2009 was full of thoughtless commentary and while it was tough to go through all of the various media blogs and find a winner, we have found that winner.

The 2009 What Were You Thinking Award: Worst Media Blog Entry goes to “Palin will run in ‘12 on more retardation platform” by Erik Sean Nelson of The Huffington Post.

Now in all fairness The Huffington Post is a diverse publication that writes on a variety of subjects not limited to politics. Erik Sean Nelson apparently works in their comedy department and if you look at his posts, you’ll see they are mostly benign Onion-esque entries but his post (since removed) on July 3, 2009 was way outside the lines … to the point where even a galvanized Palin hater would object.

On that day Sarah Palin announced her resignation from her position as Governor of Alaska and to capitalize on the day’s events, Nelson decided to post his now infamous article:

In Sarah Palin’s resignation announcement she complained about the treatment of her son Trig who always teaches her life lessons. She said that the “world needs more Trigs, not fewer.” That’s a presidential campaign promise we can all get behind. She will be the first politician to actually try to increase the population of retarded people. To me, it’s kinda like saying the world needs more cancer patients because they teach us such personal lessons.

Her first act as President: To introduce a Pre-K lunch buffet that includes lead paint chips. Sort of a Large HEAD-START Program.

She will then encourage women to hold off on pregnancies until their 40’s just to mix up some chromosomes.

She now is in favor of abortion only in case of diploid birth.

Her policies will increase jobs because Wal-Mart is building new stores each day and someone has to be the greeter.
This will lead to smaller government because fewer Americans will have the cognitive ability to hold a government job

Queue conservative caps lock email blogosphere anger …

Besides the fact that the article isn’t funny … it’s quite a low blow. Nelson was apparently inundated with hate mail and the article was pulled a little while later and he would later issue an apology. What’s even worse is that his apology features the oddly worded line “I received some emails from the loved ones of the retarded” … ouch … proofread.

So then what happened to him. You’d imagine someone would skew him with a pitchfork or post his address online … nope … thankfully people kept a level head about the whole thing … except the Huffington Post which still allows him to publish work as of 12/2/2009.