Noted without comment: “Sarah Palin is a great friend to the bowling industry and we’re so proud and honored to welcome her as our keynote speaker at International Bowl Expo 2010.”

Nice Q&A; with the great John Waters: “I talk to people about how you can’t ignore Christmas. You can love it, you can hate it, but you can’t ignore it. I love it without irony, but I understand why some people hate it. It’s a financial burden, it’s an emotional burden, it’s a decorating burden. But it’s a happy time for criminals and a happy time for people who are attracted to elderly men who are overweight and wear velvet. It’s a time for perversion.”

What were you doing over the Thanksgiving break, friend? Drinking? Eating? Pitying your one cousin who could have been totally cool if your aunt wasn’t such a Christian whackjob? Of course you were-and good for you! That’s what people do.

Me on the other hand, I’m not a person, I’m a vegan, from even before that neon green book came out. So I was doing what all vegans do when you sickos annually sacrifice poultry to long-dead Puritans: straight up fuming, about absolutely everything. Here’s a fume about how hard it is to find grocery store stuffing that doesn’t use chicken broth. There’s a fume about how Lil Wayne actually sucks, and just the general idea of Nike. And of course, right here’s a fume about Slate, a website that I love, but also one that tests my patience from time to time.

I find it hard to imagine Jacob Weisberg’s Obama’s Brilliant First Year wasn’t relegated to Slate’s “Saturday After Thanksgiving” slot for a reason, that reason being that even the most plugged-in word over-consumers were too busy marauding for bargain ‘Tendo X-Cubes or whatever to pay attention to the Internet. Weisberg may be El Jefe over there, but everyone has to be told “No” from time to time, especially if they’re, y’know, wrong.

The dek-”By January, he will have accomplished more than any first-year president since Franklin Roosevelt”-is more irksome than the article’s title, which, by itself, was actually just innocuously vague (or vaguely innocuous, perhaps). Because Obama’s first year actually has been quite brilliant. I’m half-black, man, and it’s awesome to see another half-black dude chilling in the Oval Office like it ain’t no thang. It’s awesome that, unlike when my father was a boy, single mothers of children of color can hold their babies in their arms and promise them, in all seriousness, “You can be the leader of the world one day.” It’s awesome that there’s finally a president courageous enough to stand before the United States and tell it that, in the “War on Terror,” it’s not necessarily as innocent as it thinks it is.

All that stuff is indeed brilliant. And I applaud it. But “accomplished more than anyone since Roosevelt”? The buck stops here, Weisberg!

Did I not use that phrase properly just now? Oh well. I only wrote it to segue into a paragraph about Harry Truman, the president who originated it and the guy who immediately succeeded FDR. Harry Truman is also someone who, in his first year in office, accomplished more than Barack Obama will in the same time span.

After just about six months in office, Truman gave the executive order to incinerate a quarter of a million Japanese people with the most horrific weapon known to man-even today. Reasonably terrified, Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers, and World War II was completely over. Kind of a big event. Since then, the A-bomb’s ugliest fallout hasn’t been its radiation, but the fact that every bad guy in the world with dreams of executing entire nations has been after it.

Now, you can certainly argue that it wasn’t Harry Truman who ordered the creation of the bomb, and that FDR himself-or any president-would probably have acted exactly as his former vice president did. But when I shot out my dad’s windshield with a BB gun my brother gave me, which someone else invented and ordered to be built, guess who took the heat?

In his first 365 days as president, Harry Truman also began work on this one thing with Jewish people in the Middle East.

In the often quoted statement addressed to four American envoys from the middle east who, at a meeting in the White House on November 10, 1945, warned [Truman] of adverse effects of a pro-Zionist policy, he declared: “I am sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”

Maybe Mr. Weisberg forgot this accomplishment of Truman’s presidency, because nobody ever talks about it and there’s no lingering conflicts surrounding it, at all.

Later, in his first year as president, Jack Kennedy created the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, and earlier that same year he scared the hell out of Fidel Castro during the disastrous Bay of Pigs. Ronald Reagan got shot, survived and began operating under the belief that God spared him to help destroy Communism! That precipitated Iran-Contra and a whole host of other fun things. And George W. Bush? Welp, within his first year he entered a good war in a bad way, possibly rendering it unwinnable. Either way, thousands of Afghan civilians and American troops have died since.

I suppose none of that stuff is as big as what Truman did, but it’s certainly bigger than what Weisberg is claiming Obama’s done-or, more accurately, MIGHT DO. Weisberg wrote: “The case for Obama’s successful freshman year rests above all on the health care legislation now awaiting action in the Senate.” Thanks, Weisberg. Joe Lieberman has no doubt read your article and is at this very moment gleefully massaging his jowls in anticipation of proving you wrong. Because that’s what that guy does.

The stimulus was huge, but definitely not as important as ending WWII or the acceptance of Zionism as an American ideal. And as for foreign policy?

When it comes to foreign policy, Obama’s accomplishment has been less tangible but hardly less significant: He has put America on a new footing with the rest of the world. In a series of foreign trips and speeches, which critics deride as trips and speeches, he replaced George W. Bush’s unilateral, moralistic militarism with an approach that is multilateral, pragmatic, and conciliatory. Obama has already significantly reoriented policy toward Iran, China, Russia, Iraq, Israel, and the Islamic world.

Ah, yes, he’s not immediately a xenophobic asshole to the browns! What a brilliant year!

