Worst Posts of the Week

Last week I found the worst blog post of the week in the Wisconsin blogosphere. I think I'm going to continue to do this, but I will rank the three worst posts each week. There's just so much nonsense out there. These bad bloggers deserve to have their work measured against the work of other bad bloggers. I will be grading these posts in the same three categories: hypocrisy, inanity and faux outrage. If you see a blog post that you think is particularly hypocritical, inane or full of faux outrage, I'd love to hear about it. Now for the worst blog posts of this week:

(3) The Third Worst Blog Post of the Week is written by The Marquette Warrior. It's titled "Secular Liberal Anti-Mormon Bigotry." It's sort of a "well duh" post where he comments on a "rant" of Larry O'Donnell about Mit Romney and Mormons. His words in italics:

It’s well known that a fair number of conservative Christians think that the Mormon religion is a “cult,” and won’t vote for Mitt Romney.

But a fair number of liberals and leftists have rather extreme anti-Mormon biases too.

For starters, it's a little odd that he simply begins by noting that some groups of conservative Christians think that another group of conservative Christians is a little culty. But isn't it obvious that non-religious people think a group of really religious people are culty? And if you're a member of one of those really culty religions, like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or Catholicism, that's really into displaying anti-secular bias, like Mit Romney or The Marquette Warrior are, isn't it a tad hypocritical to pretend to give a crap about anti-cult bias?

And all Larry O'Donnell said is that the Mormon religion has racist roots. And it DOES. Why shouldn't that enter your calculus when picking a candidate? Isn't it very good evidence that a candidate is unhinged if he believes that a known con artist found some magical golden tablets in the woods and read them with magic glasses and that black people were turned black by god for rejecting him? Isn't it good evidence that a candidate is unhinged if he believes that a magical Jewish zombie will save us from eternal damnation if we ceremoniously drink his blood?

Do people like O’Donnell pose a problem for Romney? Not where votes are concerned, since they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon anyway.

Why not? All candidates at least pretend to be religious.

Where media coverage is concerned, maybe. Mainstream media types are heavily secular and -- if not actually hostile to religion -- think religious belief is rather odd. And they think that Mormon religious belief is even odder. This is likely to affect the tone of the coverage.

What's great about the Romney candidacy is that it puts all religion under the microscope. He notes the media's hostility to religion as if that were a bad thing. But the media here is an opinion show, and O'Donnell is not saying anything more or less bigoted that when the Marquette Warrior says on his blog.

This was a pretty lame post, but The Marquette Warrior will have to do much worse if he wants to win the Worst Blog Post of the Week.

Hypocrisy: 7/10

Inanity: 7/10

Faux Outrage: 6/10

Total: 20/30

(2) The Second Worst Blog Post of the Week comes to us from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane. Mr. Kane is a completely and blatantly racist person and a terrible writer. He see the world in terms of race and his blog post from yesterday is no exception. It's titled "Does Berry Bonds get an apology now?" His words are in italics.

It's a dark day for baseball fans, if there are any left.

Major League Baseball has issued its steroids report and it's a blockbuster.

Big names like Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada and Andy Pettitte and others have been implicated. Basically the report says they cheated.

Just like Barry Bonds, who is facing a trial for lying to the FBI about his steroid use.


It will be very interesting to see how baseball fans who demonized Bonds react to this list of other big-time stars accused of the very same thing.

I'd first like to note how annoying Mr. Kane's writing style is. Does every sentence need to be its own paragraph? The second thing I'd like to note is that, in a lot of cases, the report basically says that some of these guys didn't technically cheat (like if they took HGH or Andro in 2004). But whatever, I'll role with the theme that many of the guys in listed in the report did cheat.

Kane's main point is that Berry Bonds has been unfairly criticized, cause... like... everyone was doing it man. It must be because Berry Bonds is black. It's not because he was very high profile, it's not that he lied to a federal grand jury and it's not because he's a huge fucking asshole. It's because he's black.

Many fans said criticism of Bonds was justified because he was one of baseball's biggest names due to his challenge of Hank Aaron's home run record. I submit Clemens, winner of seven Cy Young awards, has the same lofty stature in the game as Bonds.

Now this bit is just hilarious. Does Eugene Kane actually think that Roger Clemens is some sort of media darling? Who doesn't hate Roger Clemens? He's like the second most hated guy in baseball.

Will the Cy Young awards get an asterisk now?

Probably.

Frankly, now it looks like Bonds was just another player doing what everybody else was doing to stay on the top of his game. Lying to the government might get him jail time but taking steroids clearly wasn't a big crime for baseball players.

