I have failed

Now that 2009 is about to kick into gear, I have to look back at 2008 one last time to acknowledge one failure. As a backdrop to that failure, I note that the antivaccine propaganda site Age of Autism has posted a series of their People of the Year “awards” for 2008, including, antivaccine luminaries such as:

• Person of the Year: Dr. Bernardine Healy. Just because a hack political appointee known to tilt science to be in line with ideology hops on the “too many too soon” bandwagon, AoA thinks it has a legitimate argument from authority. It doesn’t.
• Couple of the Year: Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey. No big surprise here. A better title for them would be “proof positive that Dumb and Dumber was a documentary.”
• Journalist of the Year: David Kirby. Ha. Ha. Hahahahahahahahaha! I’m sorry, I just can’t stop laughing at that one, especially after Kirby’s history of finding no report or science that he couldn’t twist to his own ends. I will give him a modicum of credit, though, for not buying into what Cliff Shoemaker tried to do with Kathleen Seidel.
• Galileo Award: Dr. Andrew Wakefield. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. Stop it. Really. Stop it! I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe! (Good thing I can still type between paroxysms of laughter!) Few “scientists” have been so thoroughly and completely proven to have been wrong, and not just wrong but extravagantly and utterly incompetently wrong. Yet AoA paints him as a persecuted genius and continues to pull out that crank strategy par excellence, the Galileo Gambit. Remember, whenever you see a someone being compared to Galileo as a persecuted scientist, it’s a safe bet that that person is a huge crank. I have yet to find an exception, and certainly the comparisons to the Inquisition only reinforce that perception. Indeed, references to Galileo and a “modern Inquisition” against a crank is worth 40 points on the Crackpot Index. Here’s a hint to Mark Blaxill, the regurgitator of every altie appropriation of Galileo to promote quackery: In order to be Galileo, it is not enough just to be laughed at, ridiculed, or even persecuted. You must also turn out to be right. Sorry, Andy. You just don’t qualify.

Personally, many of these people are deserving of Ashley Awards more than anything else.

So where did I fail?

I didn’t win any “worst of” awards from AoA, like “Worst Blogger Ever” or “Nastiest Blogger to AoA,” or “Most Vicious Attack on Jenny McCarthy.” Dammit, I worked hard in 2008 on this blog. Real hard. I deserve to be recognized by my opponents.

Although being attacked as part of the “whackosphere” by AoA for my small effort to crash their autism poll is gratifying, as is Kelli Ann Davis’ whine about my messing up her poll and Craig Willoughby’s labeling me a craven “child hater,” it is not enough! Far from it!

I do, however, appreciate the stereotypical reference to Mr. Spock. I get it, I get it. I’m a geek. (What the reference to Saved By The Bell has to do with being a geek, though, I don’t know. No self-respecting male geek would watch that show.) So what? AoA desperately needs a new schtick when it comes to attacking its critics. This one’s gotten really old and tiresome, making me wonder if it’s a bunch of frat boys running the show there, kind of like the obnoxious jocks of the Alpha Beta fraternity in Revenge of the Nerds. Truly, AoA is incapable of originality or creativity. Also, the whole complaint about my anonymity is quite tiresome, given that I have launched all out frontal assaults on Generation Rescue and its apologists under my real name on another blog that I know members of AoA are aware of. Yet AoA never, ever mentions (or even acknowledges) anything posted under my own name because such posts represent an “inconvenient truth” that runs counter to its preferred narrative that attempts to smear its critics as “anonymous cowards.”

Oh, well, I guess there’s always 2009 stretching in front of me to do better. This time next year, I expect an award. Until then, I’ll just have to enjoy a bit of schadenfreude that Respectful Insolence has been not only nominated but made the cut as a finalist for Best Medical/Health Issues Blog of 2008 in the Weblog Awards for the fourth year in a row and AoA didn’t make the cut this year.

Better luck in 2009, AoA. You’ll really need it.