Better "Best Centrist Blog" For A Day Than Schmuck For A Lifetime

“I was living in Madison, WI, which was not at the time a federal offense. Despite that, the Bush administration held me without charges and tortured me for three years. What a hoot!”

Needless to say, the passive-aggressive ressentiment is out in full force chez Althouse. She first laments that “I make some throwaway, half-humorous remark in the middle of a comment thread and touch off multi-blog fireworks that go on for days.” Yep, don’t let the fact that her claim that it was plausible that Padilla was deprived of his senses so that he couldn’t blink messages of unspecified content to people who had no way of seeing him was entirely unfunny and defended with several earnest, defensive follow-ups fool you…she was joking! See, arbitrarily detaining people and torturing them is funny! Ha-ha! Why on earth can people not see the (intentional) comedy gold in Althouse’s remarks?

In fairness, surrounding her next whine is her insightful discovery of her analogue on the nation’s op-ed pages. “What is it about the ’08 presidential season that is making Maureen Dowd’s nicknames seem funny — instead of annoying — all of a sudden?” (I believe what he have here is a “false premise,” although it’s easy to understand why Althouse suddenly finds Dowd amusing–she’s no longer aiming her empty fashion commentary and primary school nicknames at the Republicans Althouse adores.) Anyway, I think you can see why Althouse takes the Weblog Awards so seriously–when you think it’s the height of wit and insight to treat elections for President of the United States like junior high student council elections, treating the Weblog Awards this way is nothing.