Most Alarming People 2019
(The Daily Beast and the New Yorker used to run a list like this as a year-end feature. This is my humble attempt to keep the tradition alive.)
ALEXANDER ACOSTA, former secretary of labor, one of the first people to help pedophile Jeffery Epstein to continue raping little girls for another ten years. As Secretary, he tried to cut the funding of the office that fights sex trafficking. Draw your own conclusions. Extenuating Factors: May be simply stupid. Aggravating Factors: He graduated from Harvard. If he is stupid, he may have bribed his way in. Sentence: Always to be mentioned in the same breath as Epstein.
BILL BARR, Attorney General of the United States. His department got several criminal and counterintelligence complaints from the Central Intelligence and other agencies concerning the President. He refused to investigate these complaints. Instead he opened criminal investigations on the investigations of the criminals. He is both energetic and evil, rarely a good combination. Extenuating Factors: His actions put impeachment on the table. Aggravating Factors: His dad was the guy who hired Jeffery Epstein to teach at a fancy private high school. Sentence: Oddly enough, justice.
JEFF BEZOS, head of Amazon. A self-made man, depending on the direction of the wind he is the richest man in the world from time to time. His firm is based on an awful lot of sweat-shop labor. Extenuating Factors: Not anything that comes to mind. Aggravating Factors: His money could have saved lives. Instead, he shot it into space. Sentence: Gets shot into space.
LISA BLOOM The go-to American lawyer you need when your boss sexually attacks you. She offered her services to Harvey Weinstein to protect him from charges he abused children. As far as we know she did not actually procure little girls for Weinstein. Extenuating Factors: As she has throughout her career, she has shattered glass ceilings as by appearing on this list due to her own efforts. Aggravating Factors: Proposed using photographs of the victims to embarrass them into silence. Sentence: Worrying about her own daughter.
JOHN BOLTON, former National Security Advisor. Dodged the draft while publically supporting the war in Vietnam. He has explained that his cowardice is somehow the fault of Senator Ted Kennedy. Opposed international regulations designed to control the production of biological weapons. Throughout his career has been notable for screaming at subordinates. Extenuating Factors: We are still hoping he will redeem himself by taking down the President. Aggravating Factors: Seems to be taking his own sweet time telling what he knows. Sentence: It is really up to him to decide at this point.
ELAINE CHAO, Secretary of Transportation. The wife of the leader of the Senate, she is more or less nepotism incarnate. She has made “Infrastructure Week” a national punchline. Extenuating Factors: Not so much what she has done badly as how little good she has done. Aggravating Factors: Has shattered the myth of the competent, energetic over-achieving Asian-American. Sentence: Nothing. In this administration, she will simply be overlooked.
JAMES CONNOLLY, NYPD detective. Less than one percent of New York police officers ever fire their weapons off the range. Connolly has managed to kill two people. Most recently he killed another police officer on purpose. Extenuating Factors: All his actions have been found to be perfectly legitimate. The city has paid over five million dollars to settle cases alleging misconduct by Connolly. At our office, we get a letter of concern if we use too much copy paper. Aggravating Factors: After killing the other policeman he was promoted to detective sergeant. Sentence: An encounter with his doubleganger.
KEN CUCCINELLI the current Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Appointed illegally to avoid the Republican-controlled Senate. He has been at the lead of efforts shutting down legal immigration into the United States. He seems to believe the invitation on the Statue of Liberty only applies to Europeans. He denies climate change, is opposed to marriage equality, has defended laws designed to punish homosexuals. He swore to defend the Constitution but wants to change it to ensure people born here are not citizens. Extenuating Factors: As Virginia’s state Attorney General, went to court to reverse the conviction of Thomas Haynesworth who wrongly served almost thirty years for a rape he did not commit. He then hired Haynesworth to work in his office. Aggravating Factors: The sort of man who sent the Jews back to Germany to be killed. Sentence: Peaking as the Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, a nobody.
BETSEY DeVOS Secretary of Education She simply does not like public school. Extenuating Factors: Easy to forget amongst all the other stuff going on in Washington. Aggravating Factors: Currently in contempt of court for refusing to protect people from for-profit schools. Sentence: Homeroom detention.
