TPM Reader AR takes a page from the sports world and suggests a new approach to picking the Golden Dukes:
Regarding BB‘s assertion that you won’t find a more corrupt political machine outside of Louisiana: see, that’s the problem when you allow people the chance to nominate scandals for the Golden Dukes. Everyone’s going to bring their own personal biases, old rivalries and memories of historical slights to the table. For example, Alaska may be the newest state and lacking in the tradition of grifting and palm greasing in the style of a Chicago political machine or Tammany Hall, but between Don Young, the Murkowskis, Ted Stevens, and Sarah Palin’s Troopergate and Bridge to Nowhere, they have clearly demonstrated their ability to take corruption to the highest level.
That’s why I am proposing a new system for awarding the Golden Dukes whereby six computer algorithms rank the various scandals in order of strength. The top twelve win the statuettes. I call my system the Bureaucratic Corruption Subdivision–or BCS, for short. This system eliminates the agendas that human nominators inject into the process and ensures that only the highest-quality scandals are selected for recognition.
Of course, you’ll always have some people complaining that the thirteenth-ranked scandal should be given a chance to be in the mix and others complaining that the only fair way to award the Golden Dukes is through a series of head-to-head matchups, but the amount of hand-wringing, gnashing of teeth, angry blog posts, etc., that my proposed BCS system would undoubtedly provoke would bring much-needed buzz to this illustrious award!
As a firm believer in college football playoffs, no bleeping way.
