I wanted to get the ball rolling earlier on this this year, so this is post is just to get people thinking.
Let’s come up with nominees for
- Best Balloon-Juice comment.
- Best blog post, as selected by the bloggers (this is a tribute to Jon Swift) — that means select a post from your own blog if you have one.
- Funniest blog post you have read anywhere this year. (I want to turn this into some kind of Jon Swift award too.)
- Best blog post here at Balloon-Juice. I have one request for this one: let’s try to nominate things by the newer FPers — i.e. not me, John, or Tim — because they do good work and they take a lot of shit from some of you in the comment.
Yutsano
Cleek’s comment on Republicans want whatever pisses off liberals,updated daily. Sorry can’t link right now.
CT Voter
Best blog post would be anything by Kay about Ohio/Wisconsin.
Special Patrol Group
If it matters, cleek’s genius comment was in ‘010.
Villago Delenda Est
Best comment:
This one. For no other reason other than it’s not witty, nor incisive, nor intelligent, but that it panders like a GOP nominee hopeful at the Iowa State Fair.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@CT Voter:
Seconded. Kay is the centre of sanity around which the rest of us gather to fling poo and make dick jokes.
TooManyJens
@Sarah Proud and Tall: Well put.
TooManyJens
Is the home page looking really weird for anyone else? I think maybe gastritis broke your stylesheet.
Cris (without an H)
Culture of Truth on Your dreamboat turns out be a footnote
sb
Submitted humbly for your consideration: Comment of the Year
sb
@Sarah Proud and Tall: Thirded. Or is it fourthed at this point?
Cris (without an H)
That’s nice, but I’m not one to handicap. Let the best post stand, regardless of who made it. If it turns out the top 3 or 4 posts are by the old guard, then make a new category, “Best Rookie Post.”
Cris (without an H)
@sb: no kidding, I wonder how long JD Rhoades took to compose that epic rant. I like to imagine JD typing that totally off the top of his(her) head.
Egg Berry
Is this where we call ABL racist?
(sarcasm)
Soonergrunt
@sb: yeah. The pure, cold, but tastefully understated fury is very nicely done.
kindness
How about if we have a ‘Best post from John while he’s obviously loaded’ award?
Ben Cisco
@sb: Yeah, gonna have to go with this one too. Suitable for framing, that one is.
roseyviolet
Does the funniest blog post have to be political in nature? If not, almost anything on hyperbole and a half, but especially this:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html
Or maybe the fish one. Or the cake one. Or really, anything on hyperbole and a half.
Keith
Funniest Blog Post — surely there can be little question this goes to Sarah Proud and Tall.
There may be a question as to which of Sarah’s prodigious outpourings of wit, wisdom and surrealism garners the awawrd. Reasonable questions.
For me it is tough to top Don’t drink the chamomile tea. But, others may differ.
gogol's wife
@sb:
I agree.
Satanicpanic
@sb: Add me to the list, that one was tops.
Thymezone
The suspense is palpable.
Raven
Pet Blegs. . .all of em.
Raven
soonergrunt’s intro as a FPger.
debit
OT: Cole, this is relevant to your interests. Shorter link: don’t use tap water in your neti pot unless you want to get brain eating amoebas. Let me stress that again: BRAIN EATING AMOEBAS. GAHHHHHHHH!
Tony J
@sb:
I don’t know quite what ‘the shizzle’ is supposed to be, but that comment was definitely it.
Capri
@roseyviolet:
Second. This line does have a political ring to it: “But making high-pitched noises won’t solve your problem if your problem is a complete inability to cope with change.”
kledd
Best elsewhere blog post? This GOP debate recap
JGabriel
@Keith:
I have to go with Sarah’s Ayn Rand & Gloria Vanderbilt Trilogy.
Edited to Add: Hard to know which category they fall into, since they all appeared both here at Balloon Juice and at SarahProudandTall.com
.
Suffern ACE
I can’t find the post, but the one that had me laughing the most was SP&Ts report on David Brooks giving a speech at her retirement home and being cornered by an incontinent woman (who I believe had a pet rat).
Crusty Dem
I think we need a “Best drunk tweet” category, just fill it with 10 Cole tweets from any single Saturday night..
gaz
@JGabriel: Seconded!
