The Buffalo Beast is out with its annual list of the 50 Most Loathsome Americans for 2006--the very best year-in-review list of them all. For each entrant, the Beast provides charges, Exhibit A, and a sentence. It isn't quite as laugh-out-loud funny as it was last year, but it's still worth a look. A couple of examples:
#30, Rush Limbaugh: "It’s hard to believe this repulsive shit fountain is even human, until you remember that we share 70% of our DNA with pigs. . . . Sentence: Parkinson’s disease, of course, triggered by oxycontin abuse."
#24, Glenn Beck: "It’s like someone found a manic, doom-prophesying hobo in a sandwich board, shaved him, shot him full of Zoloft and gave him a show." (You read this week that he's gotten a commentary gig on Good Morning America, personally offered to him by Diane Sawyer, right?)
Also worth reading this morning: Glenn Greenwald on yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing starring Abu Gonzalez and the usual supporting cast of bloviating senators, most of them useless except for Russ Feingold. And the Mighty Krugman (via Digby), who notes that the wholesale replacement of U.S. attorneys by the Bush gang indicates just how frightened they are of real oversight. A friend of mine e-mailed this week regarding the purge of attorneys and said, "This is what a dictatorship looks like." Krugman doesn't say it in so many words, but I doubt he'd disagree.
As hideous as the news has been over the last week or so, people seem a lot more interested in the recently rescued boys in Missouri than in stories of much greater import. But that's not a surprise--nobody buries their heads in the sand better than the average American. But it has its consequences, as the Beast noted in naming "You" as the 16th Most Loathsome American of 2006: "You have no idea what is going on in the world, and you’re fine with that. You are why democracy doesn’t work. Exhibit A: You’re Time magazine’s person of the year. So was Hitler. Sentence: More of the same."
Ramblin' Guys
Jerry Bowles
J.A. Bartlett
Culture Warriors
Groom Lake
Blackdogred
Political Pundocrity
John McCreery
Josh Hammond
Michael Scott
Leftcoast
Krugies
Danger, Bad-Ass at Work
Empathy, Ed Psych, and the Football
No Deal
Quote of the Day
Followups
Sports Page
The Fraud
So Long Saddam, So Long Oh-Six
A Ford, Not a Lincoln, or Those Other Guys, Either
White Bread, Red Meat
May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007
