[Anyone] America's Best Fiends - 2007; 50 Most Loathsome People in America

[Thos Myers]

> The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007
>   50. Nicole Richie
>   Charges: Not a brick house. Not mighty mighty. Vastly easier than Sunday morning. Her criminal
exploits, attended by hollow contritions, do inestimable harm to drug legalization efforts; while
inexplicably adding nothing to the forced-sterilization debate. Quite possibly a reason the terrorists
hate us.
>   Exhibit A: "I've just gone through so much in my life that pulling my top up just doesn't seem like
that big a deal."
>   Sentence: Sealed neck-high in the outhouse foundation of a popular Mexican Spring Break
destination. Jaws propped open.
>   49. Trent Lott
>   Charges: Old school Dixiecrat segregationist who switched parties along with Strom Thurmond
back when Democrats decided to be nicer to black people. Retired from the Senate early to dodge a
new law that mandates a two-year wait between retiring from congress and becoming a lobbyist.
That, and the dirt that Larry Flynt has on him.
>   Exhibit A: Was in the "Singing Senators," a closeted a cappella group, with John Ashcroft, Jim
Jeffords and Larry Craig -- not that there's anything wrong with that.
>   Sentence: Accidentally lynched by blind neo-Nazis.
>   48. Carson Daly
>   Charges: Otherwise too banal for derision, Daly, who cut his shmuck-teeth warming musical
Similac for tweens on MTV, acted as Writer's Guild strike breaker by returning to air without them.
>   Exhibit A: We didn't know his show employed writers.
>   Sentence: Forced to appear nightly on The Carson Daly Show.
>   47. Mike Huckabee
>   Charges: What's worse, a calculating politician pretending to be a devout Christian, or a genuine
heartland preacher who didn't come from no monkey? Huckabee is both -- a Southern Baptist who
rejects Darwin, wants to give everyone a gun and thinks people with AIDS should be quarantined, and
a seedy, corrupt politician who's never seen a payoff so low he won't stoop to pick it up. Democrats
see Huckabee as easily defeated in a general election, but they shouldn't be so sure -- Smooth
talking preachers tend to do well in this country. Huckabee is well-spoken, kind-faced, and the
opposite of wordly -- he's Obama for hicks.
>   Exhibit A: "I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the
real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives... I hope we answer the alarm clock and take
this nation back for Christ."
>   Sentence: Just as he's about to win the GOP nomination, a freak gust of wind catches Huckabee's
excess skin and carries him out over the Atlantic, where he drifts for hours before God appears to
him, tells him He's a Unitarian, and sends him to hell.
>   46. Judith Regan
>   Charges: Has done more to debase the written word than Tom Friedman. Defiled an apartment
intended to house overworked 9/11 rescuers, just so Bernard Kerik could plumb her putrescent
shallows. Contentious working relationship with OJ Simpson ended with her throat disappointingly
uncut.
>   Exhibit A: ReganBooks' roster of "authors" included Rush Limbaugh, Robert Bork, Jenna Jameson,
Jose Canseco, Janice Dickinson, John Gibson and Sean Hannity. Apparently, Dracula and the Wolfman
had prior obligations.
>   Sentence: Death by a thousand paper cuts.
>   45. David Gregory
>   Charges: The notion of his insight rests entirely on his striking resemblance to a shrewder, more
beloved Dr. Zaius. Starchier than a peep booth wastebasket, Gregory's occasional faux-outraged
exchanges with various White House press secretaries have established his reputation as a man
unafraid to confront the big scandals -- once they've been well mainstreamed by better reporters.
Managed to slip by the Valerie Plame scandal completely unnoticed, though Ari Fleischer testified to
leaking Plame's CIA status to Gregory three days before the infamous Novak column ran. His absurd,
overcompensatory assurance that he has "no problem with being tough" notwithstanding, his penile-
cleft haircut -- much like the warning coloration of venomous reptiles -- betrays his true poisonous
nature.
>   Exhibit A: No dignified reporter would be so visibly happy filling in for Matt Lauer on The Today
Show.
>   Sentence: Quartered by horses.
>   44. Hugh Hefner
>   Charges: Not dating three vacuous sluts for the articles. Brazenly attempting to mainstream
necrophilia. An erstwhile icon of virility now forced to marshal every faculty in maneuvering, giraffe-
like, his quavering, prehensile lips for contrived smooches with his surgically altered concubines,
sharing in common with them only arrested adolescence, and probably some pretty sweet coke.
>   Exhibit A: Idles morbidly like an octogenarian Zelig on the periphery of every "Girls Next Door"
publicity event, ogling dementedly and trying to suppress the faint horror of his impending
incontinence.
>   Sentence: Viagra ban.
