Year end lists

The Least Important Writers of 2016 Hard to pick a favorite here.  Probably, because it's 2016, will have to go with the man who helped invent "fake news" as we know it.

Daou, who once sued Arianna Huffington for credit for inventing The Huffington Post, is a longtime “digital strategist” of no particular account who, in concert with oddly-coiffed former right-wing hatchet man-turned-Democratic hack David Brock, ran an “avidly and unabashedly pro-Hillary” online news outlet called Blue Nation Review (later known by some other, even dumber name) throughout the campaign.

Daou and his site encapsulated the idea, which came less from the Clinton campaign itself than from the Clinton camp’s long tail of hangers-on and distantly orbiting affiliates, that personal adulation of Hillary Clinton must be mandatory and rigidly enforced if she was to win the election. Blue Nation Review ran on the principle that if enough poorly paid bloggers and “researchers,” flanked by Twitter eggs, repeated often enough that all critical coverage of Hillary Clinton was biased and unfair, the great masses would awaken to the truth that they actually Loved Hillary, Deeply and Personally. This was the dangerous myth that consumed of so many Clinton supporters—that their personal affection for her ought to be universal, and that, if it wasn’t, it was some nefarious outside force—Berniebros, mostly, this time—that was to blame. It occurred to none of them that messaging based around what Hillary Clinton would do for Americans might be more successful than messaging based around what Americans ought to do for Hillary Clinton.