2012: Winners and Losers

Well, it's that time of year again, time to tally up the winners and losers of the year gone by.  Gee, in a year that began with a mild winter in the Northeast and ended with a superstorm named Sandy as the price to pay for such a winter, in a year in which began with Newt Gingrich, then Rick Santorum, as the next President of the United States and ended with Barack Obama still the President of the United States, in a year in which Dick Clark died and First Night celebrations for New Year's Eve were canceled, yet the world did not end ten days before the year did, in a year in which Lolo Jones was hyped more than any other U.S. Olympic athlete and did worse than any other U.S. Olympic athlete - except the guys in men's team sports, of course - where do I begin?

How about the the winners' list, followed, as always, by the losers' list? These lists shifted like sand as I added and subtracted candidates to each of them.  I went from not enough to choose from -  I was aiming for ten each - to having too many to choose from, and so I decided that, since this is 2012, why not twelve each? Even then, I had more candidates than I could think of, so some were dropped.  The aforementioned Lolo Jones was briefly on my losers' list for living down to expectations, but her embarrassments were minor in comparison to those of the male athlete (and football team) that made the losers' list instead.  Conversely, other names were added at the last minute.  I didn't expect to put any political candidates other than President Obama on my winners' list, but when I had an extra slot, I decided that Elizabeth Warren, the incoming U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, deserved it.

So, without further ado, here is my list of winners for 2012, which requires sincerity and honesty on my part in explaining their places here.  And if I can fake that, I'll have it made.

Barack Obama.  He stood for election to a second term facing a well-funded opposition, a struggling economic recovery, and a health care law no one understood, much less liked.  But he was able to get his health care law successfully argued before the Supreme Court, he skillfully got his voter base out in the election, and he demonstrated the effectiveness of good government in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  He now stands to makes the transition from being a good President to being a great one.        

Suzanne Collins. The author of "The Hunger Games," a 2008 book describing a post-apocalyptic world in which young people engage in mortal combat, had her book turned into a movie, which she co-produced.  It was a huge box office hit, costing $78 million to make and grossing $685 million at the theaters.

Dennis Quaid. Given  the failures of NBC ("The Playboy Club") and ABC ("Pan Am") to copy the success of AMC's "Mad Men" with dramas of their own set in the 1960s, CBS's "Vegas," which stars Quaid as a sheriff in 1960s Las Vegas tangling with a gangster (Michael Chiklis), probably wasn't given much of a chance.  Instead, it's one of CBS's biggest hits of the 2012-13 season.  

Carly Rae Jepsen.  Call her, maybe, a big star? The Canadian pop singer had such a huge hit with "Call Me Maybe" - it hit number one on the pop singles chart - that even people who don't keep up with what's on the charts couldn't avoid it, and everyone from Colin Powell to the U.S. swim team ended up singing it.

Great Britain.  The sun has risen again on Old Blighty.  The British successfully hosted the 2012 Olympics in London, Adele remains a powerhouse on the international music charts, the Queen celebrated her sixtieth anniversary on the throne, the Rolling Stones are touring to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary together, and Skyfall, the most recent James Bond movie, is the biggest box office success in British history and the fourth most successful Bond movie of all time.  And Will and Kate are expecting!  The United Kingdom hasn't been this relevant since the days of the Beatles.

California sports franchises.  The San Francisco Giants won the World Series for the second time since moving to the Golden State. Earlier in the year, the Los Angeles Kings - a hockey team once considered so bad they needed double-bladed skates - won the Stanley Cup for the first time ever.  Eureka!    

Seventies classic rock.  Even as rock music is going through a catastrophic time these days (see below),  a much-maligned period of the rock era is receiving new appreciation.  Rush and Heart just got selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for 2013, Led Zeppelin got a Kennedy Center honor while releasing a movie of their 2007 reunion concert (Celebration Day) to great acclaim, and Gregg Allman put out a highly readable and highly interesting memoir that the PBS NewsHour took seriously enough to talk to Allman about.  Seventies rock is cool now.  And if you have a problem with that, well, ex-cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me!          

Elizabeth Warren.  The esteemed Harvard professor and consumer rights advocate was seen as someone too effete, too liberal, and too intellectual to unseat regular-guy U.S. Senator Scott Brown, even in effete, liberal, and intellectual Massachusetts.  She not only won, she won big, and she was the only U.S. Senate challenger of either party to defeat an incumbent in the 2012 elections.  And she's also getting on the Senate Banking Committee over the objections of . . . bankers.

Michael Phelps.  Enough said. :-)

Chris Christie.  The New Jersey governor's prospects for re-election are assured, thanks to the masterful way he handled the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, showing a sensitive, compassionate side he's not usually known for, and on top of all that, he finally made friends with Bruce Springsteen.  He's now looking to 2016 and possibly getting a job that would allow him to run more than one state.

Ron Howard and Brian Grazer.  The executive producers of "Parenthood" can breathe easily.  Their show is pretty much assured to be on NBC for awhile.   

Star Wars fans.  The Walt Disney Company's purchase of Lucasfilm, Ltd. gives us fans of the Star Wars saga something to look forward to, something we thought we'd never see - the third trilogy, the stories that explain what happened after Return Of the Jedi, with Episode VII slated for a 2015 release.

And now, the losers:

the Republican Party.  With the country becoming less white and more progressive, the Grand Old Patricians nominated Mitt Romney - the whitest man to run for President since the senior George Bush - for the Presidency and gave us very severely conservative U.S. Senate candidates such as Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana.  The Republicans lost their bid for the White House, they lost two Senate seats when they were originally expected to gain more than the four they needed to win control of that chamber, and they kept the House only through dirty gerrymandering.  Moreover, they've squandered what little credibility they have left in the "fiscal cliff" debate.  I don't think they're going the way of the Whigs, though.  More likely, they'll go the way of the Federalists, whose demise was slower and much more painful.  

