The 50 Most Loathsome People in America - 2008

[FilmNerdJamie]

http://buffalobeast.com/134/50mostloathsome2008-full.html

Great read and every single picture is avatar worthy imo.

 

[redfirebird2008]

I think Paulson should be #1. He committed highway robbery for his corporate cronies. #2 would be Sean Hannity with his xenophobic guilt-by-association.

 

[FilmNerdJamie]

I don't agree with all the picks, but it was certainly a great read.

 

[redfirebird2008]

I don't agree with all the picks, but it was certainly a great read.

Yeah, it was a pretty good list of people.

 

[Matt]

I thought Barry O's was a good read and wow...they really tore him a new one :

50. Barack Obama

Charges: Beyond a few token acts of bipartisan marketing, Barry's major duty in the Senate was to avoid legislating, so he could pretend Washington-outsider status and nullify attacks on his non-existent policy positions. That's the thing about Obama and his candidacy: He was a blank slate, the pinnacle of vapid public relations—onto which the benighted masses may project their sincerest, yet unfounded, hopes in the wake of the worst administration in history. Couldn’t disown Rev. Wright, until he suddenly could, and then marred his first moments as president ahead of time by inviting a pastor whose advice to gays is just to refrain from sex for life. Promised not to run for president, then did; vowed to take public election funds, then didn't; backed telecom immunity, then accepted the nomination at the AT&T sponsored convention; expressed displeasure with Clinton's hawkish foreign policy and vote for war in Iraq, then named her as Secretary of State. And despite all that, he's plenty affable. There's nothing more loathsome than a likable politician.

Exhibit A: “Yes we can” is the “Just do it” of politics.

Sentence: Presiding over the decline of an exhausted empire.

My other favorites:

44. Brett Favre

Charges: On the day of March 4th, the perp, a recovering drunk, pill-popper and hick preempted Ohio and Texas primary coverage to announce that his "career is over." Bathed in tears of self-importance, Favre broke the news with the composure one would reserve for describing the next 9/11. We get it: You throw a football. Your now official and permanent retirement, which is permanent and official, is a monumental news event. So, Favre decided to jam some more "vitamins" into his 39 year-old ass and sign on to a middling Jets squad, even though he admitted to leaving the Packers because they had no chance of getting him another ring.

Exhibit A: "I wanted to come across as genuine. I wanted to leave gracefully."

Sentence: Denied Sensodyne, arms and legs bound, encased in ice cream igloo.

42. O.J. Simpson

Charges: Jesus H. Christ, man. You literally get away with murder, to the astonishment of anyone capable of tying their own shoes. Then you write a book, coyly framed as “hypothetical,” in which you explain slicing and dicing your ex-wife and some poor shlub by describing her as a pain in the ass. You know the whole country is still gunning for you. And yet, you feel it sensible to try your luck one more time, because some guy in Vegas is selling a football you signed? Sure, O.J.’s sentence was too harsh to believe he wasn’t being punished for previous crimes of which he was acquitted, but did anyone think that wasn’t going to happen? O.J. could get 33 years for pissing on a tree, and he knew it, so at a minimum the whole “gimme my **** back” caper was unbelievably stupid, the product of a life in which consequences are things that happen to other people. At least now he can get to work on his next book, “If I was an idiot who got himself locked up for life after skating on a double homicide.”

Exhibit A: "I'm O.J. Simpson. How am I going to think that I'm going to rob somebody and get away with it? Besides, I thought what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas."

Sentence: Ghost of Howard Cosell narrates the remainder of OJ’s life: “This man, once a man of greatness, now a man fallen, disgraced, disgusting, reduced to defecating in an unenclosed, seatless toilet, in close proximity to other convicted felons, the indignity apparent on his sad, rapidly aging face. What an incredibly pitiful story is his.”

37. Keith Olbermann

Charges: The crazy man’s Howard Beale, Olbermann is an infuriating conundrum—a person who adopts mostly correct positions for mostly erroneous reasons. Olbermann has an uncanny ability to find the obtusest angle on any issue, delivering glancing blows to wide open targets. Perhaps this is why Olbermann only argues with various cameras, reserving interviews for Newsweek sycophants whose main role on “Countdown” is to listen to a series of uncomfortably leading yes or no questions and reply to each, “that’s right, Keith.” He’s been wearing out the impact of his “special comments” like a cheap sex doll for the ratings, rapidly diminishing their credibility by applying the same outraged, spluttering, accusatory tone to his uniquely unbearable all-caps missives, whether directed at White House war criminals or Clinton campaign PR hacks. Largely false accusations of anti-Hillary bias in the media found their mark with Keith, who wildly overreacted to relatively minor Clinton slights, while engaging in freakish logical contortions to justify Obama’s apparent deficiencies, despite sad pretenses to objectivity. Somehow, manages to seem dykier than Rachael Maddow.

Exhibit A: “I don’t vote…it's the only thing I can do that suggests even that I don't have a horse in the race."

Sentence: Obama loses in 2012 by one vote.

