The Terl Awards: Worst of the Worst in 2008

God, what a shitass year it has been for our country. Economic meltdown, a depressing election cycle, and the rise of the boy band Jonas Brothers signifying that our taste in music is continuing its sad decline. How fitting that our President Elect, whom everyone seems to love for reasons unbenownst to myself, throw up a nonchalant Shaka while everyone else got a pink slip for Christmas and a massive diplomatic crisis is underway in the Middle East. Under normal circumstances, you'd think it couldn't get much worse, but just wait what 2009 has in store.

To commemorate our nation's annual malaise, I present you with the Terl awards. You are probably asking who or what the fuck is "Terl". He's John Travolta's character from the colossal dud of a movie Battlefield Earth, pictured below center with cod piece.
As far as movies go, Battlefield Earth (with an abominable 3% on the tomatometer) is like Howard the Duck times Ishtar to the Gigli'th degree. It really represents everything crappy about America. A bumbling pack of lummoxes with a pushy, agenda-driven movie that has way too big a budget and no sense of humor. In that spirit, here's the worst of the worst in 2008.

Worst Occupation in America - Wall Street Exec/Politician: They seem to be one in the same these days. It was bad enough that these greedy boobs had to ruin the world economy by pushing a endless stream of bunk loans that assumed home prices were going to go up forever. But then they had to rip off the American taxpayer to continue their failed business model, and in typical politico fashion, the bailout bill was loaded up with enough pork to feed a Hawaiian army. The bailout's defenders in the media seem to be suspiciously involved with the major banks, and the conventional wisdom is that not wanting to bail out all these yahoos makes you a "neo-Hooverite". WTF. I'd rather live in a trailer in Sheboygan, Wisconsin because of a collapsed real estate market than be some serf to the power class that we all have become.

Worst Campaign - McCain/Palin: I'm a Navy officer guy like McCain, and me and him both supported Teh Surge! , so you would assume I'd vote for him come election day. But the guy just got really creepy as the campaign went on. There were gaffes galore, including justification for staying 100 years in Iraq by saying it would be similar to Germany/Japan (uh, no), and then he had to pull off dumb stunts like flying into DC to "save the economy". Then he picked Palin. Great, just what America needed, another super-religious governor that knew nothing about foreign policy to prove to the world that we are a nation of embarrassing imbeciles.

Worst Movie - The Day the Earth Stood Still: Right when a nasty cold front swept the nation leaving everyone from Vegas to Maine freezing their keesters off, Hollyweird had to release a pushy movie on the evils of mankind's ways that only an alien Keanu could redeem. If only global warming was working in that ticket line, I damn near got frostbite.

Worst Blog - The Huffington Post: If you ever wondered what self-righteous, limousine-liberal celebrities have to say about "the little people", look no further than The Huffington Post. See Roseanne preach anti-semitism with poor grammar, see people who don't know shit about the military advocate major changes in our Department of Defense, and see shameless aggregating to boost hit counts in action. LA socialite-cum-Obama worshiper Arianna Huffington also came out with a book this year in which blogs are hailed as the most important place to get information since "Tom Paine". If the Huffington Post is the "new media", we'd probably be better off using carrier pigeons.

Worst Moran - Naomi Wolf: In order to shill copies of her lame book, Naomi Wolf tried to indicate on NPR that 3ID, under the command of NORTHCOM, was going to institute an "October Surprise" so Bush could stay in power through martial law. This was long after Jason Sigger debunked this ridiculous claim, but I think some whackos on the left still wanted to believe it was going to happen to confirm their delusional conspiracy theories. Unless I was executed in the civil unrest, and the last two months have actually been a strange Pincher Martin-like hallucination in purgatory, I don't think the "surprise" happened. She'd be better off trying to push her other wildly popular ideas, like why wearing a hidjab/headscarf is actually "quite intimate" and how pornography is destroying society.

Worst Scandal - Hot Rod Blagojevich: You know, on Christmas Day in 1989, Romania's notorious communist couple (the Ceausescus) were executed on public television for crimes against humanity. No fuss, no muss. Have we somehow regressed in how we as a world deal with tyrants? I'm not saying an eternal dirtnap for Rod's hair is in order, but this asshole is sure making a mockery of democracy with some pretty obvious evidence against him.

Worst Internet Phenomenon - LOLcatz: The FAIL meme was funny. Stuff White People Like was funny before the guy totally sold out. LOLcatz should be relegated to the background of a 12 year-old's MySpace page...and I'm a cat guy! Maybe I'm just not sophisticated enough for this kind of humor. Why the fuck would a cat be on a phone anyways?

Worst Prediction - Sadr and Iran will Control Iraq: Back in March when Prime Minister Maliki decided to take down the Mahdi Army, there was predictably a period of conflict in Sadr City and Basra where the thugs were entrenched. As the coalition and the Iraqi Army took the fight to the streets, the anti-war zealots took the opporutunity to slam Bush with the rhetoric, saying that embassy personnel were going to have to be helicoptered off Saigon-style. That was in March, and now you don't hear much from Sadr anymore and most of the Mahdi Army dudes are dead, detained, or in exile...of course you don't hear much about Iraq at all from the pundit class or the media these days. Count that as a blessing. This event conveniently coincided with the 4000 KIA in Iraq, which some on the left (see the worst blog above) used as an opportunity to cash in on the political Bush-bash punditry at the expense of dead soldiers. Anything goes in an election season, I guess. But don't you dare question their patriotism or their "support of the troops". Maybe if they took off their dogmatic anti-war blinders, they could have figured out what was really going on.

Worst Under-reported Story in the Media - Mexico Drug Cartel Wars: America has long had cultural ties with our neighbor to the south (ever been to L.A.?), but our media has been completely ignoring the disturbing rise in violence due to drug cartel violence. Death tolls that dwarf Afghanistan violence continue to rack up, grenade attacks occur in the streets, but these stories get sent to the back pages of the paper somewhere near the Family Circus cartoon and the ambulance-chaser ads. There certainly isn't any serious discussion of revamping our drug policy to prevent the slaughter. The media often complains that reporting in a conflict zone is expensive and takes too much time. C'mon guys, I used to drive down to Tijuana on a Saturday for cheap drinks while unsuccessfully seeking out the "El Burro" show. You don't even have to stop when you drive south across the border...seriously you just have to slow down as the Mexican border police wave you through! Would it be that difficult to get a "crack journalist" with a notepad and few pesos down there?

Worst Viral YouTube Video - Yes We Can by Will.i.am: This video is pretty much the embodiment of every annoying, self-righteous attitude about Obama supporters. There is no reason to believe that any politician in today's system is anything but a power-hungry crook who would sell out their own grandmother for a few votes from whatever the special interest dishing out the most money was that day. But, oh no, not my Obama, he's different! Uh, change or something. If this guy is anything short of the second coming of Jesus Christ bearing free iPods and Whole Foods gift certificates, there is going to be some serious buyer's remorse in this country.

In conclusion, everything is pretty fucked. Buy canned foods and dig a fallout shelter in your backyard.