Category: Awards

The Final Stretch

The voting is going on for the finalists carefully selected by our blue-ribbon panel. If you haven't voted yet, just pick a category and test your judgment against the current totals. Click the following links to vote for the 2009 Malkin Award, Moore Award, Yglesias Award, Poseur Alert, Hewitt Award and Mental Health Break Of The Year. Also – for the first time – Face Of The Year and Cool Ad Of The Year are on the ballot. Among the various contenders for the prizes, a roster of the big names in political and cultural discourse: Gordon Liddy, Rush Limbaugh, Gore Vidal, Erick Erickson, Michael Goldfarb, James Wolcott, Lee Siegel, Leon Wieseltier, Diane Sawyer, Katha Pollitt, Newt Gingrich … and Michelle Malkin.

We're giving readers a week to pick the winners for these prestigious prizes. The winners will be announced this time next week. You picked many of the entries; we just marshalled the very best/worst for your selection.

Award glossary here. Vote early. Vote often. 

The Daily Dish Awards Glossary

Click here to vote for the 2009 Malkin Award!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Poseur Alert!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Yglesias Award!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Moore Award!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Hewitt Award!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Cool Ad Of The Year!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Face Of The Year!

Click here to vote for the 2009 Mental Health Break Of The Year!

Mental Health Break Of The Year: Honorable Mentions

Selecting ten finalists for the best MHB was perhaps the most difficult of the award categories, given the nearly 365 entries to choose from across a variety of themes and sensibilities. So, to keep the fun going, we picked out another ten to watch again. Enjoy:

Trippy Mary Poppins

Shifting Faces

Sleepyhead

Time-Lapse Haircuts

Two-Legged Dog

Reggie Watts

Movie Titles

Beat-Boxing Harmonica

Worst Music Video

Dancing Mom Remix

Hewitt Award Dissent

A reader writes:

As much as I usually agree with your interpretations of public affairs, I feel the need to tell you that your reading of Jack Pitney's quote that you nominated for a Hewitt Award is completely misguided.  As an avowed progressive who took time off from college to work for Barack Obama's Presidential campaign, I nonetheless value the opportunity to learn from professor Pitney at Claremont McKenna College.  Regardless of his personal political leanings, he is first and foremost concerned with political tactics.  I can tell you, without  a doubt, that when he said Obama's statement was a gaffe, he wasn't saying that senior citizens should be offended, he was simply predicting that they would.  I think there is a distinct difference between foreseeing unsophisticated responses from voters and driving them in that direction.  What Pitney said did not venture into the latter category, and I believe including him in your list of Hewitt Award finalists is, in some small, meaningless way, an undeserved attack on his character.  I hope that if you agree you will remove his name from the running.

Pitney's quote reprinted after the jump:

The text of the president’s speech to schoolchildren is largely inoffensive. But it contains at least one political gaffe. If you quit school, he tells the kids, “You’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.” Among Americans between ages 65 and 74, 20.7 percent quit before finishing high school. For those 75 and older, the figure is 27.4 percent. The latter group includes some who quit in order to enlist in the armed forces after Pearl Harbor. And yet the president seems to be calling them unpatriotic.

Pitney is in a distant fourth place at the moment, so readers seem to agree that it was comparatively inoffensive.

Voting For Second Place, Ctd

A reader writes:

I intended to object to this last year, when that video of the soldier and his dogs won for “Mental Health Break” for 2008. By definition, that video was NOT a “mental health break” – in fact, it was quite heartbreaking to see such a stark reminder of the human (and canine) cost of the war.  The name “mental health break” implies that whatever I’m about to watch is going to take my mind off of those things in the political sphere than anger, energize or upset us in some way.  The video last year was devastating in a way, as were all of those videos of the kids and soldiers reuniting.  That’s not a “break” by any definition of the term, but rather is perhaps the best reminder we have of why the rush to war in Iraq was one of the most colossal mistakes in judgment in recent memory.  Those videos make me sad and angry.  Silly videos of random things that allow me to shut my brain off for 3-5 minutes and appreciate nothing more than human creativity – that’s what this award should represent. 

Von Hoffmann Award Nominee II

Another good friend (Bob Wright), another Dishmas gift:

One hallmark of spiritual maturity is unity of internal purpose—the subordination of the mind's unruly impulses to an overarching goal. On the golf course, as I've said, this involves a kind of micro-discipline: imperviousness to distraction on a second-by-second basis. But beyond the golf course, it involves a kind of macro-discipline; the structure of your everyday life has to serve the larger purpose of perfecting your game. "I like Buddhism because it's a whole way of being and living," Tiger [Woods] said in the Sports Illustrated article. "It's based on discipline and respect and personal responsibility."

Discipline, respect, responsibility—now there's a guy who could become a major-league role model!