I’m tearing up after reading that post, and had my coffee been finished brewing, I’d probably be off to buy a new keyboard right now. (Not to mention a new set of sinus cavities)
Thank you for bringing this one to light. I would have missed it otherwise. A masterstroke.
Also too, the McMegan christmas list posts from Sarah and JC were stellar.
But I lean in the direction of the post you mention. Thanks again!…
JPL
Tom should get an award because he hasn’t written about Megan’s pink pig yet.
Kevin
Humbly submitted, best blog post from anywhere.
http://www.stonekettle.com/2011/12/everybodys-so-different-i-havent.html
I’m Canadian, but I think every American voter should read this…
Linda Featheringill
Awww geez! We hafta choose?
How can I do that? Kay is a fountain of information about labor issues in the Rust Belt. Sarah is both naughty and funny at the same time. Levenson is frequently quite elegant. Soonergrunt has a real down home voice that is great [and is quite accurate, too]. ABL is a cheerleader for Obama of course, but shows real empathy when talking about the vulnerability of folks caught up in the human condition. Tim is our A-number-one cheerleader when he is rounding us up to send us out to do things.
Zandar, mistermix, Doug, and Dennis are probably of a different age from me and we don’t seem to share the same background. But they write well and are very good at introducing me to different points of view.
And there is John, of course. He of the multiple personalities. I think that Kay was right. He is best described as a short order cook. :-)
Who am I leaving out? Oh that futbol guy. Well . . . .
So how am I going to choose?
Dr Paul
My blogpost, here: http://drpaul2012.wordpress.com
I thank John Cole for the previous shoutout and I thank all of your for visiting. With Ron Paul poised for an upset victory in Iowa, we need to get the word out!
jl
Kay should get an award for real world from the trenches grass roots political blogging.
But, no Airing of Grievances this year?
Downpuppy
For anywhere, are we talking independent blogs, or does, say, Esquire qualify?
Warren Terra
Best post of the year: one of Sarah’s surreal yarns, or wasn’t there an ABL post in which she told all the haters to go suck on it?
kledd
@Downpuppy: If Esquire quaifies, then Charlie Pierce just wins everything.
The Other Bob
@Ben Cisco:
Ditto
nevsky42
@sb: Yep, I’ll vote for that one…epic on a blog already chock full of epic comments.
Culture of Truth
Had I known there were awards given out I would have put more thought into this.
Keith
@JGabriel: Very good choice indeed.
dance around in your bones
I don’t know what SP&T is on, but I wish she would share.
Ruckus
@Kevin:
Thanks for the link.
I’m going to have to stop by there regularly. So much of the post you linked sounds like my life. I’m older but so much is very real to me. I wonder how many others can say the same?
And I agree it may be a defining post, definitely in the running for POY
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@sb: Chosen by acclamation.
Ruckus
@sb:
Gets my vote. Comment of the year. Maybe the last ten?
Brian R.
@Kevin:
Hey, that’s great. Thanks for posting it here.
Villago Delenda Est
@sb:
Seconded. Magnificent rant. Absolutely on target, with no collateral damage at all.
CT Voter
@sb: That’s got my vote. And I’m voting early and often, so that one gets all my votes.
Violet
@sb:
Oh, yeah, that comment by JD Rhoades was definitely comment of the year. It’s a thing of beauty.
Violet
I think we need a summertime round of these awards because folks who post awesome stuff in the early part of the year can get overlooked.
Tony J
@Kevin:
That was just as good as you said it would be.
Put me down as a ‘bootlicking sycophant’, straight on the Favourites list. Stonekettle really should be posting here.
YellowJournalism
I second or third the establishment of the John Cole Co-Ed Naked Twitter Award for drunk posts or comments.
Jerzy Russian
@sb:
This has my vote as well.
Jerzy Russian
@Kevin:
Thanks for that link Kevin. That was a good read.
Yutsano
Way OT: I have a Canadian friend named Kevin I haven’t heard from in years. He’s a proud Leninist. And funny as all get out.
YellowJournalism
Also wanted to add that JD’s comment was the first one that came to mind when reading about comment of the year nominees. Just couldn’t remember where to find it.
And there should be a category for the tag that made us laugh the hardest in John’s epic housecleaning of the blog posts.
