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Old blog record for visits-in-one-month:  44,522
New record:  89,627

Thanks to everyone who stopped by in September-- and brought a friend!  Of course, just 373 more visitors would’ve put me over 90,000, but who’s counting?

Now for the prizes.  Well, just one fake prize-- if you want me to start awarding real prizes, I’m going to have to take blog ads, and before you know it, I’ll just be another corporate shill.  So, then, here we go.  Though the competition was intense, Hugh Hewitt broke away from the pack at the last second to win September’s “I Am the Back End of a Horse” Award with a Sept 30 Weekly Standard essay in which he threatened an “enormous blowback” if the liberal media don’t focus on how orange John Kerry’s face is.  Hewitt opens by noting that brave, intrepid right-wing blogs broke this critical story, but

the morning papers-- except the New York Post-- said not a word. The Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times, and other old media found space to cover the decision of the Crawford, Texas’ Lone Star Iconoclast-- circulation 425-- to endorse John Kerry, but refused to acknowledge a genuine, though bizarre, story that is actually having an impact on the race-- because they collectively don’t think it should be having an impact on the race.

Yep, you heard that right.  The liberal media paid attention when Bush’s hometown paper delivered a long, detailed endorsement of Kerry, but were strangely, suspiciously silent about the color of Kerry’s face!  I demand an investigation!!  Send those left-wing Sun-Times editors to Gitmo!!

It’s very sad and a little bit scary, but this really is what the wingnuts are reduced to.  They’ve lined up behind the most incompetent U.S. President since Garfield lapsed into that coma, they’ve spent four years comparing him to Churchill, Henry V, and Jesus Christ, and now they’re demanding that media coverage of the 2004 election concentrate on the challenger’s appearance-- or else they’ll take down Jim Lehrer just like they did Dan Rather!

For wingnuttery beyond the call of duty and beyond the reach of parody, Hugh Hewitt is September’s Back End of a Horse.  Remember, all prizes must be claimed in person!  And be sure to watch for possible nominees in October!

Posted by on 10/01 at 07:08 AM

  1. Hugh Hewitt? You are picking such easy targets.

    He’s also claiming that Bush was triumphant in last night’s debate.  I think he’s gearing up to sweep this award in October, too.

    Posted by PZ Myers  on  10/01  at  08:50 AM

  2. Michael:

    Thanks for the link to Hewitt’s article.  His being a conservative, of course, undoubtedly damns his soul and renders his bloodline a contamination in our circles

    Posted by  on  10/01  at  08:56 AM

  3. My two cents on the debate, Michael:

    According to a renowned semiotician and psycholinguist I consulted, Kerry’s chances of making his victory in the debate translate into a surge in the polls would be great if one or more of the following conditions were met: 1)if Bush was forced into one or more Freudian slips; 2) if Bush was forced into pronouncing the word “nuclear” as “nukular” at least once; 3) if Bush was forced to repeat a couple of platitutes at least 5 times.

    Now, not only was ONE of those conditions met, they all were:
    1. a) two Freudian slips: one when he said “we looked for Saddam Hussein .. I mean we looked for Osama bin Laden”
    and the other when he said
    b) “wrong war, wrong place, right time” trying to attribute it to Kerry and revealing himself.

    2. by my counts he said “nukular” once, maybe more.

    3) “It’s hard work” and “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time” were repeated more than 5 times, the latter with the Freudian variation in its final appearance.

    Good comments, Michael. I expected you to be more pumped! I am! Let us not forget to circulate widely the Gallup numbers on who won the debate: Kerry won - 53; Bush won - 37, 10% undecided. And those are the *Gallup* numbers!

    Our man did a beautiful job: solid, statesman-like, on the offensive most of the time.

    Excelent point about Australia, JW. Amardeep’s estimates give you a sense of how much Bush lied about Afghanistan. They are probably conservative estimates. (both in comments to Michael’s previous post)

    Dear bloggers, keep up the great work! Let us highlight two great recent wins of the blogosphere: the Ohio Secretary of State going back on a spurious attempt to block new voters by requiring a specific type of paper, and a certain cable network going back on having a partisan, Republican pollster overlooking the post-debate polls. Pressure from the blogosphere. Cyberdemocracy at work.

    Let us get out and win this one. Our man did his part, and I betcha the Bush camp had a pretty sour morning today.

    Many progressive New Orleanians are planning on voting early in the day and driving to Florida to give a hand. If you know anyone who might want to join, have them email me.

    No pasar?°n!

