Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

As long as McCarthy is Speaker, the House will never be in order.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

T R E 4 5 O N

Let’s finish the job.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

You are here: Home / Politics / Media / Wanker Of The Decade 3rd Runner Up

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  3. 3.

    R Johnston

    @catclub: Personally speaking, the problem with using “Joke Line” is that references to joke line call to mind powerline and thereby Hinderocket, a wanker extraordinaire in his own right.

  4. 4.

    BGinCHI

    If Joe Kline and Mark Halperin were in a fight to the death, with knives, on a salty dry lake bed, I’d root for Kline. He’s definitely a Village dipshit, and makes this country a worse place every time he opens his mouth, but I don’t have a visceral dislike for him like I do for Halperin.

    Anyway, back to the knife fight.

  5. 5.

    Satanicpanic

    I just read his latest article in Time just to remind myself why I can’t stand him so much. I had to check my ears because I felt like the brains were running out of my head while I read it.

  6. 6.

    Catsy

    @BGinCHI:

    If Joe Kline and Mark Halperin were in a fight to the death, with knives, on a salty dry lake bed, I’d root for Kline.

    Speak for yourself. I’ll be rooting for injuries.

  8. 8.

    Joseph Nobles

    Actually there are three more: the next two runners-up and then the top Wanker of the decade.

    Bobo and Mustache are definitely in the top three.

  10. 10.

    Tonybrown74

    I bet my (non-existent) life savings that the Wanker of the Decade will be Mr. “Suck On This”!

  11. 11.

    catclub

    I just remembered the wanker feature of Joe Klein that I hate most. He saves his best, most gripping writing for only if he has been personally insulted.

    He said nothing about liberal Jews who had been attacked as Self-hating because they did not sufficiently support Israel… UNTIL it happened to him.

    And then his vitriol knew no bounds. Those people who did that were truly horrible!
    But only the day after it was done to him.

    It reminds me of the concern for special needs children that Sarah Palin has — but showed no evidence of before 2008.

  13. 13.

    TK-421

    Bobo and The Moustache are definitely in the remaining three (and my money is on The Moustache being #1), but I am blanking on who that third one is. Tim Russert maybe, but it might be too soon to piss on his grave. Maybe Rush, except I’m not sure if he’s really in the “respectable” pool of media elites.

    David Gregory? Ruth Marcus?

  14. 14.

    mike in dc

    What, everyone forgets the Goat-f-cker that quickly?

    Kuck Faus! Given Atrios’ animus for the man, I’d be shocked if he was left off the list entirely.

  15. 15.

    MoeLarryAndJesus

    @mike in dc:

    I think Kaus has fallen so far off the radar that putting him on the list now would just raise his profile. It’s not worth it. Just let him rot in his well-earned obscurity.

  17. 17.

    MikeJ

    @mike in dc: What goats has Kaus fucked lately? Really, he’s pretty much a non-entity now, isn’t he? Why help promote somebody everyone has already forgotten?

  19. 19.

    David Koch

    In the old days (2001-2005), there used to be a blog “Media Whores” and every year they would hold an online poll on “Media Whore” of the year.

    Russert, Fineman, and Elizabeth Bumiller would always battle for the top spot.

  23. 23.

    kindness

    Really. Gotta wonder the next two. Who is it gonna be? There’s more than two supreme wankers left out there.

    The Grand Pooba is got to be Bobo.

  24. 24.

    TomH

    #1 just has to be Fred Hiatt, the man most responsible for making the WaPo into a joke. Any other result must be illegal aliens and/or voting fraud. I am ready to hire James O’Keefe to investigate if Freddy isn’t the boy chosen to blow kisses on the wanker runway this weekend.

    Given that MoDo, the Moustache of Understanding, and Scooter’s BFF are still unranked, I fear the worst.

  25. 25.

    Steve

    Joe Klein had a post this week called “Santorum’s Honorable Campaign” that perfectly encapsulates Atrios’ point. What makes Santorum such a great guy? Why, it’s the fact that he and Joe Klein had a great conversation once! Hooray.

    It’s the classic media conceit, the idea that the most important thing you could ever want to know about a politician is how I, the reporter, personally feel about him.

  26. 26.

    R Johnston

    @kindness: Who the next two are depends strongly on whether Atrios is willing to double up on New York Times columnists or not.

  27. 27.

