The Crossed Pond

In the spirit of not being afraid to piss people off, which we try to make a hallmark here at The Pond, I thought I’d pick my favorites in the political categories of the 2007 Weblog Awards.

Most of these won’t be surprises to regular readers—I’m not shy about expressing my admiration for my favorite blogs, and for half the categories you can just check the blogroll to figure out where I’d come down—but maybe a few will be. For the sake of some cred, I read a lot of blogs, and I tend to run pretty well across the spectrum. As you might be able to tell from the blogroll, we tend to run across the spectrum of blogs that interest us, so at the very least, I’m a vested interest that has perhaps a bit less partisan blinders than some.

Without further ado, for no other reason than that I like lists, and picking things (you should see me around Oscar time; it’s sick)….

Best Liberal Blog

* Hullabaloo
* Think Progress
* Shakesville
* Pandagon
* skippy the bush kangaroo
* Orcinus
* Firedoglake
* Glenn Greenwald’s Unclaimed Territory
* Talking Points Memo
* Feministing

This one to me is no contest. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has gone from being one of the most interesting and vigilant voices in the blogosphere to having created something of a media empire that bustles under his steady voice, careening in all kinds of directions, from group blogging to muckracking to video blogging to book clubbing. However, I still find myself reliably drawn to the mainpage, where Josh and the World’s Best Co-Blogger, David Kurtz, reliably put out some of the web’s best content daily. What’s more, Josh has put together a site mission that seems like it should be conventional, but is actually exceedingly rare: a blog in every sense of the word that also, effortlessly, doubles as a journalistic outlet on par with any in the mainstream media. He doesn’t just opine (as we do here), he goes out and reports. And again, it’s to his imminent credit, and to all of our credits really, that Josh is out there toiling away, breaking the stories, putting in the elbow grease, parsing the documents, and all in all presenting one of the best examples on the web of good old fashioned reporting with brand new technology.

Best Conservative Blog

* Say Anything
* Sister Toldjah
* Right Wing News
* Ankle Biting Pundits
* Captain’s Quarters
* Michelle Malkin
* Ace of Spades HQ
* The Belmont Club
* Powerline
* Newsbusters

Another very easy one for me. All of these sites are good (and one of the few categories where I’ve read, often regularly, all of the nominees), but the whole point of this site is that Republicanism, in the last several years, has lost its ever-lovin’ mind. The exception to this is Captain’s Quarters, which doesn’t shy away from being partisan, but which time and time again impresses the hell out of me with its sanity, integrity, and smarts. It’s no secret that we here at The Pond have become well outside the mainstream of conservative thought as defined by the gatekeepers—of which a few are represented on this list of nominees, by the way—but Ed Morrissey is one of the very few that I find myself either agreeing to disagree with (rather than feeling like I’m being condescended to or shrilly denounced), or often in spite of myself, being persuaded by. And that, for me, is what makes him such a powerful and positive voice of leadership in the conservative blog world. We started this blog, in part, because we all felt in one way or another dejected and rejected by the state of conservatism today. Ed reminds me why I remain a Republican, and why there’s still reason to be optimistic in that.

Also, I’ve been trying to get on his blogroll for ages. Ed, call me?

Best UK Blog

* Iain Dale
* Guy Fawkes
* Neil Clark
* EUReferendum
* Pub Philosopher
* The Devil’s Kitchen
* Baggage Reclaim
* Nourishing Obscurity
* Bright Meadow
* Kickette

Sort of a strange list of nominees, innit? A lot of very great sites that were passed over (Dizzy? ConservativeHome? Finkelstein? 18DoughtyStreet? Come on, Jackart for chrissakes?), but I chalk that up to it being a largely American base of people doing the nominating. At the very least though, they got Iain Dale right. He’s consistently the best mainstream conservative voice over there, plugging tirelessly away with both patience and verve. Anybody who wants a start at British politics could do a helluva lot worse than read his site for a month.

Guy Fawkes is pretty good too, but as an American, I can’t understand a fucking word he says most of the time.

Best of the Top 250 Blogs

* Just One Minute
* My Pet Jawa
* Balloon Juice
* Wonkette
* RedState
* Bitch Ph.D.
* MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
* Jesus’ General
* Blue Star Chronicles
* Gateway Pundit

Anybody but RedState.

Fuck those guys.

Best of the Top 251 – 500 Blogs

* Isreal Matzav
* The Carpetbagger Report
* feministe
* The Moderate Voice
* TBogg
* Knowledge is Power
* Baldilocks
* Fausta
* PC Free Zone
* Asymmetrical Information

A lot of interesting blogs here that I’d never heard of. Still, hard to not give the nod to Carpetbagger. They’ve been right on top of everything for a few years now.

