 Mental Health Break Of The Year!
Nate Silver thinks the Republican race needs to remain divided in order for Ron Paul to play spoiler:
As the “third wheel” in a Romney-Perry or Romney-Gingrich race … Mr. Paul would potentially have more influence. I do not personally see a path wherein Mr. Paul wins a majority of delegates, but he could certainly control a substantial enough minority to become a power broker at the Republican National Convention, something that is an explicit goal of his campaign.
Jonathan Bernstein thinks Romney is sitting pretty. So does Eli Lehrer:
Nearly every part of the Republican primary process and, indeed, the party’s overall structure gives a massive advantage to people who have run before. The lack of super-delegates (ex officio convention delegates), for example, means that simply becoming well-known in the national media and among national figures conveys much less advantage than it does in Democratic contests. Republicans’ relatively greater reliance on low-dollar direct mail donations, likewise, means that having a well-tested list from a previous run for office conveys a fundraising advantage. Even the structure of grass roots groups on the Right conveys an advantage to those who have run before: the single greatest source of on-the-ground manpower on the Left, unions, are national organizations with top-down structures while the churches, community organizations, and tax reform groups important on the right are rarely centralized. And some right-of-center groups that have central structures–Americans for Prosperity, for example–don’t directly engage in electoral politics.
The Economist deconstructs the international work ethic by studying allotted holiday time:
North Americans are more industrious than South Americans, according to data compiled by Mercer, a consultancy. Asians work harder than Europeans. Among the feckless workers from the old continent, those in the troubled economies of Greece, Spain and Portugal have among the most generous holiday allowances.
They're just like us.
A few more readers add to the thread:
Giving gifts is definitely the best part! And this year my family really upped the ante on altruistic payoff by using our Secret Santa gifts to donate to causes that our giftee values. As my gift, my brother donated to a community organization that helps women achieve economic independence, since he knows it's important to me. I donated to City Harvest in NYC (which connects wasted food from groceries and restaurants to kitchens and pantries for the needy) in the name of my sister-in-law because she works in nutrition and food justice. Between the nine of us we'll donate $360 to various charities this year, still with the benefit of tailoring a gift to our person's values and interests. I really recommend something like this to your readers, especially if they have children in the family that they can still buy actual presents for. You really get the best of both worlds.
Another invokes the "re-distribution of wealth" that often goes into gift-giving on Christmas:
I get more stuff from my wealthy relatives than I give them, and I give my less wealthy relatives more than I get in return, which seems to me how it should work. An excuse for voluntary re-distribution is a nice way to help and be helped without feeling like a charity case.
Fans will get it:
A few reflections from readers:
Something I noticed about the Navy's caption of the first kiss on its website: the partner of the lottery-winning sailor is described as that sailor's "fiancée." Progress, indeed.
Another:
Dan Savage wrote: "The growing civil equality of gays and lesbians—from marriage equality in Canada and New York to the end of DADT in the USA—is revealing a lot of things." Among them, just how non-existent a threat it all was, he says. And I think in retrospect that THIS is what the right was most afraid of. Not that society as they knew if would crumble, or that God would damn everyone. But that things wouldn't change at all. That their story about hellfire and damnation would be revealed for what it was: pure fiction. And that in large measure, their authority (moral or otherwise) would be diminished.
And it is.
From the final two sections of "For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio" by W.H. Auden:
Well, so that is that.
Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes –
Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week –
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted – quite unsuccessfully –
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The poem continues.
(Photo: A Christmas ornament reflects St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City before the lighing of the Christmas tree. By Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images)
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