15 Most Loathsome People of 2008

By Allan Uthman and Ian Murphy, Buffalo Beast. Posted January 31, 2009.

Exhibit A: After burning through $200 million before Super Tuesday, Penn now blames Clinton's loss on inadequate funds.

Sentence: Surgically attached to Harold Ickes.

12. Dina Lohan

Charges: Fame isn't the only thing that screws up child stars; it starts with self-obsessed, psychopathic parents living out their failed ambitions through their hapless offspring (Dina has been telling false stories of her days as a Rockette and Broadway actress for years). Her college-aged daughter may be a rehab veteran and serial drunk driver, but that's no reason for mom not to televise the warping of daughter number two, a pre-rhinoplasty 14-year-old with no discernible talent or personality who calls the absent Lindsay her "role model," and an 11-year-old boy whose future mugshot will no doubt become iconic. You may think your parents sucked, but at least they didn't do it on TV.

Exhibit A: Rarely has a person's life been so succinctly synopsized by real events as when Lohan's house caught fire with her minor children alone inside while she was busy accepting -- no shit -- a "Mother of the Year" award.

Sentence: Age, ugliness, poverty, obscurity.

11. David Addington

Charges: In a nation fat with lawyers, it takes something special to be the worst of them all. If a White House legal argument is evil, unconstitutional and makes no actual sense, it’s a safe bet Grand Moff Addington is behind it. An expert in spook law since his early-‘80s stint as counselor to the CIA, Addington first hooked up with Cheney during the Iran-Contra hearings, even then pushing the “Unitary Executive” theory of unfettered presidential power and attempting to shoehorn dictatorship into the constitution. Addington thinks the president is above the law in times of war, which is awful convenient if you declare an endless war on a global battlefield. It’s this flimsy pretext on which the White House has evaded accountability for torture, domestic spying, and secret detention, proving that the best legal tools in DC are a straight face and a huge pair of balls.

Exhibit A: “I frankly don't know what you mean by the Unitary Theory of Government.”

Sentence: Declared an enemy combatant for farting in oval office; waterboarded with a fire hose by John Yoo.

10. Michelle Malkin

Charges: It's a remarkable achievement in unconscious projection that the author of a book called Unhinged could lose her fucking marbles over a patterned scarf in a donut ad, but that's what Michelle Malkin did when she sounded the nutbar clarion call and sicced her half-cocked league of masturbators on Rachel Ray and Dunkin Donuts for the flatly absurd notion that they were sending a message of solidarity with Palestinians. Right, Michelle -- you just can't sell donuts without joining the intifada these days. What did the nauseously spunky Ray do to incur the wrath of the Malkinoids? She wore a black and white scarf. A paisley scarf. A scarf that was clearly not a kaffiyeh, which, by the way, is just a hat that Arabs wear, not some universal symbol of jihad. In terms of completely false outrage, the only thing that rivaled this travesty of reason this year was the "lipstick on a pig" metaphor panic. But what puts this embarrassing sham over the top is that Dunkin Donuts actually apologized and pulled the ad, rather than try to explain to the fact-phobic horde that they were just blind, raging idiots with the collective brain-power of a lobotomized howler monkey.  

Exhibit A: "If your neighbor's got an "Obama '08" bumper sticker or lawn sign, you might want to double-check your door locks at night."

Sentence: Deported to China for wearing red T-shirt.

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