2011 Round-up: My Personal Top Five

You know, I wrote a handful of things this year that didn't entirely suck, and since a few other bloggers do a round-up of some of their faves, I figure, what the hell? I went with a "Top Five" because ten sounds like just too many, and although I nominated one of my favorites for the Jon Swift Memorial Round-up, I really had a few others that I really think capture what I'm doing on this little blog.  So here are my favorites from 2011--in chronological order, with a little explanation:

1) Culture Crusaders, My Body is Not Your Battlefield The GOP War on Women's Bodies was in full swing and I just needed to vent about why people who were so interested in policing women's bodies needed to mind their own business.

2) Pious Frauds: Not Intended to Be a Factual Government This was something I wrote with Blog Against Theocracy in mind.  It struck me as important to relate the observation that those in government who seemed most interested in imposing a theocracy on people for their own good seemed least interested in being truthful, themselves.

3) Grover Norquist's Stupid-Ass Ice Cream Cone  This isn't one of my more involved pieces of writing, but right about then I was following the contortions of the GOP Congressmembers who has taken Norquist's anti-tax pledge, and I came across a story Norquist relates about his father and ice cream that seemed like a nice jumping-off point for explaining that we are not six year olds.

4) Class, Cluelessness and damned statistics--or Why I'm not About Cutting Slack  This was the one I chose for the other round-up, wherein I explain why research into race and intelligence is disturbing and wrong-headed.  I wrote it in relation to an ongoing internet conversation regarding Andrew Sullivan's occasional promotion of that nonsense, but I don't care who promotes it, it just isn't right.

and the last:

5) You Would not Tell With Such High Zest  The death of Christopher Hitchens coincided with the final draw-down of the Iraq War, and I used the occasion to review his support of that war. Kind of a complicated thing for me to write about, as I sometimes did admire Hitchens, but I never did agree with the war.

So, those were the pieces I felt pretty good about this year. It was neat going back over the year to see what was going on and what had my interest. I think the surprising thing to me was discovering just how much I wrote about the 2012 GOP clown car--especially Rick Santorum, for whatever reason.  Also, I kind of like the ongoing thing I've started, "Know Your Class War", which I might do a Tumblr about if I ever figure out Tumblr's interface. One story I didn't follow as much as I hoped was climate change--but I'm sure there will be some opportunities in the year ahead to revisit that topic.  All in all, this year was interesting to blog about, and next year will probably be even more....interesting.  So I hope if you've stopped by and enjoyed anything you've read here, you check back, because I will be here, typing away.