culture / Lazy Sunday / Reblogged

Lazy Sunday CXLVI: 2021’s Top Five Posts

The Portly Politico31 Comments

It’s officially 2022, but this Sunday I’m going to cast one more look back at 2021.  As is tradition, in addition to my annual “Worst of” lists, I always do a “Top Five Posts” retrospective as well.

Like the “Worst of” lists, I don’t base these posts off of their quality, but by the number of views they received.  Some of them probably are very high-quality posts; others just got a lot of eyeballs.

I’ve also included the next three highest posts, which serendipitously worked out to be unique in their own ways, with two being of particular significance to the growth of the blog this year.

While I did not have any huge breakthrough posts in 2021—those garnering quadruple digits, like “Tom Steyer’s Belt“—my posts on average had more views, and my WordPress subscriber count increased substantially.  It turns out that if you keep at something for a thousand days, you start gaining some traction!  I also had substantially more commenter participation, thanks to folks hopping over from The Conservative Woman and Nebraska Energy Observer.

With that, here are 2021’s Top Five Posts:

  1. “Reclaim the Rainbow” (222 views) – The LGBTQIA2+etc. movement has hijacked the entire month of June, with every major corporation turning their logos into rainbows to celebrate sodomy.  I argued that Christians should take the rainbow back as a symbol of God’s Promise to never destroy the Earth again by means of a global flood.  That Promise also points to an earlier slide into wickedness that was so severe, God wiped out humanity.  That those engaged in abiological and immoral lifestyles have appropriated a deeply Christian symbol for their own debauched purposes is pretty much asking for God to deliver His Judgment.  This post did so well because Orthodox Christian, America Firster, former US Senate candidate for Delaware, and current babe Lauren Witzke shared the post on her Telegram page, for which I am very grateful.
  2. “The Joy of Live Music” (219 views) – I had the opportunity to hear my buddy, poet Jeremy Miles, play a gig with his new band, Jeremy and the Blissters, at a hopping coffee shop back in September.  It was one of the first live music experiences of 2021 outside of my front porch concerts.  The excitement of that evening really reminded me of how wonderfully joyous live music is.
  3. “National Night Out in Lamar” (182 views) – My neighbor organized a kind of “decentralized” festival here in Lamar to observe National Night Out, an evening dedicated to supporting law enforcement and encouraging strong community building.  It was a great time, and I’m hoping he’ll repeat the experiment in 2022.
  4.  “Lamar Elections Results 2021” (173 views) – This post is probably the first time I have “scooped” the local news media.  I had this post slapped together probably twenty minutes before my local paper, the Darlington News & Press, posted the final results on their Facebook page.  It’s difficult to get up-to-the-minute election results for small town elections, so being there when the results were posted at Town Hall gave me an edge on reporting.  I suspect the high view count was due to my sharing the link on the News & Press‘s Facebook page underneath their own election results.
  5. “TBT: Things That Go Bump in the Night” (171 views) – The only TBT to make the list, this one received quite a bit of activity in the comments section (as of the time of writing, it has a whopping sixty-six comments), sparking a lot of conversation about the “other side” of our reality—and the dangers of plumbing those shadowy depths unmoored from faith in Christ.
  • Honorable Mention: “The Weather” (159 views) – I thought it was amusing that a post about the weather did so well.  I make the point that even the most emptily benign topic of conversation has become politicized.
  • Best Movie Review: “Monday Morning Movie Review: Dracula (1931)” (140 views) – This probably is the “best” movie review I’ve ever written (I think it was pretty good), but it did receive the most views of any of them by far.  It’s a great flick!
  • Mrs. Congeniality: “Supporting Friends Friday: Audre Myers” (134 views) – The eighth most-popular post of 2021, this post about Audre Myers is directly responsible, I would argue, for increasing my views and, more enjoyably, commenter interaction.  This post brought several readers over from The Conservative Woman, due—I gather—sheerly out of their loyalty to Audre.  Whatever the case, the blog has been greatly enriched with their contributions, both in the comments section and to the blog itself.

