Swift Reads 4: Weblog Awards Discoveries

Some, like Pia Zadora and Milli Vanilli, achieve recognition in their lifetimes, while others, like President Bush and, apparently, this modest blogger, will only be judged by history when "we'll all be dead." But as I come to terms with the likelihood of being a three-time Weblog Award loser, I prefer to think of the positive aspects of this emotionally wrenching experience: the new readers who graced my blog with their presence and the new blogs I discovered.

Although I am grateful for every one of the new readers who visited this blog in the last week, I am especially surprised and delighted with one new reader in particular who finally decided to drop in. For years she adamantly refused to read my blog or even mention my pseudonym even as she said the most scurrilous things about me. I'm not sure why she resisted coming here for so long unless it was because she was afraid that my writing was so persuasive and reasonable it would shake the very foundations of her carefully constructed world view and set off a dangerous logic loop in her brain that would cause it to short circuit. For many years she remained steadfast in her refusal to let one word of my prose sully the purity of her thoughts. But perhaps the evenings in Madison, Wisconsin, are particularly cold and lonely this time of year and perhaps she had had one too many glasses of wine by 5:30 p.m. on January 8, 2009. And so that evening, as a bitter wind howled outside her window, she checked her Sitemeter to see how many visitors Instapundit had sent her that day and saw yet another link from my site, just sitting there enticingly, beckoning, whispering, "Click me. Click me." Imagine the inner turmoil she experienced as she tried with all her might to resist clicking on the link. Must. Not. Read. Jon. Swift. Then her will power failed her and she could no longer resist, and throwing all caution to the wind, she finally succumbed and clicked that fateful link that whisked her away to my blog. And soon she was reading, feeling that first rush as my prose entered her veins. Who knew it could be so good, she said to herself as one by one the words swept away the cobwebs and the dust in the attic of her cranium, cluttered with crazy theories about breast-bearing feminists, the plots of unfinished books that bored her, deep insights into American Idol episodes and even that dark corner where Bill Clinton waits, crouched lasciviously, ready to betray her all over again. And imagine that moment when her giddy anticipation was finally fulfilled and she came to the first mention of her name, right there, right there in black and light brown, her name in all its glory!: Ann Althouse. So welcome to my modest blog, Ms. Althouse. I wish you had told me you were coming and I would have tidied up the place a bit. I hope you finally found what you were looking for.

But while it was exciting to have Ms. Althouse finally drop by after so many years, it was even more thrilling to discover so many wonderful blogs I had never read before that were nominated for Weblog Awards. And so I thought I would share some of my discoveries with you. Please go and check them out. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

NuVision for a New Day
The diary of a lovely blind African-American woman who sees things others don't see. In this post she talks about being flirted with at a friend's birthday party and confesses, "I can be a little shallow at times when it comes to looks." By the way, are we still allowed to use the word "blind"?

Grace the Spot
A very witty blog that was an unfortunate casualty of the Wonkette juggernaut. Here she talks about the importance of being boring in a relationship. I'm beginning to suspect, however, I may have been mistaken about its being a Lebanese blog.

Army of Dude
A military blog by an Iraq veteran. In a recent five-part series, he tries to describe to those who haven't been there what it's like to hear, see, smell, touch and taste combat in Iraq.

F--- You, Penguin
Who knew that existential despair could be so irresistibly, so heart-breakingly cute?

Curious Expedition
A beautifully designed travelogue that describes such wonders as the remarkably bear-free forests of Carpathia and other places you are glad you've never been to.

Medium Large
The blog of a comic strip artist, who in the helpful animation in this post, explains "What Is Comedy?"

Ashin Mettacara
This Burmese blog has a lot of posts about people being sentenced to long prison terms there. Apparently, they are very tough on crime in Burma.

Blabbeando
I owe a big thanks to this blog, which provided me with the very useful information that plucking your eyebrows is a sign of homosexual tendencies, which has saved me from some possibly embarrassing misunderstandings.

Buckdog
Reading this Canadian blog I learned about subtle racist backlashes in Saskatchewan and that Canada actually has its own unique culture, something I was not aware of before.

