Our Gracious Concession Speech, Take Three

Another year, another embarrassing defeat. We’re starting to seem a bit like the New York Yankees—only no one on our staff answers to the ridiculous moniker “A-Rod.” (Thank goodness.)

As you may well know, dear reader, for the third straight year, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” were finalists for the “Funniest Blog” prize in the 2007 Weblog Awards. And, for the third straight year, we got beaten like Robin Givens.

Perhaps our obscure references to former wives of Mike Tyson don’t really go over well with the general public? We wouldn’t have guessed that this would be the case, but you never know.

Anyway, as a result of our unenviable status as thrice defeated, we have decided to offer another in our grand series of gracious concession speeches. We hope that this particular one shows the sort of pseudo-maturity that one comes to expect from the typical non-heart-felt oration.

“An Officially Gracious Concession Speech” by the Crack Young Staff, Perennial Big-Time Losers of the Weblog Awards

Unfortunately, dear friends, tonight was not our night. Neither, we hasten to add, was a night around this time one year ago, nor two years ago, for that matter. Although we gave it our level best, we went down in flames—like parts of California, or Richard Simmons.

To be more specific, we wound up in penultimate place, a mere four votes away from the ante-penultimate slot. This means, of course, that we are officially funnier than one “weblog” on Al Gore’s Internet. And, boy, that doesn’t feel very good.

Before we begin our recriminations, we ought to praise “Sadly, No!,” the winner of the “Funniest Blog” award. Apparently, tendentious left-wing mis-readings of conservative columnists are hysterical, and thus their “Michael Medved is a crank” humor deserves heartfelt huzzahs.

We mean, come on: How do these guys come up with such uproarious yuks? It’s not like Ann Coulter says something ridiculous all the time, now is it?

In addition, we feel the need to praise the runner-up, “DUmmie FUnnies.” As you may not know, the folks at this charming “weblog” decided to use all sorts of dirty tricks to garner votes, including rousing dimwitted right-wingers to plump for them by claiming their loss would be some sort of disaster in the culture war. So, congrats, guys: Not only are you runners-up, you also stayed classy.

We would be remiss, furthermore, if we failed to thank all those thousands of people who failed to vote for our humble “weblog.” There are, of course, many of you, but that doesn’t lessen our enthusiasm for each and every one of you one bit.

In fact, we firmly believe that everyone who did not cast his ballot for the crack young staff is, for lack of a better word, retarded. Severely retarded, in fact. Although we had an inkling that numerous Americans were a bit off, we didn’t recognize how many honest-to-goodness helmet-clad US citizens were out there.

But it’s true. So, fine: Vote for some other crappy “weblog”; forsake the crack young staff in its time of e-need.

We pledge to keep on trucking anyway. And we aim to be as mercilessly unfunny as we’ve been these past three years. With a little luck, we’ll be writing another such graceless concession speech after another Weblog Awards trouncing next year.