Category: Awards

Malkin Award Nominee

" I hope that Barack Obama is a failure as a President.

Before you recoil in horror that I could express such a sentiment, allow me to remind you what the pleasant face and smooth rhetoric hide in the case of Barack Obama: they hide a morally depraved and crooked man. A man who, in the midst of a discussion about infants left to die without medical care on an operating table, blithely explained that he was more concerned about the grisly prospect of one abortion doctor second-guessing another abortion doctor (presumably Obama supported eliminating medical malpractice suits in Illinois, and such support was tragically lost to posterity). A man who used his position of authority in the Senate to funnel money forcibly extricated from taxpayers to his wife’s employer, and interests friendly to his Presidential campaign bundlers. A man who has gotten to his position of power by climbing the greasiest and dirtiest ladder in all of politics," –  Leon H. Wolf, Redstate.

Yglesias Award Nominee

"The kinder thing to say is that this was an impressive celebration of left-wing patriotism, the sort of thing this country hasn’t seen on such a scale in years or even decades. In an essay for Time last year, Peter Beinart observed, with some accuracy, that "conservatives tend to see patriotism as an inheritance from a glorious past," while "liberals often see it as the promise of a future that redeems the past." The inaugural concert was all about the latter sort: The patriotism of Seeger and Springsteen; of white Hollywood and the black church; of Gene Robinson and the Gay Men’s Chorus; and of course the Pope of liberal Christianity himself … I won’t say that it was exactly my kind of celebration, but it was the kind of celebration that liberal America has waited an awfully long time to experience. And I would be an ungrateful graduate of many a boyhood Pete Seeger singalong – I know the "radical verses" as well as any Obamaphile – if I didn’t feel happy for my left-of-center countrymen in their hour of long-awaited celebration. You can’t say that they didn’t work awfully hard for it," – Ross Douthat, The Atlantic.

Malkin Award Nominee

"When the rule of men conflicts with the commands of God, the Bible leaves no doubt about where we should stand. That’s why I do not hesitate today in calling on godly Americans to pray that Barack Hussein Obama fail in his efforts to change our country from one anchored on self-governance and constitutional republicanism to one based on the raw and unlimited power of the central state. It would be folly to pray for his success in such an evil campaign. I want Obama to fail because his agenda is 100 percent at odds with God’s," – Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily.

Poseur Alert

"Once the words begin to settle into their circumstance in a sentence and decide to make the most of their predicament, they look around and take notice of their neighbors. They seek out affinities, they adapt to each other, they begin to make adjustments in their appearance to try to blend in with each other better and enhance any resemblance. Pretty soon in the writer’s eyes the words in the sentence are all vibrating and destabilizing themselves: no longer solid and immutable, they start to flutter this way and that in playful receptivity, taking into themselves parts of neighboring words, or shedding parts of themselves into the gutter of the page or screen; and in this process of intimate mutation and transformation, the words swap alphabetary vitals and viscera, tiny bits and dabs of their languagey inner and outer natures; the words intermingle and blend and smear and recompose themselves. They begin to take on a similar typographical physique. The phrasing now feels literally all of a piece. The lonely space of the sentence feels colonized. There’s a sumptuousness, a roundedness, a dimensionality to what has emerged. The sentence feels filled in from end to end; there are no vacant segments along its length, no pockets of unperforming or underperforming verbal matter. The words of the sentence have in fact formed a united community," – novelist Gary Lutz.

Poseur Alert

Bono’s new column is truly dreadful. Drezner is holding a contest:

…read Bono’s column and, in 20 words or less, explain its theme in the comments. Here’s my effort: Did you know that I knew Frank Sinatra?"

I like this entry, even though it broke the 20 word rule:

Not only am I a worldwide star and humanitarian, I am–as of now–a great writer–a point I slam home inside–a great many–em dashes. And abrupt. Sentences. Plus, I still drink in Irish pubs–thus–I am cool. Bono cool.

Shut up and sing, as they say. But his lyrics are just as meaningless. I like my occasional U2 as much as anyone, but the words make no sense at all. Ever.

Malkin Award Nominee

"Unlike her compadres Jagger, Galloway and Livingstone, who all have notorious histories of Communist fellow-traveling, Lennox is not known for far-left or anti-Israel posturing. Indeed, her political activism has thus far mostly consisted of feel-good stuff like singing at the Live 8 concert and generally raising awareness about global poverty. So one wonders what prompts her current, passionate antipathy towards Israel. Maybe it’s something as petty as the 2000 break-up with her Israeli husband, Uri Fruchtmann?" – Jamie Kirchick, Big Hollywood.

Yglesias Award Nominee

"So let’s get this straight: Robert Gates will be the Defense Secretary, we’re ramping up U.S. forces in Afghanistan and providing a reasonable period of time for a hand-off in Iraq, there isn’t going to be a windfall oil profits tax or income tax hike but there is going to be a huge set of business tax cuts – and Rick Warren is giving the invocation at the Inauguration. Who won in November? I’m sure there will be times during the next four years when Obama administration’s decisions on issues (e.g. judicial appointments) have conservatives banging their heads against the wall, bemoaning the fact that John McCain wasn’t elected. But so far it’s hard to imagine McCain would have been doing more than the incoming Obama team seems to be proposing  — and with as much chance of success –to further some key center-Right policy aims," – Jennifer Rubin.