Announcing a new, just made up on the spot feature: the Golden Asshat award, to be given out as often and whenever we see fit. The criteria for this award are simple. You must impress us, not as merely an asshat, but as such a superlative and spectacular asshat as to merit the special recognition that can only be given a Golden Asshat.

The first Golden Asshat award goes to some damned fool named Brent Matthew of Los Angeles California (naturally), who is probably celebrating right now that his "listener mail" just got read over the air on All Things Considered. Matthew thinks that NPR should ask victims of the floods currently engulfing Iowa whether they voted for a Democrat or a Republican, and what sort of car they drive, in order that NPR's listeners can know whether individual flood victims deserve their misfortune or are mere blameless innocents. While Matthew wouldn't approve of anyone asking whether a rape victim had it coming because she wore a short dress in the wrong neighborhood, or more pertinently, the suggestion that former New Orleans residents who still live in government housing are reaping the harvest of settling in a city that was almost below sea level, he thinks it's fine, dandy, and cute to ask these blame-the-victim questions of Iowa residents, because they are mostly white midwesterners who often vote for the wrong party.

I've written some damned stupid and sick things on the internet in my time, but never anything that stupid or sick, and I always regretted it later. Unlike Matthew, who is proud to be an asshat.

Sadly for Matthew, he must share the inaugural Golden Asshat award with National Public Radio, which never would have given a clown making the sort of comments referenced above about New Orleans or rape victims the time of day, much less fifteen seconds on one of the most widely listened-to radio shows in America.

Congratulations Brent Matthew and NPR, and shame on both of you! You've won the Golden Asshat award.

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