Biggest Douchebags of 2011

We’re a terrible species that does terrible things to each other. Some people might say it’s the devil at work, other’s might say it’s part of the human condition since we are the only species that is able to contemplate its own existence and therefore its own death yet we have no real control over the matter so we externalize our anxieties onto others in the form of negative actions. Only God really knows.

What we can all agree on is that there were a lot of people being douchebags this year, and I’ve come up with a list of the douchiest of them all. This list is not for people who are committing real acts of evil like presiding over ethnic cleansing or gay marriages, this is for people who should know better but have just been dicks this year.

Sports Douchebag of the year
The Penn State football program

Yes, it takes more than just a little bit of a douchebag to cover up child rape for more than a decade. I am completely aware of that. They don’t win the award for the cover-up itself, they win the award for their reaction to getting busted for covering up child rape for more than a decade.

The entire program, including Joe Paterno, treated a child sex abuse scandal within their organization with all the fervor that the Pakistani government had in the search for Bin Laden and then was shocked when people outside Happy Valley wanted heads to roll. And then when Joe Paterno was finally fired—for helping to cover up child rape—student rioted.

They flipped a news van in anger for because they thought it was the media’s fault for blowing the whole “kid getting raped in a shower” thing out of proportion. That god-damn, anti child-rape media and their gotcha-covering-up-for-a-pedophile reporting. When will it end?

The first game after the scandal, the team reportedly wanted to win so that they could bring a game ball to Coach Paterno’s house. Instead, they lost, so I assume they just went with plan B and found a child abuse victim and took turns slapping him across the face.

Honorable mention: NFL/NBA players unions and owners for the lockouts—Seriously, we were so close to ONLY having hockey, you guys. Not cool.


Political Douchebag of the Year
The GOP Primary Voter

Two things: One is I realize I’m giving it to a group again instead of an individual and it’s kind of a cop-out, but if Time can give “The Protestor” the person of the year then all bets are off. Second, the primary voters didn’t even get to really vote in 2011 and they make the list. That’s astonishing.

To be fair to the GOP Primary Voter, there were a lot of chances for you to make a fool out of yourself. The networks figured out that debates were big money makers so they were force-feeding them to us like they were a Tyler Perry show for white people. It even got to the point where Donald Trump was going to host one, but even the guy who took twenty years to paint over a rock on his property that said “Niggerhead” realized that was probably a bad idea.

Still, the GOP Primary Voter had a few “unforced errors” at the debates. YouTube sponsored a debate and a gay soldier asked the candidates their feelings about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, to which some audience members booed, and none of them asked those booing to shut the fuck up and respect the guy who is fighting in the war they all supported. At one debate, the biggest applause line was not about an economic policy or how to confront the war on terror, but Rick Perry bragging about how Texas has executed the most people in the country since he took over as governor.

Fuck you. I have no joke for that. Just fuck you.

The biggest reason that the GOP Primary Voter is the political douchebag of the year is that they won’t vote for Mitt Romney. As a liberal, Mitt Romney is the only guy I think would really be favored against Obama in the general election, but the primary voters won’t vote for him because he’s a Mormon. If Romney were Catholic or Protestant he would be up by 20 points right now, but instead the GOP Primary Voter is seriously talking itself into thinking that Newt Gingrich could or even should be president of the United States of America.

Anyone who ends up voting for Newt Gingrich in an official election should have to use the “buddy system” whenever they’re out in public from now on, because they cannot be trusted as an adult anymore.


Honorable Mention: John Boehner--Just for presiding over the Tea Party congress


Business Douchebag of the Year
Lowe’s

I was really tempted to give this to anyone who has ever worked at Men’s Warehouse just on principle, but I decided that the fine folks over at Lowe’s Home-Improvement Warehouse have really dug deep this year and earned it. A could weeks ago, the hey-we’re-not-Home-Depot store decided to pull advertising from the TLC show “All American Muslim,” a reality show which follows five Muslim families living in the United States, plotting jihad against the infidels.

Okay, actually they’re just normal families, but that didn’t stop Lowe’s from pulling the advertising after (racist) advocacy groups said they would boycott companies that purchased ads during the program. The show follows a group of Muslim-American families as they go about their daily lives, which is exactly what the problem is. Apparently, the most dangerous thing about these sneaky terrorists is when they try to convince us that they’re just as uninteresting as the Kardashians.

Lowe’s claims that they aren’t “trying to alienate” anyone and that they were just listening to multiple voiced concerns over where they were placing ad-buys. This was a better-crafted message from the PR department than the original statement from the CEO of “honestly, we can’t tell the difference between the migrant workers and the terrorists so it just makes it much easier to exclude them all.”

Honorable mention: Banks—For continuing to do what they were doing, which I have no idea what that was, but have been told by most that it’s very, very bad.


Entertainment Douchebag of the Year
Louis CK

Seriously, you cannot make amazing material every year. You have to stop. Just have an off year. Just one. Go for it. It’s totally liberating.