If This is Anyone but Steve Allen, You're Stealing My Bit!

Yes, I know, you can't copyright the concept of nominating assholes as Worst Person Alive. Other sarcastic Internet guys were doing it before I came along, more will do it after I gather my many millions of dollars in profit and walk away from blogging forever. I'm just saying...I called Rick Santorum evil first! Big ups to reader Kaz for forwarding me this link to The Beast's Top 50 Most Loathsome Americans list all the same. Interesting stuff to consider as I mull over this year's Braffy nominations.

Check this: Tricky Rick, last year's CBI choice for Worst Person Alive, didn't even make the list, but Tom Cruise and George Lucas are both on there. Yeah, George Lucas...How dare he produce classic films that have delighted, at this point, three generations of Americans. What an asshole. He's way worse than the guy who openly compares gay citizens to dog-fuckers.

I don't think Tom Cruise really classifies as one of the Worst People. One of the most confused? Sure. One of the least appropriate to raise an impressionable young child? Absolutely. But worst?

Cruise is a perfect example of a person who is simultaneously in love with and completely unfamiliar with himself, living in perpetual fear of self-actualization, and asserting a legal right to live free of criticism.

Agreed, but you guys think he's worse than Rush Limbaugh and Charles Krauthammer? How many villainous would-be dictators has Tom Cruise propped up? (Okay, L. Ron Hubbard...point taken...)

I definitely dig the inclusion of Larry the Cable Guy, but Oprah? Irritating and shrill, sure. I'd even go so far as to label her behavior in this year's James Frey debacle (backing him initially and then savaging him on her show to save her own reputation) dishonest. But she is not more loathsome than Joe Lieberman, Paris Hilton or Bill Frist. (Seriously, how could Paris not be #1. She might not be the most evil person on the planet, just because true evil requires some level of intelligence and creativity, but she's absolutely among the most loathsome. Don't you guys read The Superficial?)

Also, the entry at #4, where "you," the reader, are implicated as the fourth most loathsome American, kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Not because I think the American people aren't worth loathing. I loathe us most of the time. But because the paragraph is accusatory rather than inclusive. The authors position themselves outside of the implication - it's "You" and not "Us" - which is haughty. Also, the worst thing they can come up with is that Americans watch too much TV.

Assuming that it’s normal behavior to spend several hours each day totally inert and staring into a cathode ray tube. Substituting antidepressants for physical motion.

Look, there's nothing innately wrong with spending your leisure time watching television. There are plenty of more pointless, destructive and inane activities in which you can participate. I'm not saying there's no value to being outside and getting in touch with the world around you, but this notion that sitting in your apartment watching TV on occasion is inherently loathsome and makes you a shallow, trite individual is just ludicrous posturing. Television is just another form of entertainment like any other. If you spend 12 hours a day doing it, sure, that makes you a loser. But spend 12 hours a day doing anything but slaving away in some cubicle makes you a loser to most Americans. Personally, I have more respect for the guy who's figured out how to watch Cartoon Network all day than the guy who's Executive Regional Vice-President in Charge of Specialty Referral for CompuTex.

And then...attacking people on antidepressants? Don't they have enough problems? They're already depressed and spending their hard-earned money for drugs that don't get you high, plus being on those pills kills your sex drive. Why not go after someone more deserving of scorn, like, oh, I don't know...Rick Santorum or any of the other 500,000,000 scumbags that didn't make the list. You trying to say Don Imus and Michael Savage aren't loathsome?