by Patrick Appel
Malkin Award: Running a strong second, with around 1,000 votes to his name, is South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. His remark about people who receive government aid:
“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better."
Mental Health Break Of The Year: "Dogs Are Awesome Too" is a fantastic runner-up:
Yglesias Award: In second place, and my vote for Yglesias Award of the year, is Jim Manzi's Mark Levin take down:
"There are many reasons to write a book. One view is that a book is just another consumer product, and if people want to buy jalapeno-and-oyster flavored ice cream, then companies will sell it to them. If the point of Liberty and Tyranny was to sell a lot of copies, it was obviously an excellent book. Further, despite what intellectuals will often claim, most people (including me) don’t really want their assumptions challenged most of the time (e.g., the most intense readers of automobile ads are people who have just bought the advertised car, because they want to validate their already-made decision). I get that people often want comfort food when they read. Fair enough. But if you’re someone who read this book in order to help you form an honest opinion about global warming, then you were suckered. Liberty and Tyranny does not present a reasoned overview of the global warming debate; it doesn’t even present a reasoned argument for a specific point of view, other than that of willful ignorance. This section of the book is an almost perfect example of epistemic closure."
This striking picture of a Palestinian girl at a beach by Getty's Uriel Sinai finished in second. The photo's caption:
An Israeli woman rubs sunscreen on a Palestinian girl from the West Bank village of Jahalin as they spend the day at the beach on August 2, 2010 in Bat Yam, Israel. A group of Israeli women organize a weekly visit for Palestinian children from all over the West Bank to the the Israeli seaside, for most of the children this is the first time they get to the beach.
Moore Award: With over a 1,000 votes, Keith Olbermann takes the silver for this gem:
"In short, in Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees"
Kamel Makhloufi visually stunning depiction of deaths in Iraq narrowly missed first place:
Each pixel represents a death: U.S. soldiers blue, Iraqi troops green, enemies grey, and civilians orange.
Hewitt Award: Tom Tancredo's anti-Obama screed is a deserving second:
"The greatest threat to the United States today, the greatest threat to our liberty, the greatest threat to the Constitution of the United States, the greatest threat to our way of life; everything we believe in. The greatest threat to the country that our founding fathers put together is the man that's sitting in the White House today."
Shut Up And Sing: Justin Bieber's "Pray" narrowly beat New Kids On The Block, Sting, Madonna, and Michael Jackson for second place:
Von Hoffmann Award: Hugh Hewitt put up a good fight, but Andrew Sullivan –who will be back from vacation next week – was runner-up for the most wrong prediction of the year. The comment that earned him this honor:
"Even if Coakley wins – and my guess is she'll lose by a double digit margin – the [health care] bill is dead. The most Obama can hope for is a minimalist alternative that simply mandates that insurance companies accept people with pre-existing conditions and are barred from ejecting patients when they feel like it. That's all he can get now – and even that will be a stretch."
Mark Levin's interview with Sarah Palin couldn't best Bristol and the Situation but it still earned a respectable number of votes. I had the same reaction as this reader while listening to it:
I now understand, for the first time, why Sarah Palin is popular and why she is a real threat.
The Dish 