The 100 Most Heinous Cultural Atrocities of the 2000s: #40-31

January 1, 2000 to January 1, 2010. Ten years that felt like a colonic irrigation in reverse. And in the mouth.

We arrive, now, at the Top 40 of the bottom. Power up your hate-bazookas and train them alongside mine at oblivion-begging targets such as Vespa scooters, Vespa scooter drivers, Green Day, Entourage, the Matrix sequels, “alterna-“anything, and Michael Moore vs. The Passion of the Jesus.

What a dreadful decade. What a dreadful species.

Babs and Barry, youse was wrong: that these fecal abominations merely exist means that we ALL got something to be guilty of….

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40. THE LOVE OF 30 ROCK.
Frankly, anything that is not Tracy Morgan on 30 Rock demands to be buried up to its (no doubt, scarf-adorned) neck and get pelted into puree by 30 sizable, hefty, powerfully projected rocks—a minimum of 30 times each. And then 30 more. With 30 more rocks. And so on.

It’s not that the show itself hasn’t provided me with an occasional odd yuk—again, it does feature the mighty Tracy Morgan—but it is gimmicky, desperate to be adorable, and emptier than any of those ghastly post-Far-Side single-panel newspaper cartoons that, in fact, the show’s writers seem to graft verbatim into each episode as wretchedly unfunny cutaways.

Much is made of Alec Baldwin as the network honcho and, for certain, he can be a very amusing presence. But where Alec Baldwin belongs on TV is opposite Robert Osborne co-hosting Turner Classic Movies‘ “The Essentials”, and he’s already there.

Tina Fey, I suppose, is the core issue, and there’s no quibble as to her talent and even out-of-character likability.

But “Liz Lemon”, per se, is a worthless creation outside of embodying a mongoloid Ideal for middle-age-adjacent cunts (of any gender) who learned their lameness from Sassy and minoring in Women’s Studies and Liz Phair’s phalse claims of wanting “to be your blow job queen” and proudly being too “Lollapalooza” to ever actually go Riot Grrl, all the while en route to marriage, reproduction, and property ownership while being convinced that they are just the most hoo-larious “geek vixens” to ever try to make you think that they, personally, invented saying the words “I HEART”, and most especially when they are followed by “… BACON!”

Specific enough for you?

And, hence, disdain is officially and specifically dispensed for the adoration of this irritant where every awful, cutesy transgression gets excused and bombing clods of anti-humor that elicit natural groans get automatically converted into forced, fake, and—above all—LOUD laughter.

Just think of the dingus who plays the page. The thing where THAT comes from wins the “Best Comedy Series” Emmy every year.

And, yet, none dare call it cunt-spiracy.

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39. The Onion A/V Club’s Annual “Best of the Year” Edition
Area Man Saddened and Revolted to Read Uniform Praise for Arcade Fire, Wes Anderson, McSweeneys. Again. And Again. And Again. And Always.

Each holiday season, it hits: the horrendous moment when one is forced to face the fact that these people who write such funny, inventive things all year long have been doing it to the sights and sounds of the most self-serious self-congratulatory, depressingly pat, and glumly predictable things all the while.

And that’s when this Onion really can make you cry.

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38. AMERICAN IDIOT(S).
Green Day eats shit.

Their fans eat shit.

But there is a special extra-runny feces buffet reserved for True Believing Shit-Eaters in the “reevaluation” of Green Day after they issued an album of the exact same slavishly aped, anciently ineffective “punk” that comprises the totality of what these simps are capable of dumping out.

AH! But with American Idiot, Blowy Joe and the bros made sure to point out in press releases that, on this disc, they, like, really, really, really, seriously call George W. a A-hole.

By gum, even Rolling Stone magazine itself let us know on the cover that Green Day “saved” rock! What a feat!

Especially after Rolling Stone has spent all these decades slaughtering and entombing the goddamn thing.

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37. The MATRIX sequels.
Did you see these torpid ruinations of the original?

Did I?

Does anyone remember?

No?

Well if THE MACHINES are really that merciful, I side with Joey Pants and say, “Fuck the fuck out of you, Neo!”

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36. ALTERNADAD by NEAL POLLACK.
And anything else by Neal Pollack. And anything else preceded by the prefix “Alterna-.” And Chuck Klosterman.

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35. ENTOURAGE.
Douchebag codification so complete that it all but obliterated the potency of the term “douchebag” while, remarkably, spawning more and more and more and more of them. Forever and ever and ever.

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34. FAHRENHEIT 9/11 vs. THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST.
Or Keith Olbermann vs. Bill O’Reilly.

Or Al Franken vs. Rush Limbaugh.

Or Rachel Maddow vs. Glenn Beck.

Or Sarah Silverman vs. Sarah Palin.

Or Daily Kos vs. Newsmax.

Or The Daily Show vs. Fox News.

Or NPR vs. Sean Hannity.

Or Janeane Garofolo vs. Ann Coulter.

Or Whole Foods vs. Wal-Mart.

Or indie rock vs. country pop.

Or hybrids vs. NASCAR.

