Taking Cheap Shots

Isthmus news editor Bill Lueders bestows his annual Cheap Shot awards. Among the honorees: Gov. Tommy Thompson and Mayor Paul Soglin, who share the Social Darwinism Award (the guv for his "much-touted 'tough love' efforts to make it harder for poor people to get welfare," hizzoner for urging limited generosity to the homeless to keep city finances in the black); Wisconsin State Journal editor Frank Denton (Biggest Prude, for not letting his paper run a photograph of Fernando Botero's sculpture of a modestly endowed nude warrior because it had, in Denton's words, "a penis hanging out of it"); David Blaska (Biggest Blowhard, for giving up a gig as a reporter and writer of "mendacious, reactionary commentary for The Capital Times" to become "a state PR flak who writes mendacious, reactionary commentary" for other publications; and Tom Loftus (Worst Political Campaign, for managing "to make Tommy Thompson look good" in ways that led one wag to label Loftus "unimaginative, whiny, querulous and...outclassed"). This year's Cheap Shot awards will appear next week.