Home | Away

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

On running second

As you can tell from the homemade tile with which I’ve replaced my Dieterian “Gates” photo, this humble blog has pulled off a very curious kind of victory in the 2005 Koufax Awards: I placed second to Firedoglake’s (that is, Jane Hamsher’s and Christy Hardin Smith’s) coverage of the Plame scandal for “Best Series.”

OK, I know I throw “this humble blog” around just to fill out a line of dactylic hexameter here and there (like “Hektor of the shining helm” or “resourceful Odysseus” or “Trojans, breakers of horses"), but this time I really am stunned.  The competition in “Best Series” was serious competition devoted to serious stuff: along with Firedoglake on a breach of national security for petty (really petty) partisan gain, there was Josh Marshall’s successful campaign against Social Security privatization, My Left Wing’s Iraq War Grief Daily Witness, Scott Lemieux’s brilliant Supreme Court coverage, eRiposte on the Niger forgeries, Katherine and Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings on the quite-literally-fascist Bingaman/ Graham Amendment, Holden’s obsession with Scotty and the Gannons Gaggle, The Fat Lady’s hair-raisin’ tale of Subic Bay, the Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with George Bush, and of course PZ’s infamous NSFW series on invertebrate sex.  Myers, he got all kinds.  He got your lobster, he got your octopus, he got your spider Kama Sutra, he got your tentacles, he got your tentacles sequel, he even got your worm porn with real moving worms.  There’s just no way I can compete with material like that, you know.  Not with a bunch of stories about my younger son and his adventures in living.

In mid-March I had a lengthy email exchange about this with a friend.  He likes my writing on Jamie (actually, he considers it my best writing on any subject), but he wondered if my appearance in the Koufax Finals under the “Best Series” heading wasn’t a little bit strange.  Set next to many of the other series, which are devoted to explicitly political subjects near and dear to the hearts of liberals everywhere, my series looked something like this: Tonight, we continue our coverage of the United States’ precipitous slide into theoconservative plutocracy!  And in other news, a kid with Down syndrome in central Pennsylvania loses his retainers when his addled father tosses them into the trash at a local pizza place! I wrote back to say yeah, I thought of my presence in the K-Finals for best series, best post, most humorous post, and most humorous blog as pleasant little asides, and that I was rooting for the Jamie stuff in the first two (while rooting for other people in the other two) despite my sense that I was the George Mason of the bunch.  Best Writing, however, that’s another matter.  I care about that one simply because writing is what I do: even when I screw up and drop seven paragraphs from a recycled post (cough, cough, hack), I devote most of my failing energies to the actual writing and polishing of these posts, and I tend to think of myself (that is, in terms of my being-in-the-world) as a writer.  Of course, where the Koufaxes are concerned this is all vanity, vanity, because going up against the formidable Digby for Best Writing is like taking the ice against the Montreal Canadiens of the late 1950s or late 1970s: it’s a minor triumph just to stay on the same playing surface.

In other words, I hoped to stay close in Best Writing, and never dreamed of coming close in Best Series.  And I certainly wasn’t ready for Dwight’s extraordinarily kind words about my Jamie posts, which left me wandering around late yesterday afternoon in a kind of praise-stupor.  Yes, I’ve been exceptionally distracted lately, but suddenly I became extra special bonus exceptionally distracted.  But at least I remembered to tell Jamie that thousands of people like to read about him on their computers.  He took the news in stride, with great aplomb.  He knows there’s a book about him, he knows I write and speak about him—he just assumes he’s famous around the world.

A hearty congratulations to Digby (and also to Tristero, the Steve Shutt to Digby’s Guy Lafleur) and to the hard-workin’ and sharp-writin’ Susie Madrak for a fine showing as runnerup. (Hey, I voted for her last year as “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition,” and behold!  she won that one and then got wider recognition!) And kudos to Firedoglake of the shining helm, whose series on the Plame affair is most worthy of the Koufax.  This humble and genuinely surprised blog salutes all Koufax winners, finalists, and nominees, especially fabulous and unclassifiable comrade Chris Clarke, who may or may not be a feminist, but is very definitely a great soul and a mensch all at once.

Finally, thank you, Dwight, and everyone at Wampum.  That post means more to me than an award in any category.  And best wishes to everyone in your families from everyone in mine.

Posted by Michael on 04/04 at 11:28 AM
(34) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages