Reviewing the 2008 Weblog Awards Finalists: “Best Conservative Blog” Category

Here is my third (and final) post in a series of unfair, sloppy, and intellectually lazy reviews of blogs that are finalists in the 2008 Weblog Awards.  And to top it off, I’m posting it after voting has already been open for six days and has only a day or two left.  Sloppiness all the way around!  To really top things off, I accidentally published it before I was finished and have been feverishly editing it for he last half hour to get it in final form, so if you’ve already read this post, you might want to check to see if it has changed.

But what the hell, this was never going to help anyone with their vote anyway.  It’s just a traffic-generating stunt.

In my first review, I descended into the world of celebrity blogs by reviewing the finalists in the “Best Celebrity Blogger” category.  That was a lot of work, because I had never read any of them before, and I felt an ethical duty to review each blog for at least 30 seconds before tearing it to shreds in a review.

I expected that reviewing the “Best Conservative Blog” nominees would be a little easier, because I already read some of these regularly.  Turns out it wasn’t, because there were enough that I don’t read regularly that familiarizing myself with them took a lot of time.  So, five days after starting this post, I am finally publishing it.

Here they are, in the order they appear on the voting page:

Victor Davis Hanson.  I dare anyone to say this guy is not smart . . . no, I dare anyone to say this guy is not brilliant.  A classics scholar and military historian, this is a man who knows the importance of taking the long view.  Thus, he writes exceptionally important posts that look at the strategic big picture, with occasionally flashes of Coulter-esque insults — without the overt toxicity — for those who think everything can be fixed immediately and without sacrifice.  His posts are a little long for Ace’s “knuckle-dragging moron” readers, like me, so I’ll confess I don’t read him all that often.  I like his lists.

RedState.  You really have to love politics to love this blog.  All politics, all the time, burns me out.  I can’t comment much on the last year of content, since I didn’t read it that often.  But if you’re obsessed with how to “rebuild” the conservative and/or Republican “brand,” this looks like the place to be right now.

Ace of Spades HQ. We owe this man a debt of gratitude just for bringing back the word “moron,” which, until I tuned into this blog, I don’t think I’d heard since Stork uttered it in Animal House in 1978.  There’s lots more than politics on this blog, and even the politics is funny.  While my own style only occasionally uses  profanity . . . well, to borrow a line from A Christmas Story, profanity is Ace’s true medium . . . he works in profanity like other artists work in oil or clay.  The profanity isn’t excessive, just exceptionally well-placed.

A lot of people would expect such a potty-mouthed blogger to be less than intellectually rigorous.  Well, fuggedaboudit. This blog has the most unique mix of serious commentary, profane language, goofy news and hilarious jokes — sometimes all in the same post — that you’re ever likely to run across.

I’m not sure when it converted to more of a team blog, but it hasn’t suffered for it.  The team members are hilarious.

Comments tend to be exuberant one-liners or other some other form of joking response, even to the most serious of posts.

Power Line.  I’ve checked in here from time to time, and I know these guys are smart, but . . . read this blog for intellectual stimulation alone, not entertainment value. I’d probably read it more if I had more time.  Actually, that’s not a very good excuse, considering the posts are very succinct.  Great points are made in very few words.  OK, I’ve talked myself into checking this one out more often.

Eject, Eject, Eject! I’ve followed links here from time to time, but was never a regular visitor.  Checking it out now, it seems to be a rarely updated blog.  I wasn’t able to look around too much, but I did find the greatest essay ever on “sensitivity” training.  I especially appreciated this part:

[T]o be subjected to two hours of second-grade style, “who can tell me what Johnny did wrong by telling Sarah she has a hot body” lecturing infuriates me on many levels.

To begin with, I do not need to be told this is inappropriate behavior. I already know that is inappropriate behavior. I learned that was inappropriate behavior not from the State of California or a battalion of corporate lawyers, but from my parents, who raised me to be polite, well-mannered, and who spent much of their own youth trying to form me into a civilized gentleman. I know, I can see the smiles on many faces already. It’s like I’m speaking in Aramaic.

I’ll be going back.

Plumb Bob Blog.  I never heard of this one until I saw it in the finalist list.  Spent a little while there and really liked it.  A lot.  This blogger writes some profound things with great humility.  I particularly liked this passage in a post about how much better informed and educated our forbears were, in ways that really mattered:

And the truth be told, though I’m a bright guy, I know that my thinking ability does not come within several times zones of the abilities of the great men who built this country. Maybe I do well enough by modern standards, but really my ability to reason is not much beyond my ability at chess. If I’m being candid, I need to accuse “undisciplined” in the mirror.

What would it take for a 21st century American to obtain the equivalent of the education a man received a century and a half ago? It’s a daunting question; I ask it of myself every time I pick up a book by CS Lewis, or GK Chesterton, or even Rudyard Kipling. There are several orders of magnitude more books available today than there were then; how does one evaluate which are wheat, and which are chaff? Moreover, what do we know these days of the structure of knowledge? Into what sort of taxonomy of knowledge might we place what we learn, so the facts are not just disconnected trivia, good only for scoring the big bucks on Jeopardy? This is what colleges are supposed to offer; I graduated Cum Laude from a decent school, and received virtually nothing of this sort. Nobody I know got this from college.

Michelle Malkin.  I think Michelle has been arguing too long.  I like her . . . a lot.  And I read her every day because she posts interesting news.  And she almost always makes sense.  But her posts seem . . . shrill.  And not in an over-the-top, funny, Ann Coulter kind of way, just an “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” kind of way.  (For what it’s worth, I think this shrillness comes across whenever she’s on TV, too.)

Which is all fine, really.  I’ve pretty much given up on reasoned discourse with the Left.  No matter what conservatives say or do, the Left will say we are mean-spirited bigots, so why play nice?

I’d like to see what she’s like when she’s just enjoying herself or her family.  She’s been getting in the Left’s face and fending off unjust attacks for so long — and God bless her for it — it’s hard to imagine her in anything but combat mode.

American Thinker. Everytime I find myself at this blog — usually because one of my regular reads links there, as I do not check it often — I am intrigued by the articles.  The people who criticize bloggers as unsophisticated yahoos with no intellect need to look at this . . . site.

I say site because I’m not sure this is really a blog.  The articles are long (but good), and it strikes me as more of an online magazine.  (Update: Now I feel stupid. I see that the first column at the site is labeled “Articles” and the second column is labeled “Blog.”  I haven’t had a chance to see how much they differ.)

Here, it looks like you can get both depth (in the articles and blog posts) and snarky blog posts.  From the post about Obama’s plan to have the identical inaugural luncheon Lincoln had (after being sworn in on the same Bible Lincoln was sworn in on):

Either Barabraham Lincobama has purposefully crossed the line between a tribute and identity theft, or he’s simply obsessed with following the advice of a whisper that awakened him one night in Springfield: “If you cook it, Abe will come.”

Somebody remind me… how is impersonating one former president and hiring a bushel of Clintonites to run your administration “change”?

Blue Collar Muse.  This is a Tennessee-based blog and shows it with coverage of Tennessee issues, but it goes way beyond that.

The blog posts here are thoughtful and somewhat longer than you see on “snarky” blogs.   And, for those that still need proof that the liberal stereotype of blue collar Christian Southerners as backwards hicks is false . . . well, I was going to say you need to look at this blog, but then I realized that no amount of intelligent writing is likely to convince anyone who believes the stereotype in any event.  In fact, the writing here is likely to reinforce the stereotype in those people, not because it’s true, but because they see as vices what I see as the South’s virtues.  Keep it up, Blue. If they hate you, then you’re doing something right.

The Muse gives lots of details about his background — as much as any blogger I’ve run across who is not a public figure.  That, and the personal experience he gives on his “Socialism’s Lying Promise” page gives you such a good idea where this guy is coming from that you almost feel like you’ve had a beer or two with him before you start reading.  You can also see by looking around here that he’s not just a blogger (in fact, he contributes to nine other blogs!), but a conservative activist (check out the sidebars).

small dead animals.  The tag line alone was enough to make me want to read more: “When the Communists show up to protest the Nazis, you’re supposed to pray for an asteroid, not pick a favourite.”

This is the only Canadian in the group, and her writing is on target and amusing.  In one day, she took on global warming, Canadian liberals, bogus racism charges, and good-naturedly bragged about her nomination as a  threat to “US Blogosphere Hegemony.”  And yesterday she played up the rivalry with Ace in the voting.

Her posts are pithy.  You know where she’s coming from, but you don’t get much analysis.  It is a fun read.

Little Green Footballs.  For years, LGF blogger Charles Johnson has done yeoman’s work bringing us news of Islamic radicalism.  He also exposed the forged Bush national guard memos in the run up to the 2004 election, and was in the vanguard of those exposing the “fauxtography” coming out of the Middle East and assorted fronts in the war on Islamist terrorism.  In 2003 and 2004, I couldn’t get enough of this blog.

So why do I hardly look at it anymore?  I can’t really say where it lost me.  I don’t remember when I drifted away.   I’ve checked in recently, and Charles seems as preoccupied with creationists these days as Islamists. Weird.  A little too Rosie O’Donnell for me.

He remains quite good on the Islamist front, though.  He recently exposed the fact that a Norwegian doctor in Gaza interviewed by many media outlets on his humanitarian mission once said he approved of the 9/11 attacks and is a member of Norway’s Red party.  Somehow, everyone who interviewed him missed those details, which might tend to shed just a little light on his accusation that the Israelis are committing genocide.

For fun, search for and read (I will not link to it) “LGF Watch,” which accuses Charles and his readers of being “rabid little racists” but seems to spend most of its time knocking down straw men.

Right Wing Nut House.  Heh.  I go to check this blog out for this review and am greeted with this paragraph opening the most recent post, about the incoming Obama administration planning on talking to Hamas:

Word has leaked out that the new Obama Administration will likely open a channel of communications of some kind with Hamas. There is no word whether they plan on opening a dialogue with American Nazis, Kluxers, skin heads, or other groups in the US who also wish to kill all the Jews but I’m sure they will eventually get around to it.

What a hilarious (if darkly so) way to get across a serious and intellectually valid point!  So I read on, figuring I’m going to like this place.

There was some serious debate going on in the comment threads I checked out.  Unlike the comment threads on some blogs, this doesn’t appear to be just a place to trade insults with trolls.

I’m not sure if the name of the blog is a defiant middle finger to the lefties who refer to conservatives as “wingnuts” or if it’s just coincidence.  But I like it either way.

The Next Right.  My comments on this blog are identical to my comments on RedState.  Like Redstate, it focuses more on achieving political ends than on values-based discussion.  Politics are important, of course, else your values will be overrun by the culture.  This is a great blog for political junkies but probably best only occasionally visited by someone who, like me, likes discussion of the underlying values for their own sake.

Atlas Shrugs.  I never read this blog unless one of my other regulars links to it.  But I committed to a solid five minutes of reading before writing this review, and ended up poking around the place a lot longer.

Blogger Pamela Geller is . . . passionate in her views.  I agree with most of what I read there, and she rocks for the bold way she says it.  You find words there you don’t see used a lot in public anymore: evil, victory, defeat (the verb), fight.  Well, OK, you do see those words a lot, but they’re usually on lefty blogs and written with reference to George W. Bush.  Pamela writes them with reference to radical Islam.  She makes Charles Johnson at LGF look like a member of Code Pink.  And how many other bloggers are already missing Dick Cheney?  (Well,  I see JammieWearingFool is, for one.)

Well, there you have it.  Go vote.

2008 Weblog Awards links:

Voting rules are here.

FAQs here.

Vote for “Best Conservative Blog” here.

Links to the polls for all categories are here.

List of finalists in all categories here.