    DH

    Little Tommy is a lock for #1

    And deservedly so. If I read one more column of his praising Simpson-Bowles or how American Elect or some other made up “virtue” party will save our country, I will go off the deep end.

    The other thing is that he isn’t just some cub reporter on the Punxetawney Post. He is writing on the damm Editorial page of the NY Times. Dumb important people(is that redundant?) take him VERY seriously.

    Tragically.

  29. 29.

    R Johnston

    @TomH: If hiring practices counted then Hiatt would be a shoe-in, but I don’t get the impression that they do. His writing, while plenty wankarific, isn’t any worse than Will, or Krauthammer, or Gerson, or Samuelson, or the rest of the loony-bin operating under Hiatt’s watch.

  30. 30.

    MattF

    One pleasing thing about the list are the number of people who now have to start the day thinking “I’m more of a wanker than Richard Cohen.”

  31. 31.

    David Koch

    you know the the top slots will be Bobo and the Mustache of Hackney.

    MoDo is irrelevant. She writes her mean-girl shtick but her drivel is rarely is re-quoted.

  32. 32.

    the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)

    Preacher Meacham would get my vote for number one, if wanting to punch a Village dipshit in the face to wipe a smug sanctimonious holier than thou smirk off it is the most important criteria.

  33. 33.

    lamh35

    OT, why in the hell is Hilary Rosen going on MTP Sunday. I don’t care if they asked her…she shoulda said hell naw cause she knows the ONLY reason she’s on there will be to keep this damn story going.

    I was one who was strongly behind Hilary, but if this is true, all my goodwill in quickly losing steam.

  35. 35.

    GregB

    I predict someone other than the Mustache of Understanding as number one.

    I have it on authority that he’s being saved for the next award, Dildo of the Century.

  37. 37.

    PeakVT

    If Atrios makes a collective award, it should go to the WaPo. But I think he’ll pick Lil’Tommy for the top prize.

  38. 38.

    Mike in NC

    Mark Adomanis, writing at Forbes this week:

    Under the tutelage of Fred Hiatt, the Post has been in favor of every single American military intervention over the past decade. It is worth nothing that it was not merely passively in favor of these wars, grudgingly accepting them one they were already underway, but was substantially ahead of the curve on many of them and has remained unapologetic about those which have turned into large-scale disasters.

  40. 40.

    David Koch

    I’d like to see DougJ do a list of online wankers.

    The list would obviously contain McMeagan, Sully, The Fonzi of Freedom, perhaps Goldberg. Drudge and Malkin and her minions are more hate mongers, than wankers.

    But the wanker list should also include the progressive betters. The ones who said “kill the bill” and the others who write love letters to Ron Paul.

  42. 42.

    Yutsano

    @Steve: That’s logical. A lot of federal money just slushes around DC and Alexandria, Virginia. I’m amazed Boeing didn’t move its headquarters closer to the money spigot. But the CEO’s wife just had to have Chicago.

  47. 47.

    R Johnston

    @David Koch: But the wanker list should also include the progressive betters. The ones who said “kill the bill” and the others who write love letters to Ron Paul.

    Glenn Greenwald is one of the most infuriating presences on the internet. Eighty percent of the time he’s on target, if a bit too preachy and longwinded about it, and twenty percent of the time he makes Sarah Palin look like a brilliant policy wonk who takes criticism well. His routine submission to Ron Paul Cleveland Steamers just ends up coloring everything else he does.

  48. 48.

    catclub

    @MattF: Um … you write that as if these people even know who Atrios is.

    Much less care what he says. He is not in that gang of 500.

    Joe Klein knows that David Petraeus returns his phone calls, and _that_ is what he thinks about all day.

  49. 49.

    David Koch

    It just occurred to me, as Atrios’ list covers the past decade, Broder has to be on the list.

    In today’s twitter attention span we quickly forget. And Broder has been dead for a year, so we easily forget how much of a dick he was and how people like Bobo are in reality imitations of Broder.

  50. 50.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Tokyokie:

    Yeah, I’d rather they fight at the bottom of a recently emptied septic tank.

    __
    Does it have to be emptied? Or is emptied merely a euphemism for “we’re going to fill it up, just as soon as they get started”?

  51. 51.

    R Johnston

    @David Koch: Atrios said no dead people.

    I do, however, expect an announcement on Tuesday that “The David Broder Memorial Award for Top Wanker of the Decade goes to . . .”

  52. 52.

