Should I just give it up? Should I quit this?
What the hell, Internet?
Did I become lazy? Did I get a
life? Did I actually do work?
20 blog posts last year.
TWENTY!
That’s abysmal. I did
123 in 2008 and averaged close to 95-100 a year, until I hit a creative or
ambitious wall with 2014. Granted, 2013
and 2014 were pretty much bad years as my content will attest to.
In any case, I couldn’t close the book on 2014 without doing
my annual D-Bag of the Year Award. And if you’ve been keeping score, I kind of mailed
it in the last two years as it is.
In years past, I would go through this tournament consisting
of several rounds matching like nominees such as The Grim Reaper vs. Mother
Nature.
2014 has had its fair share of celebrity deaths like Mike
Nichols, Richard Attenborough, Joan Rivers, Lauren Bacall, James Garner, Mickey
Rooney, James Garner, Ruby Dee, Bob Hoskins, Sid Caesar, Casey Kasem, Shirley
Temple, and Eli Wallach. That was some
of the Hollywood Old Guard. The notable
names connected to a younger generation of entertainment consumers included David
Brenner, Bob Hoskins, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Meshach Taylor, Harold Ramis,
Jan Hooks, Maya Angelou, Christine Cavanaugh, Edward Herrmann, and Robin
Williams. That’s nothing compared to the
lives lost through tragedies like what happened with airplanes overseas disappearing
or crashing, deaths in Ukraine and the Middle East from war and strife, and
deaths of police officers and/or alleged criminals like Ferguson, New York, Cleveland,
or even my own backyard Pennsylvania with Eric Frein going all Rambo in the backwoods of PA after killing police officers.
But Mother Nature gave as good as she got plunging us into
stretches of subzero temperatures with Polar Vortices, a late fall snowstorm in
the Pacific Northwest and New England, cyclones, earthquakes, mudslides,
landslides, and eruptions as well.
I’ve also recounted in past years how various businesses promoted
themselves with such great audaciousness, like Apple infuriating some of its
consumer base with an automatic download and install of U2’s new album via
iTunes, whether they wanted it or not. There was also Hobby Lobby and the
controversial Christian values trumps the ACA for contraception case before the
Supreme Court. Probably the biggest and
most forgotten story was the NFL’s domestic abuse problem and how it quickly
faded once the season got into full swing.
Then the business of politics always took a lot of the focus
as nominees in the category would include people like Congress for constantly
being a blight on the Democratic process.
Republicans for the ridiculous amount of time and energy wasted on
trying to overturn the ACA, and immigration, and women’s rights. The Democrats could not escape themselves as
they completely dismantled themselves from doing anything during the midterm
elections because they just didn’t care and it showed at the polls when they
got walloped by the GOP.
But, I always found it easy to pick apart the individuals in
my round up. Chris Brown was an easy
target as he was constantly finding himself being a royal d-bag, but this year
he seemed to take a backseat to others.
2014 probably would have had me compare nominees like James Franco for
being a creepy bastard with that underage girl over texting. Shia
LeBeouf would have been up there with his Joaquin Phoenix level meltdown, had
that been real, declaring he was not famous, became the unknown comic, cut his
own face for Fury, claimed he was raped during the filming of a movie, plagiarized
a graphic novelist, and tried to mug a homeless man of Mickey D’s. It could all be a stunt or he’s just drunk
and off the reservation.
NFL and the NBA all have players, owners, and commissioners
who love to be douches. The NBA had LeBron
James, who went back to Cleveland, which made Cleveland look like such a whipped
city because they welcomed him back with open arms. Donald Sterling made the list this year
after his much publicized remarks caught on tape by his “female friend” V
Stiviano. The NBA gave him a lifetime
ban and forced him to sell the team which he fought. In the end, justice kind of prevailed but the
means to the end involved Ms. Stiviano being pretty much a d-bag in her own right.
The NFL produced great d-bags this year like Adrian Peterson
and Ray Rice, who were suspended for domestic violence, and supposedly Roger
Goodell has “top” men investigating it.
Saying Roger Goodell is handling the situation when it comes to bad
behavior in the NFL is like saying Wyle E Coyote is this close to catching the
Roadrunner with whatever ACME gadget Amazon Prime just delivered him. Also
with bad behavior, Pittsburgh’s LaGarrette Blount and Le'veon Bell kicked off
the season with a rollicking ride in Pittsburgh, while high, missing the team
flight and getting pulled over by the police. It seems a moot point when Bell has been one
of the biggest play makers for the Black and Gold, and Blount, after getting less
than an acceptable amount of touches, walked off the field and into the locker room, finally
being cut by the team and resigned with his former employer, The New England
Patriots. He was happy to be home and
Pittsburgh was happy he was, too, I guess.
