It’s the post — and the comic relief — you’ve all been waiting for … the unveiling of the Top Ten posts of 2019! These are the most read posts of 2019 and they pretty well capture the biggest sensations — with one yuge exception. In the top ten, we get our media mantra for the whole year, a heapin’ helpin’ of hoaxin’, incentives incenting, a double dose of Seattle, and the man of the year … Lord help us. Unfortunately, a few of these might come back in 2020, too.

In countdown order, here are the Top Ten Hot Air posts in 2019, and try to identify the dog that never barks:

• #10: “None Of These Details Added Up At All”: Dave Chappelle On The Jussie Smollett Hoax — From the Netflix special “Sticks and Stones,” otherwise known as The Day Comedy Revived Itself. If you somehow missed this in September, go back now and watch this. Even French actors got a laugh out of this bit.
• #9: Why You’re Not Hearing More About That Mass Shooting In Fresno — What mass shooting in Fresno? You know, the one that actually involved gang warfare in the Hmong community. This got hardly any media attention at all, and neither did the arrests of six perps this week. Jazz’ post yesterday on the update is already well on its way to making 2020’s Top 50.
• #8: Smollett: On Second Thought, It Was All Those Two Brothers’ Fault — That French actor sure gets around! Surprisingly, Jussie Smollett only made two appearances in the Top 50, but both of those came in the Top Ten. Smollett also made honorable mentions at #70, and #78. And who knows? Smollett’s still trying to flog his hoax, so we might end up with a few more in next year’s list on this topic too.
• #7: Joy Behar: We Jumped To Conclusions About The Covington Catholic Kids Because We Desperately Want Trump Out Of Office —   Yeah, Joy, we know. In fact, this could be the mantra for the mainstream media in 2019. And 2018, 2017, and probably in 2020 too, regardless of topic. But rarely will we see the media jump on a bandwagon to run over the reputations of high-school kids for such obviously partisan reasons. This was one of the most disgusting of the media failures of the year, if not the worst.
• #6: Something Big Just Happened On Mexico’s Southern Border — The “something big” in this case was yet another clear case of incentives doing what they pretty much always do. When Donald Trump threatened to impose massive tariffs on Mexico unless they began cracking down on the migrant waves from Central America, both liberals and conservatives howled … but it actually worked, whether one liked it or not.
• #5: New York Governor: Florida Is Stealing Our Population — And in yet another example of incentives incenting (or whatever), Andrew Cuomo discovered that high taxes incentivizes people to vote with their feet. In Cuomo’s fevered imagination, that’s Florida’s fault. The blame rests more on Cuomo’s party, which controls the state, and the voters that refuse to change that situation.
• #4: KOMO News’ Special: Seattle Is Dying — A groundbreaking series of extraordinary local reporting in saying out loud what everyone knows and no one wants to admit. As John wrote at the time, it’s not just Seattle that’s dying, either. San Francisco, Portland, and Los Angeles are well on their way too. Until communities take a tougher law-enforcement approach to both drug use and vagrancy, they won’t recover, either.
• #3: Trans Powerlifter Stripped Of Titles In Women’s Championships — If we want to have women’s sports accessible to biological females, maybe we should have a separate trans category for fair competition. Jazz mentions that in this post as well, but it’s a common-sense solution that thus far no one in charge seems willing to put forth. If biological males are allowed to compete as females, it’s the end of Title IX sports and female athletics as we know it.
• #2: Seattle To Shut Down A Tiny Homes Village For The Homeless Because Residents Won’t Allow City Workers Inside — A good idea in theory, but in practice … not really. In theory, the homeless would police themselves in coordination with the city that owned these lots. In practice, they took over and refused to coordinate, even when conditions deteriorated so badly that the houses became health hazards. Even the traditional public-housing model was smarter than this.

And now, the Number One Most Read Post at Hot Air in 2019 …

• #1: Report: Maxwell Told Friend That Epstein’s Entire Island Was Wired For Video, Presumably For Blackmail Purposes — Bwa-HAHAHAHA! You didn’t think the Jeffrey Epstein case had killed itself earlier on our list, did you? Although, let’s face it — the story’s doing a pretty good impersonation of rigor mortis these days. Five months later, we’re still looking for Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein still killed himself (we’re pretty sure), and Prince Andrew is still persona non grata around Buckingham Palace. The DoJ wants us to know that they’re still working on the case by leaking [checks notes] the same crap they leaked back in August, too. In 2020, we might just end up going through its pockets looking for loose change.

So which dog never barked in the Top Ten? Impeachment. And for that matter, Trump himself, except for Behar’s obsession with him. Instead, Epstein got three mentions in the Top 50, which I believe makes him officially the face of 2019. Seattle got four spots on the Top 50, while nothing Trump did or said made the list at all. The Clintons didn’t even directly make the top 50 headlines, although #30 was certainly more about Billy Jeff than Donny J. What a long, strange trip 2019 turned out to be.