The Golden Slates

LGM is proud to announce the 2009 nominees for First Annual Mikey Kaus Award For Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence in Contrarianism:

• Jonah Weiner: Creed may be the greatest American rock band since Limp Bizkit (alas, Nickelback, being Canadian, don’t count.) I think you can understand why I think music criticism is a waste of time.
• Armond White: Bandslam is one of the great achievements of American cinema.
• Robert Harris: A rapist’s family members should have veto power over whether said rapist is subject to legal sanctions.
• Lucinda Rosenfeld: If you expect your friends to not leave you unconscious in a gutter and then perhaps offer to pick you up from the hospital after you’ve been slipped a roofie, you need to lower your standards.
• Jill Hunter Pellettieri: Not only are suggestions by hotels that guests not waste energy by getting sheets washed that they don’t need washed incredibly burdensome to my delicate sensibilities, they’re probably bad for the environment somehow, I mean, they have to print a card!
  
• Levitt and Dubner: Passim. [See also.]

This year’s lifetime achievement awards:

• Jonah Weiner: Limp Bizkit’s oeuvre may represent the greatest peak in American rock music since Starship followed up Knee Deep in the Hoopla with significant contributions to the Mannequin soundtrack.
• Jann Wenner: With his new masterpiece Dogshit in the Doorway, the vocalist and co-writer responsible for one of the greatest runs of music in pop music history has been reduced to working with Lenny Kravitz and Rob Thomas. I mean this as a compliment.*
• Pretty Much Every Affluent White Male Nominally Liberal Pundit In America: Overturning Roe v. Wade would be the greatest thing ever to happen to abortion rights.
• Peter Beinart: Trust me, supporters of gay and lesbian rights will be even happier that the courts rejected their claims than the Democratic Party would have been to nominate Joe Lieberman in 2004.
• Mikey Kaus: passim, of course, but I’m especially partial to “the success of Brokeback Mountain in arch-conservative suburban Dallas proves that its appeal is strictly limited to gay liberal elites.”

Further nominations are what comments are for…

*I’ll admit that this probably crosses the arbitrary line where “contrarianism” just becomes straightforward “whoring for your powerful friends.” But I’m leaving it in because anything-for-a-buck and sucking up to powerful interests are generally integral to Slate-style contrarianism…