~VOTING IS NOW OPEN~
Previous winners:
2005 - Hindrocket, “da Vinci, Einstein, Bush“
2006 - Mark Halperin, “I loves you Hugh Hewitt!“
Love, the Bard remind us, is a many-splintered thing*. I never understood what the Bard could have meant by that, until I considered that he lived in a time of rough, ragged wooden floors, and before advances in synthetic fiber technology gave us the durable and nigh-impenetrable kneepad technology we take for granted today. Though we may not suffer for love as we once did, does this mean we love our conservative idols less fully, less intensely, less unconditionally? Indeed, no. The love we have for our beloveds is as fulsome and rich as the love of any ‘tween for any Jonas Brother, and, if we were ever splintered for this love, would we not bare these scars proudly, crimson wounds pulsing with our own hearts’ blood a sign that …
OMG is that DAVID ADDINGTON?!?!?! The way he subverts the Constitution is SO DREAMY!!!!!! OMG HE’S LOOKING RIGHT ME OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE**************
The Nominees for the 2008 Fluffy:
- Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, “The Treatment of Bush Has Been A Disgrace“
- Andrew Klavan, “Bush is Batman“
- John J. Miller, “Jesse Helms was a civil rights hero“
- Rich Lowry, “Starbursts“
- Buttrocket, “Dubya: Master of Public Speaking“
* It appears that love is, in fact, a many-splendored thing, and Shakespeare never said that. I think this only goes to confirm my original point.
December 23, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Well John J. Miller is ineligible on account of being correct! Jesse Helms did oppose not civil rights as such but “a particular vision” of them. Specifically, the particular vision of civil rights as applying in any way to black people.
So that leaves Lowry. We all know he’s going to win anyway.
December 23, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Klavan!
December 23, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Lowry in a fucking landslide.
December 23, 2008 at 11:02 pm
I like Shapiro acknowledging that everything’s shitty but gosh darn it, nothing’s Bush’s fault and we should support him BECAUSE!
December 23, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Ok, I’ve gotta be the dissenting voice again here. Lowry’s lead is clearly insurmountable, but I have to go with Klavan. The Fluffy is an award for “most disgusting, worshipful defense of powerful wingnut”. All of these are entries are pretty digusting, Lowry’s moreso, and on more levels, than most. I can’t escape the feeling that it lacks that worshipful aspect, ya know? It has more of a post-coital glow, a “I just yanked it to something dark & uncomfortable, and now I hafta justify it to my forebrain” feel. Maybe that’s just my take on it.
Klavan really puts some effort into his piece. It’s not every day you see a guy demolish both the bounds between real life, and Tolkien-
“Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense — values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right — only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like “300,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Narnia,” “Spiderman 3″ and now “The Dark Knight”?”
..as well as the “complex” differences between modern national security concerns, and the policies of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth-
“Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don’t always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless.
The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them — when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love.”
Basically, I think he deserves the win for attempting to make a moral argument FOR pure immorality, based on a comic, er, graphic novel, in tribute to a chimp. That’s some dedicated shilling right there folks.
Honorable mention to ButtRocket, who clearly has the best weed-
“President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed.”
puff, puff, pass, dude…
December 24, 2008 at 7:49 am
I gave it to Lowry. But I admit it was more like awarding Forrest Gump the Best Actor/Picture Oscars based on special effects, then when re-watching it later and thinking, “this movie sucks!”
Kordo is right. But life isn’t always fair.
December 24, 2008 at 8:12 am
Lowry went into the breach and came out deserving of a newly minted category for those unable to separate their libido from their punditry. K-Lo on Mittens would be another example, or in a previous year Santorum on dog.I gotta go with Buttrocket, for the concise redux of his alternate Bush reality:
December 24, 2008 at 9:22 am
Have to dissent from the herd qand go with Buttrocket. Lowery’s Palinology is a fine example of worship, but still very pedestrian – it’s something any of her millions of fans could have written.
But it takes something special to write of His Worthlessness,
The sheer groveling anti-reality displayed in that quote beggars the starstruck Palin fetishists any day of the week and that includes Sunday.
December 24, 2008 at 9:22 am
Hahaha, Dougie Smooth and I picked the exact same quote.
December 24, 2008 at 10:05 am
My heart says Lowry, but my fingers outrank my heart and they had to vote: “Bush IS Batman!”