Violet
@Kevin:
Wow, that’s an awesome post. I love the accompanying graph. So, so true.
zmullls
Does “Funniest Blog Post Anywhere” have to be political? Because hands-down, the funniest blog post of the year was this one:
http://thebloggess.com/2011/06/and-thats-why-you-should-learn-to-pick-your-battles/
It spawned a false update to Wikipedia (gift for fifteenth anniversay), a Facebook page for Beyonce the Giant Metal Chicken with thousands of Likes, and more than a thousand comments on the post. My wife is one of the hundreds of women who now own a miniature Beyonce.
Chris
Here’s my pick from my blog:
Scenes from the first week of school
Incidentally, I think Batocchio is planning to continue the Jon Swift tradition, as he did last year.
A Humble Lurker
@sb:
I like this comment too.
JGabriel
@Kevin:
I hate to be the buzzkill contrarian here, but as well-written and interesting as that post was, I pretty vehemently disagree with its premise: I didn’t change, Conservatives/Republicans left me behind.
See, I look back at most of the history of the GOP for the last century — from the Teapot Dome Scandal and the corruption of Warren Harding’s administration, to Hoover’s advocacy of trickle-down economics and nothing else in the face of the Great Depression; from FDR’s enemies to Nixon’s House Un-American Activities Committee and McCarthy’s Blacklists; from Birchers to Nixon’s Southern Strategy to Watergate to Reagan in Philadelphia, MS; from Iran-Contra and Poppy Bush’s pardons, to Bush II’s Iraq fiasco and torture, to today’s scientific denialists and obstruction for political gain at the expense of the country’s well-being — and I don’t see a Republican/Conservative paradigm that was any less vicious and batshit insane than it is today.
I don’t get people who say it’s the GOP that changed, not me. Conservatives/Republicans have been this bad since Taft or Harding, at least. Maybe longer.
.
dance around in your bones
@Kevin: That was espectacular. Gracias.
geg6
@sb:
Seconded. That truly was awesome.
geg6
@Keith:
Ha! Was going to nominate that one myself.
Now I can just second that.
dance around in your bones
@dance around in your bones: I guess that I should add I had only read 1/2 the post before commenting….to me, it sounded like it was going to be an “I was always a liberal/progressive” just like me. Because I was BORN with empathy, I’m pretty sure. It’s just always been there, walking a mile in the other guy’s shoes and etc.
dead existentialist
@sb: Yeah, that was pretty darned good.
Kevin
@Yutsano:
Nope, not me…Proud NDP voter in every provincial and federal election since 1972, though.
Dee Loralei
@zmullls: Blogess is a riot! I still guffaw re-reading that post! And I also love Hyperbole and a half.
And Doug, there needs to be a twitter award too. Love SP&T. for her flights of fancy, but Kay deserves something for actual real-world political on the ground work.And Dengre for his Civil War/ Modern Conservative movement posts. And I love Toms art.
But for old front pager, John’s fat hand post that made me cackle too. Hell, I love all the writers here, old and new.
Chuck Butcher
You’d think that by late ’11 the Jon Swift memorial sort of thing wouldn’t hurt. It is the kind of sad irony that Al/Jon might appreciate that his last post linked to my sad story and that Al’s mom used it to announce his death.
It hurts twice because you probably have no idea how much that link helped through all the caring it spawned; my debt to Jon cannot be erased by time.
I’ll stop with the maudlin stuff now.
Ruckus
@zmullls:
I have to agree. Have clicked on it 3 times since it was posted, have to read the whole thing every time… and almost fall out of my chair reading it. That woman must either be one of the most frustrating women to live with, or the most fun. I’m going with B.
Cris (without an H)
Speaking as somebody who went through The Change of Stripes, I think a lot of us hate to admit that a worldview which we held so close, to the point that we’d fight about it (at least get into arguments defending it), can be shaken. To admit that you were sleepwalking through your belief system, like I was, is to admit that you might be doing it again. That your current pair of political pajamas might turn out to be just as ill-fitting as the ones you earlier dropped on the floor. Abandoning your politics is voluntarily abandoning part of your identity, and likely a good chunk of your community, and that can be genuinely scary.
