***UPDATES FROM ROBERT SPENCER AND JOHN HAWKINS – People’s Choice Blog Award now Grover’s Choice Blog Award?

***UPDATED: RESPONSES FROM ROBERT SPENCER AND JOHN HAWKINS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST***

According to Hoyle, 2,717 conservative voters like to read about space aliens, Martians and ET’s. So they nominated the best science fiction blog on the subject for an award at this year’s CPAC.

Haha. Fooled you. That was sarcasm.

Robert Spencer needs no introduction. He is arguably the foremost western authority on Islam today. Er … you can retire now Bernard Lewis. Your replacement is here.

By an overwhelming majority of votes, Robert Spencer won The People’s Choice Blog Award. Slight problem. From the article:

Robert Spencer – I was surprised and honored that Jihad Watch was among the nominees for the People’s Choice Blog Award, sponsored by Right Wing News and TheTeaParty.net, to be awarded at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2013.

People's Choice Blog Award

As you can see from the vote above, Jihad Watch won decisively, getting over 50% of the vote in a field of fifteen. And I received confirmation of the victory from one of the organizers of the CPAC blog awards when I asked him when voting officially ended:

From: XXXXXXXXX
Subject: Re: You’ve Been Nominated For A People’s Choice Award At the CPAC Blogger Awards
Date: March 2, 2013 2:58:26 AM EST
To: Robert Spencer xxxxxxxxxxx
Robert

It officially ended at midnight. You won!

But as time went by and no announcement was made of this victory, and the voting continued despite my having been told that it officially ended last Friday night and that I had won, and the promised links and other placement promised to the winning blog didn’t materialize, I started to wonder. So I contacted the organizer who had written me telling me I won and asked him what was going on.
He told me that there was a slight problem: the Tea Party group, which co-sponsored this People’s Choice Blog Award, didn’t want to allow me to receive it at CPAC next week unless I promised not to criticize Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan as I accepted the award.

I told the organizer that I couldn’t agree to that. He asked me if I had planned to talk about Grover and Suhail. I said no, I hadn’t, but I had to now. So that’s that. The People’s Choice Blog Award is now the Grover’s Choice Blog Award. I will not be going to CPAC and will not be receiving this award.

The article continues here.

TRS covered the issues with CPAC in this thread.

UPDATED(TRS): I’ve been asked by the person who was involved with Robert Spencer in this ordeal to post his side of this story since he feels he was wronged. His name is John Hawkins and he runs the People’s Choice Blog Award at CPAC and he’s the one who spoke to Robert Spencer. I discussed this with 911infidel and we felt that in the interest of fairness, that we should also contact Robert Spencer and get a statement from him on the details of this as well. We have it and will post it in full as well.

First, this statement from John Hawkins:

From: John Hawkins
Date: Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 7:30 PM
Subject: Has The People’s Choice Blog Award morphed into the Grover’s Choice Blog Award?
To: therightscoop

I’m John Hawkins and I’m the one who spoke to Robert on the phone.

Just to give you some background, I helped Pamela get the room she used at CPAC last year. TheTeaParty.net, the group that’s co-sponsoring the blogger awards this year, provided that space. Pamela and Robert were both at the blogger award ceremony last year and Pamela won an award. I’ve also interviewed both Robert and Pamela at http://www.rightwingnews.com, linked them from my blog and I considered Pamela a friend and Robert a friendly acquaintance before this happened.

I asked Robert, as a personal favor, to just pick up his award without ranting about the ACU. Some people may disagree, but I don’t think asking someone not to pull a Kanye West at an award ceremony is a big imposition. The awards are supposed to be about awarding unappreciated bloggers for the good work they’re doing, not about Robert Spencer airing his personal grievances with the ACU. When Robert refused to agree to that, it was the end of the conversation because there was nothing else to say. Let me note that I absolutely, unconditionally did not tell him that he was “barred from receiving his award.” In fact, I thought he was going to be at the ceremony until his post claiming he was “barred from receiving his award” came out.

Additionally, Robert did win the award, I personally had the plaque made for him and as late as yesterday he was even going to have someone receive it on his behalf, although I’ve been told he changed his mind about that. Either way, he will have a plaque and I promise to put up a picture of it when the pictures of the award ceremony come out if he doesn’t want to have someone pick it up for him.

Last but not least, if anybody has a problem with this, they can feel free to blame me for it. I’m the one who talked to Robert Spencer and I’m the one who’s saying that I think demanding the right to throw a tantrum as a condition of accepting an award is unacceptable. All I can say beyond that is that I hope lying to get his 5 minutes of PR was worth burning people who’ve been supportive of him, because he is dead to me.


Steadfast and loyal

John Hawkins

Now, here is the response from Robert Spencer:

From: Robert Spencer
Date: Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 11:02 PM
Subject: Re: Has The People’s Choice Blog Award morphed into the Grover’s Choice Blog Award?
To: therightscoop

John Hawkins’ account below is highly tendentious to the point of being outright dishonest.

John represents his telling me not to speak about Norquist and Khan’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic supremacists as a “personal favor” he was asking of me, not to “rant” and “throw a tantrum.” The ties that Norquist and Khan have to islamic supremacists are not a matter of a rant or tantrum, but a serious issue that is causing immense damage to the conservative movement and the Republican Party’s ability to oppose Barack Obama’s consistent enabling of Islamic supremacism domestically and internationally. It needs to be raised, yet as I told John when we spoke, I had no intention of doing so at the awards ceremony until he conveyed to me the order not to do so — which order only impressed upon me anew the need to call attention to this problem.

Also, John never represented this to me as a “personal favor.” He stressed to me repeatedly that he was conveying an order from higher ups which he told me he was further ordered not to name to me. And while he did make clear that I was welcome to come and accept the award, he also made it quite clear that I was not to say anything about Norquist and Khan (the ACU was actually never discussed), and that one was conditional on the other.

I ask in the interests of fairness and accuracy that if you print his highly misleading and disingenuous remarks below, that you also print these.

Regards
R

I have made this post show up as a latest post so that it will get the viewing it deserves.


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