Worst-of List for 2009 (Part 2)

Whereas I get personal and start to name names. There is so much material here, but I promise there will not be a Worst-of List, Part 3.

Asshole of the Year: Sarah Palin
Whether it's ridiculous, preposterous concepts such as "death panels" bubbling up from the depths of her rancid little cesspool of a mind, or her baffling bail-out from the governorship of her state, or her eternally annoying bleating every time she gets in front of a microphone, Sarah Palin continues to inexplicably occupy a prominent place on the political/pop culture scene far out of proportion to any actual value her life has. Her very existence is depressing enough, but what it also shows us is the huge number of incredibly stupid, ignorant people in this nation who think that she is "speaking for them." They seem to have the impression that Palin is "real" but don't realize that every single word that comes out of her mouth and everything she does is scripted down to the finest detail by her conservative puppet-masters/handlers in the Republican party. Sarah Palin is the ultimate phony, a ventriloquist dummy with schoolteacher glasses who probably has never had a single coherent thought of her own in her whole life. Stupid people attract other stupid people, a sad fact of life that happens everywhere she goes. How pathetic for this country.

Asshole of the Decade: George W. Bush
There truly aren't enough bad things in the English language to say about George W. Bush, so I'm not even going to waste (much) space rehashing them. The eight long horrible years of his two presidential terms were truly a Dark Age of American politics. On September 11, 2001, as the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York (and, by extension, the American way of life we all grew up with) crumbled, Bush sat in a classroom, paralyzed by his own stupidity, reading a story to a group of children. He completely fabricated the assertion that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and used it to get the U.S. in a bloody quagmire of a war, for which we will be paying all manner of consequences for generations. He continually and consistently changed the tax structure to benefit the super-wealthy. Early on he established himself as a very hands-off, detached president who regarded his duties in the Oval Office as a petty annoyance he had to deal with between vacations. He used every opportunity to blur the separation of church and state, and allowed every corporate special-interest and lobbying group to have unfettered access to the highest levels of government. But as horrible and loathsome as Bush is, the American voter deserves the lion's share of blame for the galaxy-class abomination that was President George W. Bush. They voted him into office twice, and they deserve every awful thing that happens to this country in the future. Trouble is, the rest of us who voted against this empty-headed simpleton have to pay for it, too.
Runner-up: Dick Cheney (Veep of the Living Dead)

Worst Political Pundit: Bill O'Reilly
Loud, shrill, bullying, ignorant, duplicitous, venal, mean-spirited, lying, blustering, obnoxious, cowardly, hypocritical. And these are his good qualities. Did I also mention batshit-crazy?
Runners-Up: Sean Hannity, just about anyone on the Fox Noise Channel

Most Loathsome Politician: Joe Lieberman
There is something so incredibly despicable, smarmy and disgusting about Lieberman, senator from Connecticut. Sure there are plenty of vile Republican members of Congress who deserve to be despised, but at least they wear their disgustingness out in the open. Formerly a Democrat, Lieberman decided to go Independent when it looked like he was going to lose a primary election, and has been skipping over to the Republican side of the political fence regularly, as circumstances suit him. Either he is a brilliant political tactician expertly playing both sides against the other, or he is the ultimate hypocrite, crassly doing whatever he needs to do to get people to pay attention to him. It is truly symptomatic of how corrupt and broken our political system is that he was afforded such power in the recent health care debate. Every second that he is alive is a second squandered.
Runners-Up: Michelle Bachmann, Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Mick Huckabee, oh God, it just goes on and on

Most Loathsome Person of the Decade, and maybe on Earth: Rush Limbaugh
Part ultra-obnoxious grade-school bully, part Jabba the Hutt in a cheap suit, this gigantic, quivering mass of flab bloviates for hours a day, spreading toxic political flatulence far and wide with his radio program. His inexplicably vast audience, who call themselves "dittoheads," - apparently without a hint of understanding the irony - willingly accept and believe every fetid dollop of idiocy this bloated, drug-addicted puddle of goo spoon-feeds them. Everyday, in many ways, he makes America stupider and stupider.
Runners-Up: Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Gary Bauer, at least 100 members of Congress

Best Impression of a Meteorite: Tiger Woods
A meteorite is something that falls from a great height, blazes out in brilliant self-destruction and crashes to earth. That pretty much describes Tiger Woods, who must be hating life a lot right now. Let's review: here is a guy who seeming had everything: universally acknowledged as the greatest golfer who ever lived, extremely lucrative endorsement deals, multimillion-dollar home and yacht, worldwide fame, a gorgeous Swedish wife and two cute dogs. Also a couple of kids, but whatever. So what do you do when you have all that? Take a lot of Ambien and have hazy, druggy sex with a smorgasbord of "noctural hospitality hostesses", a.k.a. Las Vegas skanks. Huh??? WTF, seriously? Can he possibly be that stupid? He has it all but is still not satisfied. He deserves everything that happens to him and I hope Elin bleeds him dry.

