Well, it's Christmas Day, and my present to my readers is an entry in which I look back on the winners of the year and the losers of the year. . . as I see them! This year I'm going to try to pick one (or two) of each from various fields of interest - movies, politics, sports, and the like - to try for a more balanced list. Well, more or less.
So here we go, with my picks for the winners of the year:
Julia Louis-Dreyfus. "Seinfeld" curse? What "Seinfeld" curse? The only former "Seinfeld" cast member without a Y chromosome finally has her own hit series - "The New Adventures of Old Christine" - which not only got renewed for a full season after a spring tryout, it gained Louis-Dreyfus an Emmy in September.
Nancy Pelosi. The results of the November elections made Mrs. Pelosi both the first female Speaker of the House in the nation's history and, constitutionally speaking, the most powerful woman in the nation, in line to become our first female President should Bush be assassinated by an anarchist and Cheney have one heart attack too many.
Charles Schumer. Thanks to his stewardship of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the U.S. Senate went Democratic. Not one incumbent Democrat lost, and every open seat went Democratic. . . except one. (Sorry, Tennessee!)
Sasha Baron Cohen. The cultural learnings of his Borat movie made a benefit for our glorious nation of America, where American moviegoers learned to laugh at both themselves and bigotry. And, thanks to his star turn in the Will Ferrell movie Talladega Nights, we can be assured that he's no one-trick pony.
The Pittsburgh Steelers. The once mighty NFL team - called America's Team in the seventies by football fans who hated the Dallas Cowboys :-D - returned to glory this past February by winning Super Bowl XL.
Howard Stern. He took his raucous shock jock schtick to satellite radio, and got a generation of young men to stop fooling around and get Sirius.
Satellite radio. With or without Stern (and Opie and Anthony, who have a program on XM) , satellite radio is certain to grow by leaps and bounds, because many of its stations don't have advertising and regular commercial radio is so awful. Ironically, the idea of paying for satellite radio isn't that much different from the radio operating licenses British people pay to support advertising-free BBC Radio, which doesn't require a satellite receiver and broadcasts high-quality fare, yet Americans would never pay a licensing fee on their radios or television sets to support public broadcasting.
Stephen Colbert. Fresh from his appearance at the Washington correspondents' dinner, Colbert has spent the year effectively savaging and lampooning conservative news commentators like Bill O'Reilly and Joe Scarborough, and he's made his show the most important talk show for guests to promote their books or their political campaigns (or both), after Jon Stewart's "Daily Show." Plus, Colbert has been something of a kingmaker, getting folks like former rock and roller John Hall elected to Congress by having them on his program. Keep up the good work, pencil-neck! :-D
Barry Manilow. The Sultan of Seventies Schmaltz scored his first chart-topping album since 1979, a record of fifties standards, and followed it up with a sixties standards CD that was nearly as successful. In between, Manilow walked away with an Emmy for his recent TV special and held his own with Stephen Colbert on the Pencil-Necked One's show.
Albert Gore and Joseph Lieberman. After winning the popular vote in 2000 but having Florida's electoral votes - and the Presidency and Vice Presidency - taken away from them, the less-than-dynamic duo were ridiculed as the "Sore Loserman" ticket by Republicans. But thanks to the success of his documentary movie about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore is suddenly being talked about as a potential presidential candidate again (even though he's expressed disinterest in running) and Lieberman came back from a Senate primary loss in Connecticut to win a fourth term in the Senate as an independent Democrat when Ned Lamont, the offical Democratic Senate nominee in the Nutmeg State, failed to click with voters in the general election.
Husbands. Once upon a ratings cycle, American television was dominated by sitcoms depicting husbands as ignorant, fat, loutish jerks married to perfect women they were too clueless to appreciate. No more. "Still Standing" and "Yes Dear" both bit the dust at CBS, and "The King of Queens" has just begun a truncated final season on that network. True, "According To Jim" is still on over at ABC, but how many television viewers are aware of that fact? So now, married men no longer have to worry about getting ridiculed so much.
Helen Mirren. The esteemed British actress received rave reviews from the press and the public alike this year for her portrayals of both English queens named Elizabeth, as well as for her portrayal of Superintendent Jane Tennison in the final installment of PBS's "Prime Suspect" - a performance Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times called the most regal of the three.
Toyota. Japan's largest automaker has been gaining on General Motors for international supremacy, and in some months it even outsold the beleaguered Ford Motor Company in the U.S. Oh, what a feeling, indeed.
Florida. With Jeb Bush, Mark Foley, and Katharine Harris going gently into that good night, the Sunshine State no longer has politicians to serve as punchlines for late-night comedians. Also, the Atlantic hurricane season was so light this year, Florida was spared even the least of it.
And now to the losers of the year:
The Republican Party. After suffering numerous corruption scandals - most of them involving Tom DeLay - and a bruising pedophilia scandal involving Florida congressman Mark Foley hanging around their necks like albatrosses, they were destined to go down to defeat in the congressional midterm elections. The Democrats didn't even have to do anything to win (and for the most part, they didn't); the Republicans practically handed power to them.
Heather Graham. The midseason replacement shows of the 2005-06 television season were mostly flops - NBC's "The Book of Daniel" lasted only four episodes, CBS's "Love Monkey" only three - but the big loser was "Emily's Reason's Why Not," a vehicle for the creamy Graham, which had only one episode broadcast on ABC and thus compromised its plural title. ABC had several reasons why not to air it again when they looked at the ratings, and Graham hasn't kept much of a profile since.