Still, it’s a move that could be interesting IF and ONLY IF the Steelers
are forced to face down their only playoff demon left in the Patriots. Still, Blount was a d-bag for being a whiny
bitch and pretty much a problem child that needed spanked. If Blount rolls over Pittsburgh in a playoff
rout, it isn’t enough to call for the heads of Haley and Tomlin in
Pittsburgh. Christ, people have been
calling for them in week 1 and now the own the AFC North. By the end of the season, another famous
d-bag, Ndamukong Suh, finished out his year by stomping on Aaron Rodgers,
leading to a suspension, which was appealed and turned over in another great
moment by Roger Goodell’s mantra of cleaning up the league. But then again, I have watched all of five
minutes of NFL football this year, taking a much needed breather from all the
hypocrisy and thuggish behavior that product has included. So, it’s really a tossup in sports, but
there are no losers in that division.
Much has been made about women’s rights and the treatment of
women this year. The constant
politicizing of women’s right to use contraception took center stage with the
Hobby Lobby debate and springing off the Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice stories
was the catcalling video “10 Hours of Walking In NYC as a Woman”. It showed the “reality” of what a woman goes
through walking around and being accosted by men of color in “various” NYC
neighborhoods. I use quotes because the
10 hours of footage was not presented in full for viewing. When taken to task by Slate, the producer
said (paraphrased), “White Men catcalled her too, but they were too far off
camera or the sound was ruined by a siren.”
That footage was somehow not included. So, I include the producer of this, not for
pointing out the reality of what women go through, but because he did it
piecemeal, contextualizing it. And
speaking of being a d-bag towards women, how about Artie Lange and his tweets
about Cari Champion? Or, better yet, the
allegations and retraction (apology) by Rolling Stone over the story about
campus rape at UVA. And how about this,
as innocuous as this is against women, Justin Bieber managed to piss all over
women and the holocaust by writing “Anne Frank Was A Great Girl, Hopefully She
Would Have Been A Belieber” in the guest book at the Anne Frank House in
Amsterdam. That is far worse than those
two cancer kids snogging and GETTING APPLAUSE for it in the same house from The
Fault In Our Stars. I jest because I
loved the book and the film and thought it was a bit of a WTF moment which made
me laugh. Finally, the invasion of
privacy, and sexual crimes against female celebrities due to iCloud hacks calls
out a more philosophical question of what constitutes a sex crime?
But no individual’s d-bag story could have topped the one
that pretty much crushed a lot of us 70s and 80s kids’ childhood memories when
it was reported… A LOT, that Bill Cosby has had a long history of drugging and
sexually assaulting women. Since there
have only been allegations and no actual charges filed (I Think) against Cosby and
I wish it not true because I have adored the career of Cosby from his stand up to
Fat Albert, from Picture Pages to the Cosby Show. But,
there is a hell of a lot of smoke to not think that maybe we should call the
fire department.
In the last segment I usually throw a giant generalization
towards something like Me or the Media or Humanity to truly level the playing
field in who I think is the biggest d-bag of the year. But one d-bag seems to
challenge the faceless nameless category and this year it’s Hackers. Hackers have been all over the place this
year. First off we need to realize that
none of our information is safe. Hackers
hit every category this year. We have
business with all of our credit card and banking information hacked from Home
Depot and Target, and NYC Taxi and Limo company. The cloud was hacked and tons of pictures
and videos were stolen from famous and non-famous account holders in what was called
The Fappening and The Snappening. Sony
was hacked and emails detailing everything from pay inequality to what people
really think of Angelina Jolie was shared.
Online gaming sites like XBOX Live and SONY’s PSN were hacked and
kiddies opening up their new PS4s and XBOX Ones on Christmas morning couldn’t
go online and shoot each other in the face, leaving them to face the brave new
world of actually interacting with people face to face. And then there is the supposed Sony hack by
Kim Jong Un and his legion of TRS-80 hackers a la WarGames who threatened
terrorism if The Interview was released.
Frankly, that movie should get its own award this year because I think
this was an inside job by somebody looking to boost the hype over watching this
film, not actually North Korea.
So, where does that leave us? We’ve talked about sports and politics and
business and celebs and technology in regards to who is the biggest d-bag of
the year. But what could possibly trump
all those nominees?
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