Foodie at Fifteen (Now 16)
A food blog by a high school student who really should be spending less time in the kitchen fantasizing about pork bellies and more time playing video games like others his age.

Dr. Wizard's Advice for College Students
This blog explains the world in ways even a student on a rugby scholarship can understand. Here, for example, we learn why drugs are bad through illustrative metaphors.

Madam Miaow says…
Although this is a culture blog with a decidedly left-wing slant, the writer is from "across the pond," as she charmingly puts it, where they don't have as much access to fair and balanced media as we do, and she's not afraid to take on her fellow lefties on occasion.

And if that is not enough reading for you, then check out some of the other worthy blogs that were also nominated for Best Humor Blog (i am bossy, The Bloggess, YesButNoButYes, IMAO, Mattress Police, Mother May I Sleep With Treacher, The Comics Curmudgeon, My Mom is a Fob, and Boobs, Injuries and Dr Pepper), even though some of them could not resist dragging my pseudonym through the mud in their desperation to win. I forgive you all. And I even forgive you, Comics Curmudgeon, despite the fact that you took away my dream and crumpled it up like that piece of looseleaf notebook paper with the love poem to the cheerleader written on it, laughing tauntingly as you swept the long blonde hair from your face and tossed the wad of paper disgustedly into the garbage can.

Update: A coalition of two conservative blogs, who have apparently forgotten Ronald Reagan's Eleventh Commandment, is trying to wrest second place from me armed with an endorsement from The Corner. Don't let that happen. Show them that we conservatives have learned that negative campaigning doesn't work anymore. Vote for Jon Swift here.

Update 2: Ann Althouse responds by email, "That post was awfully needy. Not that I read more than the parts right around my name," and later taunts me on her site: "No wonder he's losing the Weblog Awards voting. Man up, Swift, you pussy."

Update 3: As voting winds to a close I try to impart some valuable lessons to my fellow conservatives: "If we learned anything from the last two elections, it’s that negative campaigning doesn’t work anymore. Conservatives need to come up with a positive vision for the future if we are going to win again, which is what I have tried to do. I think the voters see that my blog is about change and the future and not about just tearing my opponents down and that is why I appear to be trouncing you."

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Epic Fail

Sixth place. Sixth place! Have I not done enough for you people? Have I not done enough reporting for you, at least by Michelle Malkin's standards? Are my posts not long enough? Have I not posted semi-regularly enough? Has my conservatism not been reasonable enough? Have I not not read enough books for you? Is it really too much to ask, to ask you to Go Here and push a little button to vote for me once a day for a week? How hard could that be? And who is this Comics Curmudgeon? The answer to that last question is a very sad tale that involves not only my impending ignoble defeat but also larger issues and much more vulnerable blogs than this one who have unjustly suffered in this year's Weblog Awards.

When President Bush won two elections it restored my faith in the sanctity of the voting process. Then I met the Weblog Awards. Last year, my category was used as the staging ground for a pissing contest between liberals and conservatives, not unlike Berlin in 1948, while the other blogs in the category, including this one, were caught in the crossfire. This year the Weblog Awards have been taken hostage by a lopsided interliberal battle with equally tragic results. In the end one liberal blog has taken ceiling cat-like powers upon itself to determine who shall win and who shall lose, turning what was supposed to be a friendly competition into a mud-slinging contest so unlike the way campaigns are usually conducted in America. And while this one liberal blog stomps around the Weblog Awards like a clumsy giant, the other major liberal blogs remain pathetically silent. Well, if they won't speak up, then I will: J'accuse, Wonkette!

Wonkette's original goal was to defeat The Confluence, which was winning in its category of Best Liberal Blog. The Confluence is a PUMA blog, which are blogs written by bitter and angry former Hillary Clinton supporters who are still getting used to the idea of having a black man in the White House. (PUMA either stands for "Party Unity My Ass" or "People Unable to Mitigate their Anger," depending on whom you ask.) Now I understand that there are many people who disagree with PUMAs, but haven't they suffered enough? Hillary lost and one day they are going to figure that out. I think we should give them a little time to adjust. Just as my grandmother learned to say "colored," they'll come around. And who knows, maybe Larry Johnson at No Quarter will find that "whitey" tape he seems to have mislaid, at least in time for the next election. Who will be laughing then?