December 24, 2008 at 11:16 am
Lowry? Nuh-uh. He jotted it down in a brief burst of hormonal arousal. Who among us hasn’t done similar?
It’s Klavan: for grandeur of vision, for breadth of reference, for sheer Wagnerian *scale.*
(Buttrocket’s is just knee-jerk delusional. You can’t reward that! You just can’t!)
December 24, 2008 at 12:36 pm
What happened to Fred Hiatt’s nomination? To my mind, that was the most complete entry. Why was it disqualified?
December 24, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Judging by the comments, this will be a wasted vote, but Jesse Helms was a dick for far longer than Bush was or Palin was or every will be, and therefore any defense of Helms is that much more wanktastic.
December 24, 2008 at 7:29 pm
These are five extraordinary bits of fluffing. I’m torn between Lowry, Buttrocket, and Klavan.
I suppose I’ll eliminate Buttrocket on the basis of the fact that, however magnificent this post, it pales in comparison to the previous bit of Bush-fellating for which he won the 2005 Fluffy. Unless it’s the Godfather, Part II, the sequel doesn’t deserve an award.
So that leaves Lowry and Klavan. Lowry’s post has the virtue of being an instant classic. But it will become a part of internet traditions whether or not he wins the Fluffy.
So my vote is for Klavan on the basis of the sheer effort involved.
December 24, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Lowry went into the breach and came out deserving of a newly minted category for those unable to separate their libido from their punditry.
Have to disagree. The very name of the award recognizes the fact that there is, and always has been, a disturbing sexual component to the wingnut idolatry. That being the case, Lowry’s willingness to unabashedly unzip and wank away in full public view makes his entry the gold standard of Fluffies. I think in future the award ought to bear his name.
December 25, 2008 at 11:02 am
So much sycophancy, but only one vote…
Lowry’s soft pornography was a strong candidate, and Hinderacker’s apparently irony-free belief that Obama should take advice on speech from Bush deserves the recognition it has gained here.
But I chose Shapiro at the WSJ.
He doesn’t merely idolise or brown-nose Bush or Palin – he denounces all Americans bitterly for being ungrateful to their president.
Short of demanding that the people of New Orleans and Iraq apologise for the inconvenience they have caused the Republican Party (and I bet he thinks they should), this was the ugliest fluffery I’ve seen this year.
December 25, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Gotta be the Starbursts, if only for the Butthead-esque vibe of “huh-huh..uh huh-huh…thingies” that ran through it. It would have been subtler if he’d just appended “I’d tap that” to the end of his column and been done with it. “Yeah, she didn’t make much sense, but now I’ve got a boner that could etch diamond, and that’s what’s important!” Ladies and Gentlemen, put your hands together for the Party Of Ideas!
December 26, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I can’t vote for Winky Starburst because for me the meaning of the Fluffy is deeply rooted in that of the porn-industry job title from which its name derives: to wit, a crew member whose job is to sexually stimulate the performers. I just can’t imagine Sarah Palin being aroused in the slightest by Rich’s sad and degrading post, whereas I can easily see the Chimpster sprouting a blue steel hard-on upon seeing himself likened to BATMAN.
December 27, 2008 at 2:07 pm
[...] run away with this for the sheer brazeness of his couched racism and passive-aggressive violence. The Fluffy: Hindrocet almost got my vote for the reason that, coming as late as it did in the season it was [...]
December 27, 2008 at 4:43 pm
“Love is a many splintered thing”
I am shocked, shocked to see that you are reduced to stealing from Sisters of Mercy lyrics.
(she looked good in ribbons).
December 27, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Sisters of Mercy? I thought it was Martha Washington.
December 29, 2008 at 8:35 pm
A late write-in candidate. Niles Gardiner informs us, by way of the Daily Torygraph, that Bush was a great president who liberated more people from tyranny than anyone since Churchill.
“Much of the condemnation of his policies though is driven by a venomous hatred of Bush’s personality and leadership style, rather than an objective assessment of his achievements.”
The only way you can read the whole thing without throwing up is if your ability to suppress the gag reflex is as strong as Gardiner’s.
January 8, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Technically not a 2008 fluffy, but: http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jziegler/2009/01/07/my-interview-with-sarah-palin/#more-10885