SEAN DUFFY, While discussing right-wing terrorism,“[t]here is a difference" between terror acts committed by white people and those committed by Muslims.” Attacked the loyalty of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman who testified in front of Congress about the President’s Ukranian phone call. Extenuating Factors: As a youngster, he was very competitive in the sport of logrolling. In this case, “logrolling” is not a metaphor. Aggravating Factors: Resigned from Congress to be with a newborn daughter who had a heart defect. He was on CNN the next week defending the President. Sentence: A tenth child.
EDDIE GALLAGHER, Chief Petty Officer, United States Navy. Captured an Afghan kid. Sedated him. Slit his throat. Held a reenlistment atop the body. Extenuating Factors: Seems to be nuts. Aggravating Factors: Is a nut with a license to kill. Sentence: It doesn’t matter, the President will pardon him.
FRANKLIN GRAHAM, Chaplain to the Porn Star President. He claims “under attack by Muslims at home and abroad” and that the nation“should stop all immigration of Muslims.”Extenuating Factors: Has settled the lawsuit with the pool boy for an undisclosed amount. Aggravating Factors: Has claimed his father, bedridden and addled by dementia drove himself to vote for Donald Trump. Sentence: Never to be anything but the son of his father.
ALEX JONES is not on this list. Now that we know he is mentally ill it is inappropriate to make fun of him.
JARED KUSHNER, head of the Office of American Innovation, whatever that is. We would denounce him as an oligarch if only he ever had some sort of serious business empire. His family bribed his way into the best colleges. Extenuating Factors: Most everyone else in the ruling class followed the same path in life. He is nobody special. Aggravating Factors: Presently in charge of the Middle East Peace Plan, the Wall, relations with China, immigration policy, Broadband, the Opioid Crisis, reimaging the Veteran’s Administration and of course Infrastructure. Sentence: The realization that he has failed at everything he ever tried to do on his own.
PATRICK LYNCH Boss of the largest NYPD union. When a policeman was finally fired for having killed someone with his bare hands, Lynch directed a “work to rule” effort. Nobody really noticed. Led his union to vote its lack of confidence in the mayor and the department’s leadership. He has done the same thing with every other mayor and police chief during his tenure. You know stirring up the rubes for political gain. Faced with a crisis of suicides among his members said, “If you are on the edge and contemplating suicide, don’t fucking do it.” Extenuating Factors: None we can think of. Aggravating Factors: Has never worked a day as a policeman, still wears the uniform. Sentence: Time in a patrol car.
MIKE MATA head of the Dallas police union. When a police officer got confused and shot an innocent man who was sitting in his own apartment, Mata rushed to the scene. He prevented investigators from talking to the officer. He ordered the other officers at the scene to turn off their recording devices. He worked hard to impede the police investigation. He himself is a policeman. Extenuating Factors: Aggravating Factors: Sentence: Killed in a friendly fire incident.
MITCH MCCONNELL, leader of the US Senate. He is in a position where he could help people and lead the nation. He cannot be bothered. Extenuating Factors: Simply ornery. Aggravating Factors: Part of the swamp he claims to hate. Sentence: The judgment of History.
VINCE MCMAHON head of World Wrestling Entertainment. His business ensures his workers do not have health care coverage and lists them as contractors in order to avoid legal obligations. He has kissed up to Donald Trump since back when Trump was just silly. Kisses up the Saudis while they are actually frightening. Extenuating Factors: All in all, his actions are a perfect miniature of the dumbing down of America while shoveling money to the ruling class. He would be a vital lesson to us all if we were paying attention. Aggravating Factors: Became an oligarch the old-fashioned way; he inherited the company founded by his granddad. Sentence: Falls from a hoist doing a stunt. Is paralyzed.
STEPHEN MILLER, This “Senior White House Adviser,” is thirty-four years old and was in high school on 9/11. He has never had a non-government job. On the Internet, people like Miller are called trolls. He seems to say mean things just for yuks. I would "be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched America's soil." Oddly his own family fled to the United States to escape violence. His high school and junior high classmates say he was a racist before it was cool. Extenuating Factors: Was right about the Duke University Lacrosse rape scandal. Aggravating Factors: Sentence: His personal appearance.