But as Wonkette soared past the other blogs in its category, it became tipsy with power and began targeting other PUMA blogs in other categories and it didn't care who got hurt in the process. Soon other categories had its carpets dirtied by Wonkette's mud-splattered wretches. In Best New Blog, the Wonketeers randomly selected a blog, ~synthesis~, which I must say is a very fine blog, and got their legions of readers, who apparently have a lot of time on their hands, to vote for it, in order to defeat UppityWoman08, but at the same time making it virtually impossible for other blogs to win. Can you imagine how these young blogs must have felt, still gaining their sea-legs in the blogosphere, happy to be recognized for their efforts with a nomination, only to have their hopes dashed and get a sad lesson in nasty blogospheric politics? My friend Blue Gal tells me, for example, that Grace the Spot, which I think is a Lebanese blog, is a very deserving blog in that category, and it was doing quite well until Wonkette struck. Grace is understandably not happy with what she called Wonkette's "spiteful shenanigans."

In Best Small Blog, by chance, Wonkette selected Rumproast, which happens to be a great blog that I have also endorsed, but does he really want to win that way? OK, maybe he does, but there are other fine blogs in that category who now don't even have a fighting chance, such as Woman Honor Thyself, who is on my blogroll and has always been very supportive and sweet to me though I know some of my liberal readers (yes, believe it or not, I do have a few!) might disagree with her politics, just as I disagree with theirs but tolerate them anyway because that's the kind of blogger I am.

Because, like Obama, I try to be friendly with those I disagree with, it is especially painful when bloggers I thought were my friends (in an Internet sort of way) send out their vast hordes to humiliate me and other bloggers who never did anything to deserve such treatment. Yes, even this modest blogger who has always considered Wonkette to be a friend of this blog, most recently when they contributed to my year-end roundup, has been a victim of their tactics. Et tu, Wonkette? When they endorsed Comics Curmudgeon, who seems to be nice enough, as Obama might say, though somewhat irascible, in the Best Humor Blog category just because he happens to write for them occasionally, it seemed like an eerie repeat of what happened last year. As I wrote to them, "You was my brother, Wonkette, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You broke my heart! Get the butter!" Sure, I regretted that last Brando movie reference as going over the line, but in my defense, I was angry and writing in haste.

I don't blame the bloggers of indeterminate sex at Wonkette for getting a little carried away and pushing around a few little blogs. I've been tempted to push around a few little blogs myself. And they must be feeling just a little embarrassed because they are now telling their minions to stop voting for them and vote for another liberal blog. So which one do they choose? Talking Points Memo, which hardly needs more recognition.

Even John Yon and John Bolton who once believed passionately in the Unitary Executive Theory of presidential power, are suddenly having second thoughts about whether it's a good idea to give so much power to one man, now that they have had about eight years to think about it. Wonkette needs to learn to wield its power with the same discretion that President Bush has shown. And someone has to speak up and say that in America voting is sacred and shouldn't be allowed to be hijacked by an unruly mob. Imagine if that happened in a Presidential election. I must say the reaction of the other major liberal blogs in Wonkette's category has been pitiful. But even if they are too wimpy to fight for themselves and have abdicated to Wonkette in their own category, why don't they use their vast powers of linkage to help other worthy blogs in other categories and demonstrate to Wonkette by example that power can also be used for good? Perhaps the problem is that some of them are really not that much different from Wonkette when it comes to power wielding.

Sadly, I don't have vast powers of linkage but nevertheless I will do what I can to get my lazy, apathetic, good-for-nothing readers to help out a few other blogs that would just like to emerge from this competition with a shred of their dignity intact. For a full slate of my endorsements go here, but please give the blogs below your special attention (as in my full slate of endorsements, if they contributed to my year-end roundup, links go to the post they considered to be their best of the year):

Best Hidden Gem: Pajama Pundit is doing well and is certainly deserving, but Zuky could use your help. Pajama Pundit is also competing in Best Political Coverage, where it is doing less well, as is Foreign Policy Watch and they could both use some votes.

Best Up and Coming Blog: Both Simply Left Behind and Connecting.the.Dots are good friends of this blog and both have been sadly left behind so far.