>   43. Sherri Shepherd
>   Charges: Perfectly illustrated the Creationist's level of intellect when she declared her disbelief in
evolution, and was immediately stumped about the shape of the earth, explaining her ignorance was
due to the fact that she was too busy feeding her children to acquire rudimentary knowledge about...
well, about anything, presumably. Further compounded her astonishing lack of basic knowledge
when she authoritatively declared that Jesus Christ came before the ancient Greeks, and that she
didn't think "anything predated Christians." Judging by these statements, Sherri probably thinks there
are dragons on the other side of her desk.
>   Exhibit A: Accurately reflects the intelligence of her viewing audience.
>   Sentence: Pushed off the edge of the earth.
>   42. Bud Selig
>   Charges: His version of "The Island of Dr. Moreau" is even worse than John Frankenheimer's. The
baseball commissioner who succeeded in making football the indisputable, insufferable national
pastime. Followed up the fan-alienating cancellation of the 1994 season and World Series -- the
first year without since 1904 -- by studiously ignoring (along with the rest of management and tens
of thousands of San Franciscans) his players' mutating proportions. A true, blue-blooded hypocrite,
Bud reaped undeserved praise for omissive stewardship, and untold profits for his fellow owners, on
the back of his grotesquely augmented super-soldiers, and now wants to pretend he's shocked
about it.
>   Exhibit A: An irretrievable coward, Selig skipped Barry Bonds' record-breaking home run game in
San Francisco, "congratulating" the slugger by phone. Fair-skinned Viagra pitchman Rafael Palmeiro
remains uncharged for lying to congress about his steroid use.
>   Sentence: Designated BP hitting tee for Giants; denied medical attention over 162 games.
>   41. Chuck Norris
>   Charges: Only famous for knowing Bruce Lee. Churning out puerile "action" bilge for 30 years.
Skill as martial artist greatly exaggerated. Kitsch value wearing thin. Total Home Gym�. Walker,
Texas Ranger once let a little girl battle armed gangsters, because she had the power of belief in
God. Doesn't understand evolution, despite access to mirrors.
>   Exhibit A: Campaigning for Mike Huckabee.
>   Sentence: Roundhouse kick from Charles Darwin.
>   40. Lou Dobbs
>   Charges: Obvious, intensifying xenophobia and distrust of the yellow and brown races, possibly
exacerbated by Mexican wife. Whatever useful message Dobbs once had about economic populism
and the deleterious effects of globalization and cheap labor on American wages has long been
tainted by his obvious animosity towards foreigners, specifically Mexicans and the Chinese. Every
installment of his hour-long broadcast on CNN is dominated by reports about the "menace" of
foreign imports, be they illegal immigrants crossing "our broken borders" to spread disease and rape
our women, or poisonous products from "communist China." Proof that Dobbs is a venomous yellow
journalist shithead can be seen in his reaction media criticism of a segment on his show in which it
was erroneously reported that there had been a sudden upsurge in leprosy cases, totaling 7,000 in
just three years, the source of which was a lawyer who had also said in speeches that Mexican
immigrants tend to molest
>  children. In truth, there had been 7,000 cases of leprosy in the past thirty years. Dobbs was
confronted several times with this fact -- first he strongly defended his numbers, then strongly
denied ever having used his numbers. A real journalist admits his errors. Dobbs is an ass.
>   Exhibit A: Sharply criticized the use of Mexican flags in immigrant demonstrations, then denied
the obvious double standard of that comment by going on to say that he would have the same
problem with Irish flags at the St. Patrick's Day parade, and, in fact, that he was against St. Patrick's
Day. Yeah, sure, Lou.
>   Sentence: Stuffed with Green Cards; turned into amnesty pinata.
>   39. John Boehner
>   Charges: A Tom Delay disciple of shameless hypocrisy, Boehner won't stop weeping openly on the
House floor -- real crying, from his tear ducts. It's not passion; it's the pathetic noontime inebriation
of an obvious, documented alcoholic. Job title, "Minority Whip," is ironically hilarious. Bound by
ideology to destroy nation.
>   Exhibit A: His name is Boner.
>   Sentence: Afflicted with voodoo hex that makes him cry poisonous spiders.
>   38. Steven Moore
>   Charges: Mo Rocca's evil twin and founder of the election-law-breaking PAC Club for Growth,
Moore's the Wall Street Journal's most brazen corporate apologist and free market sycophant, who's
trotted out on TV to manicure the invisible hand every time it chips a nail squashing the poor.
>   Exhibit A: "If you don't want to buy a Chinese toy, don't buy it at Wal-Mart. But you know why
people buy these things? Because they're cheap and, for the most part, they're pretty good products."
>   Sentence: Given low-wage job test-licking all Chinese imports, incurs brain tumor, has epiphany
about consumer choice and income, then more brain tumors.
