Reason's Tim Cavanaugh and Terry Colon Win First-Place Awards at the L.A. Press Club's Annual Gala

Matt Welch | June 15, 2009

Last night at the 51st annual Southern California Journalism Awards competition, Reason stalwarts (and former stars of the late, great Suck.com) Tim Cavanaugh and Terry Colon both pulled down first-place hardware for, respectively, "When Free Love Died: Why the sexual revolution plays only in reruns" (Best Entertainment Review/Criticism/Column), and "What Part of Legal Immigration Don't You Understand?" (Best Magazine Design). Honorable mentions also went to Radley Balko (Best Magazine News/Investigative Story), the dynamic duo of David Weigel/Julian Sanchez (Best Online News, Feature or Package), and me (Journalist of the Year, Under 100,000 Circulation). As for Drew Carey and the tag-team of Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, well, we were just happy to be nominated!

Full list of winners here.

From the Dept. of Logrolling in Our Time, at the ceremony Arianna Huffington and Bill Maher took turns blowing kisses at one another from the podium, with La Huffington declaring Maher to be the lovechild of Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, I.F. Stone, and Hugh Hefner (I think that was intended as a compliment, anyway), and declaring that in Obama's America, Maher was "challenging the president before anyone else was challenging the president." (A Maherian example from last night: "Yes, we're spending a metrick fuckton of money, but we had to" because Republicans ruined the country, etc.) Maher gets bonus points, though, for his non-racially-transcendent joke about Obama: "He's dropped $2 trillion in just 120 days. Talk about being the first black president!" (Note: this quote, unlike the others, isn't verbatim, though it was likely a bit worse than that.)

Other Maher quotes: "There's a million lawyers in this country–can't any of them figure out a way to put one banker in jail?" And, "When I heard a president quoting Voltaire, I felt like a hockey mom at the state fair!"

Comments

T|6.15.09 @ 1:53PM|#

"When I heard a president quoting Voltaire, I felt like a hockey mom at the state fair!"

What, Obama said "Le paradis terrestre est où je suis"? I wouldn't put it past him. Or did journalists say that about him?

|6.15.09 @ 1:55PM|#

Maher is such a douschebag. Considering that IF Stone was a Stalinist spy, I would pretty insulted to be called his anything.

|6.15.09 @ 1:57PM|#

As for Drew Carey and the tag-team of Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, well, we were just happy to be nominated!

Don't be sad, Matt. I'm sure Tim won't rub it in too much.

proud libitard|6.15.09 @ 2:00PM|#

Maher sucks...and it hurts even more he calls himself a libertarian. Fucktard.

|6.15.09 @ 2:05PM|#

I always laugh when I watch Maher speak, just not when he wants me to.

mitch|6.15.09 @ 2:34PM|#

Honorable mentions also went to... me (Journalist of the Year, Under 100,000 Circulation).

I hope this won't discourage Reason's plans to cross that 100K mark.

Oh, and congrats to Matt and all the Reason crew.

Mike in PA|6.15.09 @ 2:39PM|#

Maher's problem is that he gets totally caught up in the personality of the players instead of their principles. He was pretty much against everything Bill Clinton stood for until he got the hummer. At that point it was a total 180. The man could do no wrong because he was being persecuted for enjoying a Lewinsky. Nevermind, the underlying perjury thing...

If he likes the person, he ends up defending what they do. Same thing on the flip-side. If he doesn't like the personality, they can do no right. It's sad, really, because his true principles appear to be pretty libertarian - he'll just dump those principles in a heartbeat when someone charms him.

|6.15.09 @ 2:42PM|#

I like Bill Maher... he's entertaining. Politically, he's a far left liberal with a couple of Libertarian ideas mixed in (e.g., he favors legalization of all drugs, not just pot, and generally for the right reasons; he opposes the NEA because it's not the government's business, etc).

He's very much involved in partisan infighting and loves the Democratic party almost as much as he hates the Republicans.

He's in tinfoil hat territory with health/medicine issues, and he's a loudmouth full-of-himself ignoramus about it. He's an elitist who thinks that Hollywood entertainers are, in general, the intellectual elites of society, and the mid-west is mostly Sarah Palin territory. This elitism leads him to the very un-Libertarian notion that putting "the right people" in charge of big gov't is a good idea.

All in all, it makes for an entertainingly self-righteous TV personality.

|6.15.09 @ 2:45PM|#

Mike in Pa, Maher seems to me to be a bit of faux-sophist. He will change his tune in a heartbeat to counter a guest in a funny/mean-spirited comeback. Snarktastic rhetoric is his game. I find him to just be annoying. (I haven't watched him at length for several years)

Forty-Two|6.15.09 @ 2:56PM|#

Maher's career has been downhill ever since "Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death."

T|6.15.09 @ 3:15PM|#

Maher's career has been downhill ever since "Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death." since birth.

Fixed.

|6.15.09 @ 4:25PM|#

That is an exceptionally forgiving shot of Arianna Huffington.

|6.15.09 @ 6:04PM|#

Maher was funny when he was ripping on Bush, but the fruit hung so low way back then.

I think Gillespie should go on the show and teach Maher what Libertarianism is, because clearly he is confused...

GILMORE|6.15.09 @ 6:53PM|#

Balko is under-recognized until he gets a Pulitzer.

|6.16.09 @ 1:07AM|#

Balko is under-recognized until he gets a Pulitzer.

+1 Congrats, though, to the two TCs (it's like Magnum P.I reruns!).