Best of the Top 1001 – 1750 Blogs

* Obsidian Wings
* Bookworm Room
* Agent Bedhead
* Merri Musings
* The Sundries Shack
* Thoughts of a Regular Guy
* Slacktivist
* Dispatches from the Culture Wars
* Echidne of the Snakes
* Newshoggers

Never heard of the rest of them, but Obsidian Wings is a site that, with any justice, would (shall) be a leading voice in the blogosphere. I feel like an idiot everytime I read hilzoy. We here fake it real good. She’s the real deal. One of the best kept secrets (relatively) in the Top 2000 blogs.

Best Online Community

* DailyKos
* Little Green Footballs
* Fark!
* BlogHer
* 9rules Network
* Slashdot
* Groklaw
* My Left Wing
* Gather
* Television Without Pity

This one is surprisingly tough. Dailykos is the community I’ve had the most direct involvement with, and you just can’t say enough about the massive and dedicated community they’ve built, but how can you discount Slashdot? You take any given 25 users of that site, and you’ve got a great blog right there. Or My Left Wing, which is a great dark horse in this category? All of them I could pick.

But ultimately, I think I just have to stay loyal to the people of Fark!. There’s no other site, with the exception maybe of SomethingAwful, that gives me so high a comment-to-laugh ratio. And the site is just such a treasure trove of everything. Fark’s a site I’ve been reading since damn near the beginning, and it’s maybe my quintessential comfort food of the web. No matter what kind of surfing I’m doing, if I get bored, there finally comes a time when I just click over to fark and start scrolling and clicking. It’s like crack. And, more than even any of those other sites, it’s nearly completely user driven. So, yeah.

Best Law Blog

* Above the Law
* How Appealing
* Volokh Conspiracy
* Sui Generis
* Balkinization
* Simple Justice
* Wall Street Journal Law Blog
* SCOTUS Blog
* Likelihood Of Confusion
* Ms JD Changing the Face of the Legal Profession

I don’t even think I can pick a clear winner here. I just want to highlight what an amazingly strong category this one is. If I had to pick, I’d tie between Balkinization and SCOTUS Blog. But all of these are great.

Best Blog

* Michelle Malkin
* Huffington Post
* RawStory
* TownHall
* Andrew Sullivan
* Captain’s Quarters
* The Presurfer
* Gawker
* Boing Boing
* PostSecret

Here is another pick that will probably surprise nobody. But, I will say that there are some great nominees here. HuffingtonPost isn’t often my bag, but it’s become impossible to ignore in the last two years. RawStory and TownHall both plug away with competent consistency. Captain’s Quarter’s, again, I can’t sing the praises of enough. BoingBoing and Gawker are also both excellent.

But, to me, Andrew Sullivan is blogging. He’s the quintessence. He is, of course, imperfect, at times even shrill or frustrating, but he lays it bare like nobody else. What you get is him, nothing less, sometimes quite a bit more (his reader emails are legendary). There’s no other blog that connects in quite the same way his does.

And, of course, he’s the direct inspiration for this blog. I know I speak for at least Rojas when I say that, deciding to start this blog, there was some second-guessing in our minds about whether or not we were just too outside the mainstream, if we had been too pushed aside, to have our voices matter anymore. That’s a horrible place to be, but that’s been the reality for conservatives like us in this political landscape in the last decade. It’s been Sully that’s led by example, and that’s given us hope and encouragement that, goddammit, our voices matter too. And that all we have to be is honest, and optimistic, and we’ll have earned our place at the table too.

Not to get too sentimental here, for a guy we’ve barely talked to.

Still, Andrew Sullivan’s is far and away my favorite blog, and deserves whatever accolades are thrown at him. I hope he’s a voice in the blogosphere for many, many years.

But now, the one you’ve all been waiting for, obviously the most important category of the year…

Best Political Coverage

* RealClearPolitics
* Ben Smith
* At Largely
* Connecticut Local Politics
* It’s not a democracy, it’s a conspiracy
* The MountainGoat Report
* Foreign Policy Watch
* The Campaign Spot
* The Crossed Pond
* Extreme Mortman

You know, after initial shock on our parts, I think we’re competitive with all the nominees, save one. We’re gifted amateurs at best, but still, I think we run a pretty decent show. If you’re looking for a fun blog from a few guys that give decent off-the-cuff political coverage, you could do worse than us. We don’t have the backing of some, the scholastic cred of others, but I think we do alright with our admittedly limited resources (us).

That said, to put us in the same category with Real Clear Politics is not just faintly ridiculous, it’s starkly ridiculous. I’ll say it right here: Real Clear Politics offers the best political coverage on the web, bar none. It’s not even close. There is no second place. It has everything—literally, EVERYTHING—that you could want out of a political blog. Opinion, news portal, polling info, betting opportunities, horserace coverage, interviews, as comprehensive a listing of every political article that matters on the web, updated multiple times daily. They are Godzilla, we are Japan.

However, YOU SHOULD STILL VOTE FOR US!!! I’m not entirely sure why, but come on. Everybody loves an underdog.