THE BEAST 50 MOST LOATHSOME PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 200843. 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 assholes 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.
Check the rest of it out.
I wait all year for this list and recommend reading the previous ones if you are new to the annual feature.
Living in Buffalo, NY, I've been reading The Beast ever since it was founded by
Matt Taibbi, Kevin McElwee and Paul Fallon back in 2002 as a new, free bi-weekly alt news rag alternative to the milquetoast Art Voice - though I'm sure that probably was not their intent, it's why I started reading it. It's funny, smart, unbelievably offensive and publishes with balls of steel.
Look at what they did to Buffalo's then-mayor Tony Massiello - in their first issue!
The Mayor Brown prank is even better as they almost goaded two mayors - ours and Ottawa's - into making a wholly unethical and most likely illegal bet over a fucking playoff hockey series. That's more of the silly end of things. Though, the actual journalism, however sophomoric, and the information it revealed about the alarming incompetence, gullibility and, in the Ottowa mayor's case, close to criminal behavior, said more in one or two stories about the sorry state of Western New York politics (and it's pretty sad) than the Buffalo News' political editor, Bob McCarthy, could by working any number of local politicos and contacts, then devoting months of his cherished real estate in a low rent Op-Ed section to his insights. (Not that I think Bob McCarthy is a dumb and/or incompetent man. Quite the opposite, in fact. He's just what passes for modern political journalism/punditry.)
Read The Beast. And if so inclined,
support the sorry band of losers and miscreants that publish it.
Ps. I'm a bit of a fanboy, I'll admit it. Plus, it's a local rag from a town with not much to be proud of in that department and every time I see their Grade-A, year end, wrap up posted all over the net, it a good thing, IMO.
Side note - those motherfuckers can drink.
