Koufaxed

Well, I'm truly honored.

Orcinus won one of the prestigious 2003 Koufax Awards, for Best Series.

The winner was my 15-parter, Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An Exegesis. Winning in this category was special, considering that I was competing against some of the bloggers I most admire. Dwight also posted some very nice comments from readers about the piece (you can read it there).

The series is available on the blog: Parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X,, XI, XII, XIII, XIV and XV. See also my explanatory note.

The nice folks at Cursor also published it, in a highly readable and accessible format complete with art. Highly recommended for reading it online.

And if you want to print it out and read it in a hard copy -- or share it with friends -- you can get it in a nicely formatted PDF file. If you're downloading the PDF, I've been asking for a $5 donation to help defray bandwidth costs and to generally support my little independent-journalism effort. The button is in the upper-left blue box if you feel like pitching in -- but it's only a request, neither a demand nor even an expectation.

Finally, I'd like to say a sincere and deeply felt thank-you to all the folks who voted for the series -- especially considering the quality of the competition. (To be honest, I'd also held out hope for winning in the "Best Post" category for "The Political and the Personal," but considering the quality of writers I was up against, I'm not surprised in the least. And the winner, Billmon's "What a Tangled Web We Weave," was a true classic.)

Congrats, of course, to all the other winners -- notably Atrios, the "Beatles of the blogosphere", who walked away with Best Blog and Most Humorous Post.

And many, many thanks to MB and Dwight Meredith at Wampum for all the hard work they put into the awards -- gathering and tabulating nominations, and then doing likewise for the main event. Awards are usually thankless tasks, so let's all extend our gratitude to these selfless servants of the lefty side of the blogosphere.