Janet Montgomery.  The British actress must have thought that playing a Jersey-bred - that is, New Jersey-bred - Italian-American lawyer on U.S. television would give her a chance to show off her acting chops.  Instead, she got what we New Jerseyans are best at giving - a bitch-slapping.  Her CBS show "Made In Jersey" was canceled after two episodes.    

the Walt Disney Company.  Turning Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter" stories - about a U.S. Civil War veteran who gets transported to Mars and fights twelve-foot barbarians - into a movie? Now there's an idea that can't miss! Except that it did miss, to the tune of $200 million.  No wonder the Disney dudes acquired George Lucas's production company and the Star Wars series.  Given their inability to start a successful sci-fi franchise of their own (anyone remember The Black Hole?), they had to buy one. 

Keith Olbermann.  The clown prince of political commentary proved to have more issues than Charlie Sheen, getting himself fired from Current TV after only a year for insubordination.  Once considered the on-air personality who would save Al Gore's beleaguered cable TV news network, he's now more of a pariah than Gore himself.  

Lance Armstrong.  Faced with the evidence that he cheated with performance-enhancing drugs in just about every cycling event he competed in, America's former Greatest Cyclist Ever preferred to stop contesting the truth rather than admit it.  With his Olympic and Tour de France victories wiped from the record books, his resignation from the board of his own cancer charity, and his credibility in tatters, you won't be seeing him endorse the Nissan Leaf anymore.  Would you buy a new car from this man?

New York rock radio.  If you belong to a new rock and roll band, don't expect any airplay in the Big Apple.  First, modern rock station WXRK-FM went off the air in 2009 and was replaced by a Top Forty station. Than WRXP-FM, which tried to mix classic rock, new rock, and local Tri-State acts, was bought out by a media company and had its three-year-old format changed to news in 2011.  But this year WRXP came back - albeit as a new-rock-only station - after the news format bombed, and the station's ratings tripled with little promotion.  That wasn't enough for its owners, who sold it to CBS Radio, who in turn changed the format to a simulcast of their New York AM sports station.  Don't bet on a fourth attempt at a new-rock station in New York; three strikes and you're out in this baseball town.

Rock music in general.  Rock stations all over the country are going off the air as hip-hop and Top Forty stations continue to thrive, electric guitar groups are increasingly unable to get record deals, the last great rock record ever recorded - Nirvana's Nevermind - is more than twenty years old, and the ongoing popularity of old rock talent like the Rolling Stones gives you a pretty clear idea of how dismissive people are of new rock talent. Rock and roll, once thought to be here to stay, has apparently outstayed its welcome.

Wayne LaPierre.  Tell me I'm not dreaming. Tell me that the leader of the National Rifle Association really did defend his organization in the wake of the Newtown shootings.  Tell me that the "hired gun" (pun very much intended) for the firearms industry actually called for more guns - and guns in schools - at a time when even many gun owners (many of who are rank-and-file NRA members) want to see more sensible firearms laws.  Tell me that he did indeed melt on television.  Gosh, I haven't seen him so starry-eyed since he shared a panel table with Charlton Heston.  If Wayno sticks around one moment longer, everyone will be convinced that "NRA" really does stand for "Nuts Ruining America."

Intelligent life in America.  It's not because of this country's pathetic literacy rate.  It's because noted cultural critics Paul Fussell and Gore Vidal died, and because Philip Roth announced his decision to retire from writing fiction.

the New England Patriots.  A superficial style icon with a bitchy attitude of entitlement spooked the Pats into losing Super Bowl XLVI to the New York Giants.  But enough about Madonna and her halftime show - supermodel Gisele Bündchen didn't do anyone any favors by distracting her Patriot husband Tom Brady, and her very vocal defense of him against a Pats fan during Super Bowl XLVI didn't help matters either.  One more curse for Boston sports fans to hope to see reversed.  Nothing "super" about this.

Kelsey Grammer.  As the mayor of Chicago in the the Starz series "Boss," the artist formerly known as Frasier Crane put that character to rest, but Grammer's own inability to settle down in his personal life likely provoked Starz to cancel his show after two seasons.  Worse, after a protracted battle to get full custody of his children with his now-former third wife, he took his new baby daughter by his new wife to . . . the Playboy Mansion? Frasier Crane himself would be aghast at such a psychological case study.     

Madonna haters.  Madge's most recent LP may have been a sales disappointment, but her stage show tour was the most successful live pop event of 2012, garnering $228 million in ticket sales, with some of those tickets sold even after her fans became aware of the offensively violent stage numbers in her act.  She added two shows in New York after the first two sold out.  Those of us who thought we'd heard the last of her were, again, bitterly disappointed.  But she's already ruined popular music irrevocably, so even if she disappears tomorrow, it's a moot point.  And forget about stopping her; the only thing that will stop Madge is when she drops dead.

And then she'll sell more records.

And there you have it, my list of winners and losers, though they're hardly definitive.  As I am a rock fan and a Madonna hater, the losers' list obviously includes me.  In fact, I found out firsthand how inescapable Madge is when I wrote an article this past year for one of the local news sites I labor for and my editor chose a title referencing "Like A Virgin." I was mortified, of course, but there was nothing I could do about it.  

Incidentally, I feel a need to clear up something in my Madonna-bashing blog post from February when I exhorted that Americans realize that something went horribly wrong with our popular music "on December 16, 1984, the day 'Like a Virgin' began its six-week run on the pop singles chart." I meant, of course, that that was the day it began its six-week run on the top of the pop singles chart. The original error, of course, has since been corrected.

I have to make a New Year's resolution to copyedit my blog better, or ask someone not too close to my writing for help . . ..