Courtesy of Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, (Beautiful, brilliant, bitchy - but in a Maureen “O’Hara vs. John Wayne in The Quiet Man sort of way), we have the ultimate contrarian antidote to the madness that has become the Weblog Awards. Beth calls her anti-blog prize the 2005 BadBlog Awards.

First, let me say that Paul at Wizbang, who puts an extraordinary amount of effort into the Weblog Awards, is doing a great service to blogs by putting on this contest. My beef is not with him but rather the attitude of some bloggers (and they know who they are) who hit their readers every damn day during the voting with a post pleading for you to vote for them. It gets to the point I stop visiting those sites just because I get sick of having to scroll past that twaddle.

But leave it to our Beth to give us the perfect antidote for such self absorption. Here are a few of the award categories:

Most self-worshiping blogger

Worst Blog Design/Template

Come to think of it, yours truly fits perfectly into three or four of those categories. Good thing no one reads my site. Otherwise, I may end up being nominated for “Worst Blog Fight,” or perhaps “Worst Blog Post,” or perhaps even “Blogger who takes himself much too seriously.”

Be that as it may, I thought I’d take a crack at a few of these categories. You know, run a few names up the flag pole and see if any start waving…or de-linking as the case may be.

MOST SELF WORSHIPING BLOGGER

And the winner is, hands down, James Wolcott. A few bloggers have a caricature of themselves at the top of their blog. But no one has the temerity to actually post a caricature that is so wildly different from what they actually look like. Obviously, Mr. Wolcott slipped the artist an extra $10 (or something much smaller and much more personal) just so that he would ignore the short, stubby, balding, fat faced, jowly person sitting in front of him.

BLOGGER WHO TAKES THEMSELVES MUCH TOO SERIOUSLY

Wolcott would be a finalist there also but I’d have to give the nod to Oliver Willis. “Like Kryptonite to Stupid” doesn’t begin to reveal how banal, how ponderous, and how utterly devoid of humor Oliver is. Not to mention his steadfast belief that people anywhere care what he has to say about anything.

WORST POST OF THE YEAR

Oh my! So many to choose from (including my own that I linked to above). However, this post from Jeff Harrell at Shape of Days qualifies as the worst simply because it is so over the top. The title of the post says it all: “Anyone who uses drugs should be dragged out into the street and beaten slowly to death before a warmly applauding audience.”

WORST RIGHT WING BLOG

This is a toughie. Worst written? Looniest ideas? Most sanctimonious? I’ve got nominees for each. However, for making it two out of three, I have to go with LaShawn Barber. I actually think that she’s got a fine evangelical blog there, but for political commentary (out there) and sanctimony, she can’t be beat.

WORST LEFT WING BLOG

Another toughie. Most ill informed? Least connected to reality? Most anti-American? Oh, let’s just go with Kos and be done with it.

MOST OVERRATED BLOG

This is an easy one. By far and away the most overrated blog on the internet is Duncan Black’s Eschaton. The guy has so many open posts he should probably just hand the keys of his site over to his army of degenerate commenters. He doesn’t blog, he burps.

For a spot-on takedown of his site, goto Ace of Spades and read this post and then goto “November 22″ on Ace’s blog and start scrolling. Hysterically funny.

Why not pay Beth a visit and leave your nominees in the comments?

Said Rick Moran @ 6:29 am | Permalink   

1. Bingo on Atrios. I had the same thing. Why not go to a forum rather then blog open threads? Just silly.

   Comment by William Teach — 12/2/2005 @ 2:44 pm

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