And that’s it!  A lot of great posts for you to enjoy before everyone goes back to work tomorrow.

Happy New Year!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

31 thoughts on “Lazy Sunday CXLVI: 2021’s Top Five Posts”

  1. Fun article! I had to laugh about “The Weather” – people do, indeed, love to talk about the weather. I had a friend on The Conservative Woman UK, Les (may he rest in peace), who told me that Englishmen LOVE to talk about the weather – makes sense, they have so much of it (even if it’s only rain but they can get torrential rains on a fairly regular basis). Almost every day, in her emails to me, Alys mentions the weather, lol. It’s not like I can commiserate with her – Florida weather is almost diametrically opposed to English weather, lol – but it matters to her and so, it matters to me.

    I blush at the mention of my name in your list. I am eternally grateful to God for the folks who want to read something by someone who’s crazy as a bedbug, lol!!! I am the world’s comic relief, I suspect. And that’s ok; everybody gotta be somethin’.

    Wishing you continued success with the blog. Long may it grow.

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    • Tina and I, for a couple of years, raised a glass of rum to Raps at New Year’s. We didn’t this year – at any rate, I don’t drink rum anymore and can’t entertain the idea unless it’s good stuff, like Kraken. I didn’t know Raps half as well as you did but I enjoyed some good conversations with him on the site. I have wondered, on occasion, whether Raps’ passing signalled the end of Flirty Birty on TCW; we hardly ever see him nowadays.

      As for your influence, it’s well received on TCW. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have known about Neo or TPP. If you get on a CW article that generates a lot of comments and post the odd link to either Neo or here, a lot more people would come. Not too dissimilar to our CW meets – if some of those who’ve come help me advertise, we’d have a better chance of pulling more people in.

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      • I miss him. As far as Birtwistle is concerned – like a lot of people, he’s tired of the virus stuff and TCW is unrelenting. I understand the need and I understand the (justified) outrage but how many different ways can you say, “It’s a scam”? But I don’t suspect their readership has suffered any, so many people comment every single day because they’ve been forced to find the answers the government and the media won’t divulge.

        I will keep your suggestion in mind but I don’t comment there much anymore – for the same reason as Birt. The authors I do comment on – Margaret and Alan Ashworth’s articles – I hate to bring in politics of any kind. I’ll have to watch for your next article on TCW and use that as a vehicle to drive the blogs and authors.

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      • Birwistle! I love these names. It’s like readings Alys’s comments about English Christmas. I feel like I should be eating blood pudding while I read about TCW personalities.

        Thanks for the referrals, Audre. They are very much appreciated! Between you, Ponty, and Alys, I feel like I have a real readership now.

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    • Haha, yes, the popularity of “The Weather” really made me chuckle, too. I remember writing it and thinking, “Who do I think I am?” Apparently, it was a smash hit for the reasons you mentioned. It’s currently in the low 70s here in South Carolina—at 9 AM in early January! It’s been hot and humid all week, but it looks like tomorrow is going to be icy cold—just in time for me to return to work. D’oh!

      Your name is well-deserved in this list, Audre, and the post about you was very popular. You are perhaps the wisest clown I know (perhaps I am a close second—ha!).

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      • Gosh – I hope that ‘icy cold’ makes it down this way. We had to turn on the air last night!

        I’ll take ‘clown’.

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      • I love the frost. It’s invigorating. I wish it could have been frosty this week while I was bundled up in my house sick, haha.

        To be clear, I’m using “clown” here because you referred to yourself as “comic relief.” I don’t think you’re that clownish, Audre, but you do have a childlike sense of wonder and bemusement that I very much appreciate.

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  2. Someone else posted about that yesterday. They said TCW had become Covid obsessed but I put him right. We’re not obsessed about Covid but we have an issue with a government that is stripping us of our rights and a system which wants us to shut up and be compliant. If the Covid scam is the headline, the destruction of rights and liberties is the grey area many of us concentrate on. I think a lot of people need to stop concentrating on the flashing headlights and focus on the car because it is that, not the headlights, that kills you.