Or “choice” vs. “life.”

Or The Comedians of Comedy vs. The Blue Collar Comedy Tour.

Or utmost, unquestioning faith in a baffling, unread book by Charles Darwin vs. utmost, unquestioning faith in the baffling, too-closely-read Book of Genesis.

Or Bush = Hitler vs. Obama = Hitler.

Or any other easily-purchased “culture war” short-hand identifier for: “Looky! I picked a side and got on it! Thinking’s over now! Time to just swallow whole and hard and fight-fight-fight! Got to stop THEY! THEM! THOSE PEOPLE!”

However, for personal reasons, I must single out the Michael Moore vs. Mel Gibson moment.

Obviously, my sympathy is automatically inclined toward Mad Max over the lump who hires gun-toting guards to protect his Upper West Side penthouse but who makes the money to pay them by agitating so that we who can’t afford such pricey muscle also won’t be able to enjoy the same firepower.

And the whole “million-dollar working class hero” schtick was retch-inducing when John Lennon attempted it—and he was John Lennon!

Regardless, I never actually made it all the way through The Passion of the Christ because, frankly, it just doesn’t make amusing enough good on the material with which Gibson was so hilariously adept while he was in handcuffs and blowing quintuple Breathalyzer digits.

The cries of anti-Semitism against Passion invariably arose (as they always do) from the sort of Chosen and Gentile alike who bombastically mock the idea of, say, gangsta rap promoting ghetto violence.

Nonetheless, THIS extra-super-ultra-toxic material got them bellowing with righteous rage in assured horror that Gibson’s Snuff-Goes-the-Jesus saga would send goyim hordes storming into synagogues and emerging only after crafting and donning long necklaces of blood-soaked yarmulkes and tefillin.

Those same Defenders of the Allegedly Defamed—who, again, disgustedly guffaw at the theory that Grand Theft Auto might play a part in X-Box-addicted imbeciles baseball-batting real-world prostitutes—simultaneously believed that the power of the mass media could, however, do … “good.”

But they just had to get the message out … if they could only back up the work of the Disney organization in promoting a wide-release motion-picture with a billion-dollar promotional thrust that just could not possibly fail to win hearts and cleanse minds … if they could just get you to pay to see Fahrenheit 9/11.

And by “you”, I mean “me.”

And very specifically, I mean the time I was out grabbing a bite with friends several days before F-9/11 opened.

Every American with at least two functioning senses was, at that point, at least six months into the documentary’s inescapable online “controversy” campaign and at least six weeks into the inescapable TV, radio, billboard, flyers, print, online, and in-front-of your-face-at-public-urinals advertising juggernaut.

So I was sitting down to a burrito next to my pal Don and he asked: “What are you doing Friday?”

I said I had no plans and he continued: “Well … okay, good. Okay.”

Don cleared his throat a little and took on the air of a High Enlightener doing some Extremely Important Education—by speaking Very, Very Slowly and Very, Very Clearly and Very, Very Simply.

“Okay,” Don said (a third time). “There’s a movie coming out Friday called Fahrenheit 9/11 that’s very critical of President Bush.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said, tensing my guts for the Morally Imperative Pitch I knew was to follow.

“Well,” Don continued, “naturally the government is trying to quash it. So, uh, this organization I’m involved with, Move On, is asking people to see the movie or at least buy tickets to support it.”

“It’s not my thing, man,” I said, cutting him off.

Kindly.

Because all I wanted was to chow down and not have to Be Right.

And also because I was 35, and not 15 or 25 (or, to be honest, 34), and enjoying Don as a friend was more important to me than drilling my wrath into him by asking just HOW, exactly, the government was trying to “quash” this monstrous source of tax revenue or by pointing out that Don and “the organization” with which he was “involved” were proselytizing (very much religiously) on behalf of corporate coiffeurs and the-above-the-title brand-name’s trusty ol’ war profiteering.

So, instead of that, chow down we did and convivially discuss our favorite sorts of vaginal lips we did, too.

In peace.

Today, I remain nicely chummy with Don, although I’ve often detected an air of what I suppose is “benevolent pity” from him directed toward my savage simpleton benightedness.

For if not Don … and Move On … and Michael Moore … who WILL save my soul? Or, more importantly, THE HEART AND/OR SOUL OF AMERICA?

Who, dammit!? … YOU?

Please try. But only with cash. For I am, most assuredly, for sale.

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33. Any element of ANA MARIE COX that isn’t breast tissue.

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32. VESPA scooters.
Suddenly, this is acceptable big-city commuter transportation?

For … adults?

SAYS FUCKING WHO?!?!

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31. The dreadful lack of fatal VESPA scooter accidents.
For if even one, single, solitary Vespa scooter accident doesn’t kill its driver, that, in and of itself, comprises a dreadful lack of fatality.

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Sheesh! 30 more of these left? Well, they do get more suckadelic. Next go: Bill Maher, crocodile tears for Joe Strummer, the “Red State/Blue State” conceit, and the PABST! BLUE! RIBBON! deceit.

While you wait, commemorate our being in The Top 40 with this ageless jewel:

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