The 100 Most Heinous Cultural Atrocities of the 2000s: #50-41

January 1, 2000 to January 1, 2010. Ten years that shook the septic tank. And overflowed it.

All right, we’re halfway to the bottom. Parrr-teeee!

Ten more leaps downward, with nadirs including “foodies,” what’s become of Bill Murray, horror-comedy, Aaron Sorkin, the decimation of the word “douche”, George Clooney, and more.

Always more… ever further … lower … and lower….

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50. THE WEST WING
Jingoism for pussies.

Religious zealotry for pompous liars who need the world to think they’re too “smahhht” for religion and/or zealotry.

A pacifier, shiny mobile, and comfy diaper—all in one!—for happily infantilized fools aching to believe and proselytize: “MY Good Daddy wants to SAVE America! That OTHER Bad Daddy wants to DESTROY America!”

Pornography for blank-brained adults who beamingly brandish “I VOTED!” stickers each first Tuesday in November, like children in the 1950s running around with Mickey Mouse Club ears and Davy Crockett caps (only The Mickey Mouse Club and Davy Crockett were awesome and the children had better taste and were more mature).

Codification of “patriotic” and “American” as badges and instant fall-back jargon for haughty Caucasians ever on the lookout for short-cuts to declare their Moral Perfection.

Nuclear-potent propaganda for the willfully, desperately dim, promoting the sports-modeled “Red State/Blue State” divide-and-conquer stranglehold of the Ruling Class by insisting: “Pick your side and fight-fight-fight! Because THIS is important! In fact, THIS is the ONLY THING that’s important! So fight for it! Fight-fight-fight! But only each other! Go!”

Gloss-slopped lies in plain sight declaring that something noble (and “patriotic!” and “American!”) exists among the suit-and-tie succubi whose sole life goal is to sit behind a desk and dictate to you and me what we must do—for THEM—while they are backed up by a billion gun-barrels (which THEIR hands will never touch).

And most deplorable of all: having to live with the knowledge that a mollusk exists who once giddily proclaimed: “Of course I love Battlestar Galactica! It’s ‘The West Wing in Space’!”

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49. The word: “FOODIES.”
Worse: the half-baked, skin-wrapped, ass-mocha-foam-infused economy-sized servings of flambéed feces who identify as “foodies.”

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48. VEGAS, BABY! VEGAS!
Hey, gang!

We’re a bunch of suburban, sports-nut, lite-beer-hoisting bro-hams who live for carrying the wicked office fun of casual Friday over into the bar at TGI Fridays.

We refer to attractive females as “talent.” In fact, one of our dawgs is so out-there, he calls them “candy”!

We rock the Springsteen, the U2, then maybe an AC/DC jam, and then maybe even some—hang on to your FM-classic-rock-formatted jock-straps—Green Day!

College was the defining blast of all blasts for us, brah.

And we ache for that broseph-hood, we need it, we ARE it, even though we’re totally into our hottie-hot-hot wives and totally awesome kids who we’re already training for NFL hugeness.

But we’re, like GUYS, now. GUY’S GUYS!

And we’re entitled to THE GOOD LIFE!

So what does that mean?

Blackberries? Blu-rays? Digi-cams? Flat-screens? Netbooks? We got ’em! Keep up on all the Gadget Guides, even while we’re piloting our sweet rides to-and-fro the ol’ cul-de-sac homestead.

In fact, especially when we’re on the road … which reminds me … heeeeeey …. ROAD TRIP!!!

And where do fucking repulsive square humps go when they really wanna … CUT LOOSE?

Where can you booze, gamble, maybe huff a little tootski, pay a bim to squirm across your fly and maybe even kiss your ding-ding in a dark room?

Well, anybody can do any and all of that ANYWHERE, but ….

Where do corporately programmed-down-to-a-cellular-level zeros go when they want just an—oooooooh!—naughty naughty taste of the WILD SIDE?

Where can we go where the old ladies will just sigh about “Oh, boys being boys….” while they run wild with our credit cards so we can have something to communally bitch about after the fact?

Where is this oozing, sickening pustule of braindead consumerism packaged as pre-fabricated rebellion?

Where is all this, just, deeee-licious vice possible while never daring to leave the all-encompassing embrace of societally sanctioned safety?

Vegas, baby.

VAAAAAAAAYYYY-GISSSSSSSS!

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47: DJs, DJ culture, DJing as acceptable life-calling (and anything other than immediate death calling).
This rage applies exclusively to the post-Wolfman-Jack, post-Cousin-Brucie, post-Top-40 AM radio/progressive-rock FM radio definition of the term “disc jockey.”

Also excused: the dorkuses enabling wedding reception “Chicken Dances” and record-store nerds enjoying a night out, embarking on the only version of “showing off” they’re likely to ever have (forgive me: I’ve been there).

No, the DJverse in question here involves the monstrosities who “spin” at dance clubs for the gargoyles who would enter such hell-pits motivated by any reason other than court order.

Skaggier still is the DJ who hopes that, jeepers, maybe one day he or she can waft to dizzying heights of DJdom on the fumes of Samantha Ronson’s Marlboro-Red-and-vaginal-mucous breath and—maybe, just maybe—wiggle up there in the booth lording over, like … celebrities!

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46. The post-FACTS OF LIFE fact of GEORGE CLOONEY.
Esquire magazine wants you to understand that the mere image of Hollywood entitlement at its most presumptuous, smug, disconnected, and forced-down-our-gullets bogus is the very literal—and, in fact, the only—picture of “HOW TO BE A MAN.”

“What the fuck is Esquire magazine?”, you ask.

