Year-End Roundup

On the last day of December, as 2010 slithers out the back door with its forked tail between its legs, let's take a look back at the travesty that was this year. And what a load of crap it was.

Let's get to the annual Stupidest State of the Year award. This award goes to one of the 50 states which has scaled the heights of batshit-craziness and has truly embarrassed itself (and the rest of the nation) on a planetary scale. To review, here are the criteria used to assess the idiocy:
1) General level of inborn stupidity among the residents
2) Venal, corrupt or insane governor/executive branch
3) Prevailing religious tyranny
4) Batshit-crazy or fundamentalist-controlled regulators or legislature
5) Potential for global embarrassment and species degradation

And the nominees this year are:
1) Alaska - this state continues to blaze new trails in the frontiers of stupidity, due mostly to its most infamous quitter-ex-governor, Sarah Palin. Like a hideous, never-ending bout of herpes, Palin continues to pollute the airwaves and insult everyone on earth with her deadheaded idiocy and non-stop doltishness. Always choosing to heap insult upon injury, she not only came out with another completely stupid, utterly pointless and unnecessary book, but also was in a reality show on the TLC channel (and everyone at TLC can die in a fire for inflicting this pile of stinking, festering manure on us). She had company this summer in the form of Joe Miller, the Tea Party candidate for Senate, a creepy-crusty guy who lost in a write-in election to the incumbent and at this writing is still fighting his loss in court. To Joe Miller: STFU. You lost, no one wants you. Go away and take Palin with you.

2) Arizona - I really didn't think this state could get any more ridiculous and insane, but they sure proved me wrong in the midterm elections. Not only did the clueless, idiotic voters in this state elect as governor the moldering, decomposing remains of some ancient, disease-ridden hooker, but somehow decided that putting more Republicans in office than ever will somehow make things better. Obviously letting their racism and bigotry do the thinking for them, Arizona has indeed taken several giant steps backward into the morass of ignorance from whence it came. This is such a beautiful state, but the politics are incredibly hateful, moronic and depressing.

3) Florida - The Sunshine State appeared to be spiraling into a sinkhole of dumbness this summer with some weird three-way race between Tea Party token-Hispanic candidate Marco Rubio, some other guy and Charlie Crist, doing something completely incomprehensible for some unknown reason. Everyone was hoping that a hurricane would blow in from somewhere and sweep all the crazy nutjobs out to sea, but that would leave the state with a population of maybe a couple hundred people.

4) New Jersey - this state got a huge black eye with the advent of Jersey Shore, and even when the show picked up its greasy self and went to South Beach in Florida, New Jersey still suffered. Now a huge snowstorm has buried most of the state in 2 feet of snow. If I was a Christian I would say that God is punishing those people with bad weather for all the horrendously stupid things they did but then I realize that if that were true, then I would be dodging meteor storms and cataclysmic earthquakes for living in Arizona.

5) South Carolina - The people of S.C. will always be damned for inflicting a weird, vicious, insane creep like Jim DeMint on the national scene. It's almost as if some monster chewed up and swallowed Tom DeLay, got sick, and vomited up Jim DeMint. The Democratic candidate for Senate this fall was someone named Alvin Greene, I think, and seeing him on television painfully struggling to say something even remotely sensible was sad and pathetic to the extreme. Apparently, someone has talked him into running for some other office, which is a damned shame, like making fun of retarded people. Hey, South Carolina, ENOUGH ALREADY!

Quite the sorry slate this year, but the decision is in: The Stupidest State is ... ARIZONA! Yes indeed, the state where I live has busted through to the front of the pack and has left everyone (almost everyone - Alaska was a close second) in its dust. It's become clear that Arizonans are not even bothering to disguise their racism, since all politics in this state turn on the illegal immigration issue. That was the source of the Republican sweep of this state. Most analysts agree that earlier in the year, polls indicated that the deceased, insect-like Jan Brewer was stumbling clumsily through her term-without-a-mandate as governor and would surely lose to the Democratic candidate. Then she signed SB 1070, the infamous statute which, besides making everyone in this state look like a prejudiced pinhead, gives law enforcement Nazi-like powers to compel dark-skinned people to "show their papers" on demand. The Arizona voters surmised that if a Democrat was in the governor's office, that bill would not have been signed; and in fact if Janet Napolitano had still been governor, there's no way that bill would have become law. So, if one Republican in high office garnered such good results, then putting them in all the other state offices would be a great idea, they thought. Except that it's not. This state has solidified the perception that the country has of us - of a bunch of boorish, poorly-educated, trailer-park meth-heads who hate immigrants. Because of the astonishingly fabulous job this state has done in sabotaging its own image and portraying itself in the worst possible light, it truly deserves the Stupidest State of the Year Award.

The pop-culture wreckage of this year is all over the landscape, dominated by a really annoying little anal fissure named Justin Bieber. He seems to be fancying himself as some sort of rapper/crooner and is cobbling together something vaguely resembling a career from the ritalin-addled obsessions of hordes of 12-year-old girls, for whom watching the same miserable music video on YouTube 2500 times is just another day. I think there's a real good chance that his expiration date is coming up soon and he will be pushed to the sidelines by some other marginally-talented young twerp who will capture the illicit, pre-pubescent attentions of the tweeners. Eww, it was unpleasant to even write that sentence. Ferociously trying to claw their way back from the desert of obscurity on one of those blindingly pathetic New Year's Eve shows (and yes, we still love you Dick Clark but for God's sake GIVE IT UP ALREADY!) is the two-headed monster calling itself the "New Kids On The Block/Backstreet Boys Reunion," to which I pose a simple question: WHY??? Way too old to be cute and too lightweight to be taken seriously, these people need to do something with their lives. And fast.

I was trying to think of good things that happened this year, but I came up short. It's been a tough year on all levels. I think back of all the beautiful, wonderful bunnies we've lost - Duncan, Alyce-Michele, Eliza, Sage, Fuzzy, Amelia - to name a very few, and I start to realize how depressing this year has been. The year ends more poorly than it started, it has been a net loss emotionally and spiritually. I would like to think 2011 will be better, but I have little reason to be optimistic.