    Posted by  on  10/01  at  08:56 AM

  4. Easy targets?!?  Easy targets???!  PZ, it’s hard work giving out this prize-- it’s hard work reading those essays on those screens, hard work not to get your hands chopped off reaching for the mouse.  Hard work, just like invading Iraq and listening to Perle’s plan for sweeping up the rose petals in downtown Baghdad’s Bush Plaza.  Sweeping up rose petals-- that’s hard work, too.  Really, even to read Hewitt all the way through, I had to venture into World O’ Crap territory-- and that’s hard work!

    Posted by Michael  on  10/01  at  08:56 AM

  5. Hewitt played the Oompa-Loompa song?  Does that make Bush a crazed Willy Wonka?

    Posted by Caleb  on  10/01  at  08:58 AM

  6. Jorge, I know plenty of smart conservatives.  Really smart-- and honest-- conservatives.  Hewitt is not among them.

    And you’ll never hear me talk of “bloodlines” and “contamination.” Let’s leave that to the Malfoy family, shall we?

    Posted by Michael  on  10/01  at  08:59 AM

  7. My favorite part of Hewitt’s rant was the threat that Freepers will cancel their PBS pledges if Lehrer rolls over for Kerry. I mean, I told my PBS outlet it could lump it if they still had Tucker Carlson’s show on next year when they come calling, but I’ve actually been a member for most of my adult life. I can’t imagine that the loss of Freeper pledges would have much of an impact.

    Posted by darrelplant  on  10/01  at  09:05 AM

  8. Sorry about the double posting, but I sent the first one before I was finished.  I wanted to point out that Hewitt actually does not promise a blowback if Kerry’s orange glow paintjob is not a topic on the news.  He promises a blowback if there’s “any detectable bias” on the part of Jim Lehrer.  In fact, he writes, “If Lehrer goes in the tank for Kerry, expect an enormous blowback--as predictable as the one which followed CBS’s foisting of forgeries on the public.” Nothing in the sentence about the citrus-like mien of Kerry.  Sorry.  If you are going to give out awards, at least throw out the Olympic judges from the awards panel.

    Hugs and kisses,
    Jorge

    Posted by  on  10/01  at  09:18 AM

  9. Wait:  I thought PBS was ALREADY an effete, Francophile, eggheaded outfit that no read-blooded American would watch.  How do conservatives “blow back” against something they already profess to ignore?  It’s as relevant as us blowing back against Fox. 

    JW

    Posted by  on  10/01  at  09:48 AM

  10. Hey, heads up, you pundit with those little satanic marks over your last name: 

    Instapundit.com manages two anti-French comments that are so gratuitous as to border on racist.  See if you agree.  Right wing attitudes toward France are now way beyond disagreeing with French policy or even pointing out Chirac’s links with Saddam, all fair game.  Instapundit clearly expects his readers to feel revulsion and the very mention of the French.  Seems to me like that’s pretty much the definition of racism, no?

    I realize this isn’t news, but I thought you might care to opine on it.  Is anyone discussing the consequences of the new francophobia, and anti-European racism?

    Cheers

    Posted by  on  10/01  at  10:01 AM

  11. I had some comments about the French thing back when Oregon Senator Gordon Smith called Kerry “French-looking” during an official BC04 campaign conference call (several stories on this link):

    http://www.darrelplant.com/blog_month.php?MonthRef=200408

    My question is, France is a long-time ally of the US, how is Kerry’s questioning of Iraq sending “mixed messages to the allies” and Republicans trashing the French “resolute”?

    Posted by darrelplant  on  10/01  at  10:11 AM

  12. Quite right, Jorge-- the blowback is threatened specifically if Lehrer goes in the tank for Kerry.  This humble blog stands corrected, kind of.  But the essay’s standard of “bias” is quite clearly set out in the opening paragraphs:  not attending to Oompa-Loompagate (which is “actually having an impact on the race,” says Hewitt) is prima facie evidence of bias.

    On that note, folks, check out the right-wing blogs that are now claiming Lehrer did betray a liberal bias-- by asking questions that concentrated on Bush’s record rather than Kerry’s.  Honest to Ba’al, I couldn’t have thunk this one up if I’d gone to Satire School.  I mean, come on-- the debate was about foreign policy, for Moloch’s sake, and Bush has been President for almost four years whereas Kerry isn’t quite President yet.  The next president will inherit a world shaped by Bush’s foreign policy.  Any sane debate on foreign policy should concentrate on the world since 9/11, and since 9/11-- let me check my records again-- yes, Bush has been president.  Recognizing this is now evidence of bias?

    Things seem to be getting really desperate over on the other side.  And with good reason.

