Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Watcher Countdown

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March 25, 2008

Watcher Countdown - Blast-off!

Hatched by Dafydd

Positively the last ever Big Lizards post as a member of the Council of Watchers of Weasels of Councils. And finally, we can exit the Council with all duties discharged!

(I will restrain myself from the obvious quotation.)

Council

Our number-one choice came in first, which is always nice; but in this case, it did so by beating out our own nominee -- and by the slimmest possible margin! A nice kick in the trousers on our way out the door... thanks, Mr. or Ms. Howling.

Change & The Cessation of British History, by Wolf Howling.

Wolf Howling howls about the dirty and underhanded way that the Labour Party of Great Britain backdoored ratification of th enew European Union constitution. In other news, Labour's popularity has sunk to new lows seen here only in the "popularity" of Congress. The two news items may be related.

(Our own nominee, Californichusetts, relating how the California Supreme Court may be poised to cram same-sex marriage up our -- er -- noses, polled second... by only 1/3 of a vote! That means that one extra person voted for the Wolf Howling piece... as his or her second-place vote. Yeesh!)

For our second place vote, we picked another fine post by Bookworm Room. (And what do you want to bet she was the one whose second-placer relegated us to landing behind Wolf Howling? Where's the gratitude!)

Biology Will Have Its Way *UPDATE*, by Bookworm Room.

Bookworm relates the increasing raunchiness of American culture, and especially of "female chauvinist pigs," as one book calls the rise of raunchy chicks, to the new study that shows that 25% of all teenaged girls in America have had a venereal disease.

Nouncil

The winner among non-Council ("Nouncil") entries was (wait for it) yet another Yon:

Guitar Heroes, by Michael Yon.

Now, I have nothing against Michael Yon, and his reporting scratches a niche that is large and important. But really, they contain no analysis beyond the immediate; his articles are fascinating, but in the same way one can be fascinated by watching the show Cops.

Granted, it's a view through a window that few other reporters open; he embeds for months at a time with different units in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I hope he continues doing so (so long as his family permits). But I think one win is enough... not virtually every time someone nominates his newest story.

Does this sound snarky? It's not in the sense you might mean it: I think Yon is doing a brilliant and essential job. But I believe awards such as this, particularly in the Nouncil category, should highlight posts that give us a new way of looking at the world that we might miss without the Council nominations and wins.

We voted for two posts that do just that:

The Tragedy of the Democratic Party, by American Thinker;

Amid Charges of Spitzer Tryst, Embattled Prostitute "Kristen" Expected to Resign, by Iowahawk.

In the first, Thomas Lifson and Richard Baehr note that the predicament the Democratic Party finds itself in is entirely of its own doing, mostly by switching from winner-take-all primaries to proportional primaries; the former would have selected a nominee by now.

The Iowahawk post is one of the most hilarious parodies of news obsession I have ever read; you must read it instanter!

The backward look

Here is the Watcher's result post listing every nominee who received at least one vote; but I urge you to bookmark the Watcher's main page... because you will want to glance at it at least once a week to see what wonderful posts have been nominated.

And with that last commercial message (just leave the bag o'swag on my doorstep, Watcher), I bid a fond adieu to the coven of cronies who gave me equal parts war, peace, pride, prejudice, night, day, black, white, the best of times, the worst of times, sickness, health, triumph, and tsouris. We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the -- ah, heck with it.

Guys, it's been a slice.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, March 25, 2008, at the time of 3:13 PM