Best of Jon Swift

Although every post on this modest blog has to pass through the strictest quality controls before it is published, these posts represent the best and the brightest of Jon Swift, a 2006 Weblog Awards finalist for Best Humor Blog, winner of the 2007 Blogpower Award for Best North American Blog, a third-place finalist for the 2007 Weblog Award for Funniest Blog, and a second-place finalist for the 2008 Weblog Award for Best Humor Blog.

• Jon Swift's Complete Amazon Reviews My reviews have been criticized by some readers, including one critic who wrote, "I came across a review you wrote on Amazon that made me laugh. Then I read your blog and laughed even louder. I thought, 'can this guy really be this idiotic?' So then I went and read all of your Amazon reviews and realized that you are even more idiotic than I originally thought."
• Google Searches I would like to take this opportunity to explain some of the searches I did so that no one in the Justice Department gets the wrong idea.
• President Bush's Legacy: One of Our Greatest Presidents In the three years and a half years since Hurricane Katrina not a single American city has been destroyed or partially destroyed. There are more than 10,000 cities in the United States and because of George Bush every single one of them, except for New Orleans, is still largely intact.
• Great Moments in Election-Year Blogging The conservative blogosphere deserves to win a collective Pulitzer Prize for its election-year coverage. To doubt the truth of their findings, you would have to believe that an entire segment of the blogosphere has suddenly been gripped by hysteria and gone collectively insane, which is a pretty unlikely scenario.
• The Triumph of Derrièrism Breitbart wants to bring back the kind of crowd-pleasing movies Hollywood used to make, which encouraged people to pay their credit card bills on time. “The movies used to reinforce good behavior — that you should pay back your loans,” he says, apparently thinking of such films as The Grapes of Wrath, It's a Wonderful Life and Salt of the Earth.
• Why McCain Will Win I think we’re going to see a "Reverse Bradley Effect," where black people say they are going to vote for the black guy because they don’t want to seem disloyal, but when they get into the voting booth they just can’t pull the lever for the brother.
• In Defense of Angry Mobs This country wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for an angry mob that decided it wanted a tax cut and threw English tea into Boston Harbor. Angry mobs in Little Rock and Selma deeply concerned about the issue of state’s rights helped give birth to the modern conservative movement. What was Nixon’s Silent Majority but a very quiet, very angry mob?
• Let’s Suspend the Whole Election I have been very concerned that with John McCain out on the campaign trail for the last year a lot of pressing problems aren’t getting solved. One of the reasons we may be in this economic mess in the first place is that McCain was too busy campaigning to prevent it from happening.
  
• McCain: Make Sure You Have the Right Change Americans don't like too much change. We like to go out once a week for the Early Bird Special and order the exact same thing every time. It's very economical and gives us a break in our routine.
• The Russert Rule Russert's friends and colleagues were understandably shocked by Russert's premature passing. If an overweight workaholic with diabetes and a history of coronary artery disease can suddenly die without warning, is any one of us safe?
  
• Barack Obama Should Concede the Nomination to Hillary Hillary's strategy should be familiar to anyone who knows anything about boxing. Obama has fallen victim to the "rope-a-dope" strategy that Muhammad Ali used against George Foreman in their 1974 heavyweight title match in Zaire.
  
• The Crying of Maureen Dowd Dowd was not just crying for herself. She was crying for all of the pundits and journalists and bloggers who worry that another Clinton Administration will turn us into Clinton-hating hacks. She was crying for all of us who remember how the peace and prosperity of the Clinton era led directly into the war and economic downturn of the Bush years, something we don't want to happen again.
• Castro Resigns! Sanctions Work! Let this be a lesson to other dictators around the world, from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran to Kim Jong-il in North Korea, that the United States is a very patient country and if it takes us 50 years to get them out of power, we will not waver.
  
• Why the Kennedys Are Endorsing Obama It is not just that Obama reminds them of Kennedy, it is also that the Clintons remind them of Lyndon Johnson. And if there is anything that the Kennedys don't like, it's a bunch of hillbillies in the White House, which is being kept in trust until a competent Kennedy can be groomed to take it back for its rightful owners. Until that time Obama will do.
• You Have To Be Wrong To Be Right for the U.S. Presidency The purpose of a presidential campaign is to give the candidates the chance to repudiate, back way from and explain away as many of their old positions and actions as possible in order to convince extremists and one-issue voters in their parties to nominate them.
  
