Oops. The De Novo Blog Survivor challenge has been underway for a while, and as is about to be revealed, I'm the "mystery judge" mentioned here, ever behind in his duties. Here's my verdict:

Their task was to fisk a well-known blogger (liberally interpreted), and mine is to judge them on "style and persuasiveness".

Because one of the contestants dropped out, I've been purged by the De-Novo-powers-that-be of the power to eliminate anybody, alas, but I'll offer my ever-ready judgment nonetheless.

Wings & Vodka's fisking of Ann Coulter plays fast and loose with the term "blogger," but that's fine. The whole thing is well-done, and his closing graph is precious:

John Edwards was spectacularly successful in the shameless exploitation of disabled babies for financial gain, while George Bush was spectacularly unsuccessful in the shameless exploitation of the environment for financial gain.

The Big Conclusion? It’s simple, really. Disabled babies are more lucrative than oil.

On style, W&V wins hands down.

Milbarge, on the other hand, decided to get pleasantly self-referential, and fisk the blogger-survivor announcement itself. Where W&V's post crackles, Milbarge's cuts. From little jibes, ["Each day," Well, that went out the window pretty quickly, didn't it?] to broader complaints, Milbarge basically whines his way through the assignment.

And he does it damn well. Halfway through the post, as Milbarge outlined all the ways in which his masters were making it up as they went along, I found myself positively annoyed... with my co-blogger Jeremy and the rest of the De Novo
crew.

What better mark of persuasiveness can there be?

Now, I was assigned to judge on two criteria-- style, and persuasiveness-- and the two contestants seem to have split the victory there. The kindergarten-teacher-style temptation is to say, "everybody wins!" That's especially easy because my declaration of a "winner" is useless anyway.

But I'm not going to do that. Part of what makes a "fisking" good is if it successfully anticipates its opponents' counter-arguments, makes arguments hard to find elsewhere, and takes on an otherwise sacred cow. W&V shot fish in a barrel (and well). Milbarge shot Bambi.

I mean Milbarge took the De Novo-ites to task in his post for making their first challenge a "dry run". And he did this without even realizing that his own fisking of the dry run was itself a dry run! That's a deliciously self-referential touch, and a good point.

Milbarge "wins". W&V's fisking was well done-- classic blogospheric stuff, really. But in a few weeks when it settles into the archives, will opponents of Coulter ever feel the need to flip back to W&V's refutation of her? On the other hand, Milbarge's evisceration of his own bosses will be must-reading for all who try this experiment in the future. And his reward for so effectively biting the hand that fed him will be... well, nothing.

Which only goes to show that life, or Survivor: Blogosphere, aren't necessarily fair. Which is what Milbarge told us all along. Sorry, chap.

Enjoy the game.

Last month I blogged about various contranyms-- words that are their own antonym, like "cleave/cleave" and "sanction/sanction". But I (inexcusably!) missed one contranym that appears is my beloved Ada, which a reader now chides me with:

Speaking as a botanist and a mad woman, she said, the most extraordinary word in the English language was "husked," because it stood for opposite things, covered and uncovered, tightly husked but easily husked, meaning they peel off quite easily, you don't have to tear the waistband, you brute. "Carefully husked brute," said Van tenderly.

I forgot to link to this review of E.E.Cummings's Tulips and Chimneys (along with some Wallace Stevens poetry) that The New Republic dredged up last Saturday. Edmund Wilson comments that some of Cummings's stuff is brilliant, and much of it is crap, and Cummings seems not to know the difference. I love some of Cummings's poems dearly, and I think that observation is spot-on.

From what I can tell, Wilson's review-- especially with respect to Cummings's "technique"-- must have been part of what inspired Cummings to write this brilliant fore-word to his later book, "Is 5":

On the assumption that my technique is either complicated or original or both, the publishers have politely requested me to write an introduction to this book.

At least my theory of technique, if I have one, is very far from original; nor is it complicated. I can express it in fifteen words, by quoting The Eternal Question And Immortal Answer of burlesk, viz. "Would you hit a woman with a child?--No, I'd hit her with a brick." Like the burlesk comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little--somebody who is obsessed by Making. Like all obsessions, the Making obsession has disadvantages; for instance, my only interest in making money would be to make it. Fortunately, however, I should prefer to make almost anything else, including locomotives and roses. It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my "poems" are competing.

They are also competing with each other, with elephants, and with El Greco.

Ineluctable preoccupation with The Verb gives a poet one priceless advantage: whereas nonmakers must content themselves with the merely undeniable fact that two times two is four, he rejoices in a purely irresistible truth (to be found, in abbreviated costume, upon the title page of the present volume).

Blogging over at Ex Parte, Jennifer Carter discusses the Marriage Protection Act, which would strip federal courts (including the Supremes) of the ability to hear cases on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Carter then writes:

Although the bill provides that challenges to DOMA's constitutionality can't be heard in federal court, it can't keep the Supreme Court from exercising appellate jurisdiction over state supreme court decisions on the subject. [UPDATE: no, actually the bill says "the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction." Congress probably can do that, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Do we really want some states to uphold DOMA and others to strike it down?] Worse, it can't -- and won't -- stop any federal court from hearing challenges to the constitutionality of the Marriage Protection Act itself. This issue will go to federal court one way or another.

See Banner, Please Don't Read the Title, 50 OHIO ST. L.J. 243, 255 n.37 (1989), (containing, among other things, the world's first self-citing footnote, and observing that one self-citing footnote is plenty, as it will continue to cite itself indefinitely. Note 37 goes on to consider offering a prize for the first citation clever enough to send a Lexis machine into an infinite loop, but decides not to mention it.).