(The picture accompanying Olbermann's is hillarious!)

35. Dina Lohan

Charges: Fame isn’t the only thing that screws up child stars; it starts with self-obsessed, psychopathic parents living out their failed ambitions through their hapless offspring (Dina has been telling false stories of her days as a Rockette and Broadway actress for years). Her college-aged daughter may be a rehab veteran and serial drunk driver, but that’s no reason for mom not to televise the warping of daughter number two, a pre-rhinoplasty 14-year-old with no discernible talent or personality who calls the absent Lindsay her “role model,” and an 11-year-old boy whose future mugshot will no doubt become iconic. You may think your parents sucked, but at least they didn’t do it on TV.

Exhibit A: Rarely has a person’s life been so succinctly synopsized by real events as when Lohan’s house caught fire with her minor children alone inside while she was busy accepting—no ****—a “Mother of the Year” award.

Sentence: Age, ugliness, poverty, obscurity.

28. Frank Caliendo

Charges: The ******ed man's Rich Little, Caliendo has been irritating Americans for nearly a decade, gaining recognition as the implausibly fat impressionist on the lethally unfunny "MADtv". Nicholson, De Niro, Shatner, Seinfeld.... no impression is too hackneyed for Caliendo, who mimics them all with the skill you'd expect from the hypertensive "funny guy" at the office. The only thing that could have made “Fox NFL Sunday” any worse was two John Maddens. Mission Accomplished, dickbag.

Exhibit A: His TBS vehicle, "Frank TV," is the least amusing thing to appear on television since the morning of September 11, 2001.

Sentence: New impersonation: The rotting corpse of Marcel Marceau.

(FINALLY, SOMEONE CALLS CALIENDO OUT!)

20. Joe the Plumber

Charges: The Che Guevara of bald, pissed off white men. In a lot of ways, Samuel Wurzelbacher really does represent the average American—basing economic opinions on unrealistic expectations of personal future success, blaming his failure to meet those expectations on minorities and old people, complaining about deadbeats getting his taxes when he isn’t actually paying his taxes, and advertising his own rudimentary historical and mathematical ignorance by warning of creeping socialism in a country whose highest income tax rate has dropped by half in thirty years. “Joe” indeed symbolizes the true American dream—to become undeservedly rich and famous through a dizzyingly improbable stroke of luck. As American folk heroes go, Wurzelbacher ranks somewhere between Hulk Hogan and Bernie Goetz.

Exhibit A: "Social Security is a joke...social security I've never believed in, don't like it. I hate that it's forced on me."

Sentence: After blowing his fifteen minutes and all his money on coke and Thai hookers, an infirm, elderly Joe finds that social security actually is a joke, and is finally forced to snake toilets for a living.

(should've been closer to 1 than 20 though)

18 The Clintons

Charges: Still around. Still married. Still rich. Still acclaimed. Still influential. Still sought. Still sanctimonious. Still aggrieved. Still phony. Still compromised. Still petulant. Still striving. Still self-pitying. Still self-important. Still important.

Exhibit A: Madame Secretary.

Sentence: Sniper fire.

11. Rush Limbaugh

Charges: The father of modern stupidity, Limbaugh spins reflexively, never struggling with issues, because he knows his conclusion must favor Republicans, and his only task is finding a way to get there. In other words, he may or may not actually believe what he’s saying, but it’s beside the point. His job is not to say what he thinks, but to instruct his listeners on what they should think. If the facts don’t agree, he can always change them, as his “ditto heads” are already armed against the contrary evidence with the all-purpose “liberal bias” attack. “Rush is right,” as the slogan goes, and all those nerdy reporters in the “drive by media” are lying, because they secretly love terrorists. It’s this creepily worshipful, breathtakingly infantile abdication of intellect to a blatantly dishonest hypocrite that makes Limbaugh’s audience so goddamn sad. These pathetic, insecure, failures of men look to Rush as the champion of their impotent rage, helping them to externalize responsibility for their own deficiencies, pinning the blame on those darn liberals and their racial and gender equality.

Exhibit A: You have to marvel at the sheer ignominy of someone who coins the term “Obama recession” two days after the election.

Sentence: Tiny speaker implanted in his inner ear which blares Randi Rhodes 24-7.

7. Dick Cheney

Charges: Still alive. The amount of medical resources devoted to keeping this black hole of decency operational could have cured cancer by now, but if they had, Cheney would make sure to keep it a secret. Since Watergate, Cheney’s been fighting to rehab Nixon’s image, and he has succeeded in a way, by showing us all just how much worse a presidency can be.

Exhibit A: “It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.”

Sentence: Eaten alive by baboons.

And this one is my guilty pleasure, because as mean as her "sentence" is, I cracked up at it.

39. Caroline Kennedy

Charges: A limp, lifeless, murmuring slouch whose dearth of vivacity makes John Kerry look like Richard Simmons, Kennedy has the apparent focus and charm of a shock therapy victim on Haldol. If the Kennedy name (and fundraising pull) can carry this passive princess into the Senate, it could get a bottle of fish sauce elected. At least fish sauce doesn’t say “y’know” every three seconds.

