The 2014
Brutally Honest Awards
Well folks, here we are coming up to the end of one more year.
As has been tradition for almost every year since the column began in 1996,
we like to wrap up the year with a look at the best of the best and the worst
of the worst, and sometimes a jab or two at a few things in between.
Bear in mind that this isn’t all-inclusive, and some subjects are
last-minute additions, because let’s get brutally honest here… the real world
doesn’t go on holiday breaks, and unlike TV programs, we can’t just wrap
everything up for a mid-season finale.
So let’s rock…
The Biggest Winners of 2014: The GOP and the Goddamned
Status Quo – Oh, you thought you were “changing” things up
this year? Keep dreaming, people!
In fact, I’ll just give you a prediction of what you’re going to hear
after the GOP take over the Senate in 2015 and the mindless masses don’t get the
change they think will happen. This is
what you’re going to hear…
“We want to bring about the kind of changes you demand, but
unfortunately we don’t have a veto-proof majority, and as long as we have
Barack Obama in the White House, we live under the tyranny of his veto pen.”
Just wait. You’ll see I’m right
about this… as always. We’ve been down
this road time and time again. It doesn’t
matter which of the two undeserving parties are in charge, they both read from
the same goddamned script!
The Biggest Losers of 2014: The American People
– And, yes, that includes all of you retards that voted for the so-called “lesser
of two evils” instead of the real alternatives that were on the ballots. You’ve sold your souls and this nation down
the march towards plutocratic fascism. I
hope you are proud of yourselves, because I will be here to remind you of your bad
choices over and over again until you chose to stop being retards. Every time you slap your foreheads in
frustration next year, I will remind you that this is what you voted for!
The Biggest Unrepentant Embarrassments to America
in 2014 (tie): The Fascistic GOP, Conservative Talk Radio, and Fox News
– They seem to get this award time and time again. I don’t know how many weeks I’ve dedicated my
column to their fetid hypocrisy. They come
up with bills that they know the President won’t sign, then they whine that the
President doesn’t want to work with them.
They tie his hands up in committee and then whine that the President
doesn’t “do anything”. Then when he does
use the same executive authority that his predecessor used without question,
they scream and wail and accuse the President of being a “dictator”. They justify torture, then throw little girl temper-tantrums
when a report comes out that exposes the details of that torture. And, even worse, they get on their high horses
and say that America
is so “great” that it can’t “engage” in torture. They scream and they whine and they wail and
they stomp their feet and what is even more sickening is that somehow the
retarded voters keep on supporting them and putting them back in positions of
power.
The Utterly Useless Award in 2014: The Democrats
– I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… we do not have a “two-party system”
in America. We have only one dominant political
party – the GOP – and a weaker co-dependent “party” called the Democrats that
only serve as the seat-warmers for the GOP when they overdose on their sociopathic
fascism.
The Undeserving Award for 2014: Georgia Governor
Nathan Deal – He comes to office on a cloud of Washington
scandal and questionable ethics. He
makes questionable appointments. His own
Ethics Chairperson is called the most untrustworthy person in history. His defeat at the ballot box should have been
a no-brainer. And yet even up against
the grandson of a former governor and US President, he somehow managed to get
the Georgia retards to re-elect him with a clear majority and a pompous
condescending attitude.
The Saddam Hussein Award for Abuse of Power in 2014:
Police Departments and Cowardly Prosecutors – You can shoot
an unarmed big man in the middle of the street, you can strangle a man using a
hold your own people say is wrong and do it in front of cameras, you can even lob
an explosive device into a baby crib in the middle of the night, and as long as
you have a badge, it’s perfectly okay.
That’s the
message that prosecutors are saying through the cowardly use and abuse of
the grand jury system. And on top of
that, they get military gear from the Pentagon!
The con and neo-con lunatics got it wrong. It’s not Obama they should be in fear
of! It’s their own cronies!
The “Good Riddance” Award for 2014 (tie): Attorney
General Eric Holder, Donald Sterling, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
– Both Holder and Ballmer announced their retirements this year, but only one
of them have actually left. Holder is
guilty of aiding and abetting the banking criminals, allowing them to post
pocket-change fines while continuing to screw over millions of struggling
Americans, and his departure is long overdue.
Ballmer oversaw the end of Windows XP and tried to kill the desktop from
Windows altogether, thinking that computers should behave more like cellphones
instead of the other way around. Now
Ballmer has a new job… running the LA Clippers after the fiasco left by Donald
Sterling. And what a big pile of dung
that whole thing was! I mean, if your
troubles become a subject of porn parody, then you’re really messed up!
The Stockings Full of Dung Award for 2014: Car
Advertisers – Really, ad people? You really expect us to believe that little
kids would Skype Santa and ask for a new car that they can’t even drive? Or that grown people would drop everything and
go running to car carriers like they were ice cream trucks?
