"We’re at a tipping point here. We have to do something to favor the new technologies and send a message to American consumers that gasoline prices are going to be systematically higher. A gas tax is a statement from the government that this is an issue of national security and we’re going to do something about it," – Mike Jackson, chief executive officer of AutoNation Inc., at the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit. (For a glossary on the various awards given annually by this blog, click here. And send nominees in!)
Category: Awards
Poseur Alert
"In the canon of great American duos, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo Рbetter known as hip-hop’s paragons of icy minimalism, the Neptunes Рrank somewhere between Laurel & Hardy and Hall & Oates," РSean Fennessey, Pitchfork Media.
Poseur Alert
"Soccer is the perfect game for the post-modern world. It’s the quintessential expression of the nihilism that prevails in many cultures, which doubtlessly accounts for its wild popularity in Europe," – Frank Cannon and Richard Lessner in the Weekly Standard. Alex Massie roasts these tossers here.
Poseur Alert
"It’s a bizarre phenomenon, the blogosphere. It radiates democracy’s dream of full participation but practices democracy’s nightmare of populist crudity, character-assassination, and emotional stupefaction. It’s hard fascism with a Microsoft face," – Lee Siegel, TNR. Not soft fascism with a Mac face?
Poseur Alert
"Before one can go further, mention must be made of her body – the most amazing feat of engineering since the Golden Gate Bridge. When she unveiled it, you couldn’t take your eyes off it – not as a thing of beauty but as an object of sheer, sinewy significance," – Lina Das, Daily Mail.
Cohen’s Yglesias Award
A reader objects:
Richard Cohen deserves no Yglesias award. Richard Cohen is upset because Stephen Colbert violated the only commandment that both the Washington Post and Fox News currently obey (for different reasons, mind you): thou shalt always be sycophantic before the Executive Branch of the United States. If you think Richard Cohen was offending his base, you misunderstand his base – it is not those who oppose George Bush unreflexively, it is his editor at the Post, the rest of the MSM, and his other political cronies and sources that serve to buttress the career of (in my opinion) such a tawdry writer and thinker.
Update: another reader is kinder:
I disagree with your reader about Cohen being "tawdry". He is, in fact, one of my favorites. But your reader was correct in this important respect: Cohen was, this time, a mile wide of the mark.
Von Hoffmann Award Nominee
"Michael Hiltzik’s Golden State blog is doing him and his employer, the LA Times, proud. Smart, tough work from the newspaper’s best columnist. He’s a absolute natural in this medium," – Dan Gillmor, on his blog, last November. Gillmor recently gave the Hearst New Media Lecture at Columbia University.
(For a glossary of this blog’s awards, click here.)
Malkin Award Nominee
"She strikes me as the kind of woman who would wear one of those suicide vests. You know, walk into the, try and sneak into the Green Zone … She cooked with them, lived with them … She may be carrying Habib’s baby at this point," – Bernard McGuirk, Don Imus’ executive producer, Thursday morning, on the just-released American captive, Jill Carroll.
(For a glossary of various awards given by this blog, click here.)
Moore Award Nominee
"But although Gitlin assumes in The Intellectuals and the Flag that it was natural to feel solidarity on that occasion [9/11] on the basis of a common American identity, he could have felt solidarity on any number of bases Рas a New Yorker, as a human being, as a secularist or as an anti-imperialist, to name just a few. Each mode implies a different form of politics, a different way of looking at the problem, and hence a different way of thinking about how to respond. The first, for example, might very well imply solidarity not only vis-à-vis Al Qaeda but vis-à-vis Texas oilmen whose view of compact, energy-efficient cities like New York is not much more benign," РDaniel Lazare, the Nation.
(For a glossary of this blog’s various awards, click here.)
Poseur Alert
"I’m talking to Basil Walter, the architect who seven years ago started designing the space for the Vanity Fair party. For the dinner he has used cherrywood panels to create walls in which are embedded 13 TVs so that 160 dinner guests can watch the awards. We just finished dining on burrata with a salad of red and yellow tomatoes (which at our table Aaron Sorkin has been eating off Maureen Dowd’s plate since quickly clearing his), New York strip steak, thyme-crusted tuna or buttered squash ravioli, and apple tart with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce. In a few minutes the party will begin.
As Basil walks me through the transformed parking lot, he explains what I see:
As the dinner comes to an end there’s a drape that opens straight into a vestibule made of topiary where there is a cigar bar. The lounge is 7000 square feet, dotted throughout by 17 TVs, and beginning with a large open area that doubles as a dance floor. The main feature of the space is an undulating ceiling like the interior of a cave. It has lights above (designed by Patrick Woodroffe) and couches all around — a warm and cozy place to spend the rest of the evening after the Oscars.
He forgot to mention the carpet — soft enough for barefeet, as Laurie David and I found out, having quickly shed our high heels." – Arianna Huffington – who else? – HuffPost today.
The Dish 