Best Midsize Blog: The Sideshow is way behind despite all that she has done for the blogosphere, you bunch of ingrates. And Scholars and Rogues deserves more votes as well.

Best Large Blog: Although several great blogs from my blogroll, including the incomparable Miss Cellania, are competing, skippy the bush kangaroo has done more for the blogosphere than any blog around and he is being trounced by Jammie Wearing Fool, who was quite rude to me when I so graciously linked to him.

Best Very Large Blog: Bitch Ph.D. is one of the few blogs I have endorsed who is actually winning so please send some votes her way so that I can claim it was all because of me.

Best Middle East or Africa: Informed Comment is in third place. C'mon.

Best UK Blog: Olly's Onions' vote total is in the two digits. I am embarrassed for all of you.

Best Technology Blog: Wetmachine deserves to make a dignified showing amidst the megablogs.

Best Video Blog: Hot Potato Mash is near the bottom despite having created all of these amazing videos.

Best Diarist: Are you going to allow Blue Girl to be Dooced?

Best Literature Blog: Diary of a Heretic, the only blogger in the category whose blog consists of her fiction, and Maud Newton are way behind a guy who writes science fiction. Is science fiction even literature?

Best Culture Blog: Barataria is second to last and I am hanging my head in shame.

Best Science Blog: Greg Laden is dead last. Now I am angry.

Best LGBT Blog: Susie Bright is holding up the rear, which would probably have a different meaning on her blog. Help her out.

Best Individual Blogger: Driftglass is in third place and needs a good push to get into first and Field Negro should be doing much better.

Best Liberal Blog: Shakesville has always been very kind about letting me crosspost there and expose its liberal readers to new ideas and Blue Gal has done yeoman's work for smaller blogs in the blogosphere. Both deserve to lose to Wonkette in style.

And, finally, because miracles do happen, vote for Jon Swift here.

Update: Wonkette has now endorsed this modest blog in a fiendishly clever attempt to subvert my righteous indignation.

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Jon Swift Nominated for a 2008 Weblog Award for Best Humor Blog

The nominations for the 2008 Weblog Awards have just been released, and I am proud and humble to discover that this modest blog is among the nominees this year for Best Humor Blog. This is the third year in a row that this blog has been nominated in this category, and like three-time Grammy Album of the Year nominee Kanye West, I feel it’s just an honor to be nominated whether I win or not. While a third loss in a row would be humiliating and personally devastating, it’s especially gratifying to be nominated in a category that includes such fine nominees as i am bossy, The Bloggess, YesButNoButYes, IMAO, Mattress Police, Mother May I Sleep With Treacher, The Comics Curmudgeon, My Mom is a Fob, Boobs, Injuries and Dr Pepper. Let me extend my congratulations to all of you. Your year will come some day, I’m sure.

This nomination is especially surprising because I left a message with Gov. Rod Blagojevich that while I know a Weblog Award is an “f---ing valuable thing,” I could not promise to do anything in exchange for a nomination. I can’t vouch for the other nominees, but I’m sure they did the right thing as well and I would hate to think their nominations are tainted by their silence.

This is a time of crisis for humor blogs. The next four years promise to be the unfunniest in our nation’s history. I am sure some people may be thinking that as a three-time nominee, this blog has too much experience, and it would be too risky to put the Weblog Award in the hands of a blog knows what it is doing when America is clamoring for a fresh young face. But while this blog has been around since way back when Barack Obama was just a freshman senator from Illinois, what this blog is really about is change. Not the scary kind of change, but reasonable change. The kind of change where the more things change, the more they stay the same, which is the kind of change you can believe in. So I hope you will keep that in mind when voting begins on Monday, January 5 in what is probably the most important Weblog Awards of our lifetimes. You can vote here once a day until January 12.

While much of the nation’s focus will understandably be on the competition for Best Humor Blog, there are also other categories, and I want to congratulate those nominees as well. I am especially pleased to note the nominees that are on my esteemed blogroll and I hope you will consider giving them your vote. Here are my endorsements in the other categories, which you can print out and take into the voting booth with you. Many of them contributed to my compilation of the best posts of the year. I urge you to visit them all. If I’ve left off anyone on my blogroll who is nominated, please let me know. And if you are wondering how on earth this blog got nominated, "The Best of Jon Swift" may, or may not, give you a clue. Update: The links below now go to the piece each blogger nominated as his or her best of the year for my roundup, if they submitted one, so that you can see the bloggers at their best. Each category link goes to the poll for that category. You can vote once a day until January 12.

