Sadly there could only be 10 finalists in the final voting round for the Crikey Readers’ Choice Awards Golden Arsehat category, the pre-eminent award for the year’s most appalling person. Only 10 finalists and so many contenders! Make your vote count now, by following this link and following the survey prompts. Meanwhile, here’s a sample of Arsehats suggested by our readers:

Alexander Downer: He still hasn’t got it, has he?

Andrew Bolt: I believe there’s a First Dog on the Moon cartoon which sums it up. Not content with linking environmentalism to the abandonment of newborn babies, or spuriously beating up a laura norder frenzy about the Sudanese community, he’s continuing to place himself as some kind of elder statesman within the Victorian Liberal Party. Arsehat.

Baz Luhrmann: For his high oestrogen films, wanker hats, short-man syndrome, drag-queen/jockey voice, delusions of greatness & for attempting to fuel the mistruth that Nicole Kidman has screen “presence”.

Belinda Neal: “Don’t you know who I am?!”. For me it just summed up everything that is wrong with politics in Australia. That sense of entitlement and hubris. I was glad to see her get dragged over the coals.

Brendan Nelson: For his services to party extremsists over common decency through his Sorry Day Speech.

Chris Mitchell, Editor-in-Chief, The Australian: For running a newspaper so overflowing with fleck-filled bile, misleading nonsense and chicanery. He publshed bile from Canberra boofheads on polls leading to the election, kept running with “Manning Clarke was a commie” until it became Australian journalism’s greatest standing joke, turned editorials into pathetic whinging and self-puffery, fills a Saturday edition with instantly-disposable right-wing ranting and even publicises in-house “awards” as if they were of value.

Don Churchill, managing director, The Age: For presiding over the destruction of a once great newspaper.

Steve Fielding: Self-styled idiot savant with no apparant savant.

Fran Kelly: For the greatest wasted opportunity in Australian television with The Howard Years.

George W. Bush: Because it’s the last chance to nominate him before he dissolves into obscurity and, had the “Golden Arsehats” existed before now, he would most certainly have won every year since being “elected” by the Supreme Court.

Gerard Henderson: A special award recognising a lifetime of arsehattedness, rather than any particualr highlight this year — although his dogged defence of Iraq and David Hicks’ incarceration is inspiring.

Gerry Harvey: Any billionaire who publicly disparages charity, the poor and needy on the one hand, while on the other benefiting from government handout funded flat-screens, and then cynically advertises “Christmas is the time for giving” is truly appalling.

Greg Sheridan: In a hard-fought race Sheridan proved his superiority in the Denial Stakes but subsequently faltered in the Plausibility Handicap. Only [Rupert and] and an EGO you couldn’t compress into a bulk-ore carrier would allow his columns to survive.

John Howard: His residual arsehatness far outdoes any current players.

Kerry Armstrong: For selling her soul to Coca Cola.

Kevin “Pinky” Rudd: Whatever happened to his nickname?

Lara Bingle: Who the bloody hell is she?

Malcolm Turnbull: Because he just is!

Martin Ferguson: For his black arm band view of renewable energy and public slush funds and PR for “clean” coal.

Paul Keating: The most bitter and twisted man in Australia with nothing positive to say about anyone or anything. A complete Arsehat.

Penny Wong: How can you screw an entire ecosystem without even showing some emotion?

Peter Costello: Mate just go away.

Peter Reith: For his “comeback” via The Howard Years, reminding us why he never treated running the country as anything more than an amusing game.

Sarah Palin: Enthralling, but appalling.

Stephen Conroy: For accusing anyone who opposes his authoritarian internet censorship plan of condoning child p-rnography.

The New Zealand woman who sits next to me at work.

Have you voted in the Crikey Readers’ Awards 2008? If not, VOTE NOW!