2009: The Year of Stupid

Everybody who voted for him thought that when President Obama took office in January, the country would get busy fixing all the problems left over from the Bush administration, like ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, improving the depressed economy, reforming health care, and doing something to slow global warming. We optimistically thought that Congress would want to cooperate to achieve these goals. We were wrong. Apparently, the Republicans were pretty satisfied with the status quo and willing to do everything in their power to obstruct progress. To people like me, this was the equivalent of asking your dinner mate to pass the mustard while the runaway train you're on is hurtling toward destruction. Stupid.

And as the year wore on, it just got stupider: "birthers," "deathers," "tea baggers," Sarah Palin and her book tour. It was bad enough that the Republicans in Congress had become the party of "No!", but it was intolerable to see fellow citizens latching on to every stupid idea that came out of the mouths of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and their ilk. Former Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on political talk shows to cement his image as Darth Vader, and Karl Rove refused to shut up despite his persistent irrelevance. At least former President Bush was largely absent from the public sphere, the one thing we could have hoped for that came true.

Stupidity wasn't limited only to politics. Every day the news brought us more: the hoopla over Michael Jackson's death, Carrie Prejean's ignorant sensitivity, Jon and Kate's ugly divorce, the Balloon Boy hoax, the clueless White House party crashers, and Tiger Woods's excessive horndogging. The many celebrities who died this year were lucky they weren't around to see how stupid it could get.

There was an expression in the '70s: "The IQ of the universe is a constant. The population is increasing." Let's hope it's not true.

Happy New Year!