>   37. Mitt Romney
>   Charges: America's first clip-art presidential candidate, Romney is a strange mixture of game
show host looks and android charm. A true flip-flopper, Romney's ability to turn on an ideological
dime is unparalleled, but his excuses are so inauthentic that even Republicans have trouble
suspending their disbelief.
>
> Exhibit A: "You can't have freedom without religion, and you can't have religion without freedom."
>   Sentence: Strapped to the roof of his family car, which his dog attempts to drive across the
country, but crashes horribly (because dogs can't drive, of course). Romney's flesh burns off in the
ensuing fire, revealing him to be a standard protocol droid set to world domination mode. Narrowly
edged out of primary race by Huckabee.
> 36. Master Chief   Charges: Unquestioning cybernetic super soldier of Halo 3's futuristic virtual
dystopia; lacks free will and a face. Feature article treating him as a cultural phenomenon in Time
magazine marked a low point for both franchises. Stupid name.
>   Exhibit A: Joint-marketed with Mountain Dew "Game Fuel" in a major coup for diabetes industry.
>   Sentence: Stop loss, a tour in Iraq.
>   35. Tim Russert Charges: Mountainously inert, he explained his failure to verify the Bush
administration's prewar claims with other government officials by lamenting, "I wish my phone had
rung." Smirks defiantly at his own humorlessness. Has held the most visible and secure seat in
political media for over 15 years without once mustering the courage to call his guests liars.
Impossible to watch him interview any woman on "Meet the Press" without fearing he'll suddenly
waggle his sinewy tongue, Jabba-like, and beslobber her.
>   Exhibit A: Self-mythologizing non sequiturs such as "Look, I'm a blue-collar guy from Buffalo. I
know who my sources are."
>   Sentence: Life as an actual blue-collar guy from Buffalo, i.e. a call center drone in North Carolina.
>   34. Joe Francis
>   Charges: The "brain" behind Girls Gone Wild, a series of videos documenting the decline of
American civilization, Francis is the Ray Kroc of tit shots. A whinging, muppet-faced, juvenile smut-
peddler who obtusely compares his artless, homogenized flesh surfeit to "European television," he
proves daily that alcohol is the original date rape drug, and still the best. Has sapped flashing of its
spontaneity, transforming it into merely another sad, numbing cultural reflex. Makes one guiltily
long for the days when puritanism forced more gifted pornographers to exercise restraint.
>   Exhibit A: Pathologically entrepreneurial, he reputedly exhorts his cameramen by shouting "I want
taco!"
>   Sentence: Cast as lead in first mass-market snuff film.
>   33. John Hagee
>   Charges: A fat, submoronic pastor who is literally trying to bring about the end of the world,
Hagee is the leader of the peculiar movement of Christian Zionism, whose basic plan is to get Israel
full control of Jerusalem, setting the stage for world war and Armageddon, so Hagee and his flock
can ascend to heaven while the Jews, Muslims (especially the Muslims) and everyone else can suffer
and die in the wreckage. But lest you get the idea Hagee is an earnestly insane man of the cloth, it
turns out he's also paid himself in the millions, first from his non-profit TV station, which he cleverly
turned into a tax-exempt church. So maybe Hagee is just another charlatan, but his message is still
the most dangerous he could possibly preach.
>   Exhibit A: "I deserve every dime I'm getting."
>   Sentence: Banished to hell for being a shitty tipper.
>   32. The Founding Fathers
>   Charges: Lionized as moral pillars and demigods ad nauseum without the slightest hint of irony.
Can't be judged by today's standards. Electoral College? Dumb fucking idea. Invoked by every
asshole in the last two hundred years to support every stupid idea ever. The original liberal elite.
Able to withstand lightning strikes and the British military; unable to fathom poor people voting.
>   Exhibit A: Owned wigs, Africans.
>   Sentence: Depicted as cartoons on rapidly devaluing currency; beaten at effective democracy by
former monarchies.
>   31. Dana Perino
>   Charges: In a nation weary of White House press secretaries who feign ignorance, the Bush
administration took an innovative step this year, appointing one who genuinely doesn't know
anything. No more lies, America -- Dana Perino really can't answer your questions, honest! This
slightly comely, over-promoted office wench not only didn't know what the Cuban missile crisis or
the Bay of Pigs even were; she actually thought it was a funny story to tell on NPR.
>   Exhibit A: "This is an issue where I'm sure lots of people would love to ridicule me when I say this,
but it is true that many people die from cold-related deaths every winter. And there are studies that
say that climate change in certain areas of the world would help those individuals."
>   Sentence: Sent back in time to '62; Strapped to bottom of U2 spy plane for extreme history
lesson.