    Not only that but much of what appears on Neo – the fight against the undemocratic left – follows similar lines. It’s not one particular thing but an amalgamation of the many different things that make your lives feel more restricted.

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    • That’s what I said, 39; “… so many people comment every single day because they’ve been forced to find the answers the government and the media won’t divulge.”

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    • Yes, COVID is just one of the thousand little justifications for pricking a pin into the voodoo doll of the body politic. Our liberty is seeping away from those thousand little pricks; COVID mitigation measures are just more of a hatchet than a bobby pin. I understand the “obsession” of TCW with The Virus, given how draconian the Anglosphere governments have been. I weep for Australia, which I always took to be something like America, Jr., or America: Part II: a land of lusty, athletic ex-cons and misfits, conquering a hostile wilderness and loving life to the fullest. Now they’ve been subjugated into quivering blobs, just like the rest of us.

      Here’s hoping Great Britain can come to its senses and resist these ridiculous measures.

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    • Mike, Covid is the reason I can no longer engage with TCW, to say the site is not obsessed with Covid is disingenuous because that is exactly what it is and before Covid it was Brexit. Okay, so there are things that need to be brought to the attention of the populace but TCW has become an echo chamber as much as many others on the other side of the fence and it is only, or mostly, catering to those who already share its opinions. It would have been a good idea to intersperse the non stop anti Covid stuff with pieces about other things: feminisim and the damage it has inflicted on society, the pro fatherhood and male movement, BLM, the disintegration of the Church Of England under Welby etc etc. The total saturation and constant focus on Covid, the tussle over the benefits or otherwise of vaccination are just mind numbingly tedious when the same arguments are dragged up day after mind numbingly repetitive day. I think also it is time for TCW to change its name, Tne Conservative Woman as a title for a blogsite has long been hugely unrepresentative of those who actually read and comment as at least 80% of comments are from men – that is not meant as a criticism it is merely an observation – and a quick count of blog pieces posted on a daily basis will also show a preponderence of male contributors. Perhaps that is beacuse men tend to be more vocal and determined to be heard, again not a criticism, merely an observation. The best way to change the world is to put your own life in order, put God first, live by example and the rest will follow.

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      • Oooooooh, snap—the gauntlet has been thrown! Mike—your response? I’m ready to watch a flame war play out in my comments section.

        Haha, but, seriously, it does sound like TCW became a bit one-note. I’ve also wondered about the name, but that’s not for me to pass comment upon (not that propriety has stopped me from doing so before).

        The minutiae over whether or not to get vaccinated, the properties of the vaccines, etc.—that stuff, while _maybe_ important, is also _incredibly_ tedious. It also seems to miss the larger point: that folks shouldn’t be forced to take some kind of experimental gene therapy, and should be able to make their own decisions about what they’re pumping into their bodies. I’m curious to see a more traditional vaccine developed—one that works like other vaccines, in that it introduces a weakened version of The Virus to help build up an immune response.

        That said, I’ve taken two doses of the Pfizer vaccine (much to my chagrin). We’ll see if I end up sterilized, or dropping from myocarditis in the next couple of years. I had them last March without incident, so we’ll see.

        Ah, but there I go—getting into boring stuff. I’d rather see Alys and Mike respectfully and rhetorically joust here in the comments section.

        Even better—lure some more TCW readers to this humble blog. : D

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      • This is to make you laugh – I don’t believe it but it does make one wonder what the final outcome will be, which we won’t know for some years to come: could this be the trigger to the zombie apocalypse? Lol! But with some of the talk about what’s in these various shots and how they may – possibly – change our DNA weirder things have happened. Well … maybe not weirder than a zombie apocalypse, but you get the idea, lol.