So it’s more comforting to think that your values have remained steady in a shifting landscape.
matt
funniest anywhere: Pierce on Perry…
He is as lead-footed on his feet as any major candidate I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t have what the football coaches call “lateral quickness.” He thinks on his feet with the dexterity of an andiron. He adapts to an unfamiliar question like a duck confronting the space shuttle. He corners like an oil tanker. Watch him when he tries to deliver a zinger. He looks like a guy learning to dance by following the footprints painted on the floor of the studio. Move one of the footprints a quarter-of-an-inch, and he’ll dance himself out the window and down three floors to the sidewalk.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/rick-perry-comeback-6513624#ixzz1gjpCvTYl
Cris (without an H)
Her recent post on depression is beautiful, and not really funny. I’ve known many people who say “I just don’t understand depression, why don’t you just get over it?” Allie Brosh explains that it’s not that easy. She captures the self-swallowing spiral of sadness and self-loathing perfectly.
Dr Paul
Agreed, the paradigm might more appropriately be described as I can handle a whole lot of crazy, but not this much.
Dr Paul
Sorry, that shoulda been directed at JGabriel.
Ruckus
@JGabriel:
I think you are right in that conservatards have always been the party they are now. It’s just that they didn’t appear at first glance to be as batshit as they are now because they hid it better and the double batshit far right didn’t have as big an avenue for their voice. Now all the double batshit, rubber room, infantile crap they spew is in front of everyone. We didn’t have to filter it out nearly as much, so many didn’t do that. Now there almost isn’t a big enough filter, sort of like that lever the greek guy was looking for. So people that are looking see that when the essence is boiled out of the conservatard crap, it’s still crap, just more concentrated, and they find they can not identify with it, which they once thought they could.
Shorter – The smell is as pungent, you just can’t get away from it now.
Sarah Proud and Tall
Giant. Metal. Chicken.
ETA: Thankyou to so many of you for your kind words. I feel like Sally Field on a crying jag.
daize
“Fruit is fucking dangerous.”
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/08/26/green-smoothies/#comment-2743975
Baud
Put my down with the others for anything by Kay.
WaterGirl
I know it wasn’t this year, but what year was “Show me on the doll where Rahm touched you”? Was that 2009 or 2010? Good times. I always forget whose comment that was, too, so bonus points if you can tell me that.
shortstop
So much good stuff in this thread that I missed the first time around…thanks, my little cabbages!
srv
I nominate Dengre’s Confederate Party series for best blogging series. It was perfect except for the fact that on this tag-a-palooza happy blog he failed to create a tag category for it. Derp.
I nominate Kay for the Balloon-Juice Journalism Award – I really don’t consider her coverage of Ohio/Wisconsin to be blogging.
For the most improved category, I nominate DougJ, as he has moved from Capt. Obvious/Troll to being quite will spoken and to the left of me. It’s weird to always feel like a Nixon supporter here now.
And as for funny, Sarah made me laugh most.
John had a great post with graphs and charts, can’t remember if it was this year or last – the theme was “There’s been a class war going on for 30 years, and the rich are winning by miles.” Have never been able to find it, but it was awesome.
amk
@roseyviolet: Thanks. It was a good funny read…. (yeah, I’m suckah for pet stories).
Ruckus
@daize:
In the running for funny.
JenJen
Funniest blog post all year goes to the inimitable Charles Pierce, and his takedown of Paul Ryan. It wasn’t even really a takedown; rather, Pierce took him out back and beat the shit out of him, in a highly entertaining manner.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-heritage-foundation-speech-6530510#ixzz1c0EdXSI2
#PIERCED
gaz
okay, I about fell over reading this
http://sarahproudandtall.com/2011/03/21/ayn-rand-david-brooks-and-a-bandicoot/
Sarah, Plain and Tall, FTW
heheheheheheheheheh
the way she characterizes ayn rand is priceless… effin hilarious
‘wipes tears away…
hell yeah…
(maybe the quote doesn’t do the piece justice by itself – she lobs so many LOL bombs in that piece it’s hard to pick one, and the cadence/delivery is fantastic)…
awesome stuff.
gaz
DOH! I mean Sarah Proud and Tall
Some book from my formative years screwed me up. I don’t even remember it being any good. but who knows
Sorry I messed up your name!
Batocchio
Thanks for doing this, Doug.
Ian
@sb:
That is my opinion too
Ian
@Suffern ACE:
LINK! for the love of god we need a link
Ian
@Ian:
For fucks sake. why do I not read the comments before posting. I think that comment wins by getting 33% of the total responds.
Freddie
Why don’t you guys find the exact point when this blog became the sharp edge of the sword? Important moment. Sad for me, but important.