December 18, 2006
Our Second Gracious Concession Speech
As even occasional visitors of this humble “weblog” certainly recognize, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have lost yet again. For two straight years, we’ve been finalists for the “Best Humor Blog” category of Wizbang’s “Weblog Awards,” and for two straight years we have failed to win the gold. Or silver. Or bronze. Or Formica. If you’re keeping score.
In this year’s contest, however, we performed better than our 2005 try. For the first time, dear reader, we actually bested a few fellow agonists, thereby removing the Jamaican bobsled team stench from our outfit. If the “Weblog Awards” were the Summer Olympics, we’d probably be the Netherlands. Or maybe Denmark.
Anyway, just like last year, we decided to pen a gracious concession speech. This will allow us to offer a polite tip of the cap to the outfit that actually won the award, whilst offering the mistaken impression that our dismal failure in no way troubles us.
Without any further ado, then, here goes:
Our Gracious Concession Speech, Take Two
To be sure, it is a banal truism to point out that not everyone can win. Our nation’s self-esteem-obsessed educators don’t think this is so, but that’s only because they’re losers. As such, when we became finalists in the “2006 Weblog Awards,” we knew that we’d either win or lose. Or, perhaps, tie—although this was less likely.
It turns out that we lost. Not as badly as we lost the year before, which makes us look a bit better than Ross Perot, we suppose. Actually, that’s H. Ross Perot; we never did figure out what the H. stood for and why it was sufficiently embarrassing that he’d go by Ross to begin with. But we digress.
For a second straight year, the only left-wing “humor” “website” nominated bested its competition. Frankly, we find “Sadly, No!” about as funny as the Rwandan genocide, albeit, on the plus side, we can’t blame Kofi Annan for it. Still, Seb and his gents have won fair and square and we heartily congratulate them. We think Jesus’ General would have smoked them, but that’s neither here nor there.
More importantly, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have passed on the torch of abject futility to “The Dick List,” a charmingly titled “website” that—along with a few rivals—miraculously managed to round up fewer votes than did this humble e-outfit. You can be darn sure that next year we’ll nominate “The Dick List” for a prize and hope it can work its way out of the cellar as have we.
In sum, we lost. Even so, we have improved. In this respect, we liken ourselves to Maya Angelou, the catastrophically cloying poet who, despite all reason, still rises. With any luck, we’ll wind up in third next year.
To all our supporter(s), we thank you (pl. or sg.) for your effort(s). Now, if you could only multiply a few hundred times, we stand a chance in the future.
