Place your bets! October Madness is on!

October 5, 2004 4:50 PM

Wimblehack! Matt Taibbi of the NY Press hosts a four-week tournament to crown the worst political journalist in America. Check the bracket, and place your bets. Bob Woodward looks tough to beat (he "says, with pride, [that] . . . Bush in Plan of Attack either comes across as a 'forceful, decisive leader' or 'shows he does not know what he is doing,' depending on your point of view"), Brian Mooney of the Boston Globe has a winning strategy ("Any reporter who files a 'nation bitterly divided' or a 'most fiercely contested election in history' piece is going to advance automatically. When 100 million people don't vote, the nation is not bitterly divided. The nation mostly doesn't give a shit.") but my money says there's no way anyone's stopping Elizabeth Bumiller. (Via Atrios, but should be safe for Republicans, too.)
posted by Zonker (10 comments total)

Annthrax Coulter is a journalist?

Even I didn't realize how low the barrier to media whoredom was and I'm a committed cynic when it comes to corporate media.

But then there is the entire crew at FAUX News so its within the parameters. And yes, I was forgetting the Moonie Times.

Never mind.
posted by nofundy at 5:25 PM on October 5, 2004

It's like shooting fish in a barrel. I might have to go with Novak because he makes me want to claw my eyes out and live in a padded room for the rest of my life.
posted by The God Complex at 5:48 PM on October 5, 2004

Comedy gold:

IT'S ALWAYS A LITTLE surprising to remember that the New York Post has a "Washington Bureau Chief" filing ostensibly factual stories from the Hill about the movements of the president and other real, breathing government officials. The effect of reading these touchingly earnest impersonations of credible journalism is a little like watching Koko the gorilla play with a kitten, or punch the "buttons" on a toy telephone. My god, you think. It's so human! But sooner or later Koko plugs her ears with her own turds again, and she's back to being just another lovable ape.
posted by psmealey at 5:50 PM on October 5, 2004

it's good (or bad) to see Nedra Pickler of the AP there--she gets my vote as one of the worst around.
posted by amberglow at 6:14 PM on October 5, 2004

This is good (writing).

But bad (for journalism).
posted by drezdn at 6:33 PM on October 5, 2004

As for Ann Coulter, what is there to say? Like her predecessor, Joseph Stalin, she has her funny moments.

But what's all this then?! Despite this fulsome praise for Coulter, she's already been eliminated! Treasonous, I say! Treasonous!
posted by JollyWanker at 7:19 PM on October 5, 2004

Bill Sammon is gonna be hard to beat.
posted by inksyndicate at 9:00 PM on October 5, 2004

This could get ugly. Last time Matt Taibbi ran a contest like this he tracked down the winning hack, New York Times' Moscow bureau chief Michael Wines, and threw a horse-sperm pie in his face.
posted by spork at 9:54 PM on October 5, 2004

spork, now THAT is a damned funny image, unless you're Michael Wines.
posted by fenriq at 11:35 PM on October 5, 2004

Although I deplore the throwing of horse-sperm pies in faces, if a horse-sperm pie must be thrown, I can't think of a more suitable recipient than the egregious Michael Wines (except perhaps R.W. "Johnny" Apple, who continues to pollute the NY Times with multithousand-word essays on mindnumbingly banal subjects long after he should have been put out to pasture, but the saving grace is that I can't imagine anyone actually reading beyond the first paragraph before succumbing to slumber).
posted by languagehat at 9:38 AM on October 6, 2004