Wednesday, December 15, 2004
The Few, the Proud, the Even More Loathsome
The people have spoken, and so today we move on to the semifinals of Most Loathsome Conservative of the Year 2004. Your semifinalists (in alphabetical order) are:
--Tom Coburn and the Pips, his four colleagues in the incoming Senate's freshman class
--James Dobson and the radical clerics
--Sean Hannity and Fox News generally
--Annie Jacobsen, frightened flyer, representing Americans whose fear has made them irrational
--Michelle Malkin, syndicated columnist
Before you visit the Useless Web Poll to cast your vote in the semifinals, refresh your recollections about the various loathsome activities of our semifinalists by clicking here. The top two vote-getters will throw down for the title over Christmas. We'd like to thank our other quarterfinalists--David Brooks, Tom DeLay, John McCain, and Alan Keyes--for playing our game. Our lovely parting gifts include a subscription to The Nation, a complimentary credit card (maxed out), and a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy DVD box set.
Today's Recommended Reading: The fabulously good Boston Globe columnist James Carroll takes the following as his premise--religion is to God what the clock is to time. The clock merely allows us a framework for discussing what time means. It is not time itself. Even when we don't have a clock, time continues to pass. So it is with religion. Its various tenets, dogmas, and thou-shalt-nots are not God itself.
And also, Mark Morford says that if rock and roll didn't die when Microsoft used the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" to sell Windows 95, or when Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" was adopted by Cadillac, Buick's flogging of Aerosmith's "Dream On" will finish it off for good.
The people have spoken, and so today we move on to the semifinals of Most Loathsome Conservative of the Year 2004. Your semifinalists (in alphabetical order) are:
--Tom Coburn and the Pips, his four colleagues in the incoming Senate's freshman class
--James Dobson and the radical clerics
--Sean Hannity and Fox News generally
--Annie Jacobsen, frightened flyer, representing Americans whose fear has made them irrational
--Michelle Malkin, syndicated columnist
Before you visit the Useless Web Poll to cast your vote in the semifinals, refresh your recollections about the various loathsome activities of our semifinalists by clicking here. The top two vote-getters will throw down for the title over Christmas. We'd like to thank our other quarterfinalists--David Brooks, Tom DeLay, John McCain, and Alan Keyes--for playing our game. Our lovely parting gifts include a subscription to The Nation, a complimentary credit card (maxed out), and a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy DVD box set.
Today's Recommended Reading: The fabulously good Boston Globe columnist James Carroll takes the following as his premise--religion is to God what the clock is to time. The clock merely allows us a framework for discussing what time means. It is not time itself. Even when we don't have a clock, time continues to pass. So it is with religion. Its various tenets, dogmas, and thou-shalt-nots are not God itself.
And also, Mark Morford says that if rock and roll didn't die when Microsoft used the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" to sell Windows 95, or when Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" was adopted by Cadillac, Buick's flogging of Aerosmith's "Dream On" will finish it off for good.
