On the verge of what seems like a new day in America, we the smarter half of the population, looked forward to closing the curtain on what will be plaintively remembered as “The Bush Era”. The 2000’s arrived with a fresh lot of political screwballs ready to fuck our country up six ways from sunday. Alongside these noble decision-makers stood a wide array of doltish public figures reminding us that not quite all of the douche bags are in Washington. Just enough of them to keep you thinking twice about wearing your God Bless America sweat shirt anywhere outside of Kansas

Kanye West

When Kanye first achieved super-stardom, I gotta admit, I kinda’ liked the guy and even some of his music. It was in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster when he took the opportunity to reveal to the public how much of an indignant moron he can be. Interrupting Mike Meyers during a live Katrina relief telethon, Kanye West made the bold, yet somewhat reasonable, assertion that George Bush simply “Doesn’t care about Black people”. The outburst was cut short and for the first time in history cameras were relying on Chris Tucker to keep from saying anything ridiculous. Now there’s absolutely nothing wrong with interrupting Mike Meyers when he’s speaking but to be so crass to break out into a political tirade while trying to raise money amidst one of the most horrifying natural disasters in the last decade is monumental “douche-baggery”.

Since then West has provided us with a series of installments that I like to refer to, as: “Hey look I’m a giant, shameless, unmitigated asshole”.

From walking onto the stage in protest after losing an award to Justice at the MTV Europe VMA’s to beating the shit out of paparazzi, Kanye seems to have discovered his true calling in life. He is a classic example of someone who becomes less and less intriguing the more they open their mouth and rightfully earned his spot on the list.

Sean Hannity

It isn’t a secret that there are a lot of douche bag news pundits out there but among this rabid bunch of uptight citizens is one particular “newsman” who seems to outshine the rest of them. Every night Sean Hannity pairs up with his “Liberal Co-host” Alan Colmes, to pander to millions of scared shitless “Pro-Americans”. As a well-known agent of conservative disinformation, he spent eight delusional years in unrelenting defense of President Bush’s every move. Disregarding the 80% of Americans who strongly disagree with him, Hannity, even in the waning hours of the Bush presidency, continued to blindly support the administration and went on to call other media outlets “unfair” and “shameless”. By 2008 Hannity redirected some of his scorn and dedicated his airtime lambasting Barack Obama through primary season to the very end of the election.

The most frightening aspect about Hannity isn’t the rhetoric itself but the influence that he has actually managed to wield over the last decade or so. Conservatives and even some “moderates” (who really just turn out to be closet conservatives) see Sean as the voice of reason for Middle America; it is quite the contrary. Hannity epitomizes the worst of conservative commentary (and yes my friend, it is commentary). For the first half of the decade he used fear to justify his support for the Bush administration’s abuse of powers and violations of not only constitutional but human rights as well, here and across the globe. For the second half of the decade he used fear and some out of context sound bites to convince a portion of voters that Barack Obama was probably a disguised Islamic radical hell bent on destroying America and turning its children into brainwashed militant Jihadists.

I mean, basically.

Earlier this month Alan Colmes announced that he would be leaving the show. And we all know the only thing more dangerous than 95% Hannity is 100% Hannity.

Chris Martin

Chris Martin has made quite the name for himself as the front man for the highly popular and highly overrated British rock and roll band, Coldplay. First appearing on our television screens sometime back in 2002, we get a glimpse of Martin strolling along on a vacant beach babbling on about his now famous astronomical observation, that the sky and the stars do indeed, look yellow. (To this day I haven’t the slightest clue of what the hell he’s talking about)

From then on he whisked away women one by one, frolicking across arena stages all while performing with a band much more talented than himself. By 2004 Coldplay had garnered international recognition. However, not everyone was amused by Martin’s antics and his not-so-subtle mimicry of Thom Yorke. When confronted about the comparisons regarding Radiohead and Coldplay, Chris responded:

“I don’t think we’d be anywhere if Radiohead didn’t exist. I think we’re like why Diet coke was big. Because some people couldn’t handle coke, that’s how I see us”.

Okay wait, let me get this straight. So Radiohead is the widely popular soft drink that’s been around for ages that everyone from 4 year olds to Polar bears enjoy and Coldplay is the inferior alternative better suited for old ladies that’s been believed to have caused cancer?

In more recent news, Coldplay has found themselves facing a copyright infringement suit involving their new single “Viva La Vida”. Here Chris and his friend’s take Joe Satriani’s perfectly well written instrumental “If I Could Fly” and produce what is probably the shittiest Coldplay song I’ve ever heard. Despite being relatively new to the scene, Martin has wasted no time in informing us how much of a douche bag he is and he for sure won’t be leaving us any time soon.

Those guys who made Intervention

If you paid even the least bit of attention to television within the last decade you probably noticed the rapid influx of reality shows. With such intellectually stimulating programs like Survivor and Shot at Love you might be asking where I’m going with this. Now most reality television centers on the stupidity of human beings, highlighting their most outrageous moments and accepting their should-be-extreme peculiarities as the new norm in American television. While some deal with the depressingly stupid, A&E’s series, Intervention, is just plain depressing.

Intervention is a documentary series dealing with individuals coping with addiction, a large percentage of them being drug/alcohol related. Under the impression they are being filmed for a documentary about the addiction itself, a camera crew follows them around, recording their daily lives and in addition, conducting interviews with the individuals’ family members and friends. Other than the fact that the person has no fucking idea that they’re going to be tricked into attending an intervention, the most unsettling side of this show is that the producers seem to believe they are actually building awareness and deterring drug use. First off, no level headed person needs to see a video of some gaunt-faced 25 year old man vomiting into a hotel trash bin to figure out that you probably shouldn’t do heroin. Secondly, if you truly want to help this person, next time you’re sitting there spectating as they sniff rails off the kitchen counter so they work their heart rate a little closer towards a premature heart attack, maybe you should, oh I don’t know, stop them?

All other television crimes just seem juvenile in contrast with Intervention. Like, instead of watching how many women Flava Flav can sleep with in a week’s span, you can see a once-stable, now-desperate teenager being treated like a zoo exhibit for the viewing pleasure of thousands of bored house wives. Intervention is human exploitation scraping the very bottom of the barrel. Though I’m unsure whether or not there was any moral objection to the creation of this program but it takes some incomparable gall to muster the courage to actually consider this a reasonable source of entertainment and for that Intervention clinches the title of the biggest douchebag in the television realm.

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Due to the clearly ridiculous nature of American Politics throughout this last decade, i found it way too difficult for me to determine how many politicians actually belong on this list. Since that seemed like a whole another ball of wax I decided to avoid the topic all together.

However, with that being said, biggest douchebag of this decade goes to (and this is no surprise) *drum roll*……

Bush and Cheney

Thanks a lot assholes.

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Tags: Humor, Pop Culture