Best Individual Blogger
field negro
Driftglass
Lindsay Beyerstein - Majikthise

Best Liberal Blog
Shakesville
Hullabaloo
Sadly, No!
Blue Gal
Orcinus
Wonkette
Taylor Marsh
Crooks & Liars
Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory

Best Conservative Blog
Right Wing Nut House

Best Political Coverage
Pajama Pundit
Foreign Policy Watch

Best LGBT Blog
The Bilerico Project
Pam's House Blend
Susie Bright's Journal

Best Science Blog
Greg Laden
Pharyngula


Best Culture Blog
Barataria

Best Literature Blog
Diary of a Heretic
Maud Newton

Best Diarist
Blue Girl in a Red State (Blue State)

Best Video Blog
Hot Potato Mash

Best Technology Blog
Wetmachine

Best Canadian Blog
We Move to Canada
Abandoned Stuff

Best UK Blog
Olly's Onions

Best Middle East or Africa Blog
Informed Comment

Best Major Blog (Authority over 1001)
The Moderate Voice
TBogg
Balloon Juice

Best Very Large Blog (Authority between 501 and 1,000)
Bitch PHD
Pandagon
Jesus General

Best Large Blog (Authority between 301 and 500)
Miss Cellania
Bloggasm
skippy the bush kangaroo
The Agonist
Fafblog
Fausta's Blog

Best Midsize Blog (Authority between 201 and 300)
Betsy's Page
The Sideshow
Scholars And Rogues
Suburban Guerilla
Hoyden About Town

Best Small Blog (Authority between 101 and 200)
Woman Honor Thyself
Rumproast

Best Up And Coming Blog (Authority between 51 and 100)
Simply Left Behind
Connecting the Dots

Best Hidden Gem (Authority between 0 and 50)
Zuky
The Pajama Pundit

Whither Jon Swift?

Although I have often said that a conservative never apologizes, I'm afraid I must break this rule on this one occasion to apologize to my dear readers for my recent unexplained absence from the blogosphere. I hope you will find it in your hearts to forgive me for worrying some of you needlessly.

I started this modest blog more than two years ago for the same reason everyone starts a blog: to become fabulously wealthy. But I also intended it to be a voice for the rarely heard reasonable conservative point of view. Recently, however, I had begun to wonder if I am entirely too reasonable for the blogosphere. It seems that the blogosphere has become more unreasonable than ever and I began to despair that I was having any effect at all.

On the left side of the blogosphere Obama partisans and Hillary partisans are at each other's throats, saying things about each other that are even nastier than the things they used to say about conservatives back when they used to attack conservatives instead of each other. (Although it could have been much worse if Chris Dodd had not dropped out of the race since his supporters were the most vicious of all.) I have always prided myself on having friends on both sides of the aisle despite the fact that I believe some of my friends are going to Hell or might be better off in Guantanamo. But it seems that many of my liberal friends cannot even be friendly to each other anymore. I wish these Obama and Hillary fanatics would stop fighting for just a moment and face the facts: Both of your candidates would be equally dangerous for the country! So what are you fighting about?

On the right side of the blogosphere the situation is no better. Some conservative bloggers feel no compunction about attacking our President in a manner that we all once agreed was tantamount to treason or at least was a sign of derangement. And now many conservatives now seem to be suffering from an acute case of McCain Derangement Syndrome because he has not pandered to us sufficiently by reversing himself on enough issues quickly enough. Of course, like most conservatives I dislike McCain, too, but there is still plenty of time for him to back down from all of his principles and completely capitulate to our agenda. One of the ways the right side of the blogosphere has always been different from the left is that we always defend Republicans no matter how incompetent, hypocritical or ideologically questionable they are and save our attacks for the other side or blame the liberal media. Conservative bloggers have always been dependable water carriers for the Republicans, yet it appears that many bloggers on the right believe they have suddenly developed the ability to think independently. We need to strive much harder to see the good side of being extremely old and out of touch, emotionally unstable and a flip flopper and I'm sure we can all agree that we want to stay in Iraq as long as possible. Do we really want to be like Democrats who believe that it is more important to feel good about the person you are voting for than it is to win? Since when did conservatives believe actually liking a candidate or believing he is fit for office is an appropriate criterion for voting?

