Irish Blog Awards Fever
Jan 30th, 2008 | By Bock | Category: internetAs days lengthen and tempers shorten, we huddle in ragged, mutant clusters and one to another half-mutter the eternal question:
Well?
For too long, answer came there none until today, when Mulley took pity and offered us relief of sorts, using the venerable Irish tradition of The Leak.
Bock is in the long-list for best political blog and you can see the complete field at the end of the page, but we still await the list for Best Blog. I understand it runs to eighteen million separate candidates, and is expected to take eleven years to judge.
One of the categories has me a little baffled, I have to admit, though not because I have anything against the people involved. No indeed. In fact, I read the work of journalists every single day, but for the life of me I can’t see the point of having a Best Blog from a Journalist category. I haven’t spoken to Mulley about this, but maybe I should ask him how this category was decided upon, and I’m sure he’d have a very rational and logical answer if I put the question to him. It just seems a bit arbitrary.
If you’re going to have Best Blog from a Journalist as a category, then why not Best Blog from a Plumber? Or Best Blog from an Axe-Murderer. Best Blog from a Crooked Bastard Taoiseach. Oh wait. No. That wouldn’t work, cos they’d have to be able to read and write. Well what about Best Blog from a Thieving Bastard Politician of any Party? That’ll work.
Other arbitrary categories for next year’s Best Blog might include
Best Blog from an Abusing Priest, with Alterations
Best Blog from a Misplaced Children’s Hospital
Best Blog From a Bunch of Thieving Crooks Paid by Your Tax Money
Best Blog from a Dead Crook
Best Blog from a Member of an Garda Siochana
Best Blog from a Crooked Bastard Taoiseach. Fuck, let’s list it anyway.
Best Blog from a Demented Bishop
Best Blog for the Cover-Up of a Scandal
Best Blog by a Plagiarist
Best Blog from an Old Fraud
Best Blog by an Occupying Army
Best Blog by a Martyred Muslim
Yeah. This idea looks promising, don’t you think? Any more suggestions will be welcome and I’ll put them in with your name on them if they’re good.
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Here’s the complete long-list for Best Political Blog:
Irish Election
Slugger O’Toole
Cedar Lounge Revolution
Damien Blake
James Lawless
El Blogador
Mamanpoulet
Bock The Robber
That’s Ireland
1169 and Counting
Harry McGee
Gavin’s Blog
Seamus Ryan
O’Conall Street
Notes on the Front
Dominic Hannigan
Skin flicks
Political Verse
Organized Rage
Ciaran Cuffe
Dublin Opinion
Tuppenceworth
Balrog
Everything Ulster
Richard Delevan
AtlanticBlog
Eric Byrne
And here are the plumbers journalists:
On The Record
Present Tense
Harry McGee
UnaRocks
Emigration etc
Pricewatch
The Sigla Blog
Kathy Foley
Richard Delevan
Karlin Lillington
David McWilliams
Sarah Carey
Haydn Shaughnessy
Red Mum
Community
Voice Musings
Crime Always Pays
Nadine O’Regan
John Collins
Congratulations, my sweet! Good luck! I’ll be rooting for you.
I’ll second that, Bock.
Good luck on your nominations.
There should be a “Best Unnominated Blog” catagory too.
Don’t you know its just a ploy by Mulley to get John Waters to start a blog of his own.
How do they know other blogs aren’t also by journalists anyway?
For all we know, you could be a journalist, Bock. Christ, even I might be a journalist.
Between you and me, a little bird told me Twenty Major is a total journalist.
The people should be told!
PCBride: thanks
Medbh: And congratulations on your nomination too.
Gamma Goblin: I’d believe it.
Mr Skinner: It’s like The Invaders. We could be journalists without knowing it, much like all journalists.
Oh no. Wait. I should have said we could be journalists without knowing anything, much like all journalists.
If you’re going to have Best Blog from a Journalist as a category, then why not Best Blog from a Plumber? Or Best Blog from an Axe-Murderer.
Well, that’s a bit silly, isn’t it?
Do murderers write for living? Would a plumber who blogs bring credibility to the medium?
There’s a fairly obvious connection between the two (blogging and journalism). I don’t see the problem.
No problem, Twenty.
Let them write for a living, and since they get so much more practice than the rest of us, let them compete for Best Blog, best Political Blog and all the rest.
As professional writers, they’d surely wipe the floor with us amateurs.
Aren’t they embarrassed to have a playpen all of their own?
Why would they be embarrassed? A growing number of journalists have taken up blogging and it has helped give the whole medium a bit more cogency and authority.
I don’t see why that shouldn’t be recognised and it’s definitely not ‘arbitrary’.
If you say so, who am I to argue?
Who are you to argue? Seems to me you’re the anti-John Waters, or the John Waters of the blogosphere as it were.
Comments like “without knowing anything, much like all journalists” and “aren’t they embarrassed to have a playpen all of their own?” are beyond ironic after your John Waters piece.
Post-ironic, even?
If you say so, who am I to argue?
Should I have said ‘In my opinion it’s definitely not arbitrary’? Would you have had more to say then?
But we’re at completely opposite poles on it.
You don’t think it’s arbitrary, while I can’t see why there should be a category reserved to journalists.
I’m making the point that plenty of people besides journalists write for a living. Why not have a special category for novelists? Unemployed screenwriters. Scientists. Poets. Mathematicians. Lawyers. OK. Not lawyers.
Where are we going? There’s little enough common ground on that particular issue, wouldn’t you think?
Congratulations and Good Luck
Thanks. I won’t buy my dress just yet.