Congratulations, you are a man.

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45. The cooptation and corruption of the once glorious term “DOUCHE”.
Pay attention, douches:

“Douche” as epithet entered the popular lexicon in late November 1985—exactly and precisely—courtesy of Howard Stern.

That was when Stern debuted on Infinity Broadcasting’s WXRK-FM after three years on WNBC-AM.

Prior to that, “douchebag” was a popular insult tossed around for years, from rooftop to chimney, from Harlem to Bimini.

And Stern had shocked the shit out of New York airwaves by routinely referring to callers, station management, and whoever else he deemed to bless as “douchebags.”

Most famously, he rechristened his traffic reporter Donna Fiducia as “Donna Fuh-douchebag.”

Upon graduating to the FM band, Infinity’s censors informed Stern that he could no longer utter the word “douchebag” and so he shortened it to merely “douche”, which actually, in its odd-sounding objectification, proved more potent, both for comedy and mean-spiritedness.

(Similarly, “scumbag” had to be shortened to “scum”, which evolved into the more amusing “skunk.”)

Like it or not, Howard’s influence on day-to-day language has been monumental and permanently culture changing.

For 25 years, Stern broadcasted previously unimaginable topics while using previously criminal language into the daily commutes of the New Yorkers and Los Angelenos who control and shape everything we see and hear all day.

And from there arose “douche.”

It was everybody else who ruined it. Forever. Fucking douches.

44. THE OTHER HOLLYWOOD: THE UNCENSORED ORAL HISTORY OF THE PORN INDUSTRY by Legs McNeil.
Legs McNeil always struck me as the spore that suctioned itself to the mighty John Holmstrom at Punk magazine, a fact he mortifyingly proved correct via his attempts to do something, anything, on his own at Spin back in the ’80s.

I also hated his Please Kill Me oral history of first-wave New York City punk-rock, because the book’s primary purpose was to solidify and perpetuate the Rolling Stone/Rock-N-Roll Hall of Fame OFFICIAL STORY of punk’s totality.

You know it: that fucking fakery that starts with CBGB’s and the Sex Pistols forever “blowing away” Yes and ELP, reportedly “peaks”with The Clash, and then does nothing until Nirvana, and then it stops, and then there’s (bleeccch) American Idiot and then it stops again.

And, on that lying, despicable front, Please Kill Me succeeded.

And Patti Smith can go shave my armpits.

Naturally, I expected McNeil’s approach to porn to be the most warmed-over, stepped-on-jizzbag take on the topic and—surprise!—he didn’t surprise me.

Here is exactly who, by the 2005 publication of The Other Hollywood, never, ever, under any circumstances, needed to speak about pornography again: perpetually unfunny tub-a-lub Ron Jeremy, somehow less funny tub-a-lub Bill Margold, and bad-lisp-with-terrible-breast-implants Nina Hartley.

Need anyone point out which three voices are quoted most relentlessly, and uselessly, throughout the Legs McNeil opus?

Chapters rehashing Deep Throat (1972), the ultimate Abel-offs-Cain outcome of the makers of Behind the Green Door (1972), and the long, strange drip of John Holmes present amateur encapsulations of stories properly and grippingly documented by the respective tomes The Complete Linda Lovelace by Eric Danville and X-Rated: The Mitchell Brothers—A True Story of Sex, Money, and Death by David McCumber, and John Holmes: A Life Measured in Inches by Jennifer Sugar and Jill C. Nelson.

The Traci Lords story is better served by the (self-serving) Underneath It All, credited to History’s Most Spectacular jailbait herself and, hugely more amusingly, in Lights! Camera! Sex! by Christy Canyon who, make no mistake, did compose that magnificent score-settler all by her own hands and glands.

Remarkably, McNeil’s sole original contribution is an endless, endlessly boring account of FBI investigations into the skin-flick trade, with one fed after another naming Mafiosa monikers, and nobody even getting wasted—except the reader, in terms of his time and effort when it comes to anything ever authored by a grown man who’s last name is not “Diamond,” but who’d still have you refer to him as “Legs.”

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43. The genre: HORROR-COMEDY.
Scare me or make me laugh, but don’t try to do both.

Because if you’re not Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Fright Night (1985), Re-Animator (1985), Return of the Living Dead (1985), Night of the Creeps (1986) or TerrorVision (1986), you’re probably trying to be Evil Dead II (1987) and, from there, all contemporary horror-comedy emerges.

And it is the product of filmmakers too incompetent to make a frightening horror movie so they try to cover up with gags and it is the favorite subgenre of horror-fans-in-name-only who actually hate bona fide horror.

And none of it is good.

No, I have not seen Shaun of the Dead (2004). Stop automatically asking.

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42. Those twee dioramas on the cover of SARAH VOWELL books.
But really: just Sarah Vowell.

41. 21st Century BILL MURRAY.
The de-evolution of a comic maestro from Meatballs (superb) and Caddyshack (sublime) to Wes Anderson (terrible) and Jim Jarmusch (the worst).

And—let us never excuse, or forget, or forgive—Zombieland.

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Christ, am I a miserable windbag! But fret not, there’s more heated gas en route, next time including Vespa scooters, 30 Rock, “alterna-”, Entourage, Michael Moore, and the annual Onion A/V Club “Best of the Year” edition.

Till then, sweet things, don’t miss:

The 100 Most Heinous Cultural Atrocities of the 2000s: #100-81

The 100 Most Heinous Cultural Atrocities of the 2000s: #80-61

The 100 Most Heinous Cultural Atrocities of the 2000s: #60-51

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