    David Koch

    @R Johnston: oh, that’s a shame.

    seriously, I can’t think of a more poisonous wanker than broder. Broder’s policies killed more people than bin Laden could dream of killing.

  53. 53.

    Tokyokie

    Yeah, I know he’s you know, dead, but Brodzilla was awfully wankerific for most of the Decade of Atrios. Be a shame to leave him out.

  54. 54.

    Cargo

    It’s a specific thing to be a wanker – not just a neocon, not just a warmonger, but a wanker is one who cloaks his or her pronouncements in robes of moderation, and an average schmoe on the street would think they’re at least “centrist”. This rules out your Krauthammers and so forth.

    Bobo Brooks is the wanker of the decade. Bookmark it, libs. You will wonder how the hell I was able to call this.

  55. 55.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @TK-421:

    A nanosecond after the last dirt molecule was deposited on Pumpkinhaid’s grave was not too soon to piss on it. Then to liberally sprinkle it with the blood of his dipshit spawn.

  56. 56.

    Tokyokie

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Well, you’re not going to have a good knife fight if the fighters are up to their chests in liquid, but if it’s been recently emptied, then it wouldn’t have dried out and there’d still be (literally) crap dripping off the sides. It’d make for treacherous footing and pretty much guarantee some nasty cutaneous infections for the survivor. I call that a win-win. But if you want to fill it back up once a winner has been declared, hey, I’m OK with that, too.

  57. 57.

    PJ

    Though many are called (most of the Washington Post editorial staff), there can only be one: #1 has to be Kristol. No pundit has been so consistently wrong about everything over the past fifteen years and simultaneously as intellectually lazy, dissembling and smug as he. Plus, he epitomizes, more than Goldberg or Russert, the corrosive effect of nepotism in journalism.

  58. 58.

    Villago Delenda Est

    BTW, the final three:

    BoBo
    The Moustasche
    The utter poltroon that is Fred Hiatt.

  59. 59.

    General Stuck

    It’s Citizens United world, and you are little people.

    “An anonymous donor has given $10 million to run ads attacking President Obama and his policies, escalating the money race that is defining the 2012 presidential campaign,” the Washington Post reports. “And in the new, free-wheeling environment of independent political giving, the identity of this donor, like many others, is likely to remain a permanent mystery.”

    For all we know, this cash could have come from Ernst Blowfeld, Lex Luthor, or Dick Cheney, or any one of any number of known and unknown world class villains.

  60. 60.

    R Johnston

    @Cargo: Bobo’s been my choice from the beginning. He combines consistently wrong, consistently blazingly stupid, party hack who’s heralded as moderate for tone regardless of substance, and prime journalistic real estate better than anyone else.

  62. 62.

    Elizabelle

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The utter poltroon that is Fred Hiatt.

    Poltroon.

    A new word to me.

    And just perfect.

    Poltroon Beat.

    Poltroon Pundits.

    If it’s Sunday, it’s Meet the Poltroons.

    Poltroon cleanup on aisle 5

  63. 63.

    General Stuck

    Just frugal well meaning republicans wanting smaller government and a highway roller to crush the peasants into road kill.

    Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee unveiled on Friday a plan to trim $35 billion from the deficit by rolling back several key administration initiatives, including large pieces of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

    The panel will vote Wednesday on proposals to eliminate the administration’s flagship housing relief program and key pieces of the financial overhaul. The GOP’s plan, which will almost certainly be opposed by Democrats, would also slash the budget of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by more than half

    .

    They never ever give up trying to screw the public, any way they can. And then call it responsible spending restraint. It ain’t that, it is clearing any and all impediments on the broad highway of American commerce, to run you down with.

    “Our deficits and debt are a threat to both our economic security and our national security. Congress has an obligation to make tough choices that cut spending, reduce the deficit and do so in a way that does not imperil our nation’s defenses,” said Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.).


    Smile A Little Smile For Me

  65. 65.

    gnomedad

    No point losing sleep over Atrios’s opinions. Goad Cole into starting his own list.

  66. 66.

    gaz

    Didn’t we just read a front-page post about primates exercising rudimentary literacy skills?

    I think this jokeline post is redundant.

  68. 68.

    LosGatosCA

    I need a ruling from the Keeper of all Internet Traditions –

    If I was to refer to Joe Klein as the Marshall Pétain of pundits does that invoke Godwin’s Law?

    Just asking.

  70. 70.