• Journalism 101 I think it would be helpful if bloggers knew the 20 basic "Rules of Journalism" so that they won't pester Joe Klein and other professional journalists too much about journalistic ethics in the future.
• My Favorite Comedy, Explained In order to scientifically analyze just how comedy works, I'm going to dissect one of Woody Allen's funniest films. Unlike many critics, I prefer Allen's older, funnier movies and I don't think he has ever topped his 1978 comedy Interiors.
• Pseudonym-Americans Fight Back Pseudonym-Americans are not asking for special rights. We are just asking for the freedom to be who we are not.
• Facebook Declares War on the Blogosphere According to Facebook, I am a fake, a charlatan, a nonperson and all of my more than 200 Facebook friends are the victims of a cruel hoax. My crime? Violating Facebook's Terms of Service by not using my "real name." What's next? Will Second Life require people's avatars to be a perfect likeness?
• Why Do Conservatives Like Larry Craig Seem So Gay? The more one looks at the evidence that Craig seems to be gay, the more one can see that it is really just evidence of being conservative. There are many attributes of conservatism that seem really gay and unfortunately the more we deny that we are gay, the gayer we seem.
• Antonioni and Bergman Bite the Dust Jack Warner once said that he judged movies by whether his ass shifted in the seat while he was watching them and John Podhoretz has been judging movies by his ass for years. But Podhoretz is not the only film critic inspired by Jack Warner's critical method, which we might call Derrièrism, since most critical theories have French names for some reason.
• Jonah Goldberg's Shining (Liberal Fascism with LOLcats) Most of Goldberg's ideas could be expressed much more economically, not to mention entertainingly, by using LOLcats, an Internet meme where pictures of cats and other cute animals are captioned with grammatically challenged prose. Conveniently, many cats look like Adolf Hitler.
• I Am Paris Hilton How can we possibly have faith in the American system of justice when we see that despite having access to the best lawyers money can buy, Paris Hilton can be treated so cruelly? What hope do we have for the future when we see that even if we become a wealthy celebrity, we might still be subject to the harsh vagaries of the law. First they came for Paris Hilton and I did not speak up because I was not Paris Hilton.
• My Mother Is a Terrible Person It was pretty embarrassing having a mother who was divorced and had to work. Was there no end to the shame my mother brought to me?
• Raising the Minimum Age for Porn Can a girl of 21 really know what she is consenting to when she signs a release form for a pornographer? Does she really understand what the ramifications might be later in life? That is why I propose that we raise the minimum age of consent to participate in pornography to 65.
• Is Abstinence-Only Sex Education Too Explicit? Once you tell kids to abstain from sex until marriage, you have already told them too much. When kids start experimenting with abstaining, it should be no surprise that things can get out of hand and that they will move on to actually having sex.
• When Giuliani Is President, Every Day Will Be 9/11 Isn't it unfair to judge a man on how he behaved on 22,930 days of his life instead of the day he was at his best?
• Conservapedia Conservapedia is based on good Christian values, unlike Wikipedia, which I gather from the name, is based on Wiccan.
• Tim Hardaway Makes Homophobia Look Bad In high school, athletes were often picked on by acerbic gay wits who cruelly ridiculed them with jokes that went over their heads, while girls, who thought of them as little more than slabs of muscle to accompany them to school dances, giggled behind their backs.
• Anna Nicole Smith: America's Princess Di Her name will forever live on in the halls of justice for her victory in the landmark Supreme Court case Marshall v. Marshall, which struck a blow for the rights of millions of young widows of elderly billionaire husbands.
• Blogrolling The more I learned about this Amnesty Day, the more I realized that it was a very strange amnesty indeed. The amnesty [Atrios] granted turned out to be amnesty for himself. He wanted to assuage himself of the guilt he might feel at kicking blogs off his blogroll instead of granting amnesty to others to swarm across the border into his domain.
• Breaking News: Michael Ledeen Is Dead Sadly, Ledeen did not live to see his greatest scoop vindicated: his report that the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was dead. Or if he hadn't actually died, was dying. If not right at the moment, then eventually.
• Who Needs Books? For a long time I have been saying that actually reading books is overrated. Now I have an unlikely ally: librarians.
• Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year I think if Time was going to choose a pronoun as Person of the Year, the best choice would have been Them. More and more people see the world as Us against Them. They seem to hate us for some reason. And lately we haven't been so fond of them either.
• Save Britney's Marriage If Republicans really want to protect the institution of marriage, and were not simply trying to ban gay marriage to use it as a wedge issue in the campaign, then they should prove their dedication to this cause by introducing the Defense of Britney's Marriage Act.
• On Battlestar Galactica Heroic Cylons Battle Vicious Terrorists The heroes are a deeply religious race, called the Cylons, who struggle to bring democratic ideals and Christian values to a planet called New Caprica (Iraq, of course) in the face of an increasingly violent insurgency.
• Science Is Dead What is especially great about Mark Noonan's theory that science is dead is that he doesn't have to conduct any experiments or present any evidence to prove science is dead because science would actually have to be alive to do that.