>   30. Duane "Dog the Bounty Hunter" Chapman
>   Charges: Shocked a handful of innocents and turned into self-recriminating chum for Sean
Hannity with the revelation that a redneck bounty hunter is-gasp!-a racist. Looks like an extra from
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Married to a silicon-based life form. When a guy's own son
intentionally destroys his career, you know he's got to be a singular fuckhead. Played at
extraordinary rendition this year; got arrested for trying to physically extradite a Mexican national.
>   Exhibit A: "I'm not gonna take a chance ever in life of losing everything I've worked for for 30
years because some fucking nigger heard us say nigger and turned us in to the Enquirer magazine."
Yeah, 'cause not saying "nigger" is just out of the question.
>   Sentence: Neutered, dewormed, given to Michael Vick's buddies for sparring practice.
>   29. Dinesh D'Souza
>   Charges: Wrote a book blaming 9/11 on -- who else? -- liberals, because if we didn't live in a
free society, then fundamentalists wouldn't dislike us so. Even conservative nuts blasted D'Souza's
empathy for poor al Qaeda. Lately, he's been engaging prominent atheists in debates, revealing
himself to be a pseudointellectual ass, and then declaring victory. D'Souza's master plan for
attacking atheism is the ridiculous Pascal's wager: Atheists could be wrong, and then they'd go to
hell, but if the religious are wrong, then they suffer no ill effect -- aside from living their lives in
delusion, of course. And possibly going to someone else's hell for believing the wrong religion.
D'Souza seems to think that if he speaks more loudly and rapidly than his opponent, he is winning,
but his arguments are weak and idiotic, and he never even attempts to truly debate the existence of
any god, which is the ostensible point of these debates. Instead, he likes to compare body counts --
>  Stalin and Mao killed more than the religious leaders of their time -- rather than actually debate
whether there is a God, or for that matter a Jesus. This, of course, is because there is no case to be
made.
>   Exhibit A: "[Atheists] are God-haters... I don't believe in unicorns, but then I haven't written any
books called The End of Unicorns, Unicorns are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion." But what if
everyone you met did believe in unicorns, and not only that, but worshiped a unicorn, held a book
about unicorns to be the divine truth of the universe, invoked unicorns in political contexts, and
speechified about how non-believers were indecent people waging a war on morality, which could
only be predicated on the unquestioning belief in unicorns? Then, maybe, D'Souza would think about
writing that book. But of course, that's not really true, because if that was the world we lived in, then
Dinesh D'Souza would believe in unicorns.
>   Sentence: Spanish inquisition.
>   28. The Troops
>   Charges: Rubes, the lot of 'em. Come back all fugly. They keep telling John McCain they want to
win. They need so much support, it's clingy and sad. Matching outfits? Kind of gay.
>   Exhibit A: Too cheap to buy their own body armor.
>   Sentence: Walter Reed.
> 27. Britney Spears   Charges: Never was talented; now she's not even pretty. Look, it's okay to say
someone's getting chunky when the only reason she was ever famous was her ability to make people
horny. Let's face it: fat Britney don't sell units. In the end, it doesn't bother us that Britney is human
wreckage, what bothers us is that she is always, always on television being wreckage. What the hell is
with this media trend of hounding the sickly until they finally expire? It's not interesting; it's not
informative; what it is is a sick shot in the arm for people who hate themselves and revel in the
misfortune of others -- and, ahem, that's just not our thing. We don't care if she shaves her head, or
shows her snatch, or turns up in a dumpster. It's just too easy to kick this rapidly frumping swamp
slut while she's on the nod and not even pretending to care that her kids are being taken from her. In
the immortal words of that fucked up youtube queen, Leave Britney alone!
>   Exhibit A: And this goes for all you fucked up superstar bimbos: You're rich, bitch! Get a fucking
driver! Then you can knock back all the oxy you want and wash it down with Grey Goose, and nobody
will arrest you. Get it? Sheesh!
> Sentence: Obscurity, children returned.   26. William Kristol
>   Charges: Bears the burlesque Cheshire grin of a sophist born with a large silver spoon jammed
sideways in his mouth. A second generation neocon raised in the tradition of Straussian perception
management and myth creation, Kristol is basically lying about everything -- always -- and he
knows it. Whether at the helm of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, appearing on Murdoch's Fox
News Channel, or co-founding the disastrous Project for a New American Century, Bill is arguably
the most egregious media hawk of a generation. Seems to have suffered no ill impact to his career or
prestige despite having been completely wrong about everything to do with Iraq and Iran, and
actually laughs about it with obnoxious frequency.
>   Exhibit A: "First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I
tend to think it's a good idea. I'm happy that the President's willing to do something bad for the
kids."
>   Sentence: Corners of mouth torn apart by metal hook towing mules and face stomped by high-
heeled elephants.