Congrats, America: Our bar is now this low.

Previously: Newspapers Are Doing as Badly as You Think.

Cord Jefferson is a writer-editor living in Brooklyn and The Awl’s Special Correspondent for Slate’s Counterintuitiveness. Some of his other work has appeared in National Geographic, GOOD, The Root and on MTV.

By 38–24, the gay marriage bill fails in the New York State Senate. You know who voted against it? Former New York City Councilmember HIRAM MONSERRATE. It is our editorial opinion that he can go fuck himself. He was endorsed by, among others, The Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club of Queens, after a good deal of gay outreach. Here’s the roll call. Pick an enemy today!

Madison is the most popular name for African-American girls born in New York City in 2008. In total, we have gained 384 new Madisons, making it the 6th most common name for the year. (OLIVIA somehow won among white women.) Ashlee, on the other hand, is tied for 147th, among all races. But, but, but… that’s a whore’s name!

“In essence it is a fawning celebrity profile — one in which reporter and superstar have somehow fused into a single first-person voice.”

Scott McLemee is unimpressed with Cornel West’s new memoir: “If sketchy in other regards, Brother West is never anything but expansive on how Cornel West feels about Cornel West. He is deeply committed to his committed-ness, and passionately passionate about being full of passion. Various works of art, literature, music, and philosophy remind West of himself. He finds Augustinian humility to be deeply meaningful. This is mentioned in one sentence. His taste for three-piece suits is full of subtle implications that require a couple of substantial paragraphs to elucidate.”

The Peruvian police investigator who made international headlines last month when he claimed to have arrested members of a gang who killed people and sold their fat on the black market has been suspended indefinitely after it turned out there was no evidence to support the claim.

85. The Father Who Must Be Killed
84. Let me Kiss You
83. Life is a Pigsty
82. Friday Mourning
81. I Knew I was Next
80. I Am Two People
79. Ganglord
78. Sing Your Life
77. There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends
76. I’m the End of the Family Line
75. The Ordinary Boys
74. Because of my Poor Education
73. He Cried
72. Sunny
71. Mexico
70. Will Never Marry
69. First of the Gang to Die
68. Mute Witness
67. Alma Maters
66. Seasick, Yet Still Docked
65. Driving Your Girlfriend Home
64. I Am Hated for Loving
63. Nobody Loves Us
62. My Life is a Succession of People Saying Goodbye
61. I’ll Never Be Anybody’s Hero Now
60. Come Back to Camden
59. Tomorrow
58. It’s Not Your Birthday Any More
57. King Leer
56. Angel, Angel Down We Go Together
55. I Just Want to See the Boy Happy
54. Billy Budd
53. Best Friend on the Payroll
52. Southpaw
51. Christian Dior
50. If You Don’t Like Me, Don’t Look At Me
49. The Loop
48. Don’t Make Fun of Daddy’s Voice
47. Interesting Drug
46. At Amber
45. Hold on to Your Friends
44. Certain People I Know
43. He Knows I’d Love to See Him
42. Hairdresser on Fire
41. The Harsh Truth of the Camera Eye
40. Satan Rejected my Soul
39. I’ve Changed my Plea to Guilty
38. Mama Lay Softly on the Riverbed
37. Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself?
36. I Have Forgiven Jesus
35. In the Future When All’s Well
34. I Like You
33. Found Found Found
32. Good Looking Man About Town
31. TIE: I Don’t Mind if You Forget Me and I Know It’s Going to Happen Someday
30. Will Never Marry
29. The National Front Disco
28. All the Lazy Dykes
27. Such a Little Thing Makes Such a Big Difference
26. I Know Very Well How I Got My Name
25. The World is Full of Crashing Bores
24. Picadilly Palare
23. We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful
22. Now My Heart is Full
21. Munich Air Disaster 1958
20. When Last I Spoke To Carol
19. Late Night, Maudlin Street
18. Our Frank
17. I Will See You in Far Off Places
16. Irish Blood, English Heart
15. Disappointed
14. Asian Rut
13. Black Cloud
12. Sister I’m a Poet
11. November Spawned a Monster
10. Every Day Is Like Sunday
9. Yes, I Am Blind
8. That’s How People Grow Up
7. All You Need Is Me
6. You’re the One for Me, Fatty
5. Something is Squeezing My Skull
4. Jack the Ripper
3. The Last of the Famous International Playboys
2. Spring-Heeled Jim
1. You’re Gonna Need Someone on Your Side

This weekend’s coming New York Times magazine fronts an excerpt from relations blogger Elizabeth Weil’s memoir-to-be about marriage, and her marriage in particular, with a wine blogger named Dan, called No Cheating, No Dying. They take on improvement projects, and I think what I learned most is to not improve things. Weil blogs in the Times magazine: “Since the beginning of this project, Dan had been waiting for one thing: sex therapy. And I have good and bad news on this front: improving the sex in our marriage was much easier than you might guess, and the process of doing so made us want to throw up.” Well. As with reading nearly any memoir (except Smile Please), at one time or another you will decide that one or both of the people-characters being blogged in the memoir about are horrible people. But you know. That’s really never the case, is it? Also, nice people! And maybe your relationship is/is not/is sometimes like/is often dislike theirs! And that’s why, I guess, the reason why there are memoirs.

There’s some interesting stuff to be found in this list of Google searches specific to different U.S. cities, particularly since it confirms my longstanding belief that people who eat at Hale and Hearty soups are morons.