Library Chronicles Chronicles Wimblehack

Jeffrey found the final article, which announced the winner of Wimblehack 2004. The envelope, please.

The winner is---Elisabeth Bumiller. Not entirely an upset, given her #3 seeding--Fineman was the true dark horse with a #4, but alas, Howard defaulted the title away. Still, Bumiller can proudly identify herself as truly the biggest hack for--well, perhaps four whole years, depending on how often New York Press decides to hold the contest.

As hard as it was to choose the hacktackularist of the bunch, it's equally difficult to lift anything from the article itself--I highly recommend reading Taibbi's entire piece. However, as someone who watched Bumiller display her arrogance last February during a Democratic candidates' debate, this really stood out for me:

Bumiller, of course, was not completely immune to concerns about the lack of substance in the campaign. She demonstrated that most forcefully when she was one of the moderators of a live televised debate of Democratic candidates, held in New York on Feb. 29 of this year.

You may remember that one: Bumiller was one of three journalists, along with Dan Rather and Andrew Kirtzman of WCBS, who moderated the last meaningful Democratic debate. At the time, there were only four candidates left: Kerry, Edwards, Sharpton and Kucinich. The debate was remarkable because of the obviousness with which the three panelists tried to steer the discussion away from Sharpton and Kucinich. Early in the debate, Bumiller cut Sharpton off in the middle of one of his answers, about Haiti. When she tried it again later on, Sharpton protested:

SHARPTON: If we're going to have a discussion just between two—in your arrogance (ph), you can try that, but that's one of the reasons we're going to have delegates, so that you can't just limit the discussion. And I think that your attempt to do this is blatant, and I'm going to call you out on it, because I'm not going to sit here and be window dressing.

BUMILLER: Well, I'm not going to be addressed like this.

But wait--there's more. Elisabeth was also responsible for a Times piece about Dubya's "heroic" turkee run into Baghdad a year ago. Interestingly, Team Bush, miffed that the newspaper of record didn't demonstrate sufficient fealty to all things GOP, made sure Liz wasn't invited. No problem: Bumiller just rewrote the pool reporter's copy--making sure to bury a small disclaimer in the body of the text.

Her efforts inspired my friend Ben to come up with this homage to the flightsuit-in-chief:

And W came and brought turkey unto the brave soldiers,

The Soldiers of the Lord,

By the light of the slivery moon.

And W said, Eat, and be Proud,

For you bring Freedom unto the world.

And W then departed, walking as they do in West Texas,

To Air Force One, returning, humbly, to the Throne

God had made for Him.

Thus making him the first guest poster here at my humble blog. Thanks, Ben.