Waste of White Space

The "Waste of White Space in a Leading Publication" award goes to:
Fred, Fred, Fred: Thompson's Challenge Has a Name
Here is a little taste of this piece of juvinile "journalism".

In the swampy soup of hopefuls for the 2008 presidential election, there is a man with a funny name. (No, not that one.)

We're thinking of the one named Fred (Thompson).

Say it out loud. Do it. Fred. Fred. In the South, Fray-ud.

Fur-red-duh.

It has the tonal quality of something being dropped on the floor, something heavy and damp-ish.

Waterlogged paper towel.

Fred.

The phonetics of the name seem integral to its image problem: On Urbandictionary.com, a "Fred" is defined as "a person who does stupid, annoying, or idiotic things" (Fred Flintstone, Fred Mertz). The best-case descriptors a Fred can hope for are terms like well-intentioned, predictable, benign (Fred Rogers).

And it just gets worse. Why would anyone pay Monica Hesse to write this drivel and why would anyone pay to read it?

And we have a winner!

The Biggest Waste of White Space in a national publication award goes to Anne Applebaum. Never has a pundit used so many words to say so little of value. She has gone where no pundit has gone before and made David Broder look brilliant.
Of course Anne gets the last laugh. Fred Hiatt is paying her six figures to mindlessly fill white space while Digby and I get zip for filling white space with evil brilliance.

Update
Jim Henely and Kevin Drum seem to agree.