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      • I probably wouldn’t have seen this response until tomorrow had it not been for the extremely tricky bits we keep coming up against on Abe Soulstorm (video game). I’m so glad that its new incarnation is as difficult as the originals even if we are pulling our hair out! 🙂

        Right, first thing. My claim is not disingenuous. There are and have been many articles on the things you talk about but yes, they’re swamped by the pro freedom articles on the site. I call them pro freedom, rather than Covid related, because that’s what they are. During this period, our government have told us to stay at home. They have told us to wear masks. They have told us that we need to have an experimental injection (in fact, not one but 2, 3, who knows how many) in order to shop, go to the cinema or a restaurant, in some cases work or study. The government overreach has been persistent, it has been intrusive and in many cases illegal; in any other walk of life, the various human rights councils would have put a stop to this but laws and rights and freedoms are being taken away with barely a whimper. There are many of us on the site who have not only seen others separated from their loved ones or lose basic liberties but who have experienced it for ourselves. Neither Tina nor I have seen our mothers for the last 2 years and under the stupid laws (you know, the ones that are consistently broken by politicians or pro lockdown cheerleaders), probably won’t until all of this ends. Had it not been for sites like TCW, persistently highlighting the problems that have come during this period, many people would have felt more isolated and scared than they have already. TCW has given people a place to talk, even contact each other and meet up and boy, have we needed that recently.

        As for the name change, they did it a few months ago – now it’s TCW: Defending Freedom. As for the genders posting on there, I couldn’t care if it was 100% men or 100% women but that’s just me – the site was named after the women who started it.

        This is a rebuttal, by the way, not an attack. 🙂

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      • A very cogent response to Alys’s lurid chargers, Ponty (just kidding, Alys—I thought your critiques of TCW were quite cogent and fair as well). I do think it’s important that we know other people are enduring the same things we are—and that they’re just as frustrated about it as us! Alternatively, I can easily see how that constant drumbeat—even if it is necessary—could cause substantial burnout. It’s one reason I don’t write nearly as much about politics and assaults on liberty as I once did. I think the situation is very serious—quite dire, in fact, though not as bad here in the United States, at least in the Southern States—but I can’t bring myself to write or think about it constantly.

        Sadly, too, it seems that our vocal online vanguard might be just that—a minority. One of the most depressing aspects of The Age of The Virus has been the utter indifference on behalf of my most Americans/Brits/etc. to the systematic attacks on our rights, liberties, and privileges—all God-given and -ordained, not granted by the government. The constant violation of Natural Law is unsettling and terrifying to the core.

        But, at this point, I can only tend to my little corner of this great Republic, and do what I can to fight these encroachments on our liberties from my tiny perch. I wish England had the same federalist system we enjoy in the United States, as well as a true Bill of Rights; both would be a welcome bulwark against the present tyranny you are facing. Even so, we have and will continue to experience it here as well.

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  3. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t bother so much with politics as I have but this attack on our way of life, even our own bodies, is too much and it comes from the very people we elect. I read a quote by Albert Camus the other day which I thought was pertinent to these times – ‘The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.’ Very true and comes close to another quote I remember reading a while ago, even though I can’t remember who said it or what the entirety of the comment was; to paraphrase, ‘an evil man doesn’t rise in the morning and say ‘I’m going to do evil.’ He rises and says ‘I’m going to change the world for the better.’

    I don’t see this as our governments killing us with kindness. No, it’s the very opposite and if you’re one of the many people affected by their measures, you can see why there is repetition from our side. We need to continue hammering home that they cannot do this to us. There are some who have been affected – Tina’s mental health has not been alleviated by seeing masks everywhere, a people afraid of their own shadows, the possibility of conflict from non compliance. It has certainly made my job harder. Away from us, being massively empathetic, I mourn for those who have lost their jobs through non compliance. Those who have not been allowed to see their dying relatives. Those who have been left isolated/kept away from their families by the perpetually fearful. Those who have lost their businesses and those on the verge of losing their livelihoods and then I see and read about politicians breaking the rules they set for other people and it makes me angry.