• It's Not You, Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, It's Me I think it was very kind of you to offer all of the "delusionally hopeful men" you've rejected sound advice on how they can find someone more suitable, such as by lowering their standards, finding a mail-order bride in the developing world or joining a gym. So let me offer you some advice in kind. Why not try looking for a man that doesn't meet every single one of your high standards?
• A Conservative Message to Blacks: Sink or Swim I don't know how it is racist to point out that blacks can't swim and it seems to me it's better that we confront this problem instead of sweeping it under the rug. Think of how many lives could have been saved if we had known about this before Hurricane Katrina and done something about it.
• Looking at the Bright Side of World War III As events in the Middle East spiral out of control, many are worried that we may be on the brink of World War III. I must admit that I, too, was concerned about the violence and bloodshed over there until I started reading what folks on the Rapture Ready Forum are saying. They don't seem very concerned at all with what is happening there. In fact, they are downright giddy at the prospect of all-out war.
• Guantanamo: Kafkaesque, in a Good Way This week three prisoners at the Guantanamo prison camp committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells using bed sheets. "They have no regard for life, either ours or their own," said the commander of the base, Rear Admiral Harry Harris about men who killed themselves. It's easy to understand the frustration of Admiral Harris, who has cared for these prisoners for years only to be repaid with this kind of planned and coordinated attack.
• Ann Coulter Tackles the Menace of Widows and Grieving Mothers Coulter is understandably frustrated at how the liberal media fawns over the 9/11 widows and hangs on their every word, while she has struggled to get her message out through the occasional television appearance, talk radio, college campus tours, her syndicated column, her website and her bestselling books.
• 50 More Conservative Rock Songs Every great rock song is actually conservative, which is probably why they sound so good in commercials. A lot of liberal critics twist the meanings of some of the lyrics, pull words out of context or just willfully blind themselves to the real meaning of many rock songs.
• My Battle With CFS I went to see a doctor and after a series of tests he was able to diagnose my malady. "I am very sorry to have to tell you this," he said looking down, avoiding my eyes. "You have Conservative Fatigue Syndrome."
• No Amnesty for Old People Compassionate conservatism isn't about catering to whiners' every whim. It's about deeply sympathizing with peoples' problems and sincerely hoping that private enterprise will be able to do something about them.
• Let's Not Nuke Iran-Yet The specter of the Vietnam War is always going to hang over our country until we win this war decisively. That's why I think the next country we should invade is Vietnam.
• Jill Carroll vs. the Blogosphere I was especially proud of many of my fellow conservative bloggers who instead of posting their initial unfiltered thoughts without thinking about what they were saying, stepped back and took a moment to ponder the ramifications of her release. Maybe her being alive wasn't such a good thing after all, they said after some reflection. Maybe it would have been better if she had been beheaded.
• Everyone Hates the Christians When I became a convert from Judaism to born-again Christianity after watching The Chronicles of Narnia, I thought things were going to get a lot easier for me. After all, Jews have historically been the most hated people on Earth. So I was very surprised to discover that in fact everyone hates the Christians!
• Who's Afraid of Global Warming? I don't believe global warming exists no matter how much evidence scientists come up with to support it. I think it's just a lot of fear-mongering from ice berg-hugging scientists who are trying to distract us from the War on Terror.
• Politically Incorrect Guide to American History Amazon Review I have not actually read this book but I don't understand why someone would write a book of history that is incorrect.
• A Global Second Amendment It is the Second Amendment that makes our country free. A Global Second Amendment would make the world free. Nuclear proliferation could be the key to making the world safe for democratic proliferation.
• Narnia Made Me a Born-Again Christian Over the holidays I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia and it had a very profound affect on me: It made me a Born-Again Christian. I have not had a chance to read the Bible yet but I am very much looking forward to reading about fauns and talking animals and all of these other magical biblical creatures.
• Canadians: The Other Illegal Immigrants The effect of Canadians on our economy is devastating. Unlike Mexicans, Canadians take jobs from Americans that Americans actually want.
• Gay Mariage I don't care what two people do in their own bedroom as long as the door is locked and the shades are pulled down and the radio is turned up really loud.
• 100,000 and Counting I'm not quite sure I understand your comment, "Your use of political blogging is comparable to giving a monkey a gun." If you are recommending that we somehow extend the Second Amendment to animals, I will have to admit it is an idea I have not thought about before but it is very interesting.

You can find an interview with Jon Swift here and below is a sampling of what some others on the blogosphere are saying about Jon Swift:

• Terra Extraneus
• Zuky
• Candide's Notebooks
• Captain's Quarters
• Appletree
• Backword
• Chuck For...
• Blue Wren
• Rogel's View
• Ahistoricality
• Immunoblogging
• Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying
• Reid Report
• Medulla Noodle
• Poised at the Starting Line
• Travels with Shiloh
• Bad Attitudes
• What I Meant To Say Was…
• Best of the Blogs
• Bloggy Award
• I Talk 2 Much
• Digg
• Reddit

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