Andrew Sullivan Award Nominee For Absurdity In Awards Nominations
Am I reading this right? Andrew Sullivan wants to draw attention to the extremism of David Duke by comparing him to Michelle Malkin?
If this isn’t evidence he should retire the whole “awards” schtick, I don’t know what is.
If this isn’t evidence that you need to relax a bit when you read blogs, I don’t know what is.
— Grunthos · Feb 2, 04:46 PM · #
Come on! Although it often falls flat, I usually enjoy that awards shtick. Sullivan is NOT equating Duke to Malkin. He’s nominating the Duke passage he quoted to his Malkin Award. Here is how Sullivan describes the Malkin Award:
“The Malkin Award – named after blogger, Michelle Malkin – is for shrill, hyperbolic, divisive and intemperate right-wing rhetoric. Ann Coulter is ineligible – to give others a chance.”
Sullivan has often written about the rationale of those awards. Except for the Yglesias Award, which is meant as a “hats off” gesture, his award shtick is to poke fun at overblown rhetoric commonly found in the web. The passages he choses as “nominees” are quite frequently right on the money. That is, the quoted lines themselves succeed in poking fun and deflate the author of the lines.
And here is how he describes his other awards:
“The Hewitt Award – named after the absurd partisan fanatic, Hugh Hewitt, is given for the most egregious attempts to label Barack Obama as un-American, alien, treasonous, and far out of the mainstream of American life and politics.
The Moore Award – named after film-maker, Michael Moore – is for divisive, bitter and intemperate left-wing rhetoric.
The Poseur Alert is awarded for passages of prose that stand out for pretension, vanity and really bad writing designed to look like profundity.
The Yglesias Award is for writers, politicians, columnists or pundits who actually criticize their own side, make enemies among political allies, and generally risk something for the sake of saying what they believe.
The Von Hoffmann Award This award is given for stunningly wrong political, social and cultural predictions.”
— Kolya · Feb 2, 05:26 PM · #
I agree. This is unfair to David Duke.
— Ryan · Feb 2, 06:06 PM · #
Does the text on the main page (as opposed to the RSS feed) come in all center-justified for anyone else? It’s kind of distracting.
— Freddie · Feb 2, 07:57 PM · #
I’m actually closer to a pundendum than a ball-sack.
— David Duke's Scrotum · Feb 2, 09:24 PM · #
I usually enjoy AS’s awards, but this was really a stretch. The Michelle Malkin award is usually used to expose really hack partisanship from someone on the right. Citing to David Duke is just absurd.
My American Scene is loading center justified as well. It is hard to read, unless you try to pretend that the writer is doing a haiku. This sometimes works for Reihan’s posts.
— wph · Feb 2, 11:33 PM · #
In what browsers are people getting the center-justified thing?
— Matt Frost · Feb 3, 03:41 AM · #
I think it may only be that way on older versions of IE Matt…. It’s like that on the public PCs at school.
— Freddie · Feb 3, 05:01 AM · #
It’s not happening in Google Chrome.
— John Schwenkler · Feb 3, 05:54 AM · #
I think it is funny that anyone still reads Sullivan. His whole “I’m a conservative, but I don’t actually believe in anything conservatives do” shtick was tired years ago.
— Steven · Feb 3, 03:30 PM · #
As last year progressed it became increasingly difficult to separate the ‘Moore Award Nominees’ from Sullivan’s regular posting.
— john h · Feb 3, 05:42 PM · #
Everything is center justified in IE 6 SP3 for me. It started about a week ago, maybe a little more.
— cyrus · Feb 3, 08:32 PM · #
rachel maddow got it right last night when she said david duke calling michael steele a racist is like… david duke calling michael steele a racist. you can’t top it.
sullivan’s awards schtick functions like his view from your room schtick or mental health break schtick. they promote familiarity. which is why readership on his blog is what 1000 times what it is on this blog?
— rst · Feb 3, 11:34 PM · #
rst-
The only time familiarity is scarce around here is when Sullivan readers swarm and release all their deferred commenting.
— Matt Frost · Feb 4, 03:11 AM · #
Recently everything here has been center-justified for me, too — Internet Explorer — and I agree that it’s really distracting.
— Jim · Feb 4, 04:49 PM · #