Seeing my despair, Mrs. Swift became very worried about me and decided it was time for an intervention. She showed me an article in the New York Times about blogging that worried her. The article likened some bloggers to workers in a sweatshop, which the writer thought was a bad thing, though I was very impressed that some bloggers actually get paid $10 per post! But the article also pointed out that never leaving the computer might actually be bad for one's health. She also mentioned that although our household is doing reasonably well financially with the Google ads from my blog and her three jobs, my blog has not quite been the cash machine the colorful blog brochures had promised. And so she suggested that I take a brief hiatus from the blogosphere to get some perspective and perhaps even look for some ways to supplement our income.

At first, I must say, this extreme deblogification was difficult. I didn't know what to do with myself. I did spend some time on Craigslist looking for other writing opportunities though I was unable to find anything that called for the unique abilities of a reasonable conservative and frankly there is nothing quite so satisfying as getting paid little or nothing for one's work. However, I soon realized that I had a lot more time to do some important things I had been neglecting in my life since I started my blog. I began watching a lot more television and playing more videogames, some of which were quite challenging. I became active in local community issues such as fighting to stop bilingual Esperanto education in our schools instead of forcing Esperantos to learn English. Some days I even went outside of the house and drove to the park to watch people exercising. And most important, I spent some quality time with my daughter Schlafly and my son Spiro, though not actually in the same room since they never seemed to be around the house. But I did have more time to text message them about how they are ruining their lives and how they are so much luckier than I was when I was growing up, which I think has made us closer.

And so what I had intended to be a brief respite stretched on and on. Not only did I stop posting to my blog, I stopped reading my email and other blogs as well and so I had no idea that my disappearance had caused some consternation among my readers. It wasn't until Melissa McEwan of Shakesville cleverly tracked me down and got a message to me that I realized that I had self-indulgently caused some people to bevome concerned about my well-being, which made me feel terrible, like I was Meryl Streep in Kramer vs. Kramer abandoning my blog to Dustin Hoffman to take care of.

I had no idea that some bloggers, worried about my absence, had even organized online search parties to find out what happened to me. In the last few days I have been catching up on some of the speculation about the reasons for my disappearance. ZenYenta worried that something had happened to me but hoped I had gotten a book contract. From your lips to Simon & Schuster's ears, I thought when I read that. Of course, most New York publishing houses are run by liberals and the only publisher I know of that publishes conservative books is Regency, which I believe is one of those fly-by-night vanity presses. Saskboy speculated that my disappearance could be due to "blackmail, or death. It's an international mystery!"

I am still trying to sort though the 3,000 email messages I got during my absence and the hundreds of comments people left on my blog. It will take me a little while to catch up on these messages and reconnect with the issues that are so very important in the blogosphere (though nowhere else, I discovered). I'm still not up to snuff on every time Obama has gotten a date or geographical location wrong, how many times Hillary has slipped racial innuendo into seemingly innocent remarks or campaign ads, or figured out how to spin all of McCain's flaws into virtues, so please bear with me. I feel terrible about all the worry I caused and humbled by the affection you have shown me, so let me thank each and every one of you for your thoughts and good wishes. I must say, however, that Bukko in Australia, has a point: "Don't you people have lives, coming back day after day to a site that any sensible conservative would have given up for dead?"

Unlike some blogs, this blog has not had any great accomplishments to point to like getting someone fired from a job or thrown in jail, so I am genuinely stunned to discover that some people think this blog is important. But I guess if this blog can make even one person's pathetic existence just a little more bearable, then maybe that is enough. In these difficult times people will cling to anything that gives them hope, even a modest little blog. And perhaps I am wrong about being entirely too reasonable for the blogosphere. Maybe the blogosphere needs a reasonable conservative now more than ever.

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