A new award and winner!

Last week, Smartie over at Power Liberal suggested that readers should take a look at James Lileks’ post on the Bleat (his blog) the day before Thanksgiving. Pay particular attention, Smartie says, to the final paragraph. As you might expect, these are unexplored environs for Spot, but being the obedient dog that he is, Spotty did surf over there. Here’s the paragraph:

Public service: Chris Matthews got banged around in the blogs for remarks he made about the need to understand terrorists. He replied, at length, on the Dennis Prager show Tuesday. His show is not archived online, so I am taking the liberty of posting the exchange here, for one day. (This link does not work in the archived version of this post.) Matthews labors to make a point which seems both obvious and irrelevant, but matters a great deal to him. In any case, I don’t “hate” the other side; I just find their ideas inconsistent with the basic themes of Western Civ, and hence I oppose them. It’s interesting to note how Matthews makes a point of using US support of the Shah as a grave mistake, given the horrible consequences that followed from his boss’ removal of support from the Peacock throne. But you can judge for yourself. See you tomorrow, with bells on.

First, a digression. Spotty’s readers know about the Spotty award, given to someone who writes a letter to the editor or other opinion piece expressing thoughts that Spot wishes he had put in a post. For some time, Spot has been thinking about an anti-Spotty type award. But then he thought that the whole site was kind of an anti-Spotty, except for the Spottys, of course. Well, what to do?

Spot decided he should have a special, extra-mile, kind of award for writing that expresses the distilled essence of doctrinaire, bilious, right-winger thought. And James Lileks gave Spot the perfect occasion to award the first one. But what to call it?

Spot has decided to name the award in honor of all of the movie extras who played frightened villagers in old Frankenstein or other horror movies. You know, the kind who ran around with torches and pitchforks looking for people to burn or impale? The award will be called the Ignorant Superstitious Villager award; perhaps it will come to be known as the ISV for short. As with the Spotty, the grant of the ISV award is solely within the discretion of the publisher of The Cucking Stool, namely Spot. There are no appeals, and there are no prizes, except for the kudos or obloquy, as the case may be, that goes along with receiving the award.

Okay, back to cases. The arrayed right-wing blogosphere, including our awardee, have raised a howl because MSNBC’s Chris Matthews had the gall to suggest that we might have better luck if we spent some time trying to understand the terrorists! But Chris, it is so much easier to loathe and fear people we know little or nothing about! That should be so obvious. Look, it is hard enough to write people off as infected with evil spirits as it is, without some smart ass going around suggesting they might have some human attributes.

And Jim (he hates that), Spot appreciates western civilization, and the white man’s burden and all that, but maybe in the Middle East they don’t. Ya think?

Tags: James Lileks shoulders the white man's burden