Outside the Beltway

Moast Loathesome Americans

The Beast has released its The 50 Most Loathsome Americans of 2010, which I gather is supposed to be amusing rather than taken seriously.

James Joyner · Monday, January 24, 2011 · 4 comments

The Beast has released its The 50 Most Loathsome Americans of 2010, which I gather is supposed to be amusing rather than taken seriously. A sampling:

50) Paula Deen
Charges: The A.Q. Khan of the culinary world, her secret recipes are demonstrably more dangerous to America than a nuclear armed North Korea. When not delighting delusional hicks on “Huckabee,” she’s cooking up coronary-clogging treats like the “Luther”—a bacon-topped cheeseburger served between two glazed donuts—whose purported inventor Luther Vandross suffered from diabetes and died of a massive heart explosion. Make no mistake, this insane, evangelical pumpkin-face is trying to send you into the arms of Jesus.
Aggravating factor: “I’m gonna start with my normal ingredient, y’all: one stick of butter.”
Sentence: Steamed and served over a healthy bed of greens.

40) Charlie Rangel

Charges: It’s understood that corruption is our legislators’ raison d’être. Rangel so aptly plays the character of a crime boss that his image should jump to mind whenever you hear the words “member of Congress.” He dresses like John “Dapper Don” Gotti, sounds like Marlon Brando’s Vito Corleone, and looks like the Joker as played by Cesar Romero. Rated by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as one of the most corrupt congressmen the past three years.
Aggravating factor: If John Q. Douchebag used Congressional letterhead to solicit funds for a college center named in his honor, had $600K in unreported income and assets, and didn’t pay taxes on his Caribbean home—to name three of Rangel’s 13 known violations—he wouldn’t be read a sternly worded letter by Nancy Pelosi. He’d go to jail. For a very long time.
Sentence: “Dancing With the Stars.”

35) LeBron James
Charges: Aside from indirectly employing hundreds of Chinese kids in sweatshops, his sole contribution to society is tossing a ball through a hole. A genetic-lottery-winning monstrosity, he demonstrates the sort of unbridled ego deserving of the NBA’s first all-star midget. (Now that little dude can talk all the smack he wants.) Last year, “King” James actually had Nike goons confiscate video of Jordan Crawford dunking on him during his clinic. This year, he imbued his free agency announcement with the import normally reserved for declarations of war. For a full half hour of his torturous hour-long ESPN special “The Decision,” he waxed smugly on topics unrelated, as the sad city of Cleveland nervously awaited the ultimately crushing news that he was going to South Beach. Cleveland, left with no reason to exist, has since slid into Lake Erie. Totally true.
Aggravating factor: “I’m the next O.J.”
Sentence: College.

20) Mark Zuckerberg

Charges: In the backhanded tradition of tech dickery, Zuckerburg brazenly pilfered the idea which allows you to neurotically tend that asshole from high school’s virtual farm while not getting any work done. The Facebook founder’s fortune comes in part from selling your information to third parties via default privacy settings. After vowing to donate half of his some $7 billion to charity, as transparent PR in the wake of The Social Network, he got into bed with the execrable Goldman Sachs and a Russian investment firm run by a convicted extortionist to recoup the loss. Invented “poking.” And he’s actually trying to trademark the word “face.”
Aggravating factor (from his business card): “i’m CEO … bitch.”
Sentence: Whatever Tom Anderson’s doing right now.

14) Barack Obama

Charges: Outside of his promise to never end the pointless war in Afghanistan, his word has the integrity of Halliburton cement. Whether it was a “robust” public option, real net neutrality, importing prescription drugs, barring lobbyists from serving in the White House, meaningful Wall Street reform or ending the Bush tax cuts for the disgustingly wealthy, our President caved like the Metrodome under the weight of a bloated oligarchy. Most irksome, he seemed dignified doing it.
Aggravating factor: Authorized the assassination of Americansaccused of terrorism.
Sentence: Primary challenge from the Rent is 2 Damn High guy.

6) Sarah Palin
Charges: An ideologically abhorrent dunce whose answer to everything—caribou, wolves, Julian Assange, feminism, science, decency, accountability, the English language, Democratic incumbents—is to shoot it dead. From conspiring to advance her ham-legged, clopping daughter on “Dancing with the Stars” to successfully endorsing a slew of faux-revolutionary Tea Party imbeciles, she’s a persistent, violent rash on the entire body politic.
Aggravating factor: “But obviously, we’ve got to stand with our North Korean allies.”
Sentence: Shot in the head by a bear.

1) You
Charges: Your brain’s been cobbled together over millions of years of blind evolution and it shows. You’re clumsy, stupid, weak and motivated by the basest of urges. Your MO is both grotesquely selfish and unquestionably deferential to questionable authority. You’re not in control of your life. You wear your ignorance like a badge of honor and gleefully submit to oppression, malfeasance and kleptocracy. You will buy anything. You will believe anything. You believe that evolution is a matter of belief. You likely scrolled down to #1, without reading the rest, because you’re an impatient, semi-literate Philistine who’s either unable or unwilling to digest more than 140 characters at a time. You think Epic Beard Man is a national hero and that Bradley Manningmight be Eli and Peyton’s brother. You believe in American exceptionalism despite the contrary, compelling and overwhelming evidence. You tacitly partake in all manner of atrocity without batting a lash. You’re actively participating in our species’ extinction and you’re either in denial or you just don’t give a shit. You escape into every sort of mind-numbing distraction and ridiculous, convoluted fantasy, so you don’t have to face the bitter, terrifying fact that your life is utterly meaningless.
Aggravating factors: The careers of Rush Limbaugh, Oprah Winfrey, John Stossel and Justin Bieber; the success of The Secret, “Medium” and Atlas Shrugged; the election of Rand Paul; the existence of Kentucky, Texas and “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.”
Sentence: Bad teeth, an affinity for afternoon tea and the guilt-plagued, nostalgic psyche of a fallen empire.

The sheer diversity of the list is impressive.

via Kottke