Last year’s Oblivion of the Year award went to the well-deserving Michael Moore.
This year, the Left’s biggest mouth was MIA. Moore stayed pretty quiet all year. In fact, he was mentioned only twice in the Grrr! column over the past 12 months.
I guess he’s lying low while he works on his next great documentary.
2005, however, was not remiss for Oblivion moments.
Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans apparently dismissed his police officers during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for some “rest.” Looting, starving and dying followed that Obliviot decision.
Disgraced FEMA Director Michael Brown, who stepped down in September after becoming the de facto fall guy for everything that went wrong with Katrina, actually started his own disaster recovery consulting firm. Huh?
And to top off what was already a tragic situation, rapper Kanye West declared at a Hurricane Katrina benefit concert that “President Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
Yeah, that’s a great way to encourage people to get out the checkbook for the cause. What an Obliviot.
And then there’s always La La Land…
Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon brought child molestation charges against Michael Jackson with perhaps the most flawed witnesses to ever appear in such a high-profile case — at least since Kato Kaelin.
Sneddon’s “hellbentia” to get Jackson saw the “King of Pop” go free after a jury of his “peers” acquitted him, most citing the lack of credibility from the alleged victim’s family.
“Don’t wave that finger at me!” Wahhhh, Wahhhhh, Wahhhhh!
One thing we can credit to Sneddon, however: Jackson banished himself to Bahrain, and for that we will forever be grateful.
Actually, I just don’t like Michael Jackson. But I do like Christmas. And that remark will make me a crusader trying to crush secularity in our great nation in the eyes of the ACLU. Actually, I just like Christmas. Then again, I like the holidays too, so my fellow Christians will bash me but I can’t win them all.
In Hollywood, “The Insider” Pat O’Brien entered rehab after being caught on tape making salacious offers for threesomes and sodomy to a female friend of his. It must be nice to have enough dough to enter rehab and waste counselors’ time every time some celebrity gets into hot water or needs a public relations makeover.
Unless, of course, these mega-exclusive (read: expensive as hell) rehab centers to the stars are really just posh spas designed to keep us little people in the dark. Oh, how naive we are!
Paris Hilton didn’t do much except make Carl Jr. famous in the form of a soft-core porn television commercial featuring the heir-head seductively washing a car while eating a burger. Huh?
Yeah, exactly, but it did the job for the burger joint. I just mentioned it again.
Donald Trump was an Oblivion for allowing Martha Stewart to jump on “The Apprentice” bandwagon. Like I predicted when the domestic diva was still in prison, her awful show will not be back for a second season, thankfully.
Oprah Winfrey, while not a complete Oblivion, didn’t help her cause after taking Hermes to task for not opening a closed store for her and her entourage. However, she more than made up for it with her broadcasts of known sex offenders and child molesters. No Grrr! there at all.
In fact, kudos to Oprah and continued kudos to “America’s Most Wanted” creator John Walsh for using the medium for some good.
Football millionaire Terrell Owens showed some Oblivionism in his quest to get even more attention from the Philadelphia Eagles until he was finally shown the door. The big-mouth whiner has been pretty quiet lately. “Next question.” How about this one: When will you fire your agent and play some ball?
“Next question.”
The biggest Oblivion in sports, however, has to be Rafael Palmeiro, who after declaring at a congressional hearing that he never took steroids was caught with Winstrol in his bloodstream. Winstrol is one of the most effective steroids out there, and no wonder: It’s used on thoroughbred horses to create lean muscle.
I don’t know about you, but that’s something I want running through my system. HeeeHeeeHeee.
Here in New York City the biggest Oblivions are the transit workers, who thought it would be a good idea to go on strike the week before Christmas, costing the New York economy an estimated $300 million a day. Here’s hoping Mayor Mike Bloomberg can bust the power-hungry union once and for all.
Hey, transit workers make more money than the majority of people who ride the subways. The very people who pay their salaries, and yet they walked out on them the week before Christmas.
But just who is the Oblivion of the Year? You might be surprised.
It’s not a celebrity. It’s not a politician. It’s not a news anchor, syndicated columnist or even a labor union.
For such a dubious award, we have to go back to the very basis of the Grrr! genre.
The Oblivions of the Year are the state legislators from New York, Connecticut, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan who want laws that force movie theaters to list actual movie start times so people can skip commercials.
Those are the true Oblivions.
Do we really need legislation for that? Don’t our elected officials have other things to deal with? I agree that being forced to watch commercials after forking over $10 to see a movie and more for concessions is a major Grrr!
But posting actual start times for movies will only make matters worse for moviegoers.
That’s right: Worse.
We all know that the Oblivions who arrive to movies late anyway will only arrive even later, thus ruining your movie.
I was in “King Kong” recently and of course, some Obliviot comes in late with his date and has the audacity to ask people to move so that he can sit with his woman. Imagine a dozen or so of this guy at every movie because he figures he’s got some time to kill before the movie starts — because he looked at the “actual” movie start time — and figures he’s got 15 minutes of BS before the movie starts.
Imagine his surprise when he arrives late.
Will the legislators then pass new laws that would require movie theaters to refund my money when I complain that some Oblivion and his date ruined my moviegoing experience because he was late and tripped over me in the dark in order to get into the one seat in the middle of my row?
Will they then pass laws requiring police to issue summonses to late arriving moviegoers? Or would they pass laws that prohibited entry to any late-arriving moviegoer?
If the law passes, you can look forward to an even bigger Grrr! than having to watch an annoying commercial at the theater. You’ll have to wear your steel-toed shoes and beg for headphone jacks to be installed in your seat so that when the people climb over you to get in their seat, you won’t suffer any broken toes, and you won’t miss a word.
Better yet, wait for the DVD.
Next Tuesday will feature the non-Oblivions of 2005.
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