    Jay

    I don’t know if there’s some kind of rule against including politicians in this race, but Joe Lieberman HAS to make number one.

  71. 71.

    catpal

    yep agree that he is top wanker for this last decade because of this

    making such six-month predictions for a period of two and a half years, on at least fourteen different occasions, starting with a column in the November 30, 2003 edition of The New York Times, in which he stated: “The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy

    that was serious every-six-months of wankery.

  73. 73.

    Valdivia

    Not linking but Politico has a vapid column comparing Romney to Don Draper. Shoot me now.
    Can Politico all by itself be wanker of the decade?

  77. 77.

    Schlemizel

    @JPL:
    Come on are you a real Sooner, grunt? Cuz if you are I expect you to get out there with your super8 & get us some video – they you can tell us it sounded like a train!

    8-{D

  78. 78.

    Suffern ACE

    @Valdivia: His wife is a rock star and he is a sex symbol? Isn’t that the opposite of the dream men have. It’s actually a rather creepy editorial stance.

  79. 79.

    R Johnston

    @catpal: Ah, but every Friedman Unit, or even more frequently at times, Bobo traps himself into arguing either economic policy or the merits of vapid centrism with Krugman, whereupon an embarrassing beat down occurs.

    Friedman is smart enough not to say stupid things likely to provoke a response from Krugman.

  81. 81.

    Suffern ACE

    @Valdivia: Authors in DC who got turned on by Perry’s cowboy boots and figured that would make Iowans swoon for him, too.

  85. 85.

    Narcissus

    The fact that all these brain-dead fools make a shit-ton of money and live in the lap of luxury makes me want to drop them off a bridge.

  86. 86.

    Mickey

    Meh…no wanker of the decade list would be complete without Greenwald. Until he makes the list I won’t take it seriously.

  88. 88.

    Mickey

    @R Johnston: How could anyone who is a Ron Paul fanboy be taken seriously on anything? He could be 100% right on everything and still be a wanker for being a paultard.

  89. 89.

    R Johnston

    @Mickey: Greenwald is a wanker, but he’s not wanker-of-the-decade material. He just has a soft spot for complete fucking morons who appear to agree with him if you don’t bother to look too hard. If there were an honorary Wanker Award for “Left-leaning Wanker Who Most Frequently Blinds Himself with Jism to the Eyes After a Ron Paul Speech,” I’d advocate for Greenwald in a heartbeat.

  90. 90.

    Mickey

    @R Johnston: lol…so you have no problem with his “kill the healthcare bill” and “Obama is worse than Bush” bullshit???

    He’s a firebagger who gets a significant portion of his money from the Koch funded Cato institute you fool!

    Just in case you thought we were one the same page…you’re wrong.

  91. 91.

    telcharran

    Andrew Sullivan for top wanker – Betsy McCaughey, the Bell Curve, Iraq, extreme victimhood, persistent racism, pathological levels of entitlement….

  92. 92.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Valdivia: Is the similarity that both of them have fictional public personas and re-invent themselves to get a job? ‘Cause I could see that.

  93. 93.

    Bruce S

    @Steve:

    You’re right about Klein and the journalistically infantile prioritization of his emo-meter, but he’s sort of right about Santorum. Santorum’s a douchebag and knee-deep into a pile of very dangerous crap. But it’s not because he’s a lying sack of shit, like Romney – it’s because he’s a zealot. If you isolate “integrity” into it’s narrowest bandwidth, Santorum has it to spare and Romney has none. I think that’s Klein’s implicit point. Now ask me how much I care…

  94. 94.

    Bruce S

    @Bruce S:

    Just want to revise that prior comment, as I just read that Rick Santorum and his stand-by-your-madman wife signed up his 3-year old daughter as a life member of the NRA, just in time to announce it in a speech to that organization. The man and his spouse are either mentally ill or they are, contrary to my previous assertion, in a race with Romney for Whore of Babylon in fulfillment of the Book of Revelation. Sorry for mixing the concept of “integrity” into the fact of zealotry that dips into the waters of character flaws writ large as full-blown pathology.

  95. 95.

    Schlemizel

    @Soonergrunt:
    I’ve heard that.

    Sorry, it was a cheap joke I know, I have very little self control when it comes to cheap jokes. – I hope you guys all escaped unscathed.

    BTW – I’m a Minnesotan so go with the Fargo jokes when you swing back. Oh ya, donnc’ha know.

Comments are closed.