Yes, that is what it looks like. That's what it always looked like. Nobody thought Bonds was the only guy doing roids. You heard his name more because he broke a career record of a legendary player that everyone loves (who was black). If it had been McGuire or a Giambi, we'd boo just as much.

This will be a good score for Eugene. The post pretty much sums up his bad blogging. The hypocrisy is huge. He's accusing everyone of being racist when he's clearly a very racist man. The inanity is also huge. Of all of the issues that the Mitchel report brings up, Mr. Kane decided to approach it from a racism angle. That's an issue that just isn't there. His faux outrage isn't too high. To be sure, he's pretending to be upset without reason, but he doesn't express his outrage in the fire and brimstone manner of a lot of bloggers. He'll lose points there. If I awarded bonus points for bad writing and racism, Kane's post would be one for the ages. Still, it's a good score:

Hypocrisy: 9/10

Inanity: 8/10

Faux Outrage: 6/10

Total: 23/10

(1) The Worst Blog Post of the Week comes from Peter the Hypocrite. I expect Peter the Hypocrite to be a major player in the Worst Blog Post of the Year race. He's what you would call a three-tool athlete in the sport of bad blogging. He's a hypocrite that becomes outraged at basically everything. And the inanity. Oh the inanity. Peter the Hypocrite's worst post this week (and there were plenty of bad ones) is called "More From the Hate Left." Even the title is brimming with hypocrisy, inanity and faux outrage!

Sometimes it’s best to ignore the smears and personal attacks that resemble a middle school lunchroom that flow with regularity from the liberal side of the blogosphere. They have their own little circle jerk and laugh at each other like the adolescents trapped in adult bodies that they are.

Peter the Hypocrite calls Hillary Clinton "the Hildabeast" whenever he refers to her. He refers to public schools as "gummint run schoolz." Peter is so middle school lunchroom that his voice cracks. Huge hypocrisy points. He get's more with the "circle jerk" comment. Peter the Hypocrite bans commenters that disagree with him. His blog is all about laughing at dumb puns with his mouth-breather friends.

Then there are times which various items need to be addressed. These are the people who are demanding we be civil and show proper respect to liberal icons like Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Jim Doyle, etc.

They howl in protest with each reference to The Hildabeast, Or Shrillary. Or The Swimmer. Or Osama bin … Osama Obama … Obamamama (actual words used by Ted Kennedy). Or The Breck Girl. Or Don Doyleone. Or … well, you get the drift.

How dare you launch these personal attacks and fail to show proper respect? Well, for starters, these are what are known as public figures. Public figures have always been fair game for ridicule. Ever hear of Jay Leno? David Letterman? Jon Stewart? Stephen Colbert?

I've never heard anyone demand that Peter the Hypocrite stop using his kindergarten humor. People often read it and remark, "wow, Peter the Hypocrite sure is a douchebag" or whatever. Some people even asked a columnist at the Journal Sentinel to remove his link to Peter's blog. But that's hardly demanding that he halt his douchebaggery. And even if it is, nobody is forcing him to listen. And the obvious difference between the comics he listed and himself, is that they're funny.

He goes on for a few paragraphs about someone making fun of some other blogger. More middle school crap. More hypocrisy. Then there's this:

It’s the frightening attitude of several commenters who implied that it is fair game to go after conservative bloggers and investigate their backgrounds and publish it. Two of those were cowards hiding behind the cloak of anonymity and a third was a liberal blogger from Racine. All seemed to imply that anyone writing a blog is fair game for the leftwing smear machine.

Actually, no. They are not fair game. Someone writing a blog, be it on the Left or the Right, is a private citizen. None of us are public figures, running for office or part of the media. Citizen bloggers have much more protection in the areas of libel and slander than do political or media figures.

Yeah, they do. But truth is still and (almost) absolute defense. And publishing someone's address doesn't exactly fall into the category of defamation. And opinion statements are rarely found to be defamatory. So I'm totally free to make the statement, "Peter the Hypocrite is a douchebag" because we have a First Amendment in this country.

Citizen bloggers should be off limits from the type of personal attacks displayed on a regular basis by the Left, as well as other smears, parodies, etc

To suggest that only "the Left" engage in personal attacks is just astounding. He's basically attacking a "private citizen" blogger in this post by referring to some dude's blog as "stalker blog." How's that not defamation under Peter the Hypocrite's definition? Read the whole thing. It's really quite jaw-dropping. Peter stands out in all three categories.

Hypocrisy: 10/10

Inanity: 10/10

Faux Outrage: 10/10

Total: 30/30