MIKE PENCE, vice-president of the United States. A clip art bobblehead bootlicker in chief to the Porn Star President. He makes Mitt Romney look like Alice Cooper. Extenuating Factors: Says he is a Christian. Aggravating Factors: Helped hand over the Christian Kurds to slaughter at the hands of the Muslim Turks. Sentence: His obituary.
MIKE POMPEO, Secretary of State. He was first at his class at West Pont. He is simply an embarrassment to the Academy and the Army. On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall remarked how walls are cruel. He works for a man who wants to build a wall. Extenuating Factors: He was never told beforehand about a lot of the bad stuff the President was about to do. Aggravating Factors: Lied about being in on the call. Sentence:
WILBUR ROSS, The Commerce Secretary. Led the effort to monkey with the Census for political gain. Led the effort to monkey with the weather reports for political gain. Swears he does not monkey with unemployment, inflation or other reports from his department for political gain. He wears satin bedroom slippers in public. He is considered the social butterfly of the Cabinet. Extenuating Factors: His art collection is valued at $150 million. Aggravating Factors: Holds the Order of the Rising Sun for his efforts to help the Japanese economy. Sentence: The inevitable ruin that is old age.
PAUL SKALNIK, jailhouse snitch. According to the Florida Department of Corrections, a “con man of the highest degree.” Probably the most productive jailhouse informant in American history. He has put more than five men to death row. One of them, James Dailey is almost certainly innocent and will be executed in 2020. Extenuating Factors: Has been testifying against other prisoners for about forty years. You got to admire professionalism. Aggravating Factors: Once the government did not deliver the promised reward for his testimony. He sued. The government called him a liar. Sentence: General population during a long power failure.
DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States. Living proof that money cannot buy either happiness nor dignity. He seems to run his life and his administration by threatening people with the Tweet of Damocles. His speech is oddly hypnotic. It as if he says aloud the quiet part in our heads like some sort of deranged beat poetry. Looking at this from the angle of cosmic balance, President Trump seems to be the karmic counterpart to President Carter. Extenuating Factors: He has not started any new wars. Aggravating Factors: He has ended old wars by giving our allies over to our enemies. Sentence: A long retirement wondering why nobody will take his calls.
ANDREW WHEELER, Former energy lobbyist, now director of the Environmental Protection Administration. He is gleefully rolling back the next generation of auto emissions standards. These are regulations the auto industry is cool with. Nobody really knows why he is doing it. He used to work for Robert Murray the evil coal operator. Extenuating Factors: Fully qualified for his job having held a number of positions in the agency he now heads. Aggravating Factors: Does not believe global warming is an existential threat. Sentence: Has to explain all this to his grandchildren.
RANDALL WILLIAMS, State Health Director of Missouri. He keeps a database of the menstrual cycles of women, but only because he wants to know which women are pregnant. Extenuating Factors: No longer requires women get unnecessary vaginal exams. Aggravating Factors: He wears a bow tie. Sentence: Life in Missouri.
YOU Born in the richest, most peaceful time in human history you never even raise up your eyes to focus on anything but your petty problems. Your only charity is the “leave a penny” at the 7-11. You honestly think everyone else should learn English. You have become convinced that using paper straws somehow will save the planet. You are so morally confused that you somehow think having a child, the most selfless act is the most selfish. Extenuating Factors: Not really evil, just stupid and ungrateful. Aggravating Factors: You could have been so much more. Sentence: Everything you deserve.
MARK ZUCKERBERG, chairman of Facebook. Has asked Congress to write a law governing online content so he will not be responsible. Extenuating Factors He didn’t really try to cause so many problems in the world. He simply does not care. Extenuating Factors: Active in many charities. He named his dog “Beast.” Sentence: Another movie.
Now playing at the Hell Plaza Octoplex
GODZILLA; KING OF THE MONSTERS
HELLBOY
MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL “International” as in English-speaking people in London.
THE UPSIDE because people in wheelchairs are all triumphs of the human spirit who could teach us so much.
LOQUEESHA
GEMINI MAN
MIDWAY
And of course,
CATS
there doesn't seem to be anything here