    Many of those who do comply or those who have shunned this debate do so because they are not affected. Their freedoms haven’t been massively curtailed and they are usually financially comfortable to well off. It’s easy to see why some don’t join the throngs of pro freedom marchers or debaters because their lives haven’t been put on hold by this; if you’re living in a largish house with a decent size garden, you’re going to be in a better place than someone who lives in a high rise council flat with no garden. I’m not saying you or Alys or Audre or Birt are these people, far from it. You are a warm bunch and very kind with others as well as strangers. I’m looking more at those who have not only complied but who snipe at those with questions and I think that’s one of the most salient points about all of this. Had the debate been open and not hostile, maybe society would be a whole lot different.

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    • A very passionate defense, Ponty, and I agree with you. We shouldn’t take it standing idly by. I did feel a bit convicted by your last paragraph. I’m blessed to avoid a lot of these government-mandated injustices, which perhaps explains why I’ve moved away from them.

      I will say that I fought these battles here in the States, though: I fought against our mask mandate in Lamar; I pushed to re-open Town Council meetings to the public in-person, and not just online; our previous mayor was talking about requiring vaccinations for Town employees, and while it never came up again, I was preparing to fight against that, too. It’s wearying and difficult, but necessary—even, perhaps especially, when you lose. I ended up winning on the first two points thanks to intervention from higher levels—the Governor forbid mask mandates, and we eventually resumed in-person meetings after my proposal was initially dismissed. In both cases, though, it required action at a higher level, and I believe that action came _because_ people were pushing on every front against this tyrannical innovations.

      Perhaps some balance could be welcome. Even the most grizzled warriors find themselves in need of a break from the battle—or a break from reading about it, at least.

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  4. I do not, and did not say I disagreed with the stance taken by TCW over Covid but if Mike wants to understand why some people – such as myself – have become disaffected and disengaged with the site then I am telling him. Of course it is important for opposing opinions which were not being covered by mainstream news and opinion outlets to be aired but as I said, I feel the saturation coverage of Covid has been to the detriment of the wider appeal of The Conservative Woman or whatever it cares to call itself nowadays. When I first started reading TCW some four years ago it covered a lively mix of topics, now I struggle to find much at all to read that holds my attention. My own experience of the whole Covid debacle has ranged from mild irritation to seething anger and although I had the initial double vaccination I will not be having any more. I am fully aware of the damage which Covid has inflicted on our freedoms, the economy and our interactions with other people but I have not, and will not, let all the negativity grind me down. Having endured the sudden death from an undiagnosed genetic heart complaint of my 38 year old daughter in April 2020 I have had to put life into perspective. I know that our hold on it is pretty tenuous and that anything can take any of us out at any time. I have no axe to grind and am well aware of the negative effects of Covid but there is more to life than The Virus and I am looking foward to the day when the headlines are about something other than vaccinations, numbers of people testing positive, disagreements about numbers of who has died with, or of, Covid etcetara. I think it is vital that we do not lose sight of our humanity even though it has been sorely tested this past two years. This will pass and life, although it may not be quite like it used to, will carry on, babies will be born, the sun will shine, men and women will fall in, and out of, love and the world will keep on turning.

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    • “I think it is vital that we do not lose sight of our humanity even though it has been sorely tested this past two years. This will pass and life, although it may not be quite like it used to, will carry on, babies will be born, the sun will shine, men and women will fall in, and out of, love and the world will keep on turning.”

      Beautifully put, Alys. I think you and Ponty are both correct: we are right to be angry and frustrated with what has been done in the name of “flattening the curve” and fighting The Virus and such, and we should speak out (and write!) against it. But there is more to life, and we still have much life to live.

      I am so sorry to hear about your daughter. As someone who is turning thirty-seven (tomorrow!) with blood pressure issues, it hits close to home.

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      • Thanks Tyler, yes Hannah was to all outward appearances a healthy young woman, she did all the right things, ate sensibly, went swimming, walking etc and then one night she died in her sleep leaving her husband of three years with a fourteen month old baby daughter to look after. It has been a difficult thing with which to come to terms eben knowing thatbshe had achived a good deal in her life and is now safe with Jesus.

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