The results of the 2006 Weblog Awards are in. I have two things to say about them, one gracious and one self-serving. They are the same sentence: "It's the thought that counts".
First and foremost I'd like to thank all of you who voted for Cobb. I racked up a non-insignificant amount of support considering that I did absolutely nothing to remind the hundreds of people who stop by on a daily basis that I was up for the award. Next time I should be a little smarter than that. After all, I think those who find value in Cobb would appreciate knowing that others do to. So I apologize for not really putting any effort into the matter - especially to those who nominated me. I placed in 9th place out of 10 with a net total of 81 votes. The winner in my category had something around 1400 votes. 40 more votes would have put me in third place. I did miserably, but it's the thought that counts.
I just finished going through all of the preliminary results and according to my reckoning, I am the second most popular vote-getter among african american bloggers. To my counting there were exactly two nominated. No wait, make that three, and that means I'm third. I forgot Pandagon. My friend David Anderson at ISOU got a good number of votes and came third in his category, if I remember correctly. That makes me third of three. Considering that there were only three black blogs nominated out of several hundred nominees. I might consider myself fortunate. But I really don't. I'm just doing what I do and not trying to be popular. Although I think my blog is quite presentable and well organized it is not organized to be popular. And considering the fact that Booker Rising, Dell Gines, Prometheus 6, Bomani Jones, Negrophile, Jimi Izrael and a host of other excellent black blogs got no nominations, no support and no votes whatsoever in this contest, one can only say of the contest, It's the thought that counts. We provide it. It didn't get counted.
Of all the controversies of the year, especially that of Michael Richards of all the nimrods on the planet, you can only hope that they bring some enlightenment. But as much as the blogospheric pundits pride themselves on their ability to route around and correct the nonsense of the mainstream media, the screaming absence of black opinion as represented in this survey is... X, where X is not to be desired. I cannot think of a word somewhere between disappointment, shame and shrugging disgust that describes exactly what X should be. That is not because, as one might expect, I feel that the truth and the facts don't arrive. But it is difficult to reconcile the paucity of attention paid to our collective given what passes for serious business at joints like MySpace and YouTube. We have to admit that we live in a country that spends orders of magnitude more attention to Mentos and Coke than the studied opinions of the best African American bloggers.
Be that as it may. There are a million things in this world that I cannot do, and a million things that I can. I think I'll continue as I always have, satisfied with my million. It's the thought that counts.
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