The Scrooge Award for 2014: Sony’s Playstation 4
– So… pre-Thanksgiving they have a standalone game system for $399. And then during the dreaded “Black Friday”
and “Black Thursday” and “Cyber Monday”, they have it for the “low, low, low”
price of… $399. And this is the
standalone system. No games bundled with
it. No package deal. And you expect people to buy it? Microsoft at least slashed their game system
price by $50 and threw in two games.
Come on, Sony! You’re better than
this!
The Golden Globes Award for 2014: Kim Kardashian
– No, she still can never “break
the Internet”, but I won’t complain too loudly if she continues to try by
showing off that really curvy and oiled body of hers some more. In fact, I’d be rather happy if she did keep
trying.
The Best TV Show in 2014: The Flash
– “The Flash” follows CW’s series “Arrow” as the modern-day retelling of Barry
Allen’s heroic beginnings. But unlike “Arrow”,
“The Flash” is brighter, perky, and energetic.
They don’t mind giving villains code-names. They don’t spend their time lying to each
other and then whining about others not being honest with them. They even did a two-part crossover with “Arrow”
which gave them the best ratings to date!
The CW seems to have clearly learned from the failures of “Smallville”,
and they need to keep it going.
The “Smack My Head In Frustration” Award for 2014:
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Okay, the TV series is
supposed to take place inside the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
alongside “The Avengers” and “Captain America” and “Thor” and even the “Guardians
of the Galaxy”, and yet they seem to operate in the outer periphery of the
blockbuster greats. Their tie-in with “Captain
America: The Winter Soldier” was even more remote than for “Thor: The Dark World”. They introduce really interesting characters,
and then kill them off. Every step
forward for them results in yet another kick in the nuts of the viewers.
Marvel and parent company Disney have done a great job with the movies,
but what they really need to do is re-connect their TV series to the MCU in a
big way. And I don’t just mean with a
one-time cameo with Lady Sif or even Nick Fury and some modest references to
the movies.
The Biggest Disappointment in TV for 2014: BBC’s
Doctor Who – This one is show-runner Steven Moffat’s award to
claim. Moffat oversaw the end of Matt
Smith’s tenure as The Doctor, hyped us for the new tenure of Peter Capaldi – a longtime
Who fan – and then… fumbled. We got
Clara Oswald lying to herself and everyone else. Claiming to “not know” this Doctor, and yet
this is the one that supposedly knew all of the incarnations. A Doctor that doesn’t really become himself
until four episodes into the season.
More plot-holes and unresolved storylines than “Twin Peaks”. Good characters that get either abandoned or
else killed off. And then a season that
was slashed in half, and after the Christmas special we have to wait until next
fall to see what else Moffat can do to
insult our intelligence.
Bunch of bollocks, this season’s been.
The Worst Timing for a Questionable Scheme in
2014: The Oil Investor Pitch – I hear weird things on the supposed
“news radio” station here in the Atlanta area.
Questionable sales pitches for “wealth-building” programs that remind me
of the old snake-oil sales pitches. So
recently I couldn’t help but laugh when I heard the sales pitch for oil well
investments, promising continual growth in a market that would continue to go
up and up and up and up. Mind you this
comes at a time when the price of oil is tanking and the price at the pump
continues to drop and drop and drop.
Yeah, really bad timing, guys.
The Get Off Our Cloud Award for Digital
Douchebaggery in 2014: The Data-Thieves – Whether it’s going
after the Big Corporate stores like Target and Home Depot or going after the
female celebs who foolishly put nude selfies on their cloud accounts, black hat
hackers have made the digital world a nightmare for the non-tech person. Some of that is the fault of Big Corporate and
their obsessive fetish for information.
Some of that is the fault of Big Government and their fetish for getting
into every device at any time for any reason.
And some of that fault is the so-called “technically illiterate” who get
their hands on so-called “smartphones” and are given gigabytes of cloud server
space and are told to take full advantage of it. And they do, and they find out how foolish it
was. But the rest of the blame are the
data-thieves and their fetish for stealing and selling our lives for a cheap
buck. (And, yes,
our digital lives are cheap to them. It’s
just not cheap to us when we have to reclaim them.) May you all get Ebola and suffer miserably.
Speaking of…
The Aids-In-The-Toilet-Seat Award for Stupid
Hysteria in 2014: The Ebola Fear-mongers – This is not to
minimize the threat of Ebola, but the out-and-out stupid hysteria that was
generated by people who live in fear of something they will probably never get has
been even more sickening than the disease itself. Oooh!
The person who showed no signs of the disease actually breathed the same
air as other people! Get the torches! Get the Benzine! Get the antiseptics!
As Snoopy used to say when Lucy threw that kind of fit… “Blaaaaaaaaaah!”
And finally…
The We Will Miss You Award for 2014: Elizabeth
Pena, Robin Williams, and “Old Vet” Dave Matthews – An actress
who was taken before her time, a comedian who took his own life, and a father
who was taken by the misery inflicted upon him.
The world will miss the first two.
I will miss the third more than any other who left us this year.
Well, that’s it. Enjoy the
holidays and see you guys in 2015.
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