'Tard of the Year - 2009

Wednesday, January 6, 2010
So it's 2010, and I'm joining the rest of the country in fervently wishing it's a better year (and a better decade) that what's come before. But before I can put 2009 to bed, we need to determine who will win the much-sought-after "'Tard of the Year" award.

This year's candidates:
  • Dale and Leilani Neumann, whose belief in superstitious nonsense cost their daughter her life; 
  • Scott Renfroe and Dave Schultheis, who believe being gay is comparable to being a murderer and that babies of HIV-positive mothers deserve to get AIDS;
  • Genine Compton, who believes breast feeding her child while talking on the phone and driving her other children to school is no more risky than walking down the street; 
  • Michele Bachmann, who is making a new career of being Dumb in Public;
  • Thomas and Manju Sam, whose belief in the stupidity that is homeopathy cost their daughter her life; 
  • Pat Buchanan, whose sense of entitlement is excelled only by his dumbassery; 
  • Major Stefen Frederick Cook, who volunteered to deploy to a combat zone only so that he could "legitimately" expose himself as a "birther;" 
  • Sarah Palin, who is so fucking stupid she has been formally retired from the 2010 contest; 
  • Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who really is just bugfuck crazy;
  • The Oath Keepers, those treasonous motherfuckers who think only THEY are real Americans (the rest of us are apparently just PRETENDING);
  • Swiss Voters, who have taken institutionalized bigotry to a whole new level;
  • The Family Research Council, who thinks obfuscating in the name of terrifying their base is the way to keep TEH GAYZ, OH NOES! from having equal rights in this country.
What say you, Hot Chicks and Smart Men?

22 comments:

Jeri said...

Wow, that's an action-packed, highly competitive field, kind of like picking best in show at Westminster. It bears some thinking. ;)

Steve Buchheit said...

Had to go with the crack pot that keep on giving, Michelle Bachman, who only recently stopped telling her constituents to boycott the census when she realized more than likely it'll be her congressional district that is chopped if Minnesota loses enough population (considered very likely).

WendyB_09 said...

I'm with Jeri...need to consider the candidates carefully.

Unknown said...

It's like an amazing salad bar of stupid where it's impossible to choose just one! I'm going to have to consider this carefully.

Eric said...

Oo--Steve, I hadn't heard that one about Bachmann; that would be massive karma.

I have to say it: Sarah Palin can't be 'Tard Of The Year, and here's why--because SP's joke is and always shall be on us. In any other country, planet, or alternate dimension produced by butterfly-squashing time travelers, Sarah Palin would be a trailer-park resident, and I mean that most sincerely and not as snark or irony or a joke. She was a student athelete of limited ability and some few charms from a rural area who went through a succession of colleges because her Dad was a schoolteacher (and there's implied psychodrama between all the lines in that tale of a man who drags his family into the Alaskan wilds and seems to have been more than a little bit of a hard man) before marrying her blue-collar high-school sweetheart as soon as she could get enough wriggle room beneath her parents' thumbs. It's only a bit of cosmic weirdness and Alaska's strange, unique qualities that finds Palin graduating from fish-gutting baby-machine to City Councilwoman, the beginning of a long upward fall in which she stumbles, Chauncey Gardner-like, upwards into a state Governorship, VP nomination and likely Presidential bid.

The novel (not the movie) Forrest Gump has some wonderful, hysterical metafictional riffs on the "magical retard" literary trope, the mentally-challenged character who, via the narrator's conceits, is ironically wiser than the "able" people around him. (The book, if it had been written after the movie version was released, would be regarded as a parody of it.) So whither Sarah Palin, the "magical retard" of the real world, if there is one. How can we really label such a woman a "'tard" when she turns our wisdom against us, prevails against the long odds, and continuously fails upwards?

She may be smarter than every last rotten one of us.

Megan said...

Yeah, this is too hard. Does making a choice that leads to the death of your own child make you a TOTY, or just someone to be pitied? Hmmmm.

Eric said...

(Clarification on "went through a succession of colleges because her Dad was a schoolteacher"; I have no doubt in my mind that if Mrs. Palin's parents had been high school dropouts, she would have been one as well. And if her parents had been HS or college grads but hadn't been from what has to be described as America's intellectual class, I'm not sure she would've gone to college or finished it. She went to college because it was expected of her, and appears to have been as predictably poora student as that would lead one to expect.)

Nathan said...

I went with Bachmann. She's he sweetheart of her party at the moment and the most likely to be a continuing burr under our saddle. (saddles?).

D'oh!

mfheadcase said...

For me, most of the course are run o the mill idiots, but i am torn between the Neumanns and the Sams. These morons are so exceptional that the effectively murdered their own children to support their bullshit faith and belief in pseudo-science respectively.

neurondoc said...

I hate when I have to make this kind of decision. I will think it over tonight and get back to you in the morning...

Nathan said...

For those of you still on the fence...I'm heartily disappointed in Bachmann's poor showing so far.

Anne C. said...

I voted for the oathkeepers because they represent a multitude of idiotic "patriots" whose rantings could actually be construed as treason. Talk about irony. :P

Keith Wilson said...

They all qualify for the Darwin Award.
How 'bout just voting for the whole damn year?

Warner (aka ntsc) said...

Went with the Swiss. They have actually done something that most of the others on that list can only dream about.

The only person executed for war crimes from the American Civil War was Swiss.

vince said...

This was a tough one for me, but I have to go with my state's Michelle Bachmann. After all, it was she who, nn a Dec. 29 interview on Fred Thompson's radio show with guest host Jed Babbin, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said that if the GOP were "wise," they would "allow themselves to be re-defined by the tea party movement":

Well, it’s embrace the tea party movement with full arms and hold as many open forums as they possibly can to bring people in and listen to them because the leadership right now is truly coming from the tea party movement because it is disaffected Democrats, Independents, Republicans. It’s really people who love the country and who brace what ultimately has been the mission statement of the Republican Party. If you look at the two parties, Democrat and Republican, there’s no question that the heartbeat of the tea party movement would be more in line with the mission state of the Republican party certainly than that of the Democrat party. So if the Republican Party is wise, they will allow themselves to be re-defined by the tea party movement. And I hope that that will be the case.

But with so many excellent options, I see merit in Keith's suggestion about giving the award to the whole damn year.

Janiece said...

Because, really, the Republican party isn't extreme ENOUGH. Good plan, Michele. GOOD PLAN.

::shock::

WendyB_09 said...

Well, after careful deliberation during a bout of insomnia last night, had to go with the Oathkeepers. Something to do with them not following orders of the Commander in Chief...

Jeri said...

I'm going for Bachmann too. Just an edge more edgy than Palin. ;)

Nathan said...

And Bachmann comes roaring back in the homestretch!

:D

Carol Elaine said...

I still can't decide. They're all so 'tard-lectable.

Eric said...

Janiece, I just figured out why all of your nominees are wrong, unless you think he should be 'Tard Of The Year 2008, which is a fair objection.

Janiece said...

Eric, I responded over on Giant Midgets, but I really think Mr. Schmidt is more a "Douche of the Year," rather than a 'Tard. After all, he's not stupid - just morally bankrupt.