    As for the wingnuts’ vilification of the French (and Instamatic crossed over into wingnut territory long ago, imho), yes, it borders on racism, and yes, they’re completely out of their bleeding minds if they now think they can accuse Kerry of maligning our allies.  But dog-bites-man stories don’t have much traction, I’m afraid-- look how quickly the dog-bites-man-in-Abu-Ghraib story died down!

    Posted by Michael  on  10/01  at  11:09 AM

  13. I think you’re much too hard on Garfield—he looked very resolute in that coma!

    Posted by  on  10/01  at  11:32 AM

  14. The “hard work” thing was the most absurd. Can there be a topic that the BoyKing knows less about?

    Posted by  on  10/01  at  12:51 PM

  15. The funniest part of this all has got to be how the FoxNews folks, so long used to discussing stupid issues like “body lanugage” and related things, were so unprepared for anything else that they, to a person, immediately after the debate, said Kerry did well--and Bush didn’t.

    Then, one reads the panic in Jay Nordlinger’s National Review comments on the web and sees the same.

    The Republican hacks expose themselves as incapable of discussing policy issues, which explains why those of us who believe policy should be paramount, and read widely, have such a difficult time arguing with these pathetic people.  They really can’t get a grip on anything other than the most superficial level.  Hence, Hugh Hewitt blowing his top over Kerry’s skin coloring…

    As I said, Pathetic.

    Posted by  on  10/01  at  03:31 PM

  16. Truth is stranger than political satire!

    Posted by  on  10/01  at  05:50 PM

  17. Hugh is an example of someone following their economic interests unlike so many of Frank’s Kansas folk.

    His radio network, Salem Communications, editorial board has to be viewed to be understood.  Think So. Baptist and Creative Design.

    The program’s sponsors were selling snake oil and gold bricks in the 19th century.

    His goal is to make millions before the Rapture.

    Posted by  on  10/01  at  06:36 PM

  18. Very well, then.  I will have to concentrate on making millions after the Rapture.  And we’ll take back Kansas, too!

    Posted by Michael  on  10/02  at  03:45 AM

  19. Re: “Possible October Nominees”

    Are we looking for the most asinine wingnut remark or the kookiest?  Can we cull from every wingnut homepage, or just the mainstream ones (NRO, Weekly Standard, etc.?).

    Cuz if we’re going for kookiest and can take from anywhere, you got plenty of columns on Renew America to read…

    Posted by Brad Reed  on  10/02  at  07:58 AM

  20. I’d forgotten about Renew America in all the excitement lately.  Maybe we should give it its own separate category, and create two classes of prizes-- looniest thing in general, and looniest thing on Renew America.  After all, it’s not fair to make the humans compete against the space aliens!

    Posted by Michael  on  10/02  at  08:47 AM

  21. And even then, you’d have to distinguish between “looniest Renew America column” and “looniest Jen Shroder/Schroeder/Schroder column.  She’s <a href"http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/shroder/040930">convinved</a> public schools are forcing children to convert to Islam again, the poor thing…

    Posted by Brad Reed  on  10/02  at  10:58 AM

  22. The weirdest thing of all is that Kerry isn’t actually orange.

    Posted by  on  10/02  at  06:33 PM

  23. Oh, great, now we’ve got people denying that Kerry is orange.  Don’t you realize that your denials of Kerry’s orangeness are having an impact on the race?

    Posted by Michael  on  10/02  at  07:25 PM

  24. I just heard Tony Coehlo and Jim Carville are going to be interviewed on television to say the Kerry camp is in disarray because some believe Kerry should have immediately challenged the attack about his being orange.

    Susan Estrich is said to be saying already, “It’s part of Kerry’s overall losing strategy.  I know about being a loser, too.  I ran Dukakis’ campaign and told him he’d look great in a tank!  Kerry also needs to be softer here and not so shrill when he does counter these effective attacks on his skin color.”

    Yes, for the mouth breathers, this is satire.  But as we see, we can’t even reach “A Modest Proposal” since these people are often walking satires themselves.

    Posted by  on  10/03  at  08:47 AM

  25. Estrich is my professor (I go to USC law school).  Someone once asked her about the tank, she claimed it was her first day off in 3 months, she turns on the television, and sees that.  Take it for what its worth. 

    She’s very intelligent, but there’s limited respect I can have for someone who terms Ann Coulter a friend.

    Posted by Josh  on  10/03  at  09:20 PM

  26. I don’t know calling Bush the least competent post-coma Garfield, gives an awful lot of credit to post-stroke Wilson.

    Posted by  on  10/04  at  11:23 AM

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