Exhibit A: “I’ve spent a lifetime growing up around public policy issues.” Her dad died when she was 5.

Sentence: Badly injured in a car crash, Kennedy is rushed to the hospital, where she is attended to by a guy whose dad was an excellent doctor.

 

[hippie_hunter]

I gotta say, I'm really liking the guy who wrote this.

 

[redfirebird2008]

I gotta say, I'm really liking the guy who wrote this.

Yeah, pretty much kicked everybody's ass.

 

[SuperFerret]

43. You

Charges: You think it’s your patriotic duty to spend money you don’t have on crap you don’t need. You think Hillary lost because of sexism, when it’s actually because she’s just a bad liar. You think Iraq is better off now than before we invaded, and don’t understand why they’re so ungrateful. You think Tim Russert was a great journalist. You’re hopping mad about an auto industry bailout that cost a squirt of piss compared to a Wall Street heist of galactic dimensions, due to a housing crash you somehow have blamed on minorities. It took you six years to figure out what a tool Bush is, but you think Obama will make it all better. You deem it hunky dory that we conduct national policy debates via 8-second clips from “The View.” You think God zapped humans into existence a few thousand years ago, although your appendix and wisdom teeth disagree. You like watching vicious *******s insult each other on TV. You support gun rights, because firing one gives you a chubby. You cuddle falsehoods and resent enlightenment. You think the fact that 43% of whites could stomach voting for an incredibly charismatic and eloquent light-skinned black guy who was raised by white people means racism is over. You think progressive taxation is socialism. 1 in 100 of you are in jail, and you think it should be more. You are shallow, inconsiderate, afraid, brand-conscious, sedentary, and totally self-obsessed. You are American.

Exhibit A: You’re more upset by Miley Cyrus’s glamour shots than the fact that you are a grown adult who is upset about Miley Cyrus.

Sentence: Invaded and occupied by Canada; all military units busy overseas without enough fuel to get back.

Awesome.

 

[redfirebird2008]

Awesome.

That might be the best one of all. That Miley Cyrus thing = .

 

[Matt]

I wish they did a world edition. Putin has it coming

 

[CelticPredator]

I didnt see one for Bill-O the clown. ****ING LIST SUCKS!

 

[redfirebird2008]

I didnt see one for Bill-O the clown. ****ING LIST SUCKS!

ROFL! Well played.

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Something tells me he has one of the worst tempers ever.

 

[Excel]

Most are funny, but not a fan of the jab at Russert in the one to "you". He was the best one on the air.

 

[Kelly]

Pretty funny stuff....

 

[SuperT]

I stopped reading that list once I got down to #50 - Tila Tequila and they wished AID's upon her.

I don't care if you hate someone or not, but wishing AID's on them is just disgustingly low.

 

[Matt]

It was an ironic joke based on her this comment that she made:

"I'm shooting a commercial for safe sex. How ironic. Because I don't have that."

Are you familiar with irony?

 

[Hobgoblin]

to the Palin picture. Thank God she's back in Alaska.

 

[Superman4ever]

That was a fantastic list. Thank you for posting this. OMG! That Joe Liberman picture is astonishing.

LMFAO!

 

[rdh007]

I wish they did a world edition. Putin has it coming

Careful, Matt.

Though I agreed with your choices. I'm glad they didn't let Barry completely off the hook.

 

[Matt]

Careful, Matt.

Though I agreed with your choices. I'm glad they didn't let Barry completely off the hook.

The sad part is, he even makes man boobs look manly.

I gotta hand it to Putin. The man has balls. He did this, afterall:

And the really shocking part:

Spoiler

IT WAS AN ELECTION YEAR! The Russian people just knew better than to vote him out of office. God would they feel his wrath

 

[p4poetic]

I thought Barry O's was a good read and wow...they really tore him a new one :

Tore him a new one? Are we reading the same thing? It was still positive even though he's on the list (and being at #50 out of a top 50 lists implies a sort of a he's loathsome because we actually like him).

 

[Carcharodon]

I stopped reading that list once I got down to #50 - Tila Tequila and they wished AID's upon her.

I don't care if you hate someone or not, but wishing AID's on them is just disgustingly low.

It's AIDS. Not AID's.

 

[mclay18]

Whoa, where's the Ann Coulter entry?

Granted, she's reigned herself in last year (or maybe because her mouth was wired shut for part of it), but everytime I hear her or read her weekly column I get nauseated.

She's almost as repulsive as Sarah Palin -- very close, but not quite.

 

[gap5ewl]

I think I found my new hero. AWESOME list.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Whoa, where's the Ann Coulter entry?

Granted, she's reigned herself in last year (or maybe because her mouth was wired shut for part of it), but everytime I hear her or read her weekly column I get nauseated.

She's almost as repulsive as Sarah Palin -- very close, but not quite.

No one is more repulsive than Ann Coulter. Coulter takes the cake by far over every public figure. And even though Palin has a rather small brain, at the very least she's a GILF.