This newspaper has never been a big one for journalism awards.

Partly it's because the work we do here—if you can call it work (or even call us a "we")—is not the kind that is traditionally considered strictly journalistic by high-toned awards organizations. And party it's because certain elements of the paper's top management tier were raised Catholic and therefore harbor a built-in disdain for the kind of self-congratulation implied by nominating writers and articles for that sort of attention.

It's difficult to say what all goes into the stew.

Nonetheless, Eli won a Pulitzer in 2012, which is a very big deal. And Sydney was named the SPJ's Journalist of the Year for Western WA last year and earned a Gender Justice League award the year before that. She deserves plenty more.

There may be other awards in the paper's past (it may surprise you, for example, to learn that then-future Seattle Times reporter Jim Brunner and I shared the coveted third place for editorial writing berth in SPJ's coveted Mark of Excellence competition in 1995)...

But let us look to the future. The immediate future. Like, today, which is when you can participate in the president's most recent folly: "The Highly-Anticipated 2017 Fake News Awards."

(Superfluous hyphen inclusive.)

A link to the "survey" was emailed today to those of us who subscribe to PT's e-mail list—the contents of which unfailingly resemble the work of a twitchy rodent with a Geocities login, a quality shared by its parent, "the certified website of President Donald J. Trump."

It consists of a list of publications, each one vying for the title "2017 King of Fake News" (or, more accurately, "2017 KING OF FAKE NEWS").

(Gender bias noted.)

The list:
ABC
The Associated Press
Buzzfeed
CBS
CNN
Fox News
The Huffington Post
MSNBC
NBC
Newsweek
The New York Times
NPR
TIME
The Washington Post

Then at the bottom is a space for participants to write in their choice of "Other, please specify."

You see where I'm going.

Do you have any idea how much Trumpiana the staff of this paper has chosen/been forced to write and publish in the last year or two?

Even if you don't count all of the "you'll never believe what he said this time" posts, and even if you haven't followed the "this is what resistance actually looks like" reports, even if you don't credit the aftermath (the duringmath!) of having to stay tuned to his noxious frequency every minute of your life, you could always consider the Nov. 1, 2016 cover story in which some thoughtful wag managed to regain composure after being mocked by one's colleagues for thinking Trump had a snowflake's chance in hellscape of winning long enough to observe thus:

"Even if he doesn't win, the scary thing is that he could have. By this time next week, we'll most likely know whether or not he did. Whatever the outcome, if he wins, the victory will be called both inevitable and impossible, and everything will change forever.

If he loses, we'll heave a sigh of relief, smug pundits will say I told you he never had a chance, and this whole past year of unfunny jokes and impotent disgust will get filed away until the next unforeseeable nightmare we all should have seen coming comes along.

Either way, the berserk thing his campaign unlocked—a validation of the lowest imaginable road as a viable path to power and glory—isn't going anywhere. Ever. My only objection to the term "Trump Anxiety" is rhetorical: Anxiety is fear without an object. There's no shortage of objects in this scenario: his presidency, his followers, his bloodless children. Trump Anxiety isn't anxiety. It's fear. It's dread. And dread is a much harder tension to live with because you know exactly what you're dreading."

I'm just saying. If Time (or rather TIME) deserves to be considered for an FNA, then so does The Stranger. And you, member of the never silent majority, can help make Make America Great Again great again. You may not believe we deserve the title of King. But surely we're at least in the running for Queen?

Look, I know the pill is bitter and covered with lint and hair and a partially oxidized old penny that got stuck to it (Lincoln side up) in the bottom of your purse, and it will probably get lodged in your throat—not enough to make you choke, but just enough to make you gag and to make you feel like you but consider this: After you cast your vote for King (they can't even get that part right), there's one last question:

2. Are there any other thoughts you’d like to share with the President? (Optional)

...and a nice big box for you to let him know what a great use of his time this whole project is.

And mine. And yours.

And then try to shake the tableau of Trump, post-coitally not-withering because Viagra is so tenacious, gazing at his own reflection in Stormy Daniels's eyes and telling her how much she reminds him of his daughter.

And after not shaking that, you can fail to shake the other tableau that scene conjures—a scene that almost certainly lives in Trump's imagination at the very least, and seems like it might be the only revelation that could possibly dislodge him from the favor of his cult.