At the end of last year, we took a look at our top posts of the year as part of a retrospective that our readers seemed to enjoy.  Let’s take a tour of the top 50 Hot Air posts of 2011 with the most unique page views, starting with slots 41-50.  The list was generated by Hot Air’s technical gurus late last week, so it won’t include anything from this week — and that may be part of the fun, since this is a good way to revisit some of our most-read posts that may have fallen out of memory.  I’m excluding holiday posts, since those work as open threads and have a bit of an unfair advantage.  That actually only disqualifies our Thanksgiving post on the greatest moment in sitcom history, which turned out to be the overwhelming favorite of most readers.

• 50: Video: The greatest quarterback of all time  – Johnny McEntee may not be the greatest QB of all time, but he may be the greatest trick-shot QB of all time.  No one knows how may outtakes had to be filmed, but these look like they were all shot in the same day, and any one of these would be awesome by itself.
• 49: Historians agree: Palin was right about Revere – Mostly right, at least, and more correct than some of her critics.  This turned into a nine-day wonder of a story, but it got a lot of commentary.
• 48: Tea partier heckles Obama: Why are you talking about civility when Biden’s calling us terrorists? Update: Video added  – Prescient question from Allahpundit on this post: “In fact, Jonathan Last‘s already wondering how long it’ll be after Perry takes the lead in national polls before the left decides that George W. Bush, a.k.a. the new Hitler, was a genteel chap compared to this new Texan hybrid of Hitler, Bin Laden, and Yosemite Sam. Over/under: Six weeks.”
• 47: Celebrated redistributionists discover healthy respect for private property – The first of our Occupy posts in the top 50, this one’s a charmer.  Taking other people’s property for your needs — A-OK.  Having your laptop stolen — crime!
• 46: OJ Simpson to admit to murders – Alas, the purported confession to Oprah Winfrey’s producers proved not to be true, but a miscommunication of a comment Oprah herself made.  Not too many people still believe OJ was innocent, though.
• 45: Megyn Kelly to Mike Gallagher: I’m happy with my baby and my employer, not so much with you – The first post from Tina Korbe on our top 50 was this anti-climax between Kelly and Gallagher.
  
• 44: Waukesha County Dem on Prosser vote totals: On second thought, this whole thing is darned shady – Say, remember when Big Labor was going to teach Republicans a lesson in Wisconsin for curtailing bargaining rights for some public-employee unions?  Good times, good times.
• 43: Media Matters plots guerrilla warfare and sabotage against Fox – Nothing wrong with watching the watchers, as Jazz Shaw noted at the time, or even doing so with the hyperbolic notion of “guerilla warfare.”  We do media criticism here at Hot Air, too.  We draw the line short of “sabotage,” though … several miles short of it, actually.
• 42: Tapper grills Carney: Why isnt it fair to blame Obama for Hoffas remarks? – A delicious sauce-for-the-gander moment from Jake Tapper at ABC.
• 41: Bombshell: General accused WH of pressuring him to change testimony for Democratic donor – This was our first post on LightSquared, but it sure hasn’t been our last.  Eli Lake’s report for The Daily Beast shined a little light on the political pressure being used to push LightSquared’s network despite the grave reservations of the military and FAA — concerns that later testing showed to be vindicated.