Most Awful Occurrence of the Year: Nothing yet, but there are still 8 days to go. After all, a monstrous tsunami or earthquake can always occur with no warning.

Most Awful Occurrence of the Decade: September 11, 2001
The date that is burned on all of our memories, the day that the life of every American, and in fact the lives of everyone in the world, changed irreversibly. Eight years past, the horror of the day is still pretty much undiminished and unresolved. We've come to expect long lines at airports, removing our shoes to be searched for explosives, and the uncomfortable thought that is always in the back of everyone's minds: when will the next terrorism event happen? Even the "good old days" of the 1990's seem like a world away. In fact they are, and the world we live in now is a much more dangerous place.

Douchebag of the Year: Jon Gosselin
The male half of the Parenting Team of the Year on the inexplicably popular reality show Jon and Kate Plus Eight always seemed to be portrayed as a pudgy, dimwitted doormat, regularly emasculated by his vicious harpy of a wife in front of the children and an audience of millions. Somewhere along the line he sort of got a clue and bailed on the show and his family. Once free of the stifling, abusive tyranny of his marriage, Gosselin went wild and was spotted at every dubious party and media event he could possibly cram into his calendar, while Kate stayed at home sharpening her hair and making other people shovel out tons of soiled diapers. The fact that he was photographed unabashedly slobbering over a series of disgusting, classless media whores only served to make his snarling wife look like the victim. If anyone makes an allegation of how gay marriage would destroy and debase the institution of matrimony in this country, they need only be directed to the Gosselins as the true source of disrespect and debasement.

Douchebag of the Decade: Girls Gone Wild producer Joe Francis
Here we have American capitalism at its finest - an "entrepreneur" who builds a hugely profitable empire on videotaping drunk, moronic college girls cavorting around with no tops. That's it - no subtlety involved here. Whores and skanks with their boobies flopping around. I've never seen a GGW video and make all possible efforts to avoid them, but wouldn't that get really boring after about two minutes? Anyhow, Francis has the spongy, round face everyone would love to punch and a Pillsbury doughboy body that just begs for a good butt-kicking. I guess the last I heard of him he was in jail for something, where he probably will never get to see who his cellmate is since he will always be facing the other direction.

Stupidest People of the Year: Birthers and Teabaggers
Barack Obama's election and inauguration as the first African-American president so shocked and angered lots of (racist) voters in this country that for a while they were stunned into mute disbelief. They woke up and got their bearings midyear, going batshit crazy with some wild conspiracy theory that Obama wasn't an American citizen and therefore could not be President. It didn't matter one whit that all their claims and forged documents were universally, categorically and affirmatively refuted - they were sure they were right. And a lot of them still believe they are as they and their "movement" mercifully fade into the background noise of idiocy that makes up a lot of the socio-political climate of this country. The teabaggers were on display everywhere this summer, from throwing tantrums at town-hall meetings to lugging around hilariously misspelled or misconceived signs at the "Voter Values Summit" in Washington, of which my favorite was the "Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare" sign brandished by a senior citizen. And anyone who is aware of the "other meaning" of the term "teabagging" found it difficult to not laugh and gag at the same time when someone reported on television that "senior citizens were teabagging on the streets of Washington."
Runners-Up: "Intelligent Design" advocates

Stupidest People of the Decade: Republicans
Republicans are always on either the stupid side of major issues (global warming, evolution, health care, financial reform, foreign policy, tax reform) or the evil, hateful side of major issues (gay marriage, church/state separation, clean air/water issues, abortion, coal/oil policies, etc., etc.). They claim to be in the "party of Lincoln" but Old Abe is spinning in his grave like a runaway food blender every single time one of them opens their mouth. Republicans have forged an unholy, vile and extremely cynical alliance with the fundamentalists and they, despite all their claims to being "Christian," continue to spread racism, homophobia and discrimination far and wide across the world. As far as I'm concerned, there is absolutely nothing of any merit or value in the Republican party AT ALL and I could not disagree with them more vehemently on nearly everything.

That's it, I'm done. Please, 2010, do better than this past year.