Last year the award was given out at Blogworld in the same calendar year, so I'm not certain when Andy Towle will receive the Styrofoam posterboard winner's "plaque" like the one I picked up for Joe Jervis when Joe.My.God won the category in 2007. 
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BTW, the Blend came in a distant fourth (8.9%), behind The Bilerico Project and Joe.My.God. Not an unexpected showing, given I didn't campaign, and actually, that's a better finish than I thought, since a whole day of voting opportunity was effectively lost when Soapblox was hacked and PHB was toast. Readers would have had to go out of their way to vote, since PHB's front page with the handy link was inaccessible. I didn't bother reminding folks to vote once back online either since, well, dodging the full-blown loss of four years of work and a platform in crisis had my mind, well, elsewhere. So many thanks for the 2,848 votes cast for the Blend, and congrats to my fellow finalists.
BTW, the latest update from Soapblox is here.
Dear Editor, Monterey County Herald,I am amazed at the jaw-dropping stupidity of your printing a letter that calls Barack Obama "our new zippity-do-dah president."
Obviously, you are not familiar with the Disney film Song of the South that featured the song Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah. The film is the only Disney feature film that has not been released on home video in the United States due to its racist characterizations of African-Americans.
The Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris that the film was based on have long been considered racist and objectionable. These stories are the origin of the term "tar baby" and the short animated film The Tar Baby is one of three included in Song of the South.
It is possible that the writer of this letter may not have intended this as a racial slur. However, the responsibility of keeping racist slurs -- intentional or not -- out of print belongs to you.
Some of the responses?
It's amazing you can read the letter-writer's mind and proclaim that you "know" he had racist intent.
...can you not think it possible that Mr. Clark's use of the phrase "zip-a-de-do-dah" was innocent of actual malicious racism, despite the speciousness of the rest of his diatribe?
This is one of the more frustrating exchanges I've read, because clearly there are a few people who are just talking right over Fritz, acting as though he accused them directly of racism for suggesting the possibility of racism in one specific letter.
Fritz's post was educational and it was meaningful. Not agreeing with it is fine, but attacking him for things he did not say is insulting and dismissive. Pretending that racism can't exist is one way to give racists cover, which is the intent behind stuff like this.
It's common for bigots to find other ways of expressing their bigotry, using code words and the like, when their bigotry becomes less acceptable. Back in the sixties, when racists found pushback for use of the word "nigger" they would start saying "negro" but just push it enough to make it sound a little like "nigger" without quite saying it, so they could get away with claiming it was misheard. Similarly, someone can plead ignorance when they hang a noose from a tree that's generally considered to be where the white kids sit the day after black kids sit there and pretend it's just a prank, that it has nothing to do with race, pleading ignorance.
The more effective approaches are with phrases such as "tar baby" and the Song of the South examples, because the racism is enough part of pop culture that not everyone gets it, and then they push back at the mere hint that it could be racist.
I can't remember which movie it is, but there's a Marx Brothers film that ends with a minstrel show song and dance. I really love the Marx brothers, and when I saw that film as a child, I didn't get why there was something wrong with that part of it. As an adult, I can see it quite clearly, but I totally get why people who don't understand what minstrel shows are wouldn't think it entertaining.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't point out the racism, question it, and address it when it comes up. I was at an AIDS benefit once and there was a drag queen there who did a bit in black face. Everyone was sort of unsure how to react. No one wanted to ruin the benefit but a lot of us were very uncomfortable with this. Whoever ran the benefit should have really had the good sense not to put on that particular act, but they didn't. One man got up on the stage right after and was clearly upset by it and just said something along the lines of "look, I don't want to cause trouble here, but I had a real problem with that."
A lot of us applauded him, just because someone had to say it. Too bad it took the only black man in attendance to do it, and I wish I'd had the presence of mind to do it, too.
But the point is: none of us would have been within proper behavior to attack that man for standing up and objecting to racism. I'm seeing pushback against anti-racism here, and I find it personally disgusting and a bit trollish.
So that's what I have to say about this.
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