Scientologists. I'm not talking about Scientologists in general. Rather, I'm talking about individual Scientologists, who, coincidentally or not, flopped out this year. Jenna Elfman's sitcom failed, and Leah Remini, who stars in "The King of Queens," is seeing her show reach its end. Meanwhile, fellow Hubbardite Isaac Hayes undistinguished himself by quitting the voice cast of "South Park" after the animated series's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, ridiculed the science-fiction-inspired faith, demonstrating his inability to take a joke. But the biggest loser was Tom Cruise, whose third Mission Impossible movie underperformed at the box office even as his production company's deal with Viacom was canceled by Viacom chief Sumner Redstone. Also, his relationship with Katie Holmes kept getting more and more bizarre, what with their expensive wedding in Italy and their Vanity Fair cover with their baby Suri poking out of Tom's coat, which may have been intended to remind people of the back cover of Paul McCartney's first solo album (which showed his baby daughter Mary peeking out of his coat) but only served to remind folks what a creepy character Cruise really is. Paging Xenu!
Paul McCartney. Speaking of Paul. . . . Paul McCartney's Beatles song fantasizing what his life would would be like at 64 couldn't have been proven more wrong in this, the year of his sixty-fourth birthday. His nasty separation from second wife Heather, and the lurid stories that led up to the divorce filings, tarnished his good-guy image. There'll be no one waiting for him at 2:45 A.M., and Heather won't be sending him any birthday greetings or a bottle of wine next June. Hopefully, Paul will channel his disappointments into his music - the more restless the artist, the better the art. Otherwise, he's sincerely wasting away. But even if this divorce is expensive for him, renting a summer cottage on the Isle of Wight still won't be too dear. (If he owns a summer cottage, Heather will probably get that.)
American athletes in international competition. It simply hasn't been a good year for Americans on the playing field. Although the U.S. Winter Olympics team won 25 medals in Torino, second only to Germany's 29, and won nearly twice as many medals as their previously highest medal count at a non-American winter Olympiad, the big stars - Bode Miller, Michelle Kwan - flamed out spectacularly, and victorious athletes in other sports failed to capture anyone's imagination, excepting snowboarder Shaun White and possibly ice dancer Tanith Belbin. Also at Torino, Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis tarnished their speed-skating victories with a childish feud that suggested racial and regional fissures (Hedrick is a white Texan, Davis a black Chicagoan) back home. The American World Cup soccer team, forbidden to travel through Germany for games in a bus displaying the U.S. flag for fear of arousing anti-American sentiment, failed to make it out of the qualifying matches after losing to Ghana. Cyclist Floyd Landis got stripped of his Tour de France win after testing positive for steroids and isn't likely to be reinstated as the winner even if the test results are overturned. And not even Tiger Woods, who actually had a good year overall, could save the U.S. golf team at the Ryder Cup in Britain. They went, they saw. . . . Maybe they should have stayed home.
Ford. When the nation's second largest automobile company has to offer buyouts to all its salaried employees and close numerous plants, then insist their downsizing is a "way forward" - a phrase that's as derivative (Toyota's current tagline is "Moving Forward") as it is ironic - you have to wonder who's in charge in Dearborn. Few if any of Ford's plans seem to address the lack of appealing product, which they would have had by now if they hadn't relied so heavily on SUV sales for so long.
British rock. Once upon a time, a British rock band could have an album go gold in America upon release. Elton John, a Brit, was the first performer to have an album enter the Billboard charts at number one in 1975, and he did it twice that year. No more. The Arctic Monkeys, allegedly revered in Britain, released their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, in America this year, and it entered the American charts at a pathetic number 24. Also, when the year began, the Arctic Monkeys' debut album was hailed in the U.K. as one of the best albums ever. Now, as the year draws to a close, I doubt anyone in Britain can even remember its title.
Rock in general. Rock and roll - once a rebellious noise that annoyed parents throughout Western civilization - is so close to extinction that the cliche that rock is dead may have to be taken literally. Rock radio stations in America are going off the air, CBGB's in New York closed, rock albums don't hit the top of the charts anymore - they don't even come close - and most young people dislike rock, preferring hip-hop because it's rebellious noise that annoys their rock-loving parents. Now there's irony for you. The assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, which sparked World War I, signaled the end of the Hapsburg empire; the inability of the rock group Franz Ferdinand to gain Jay-Z-like exposure suggests the end of rock and roll.
Katie Couric. CBS's new nightly news anchor was supposed to change CBS's news ratings. She did just that; they're down after temporary anchor Bob Schieffer got them up. . . just as temporarily.
Colorado. The state that gave us Gary Hart and the Coors family hit new Rocky Mountain lows. Just when the Centennial State's citizens thought that the JonBenet Ramsey case - Colorado's most notorious murder mystery - was closed, the man who confessed to the crime proved to be delusional, so the case remains unsolved. A major blizzard crippled much of the state, including Denver International Airport, sending out ripples that affected air travel all over the country. And as if that weren't bad enough, Gary Hart is rumored to be considering a run for the Presidency again.
Michael Richards and John Kerry. You gotta hand it to these guys. I didn't think that what they did was possible - they killed their own careers long after they were already dead!
Rhythm and blues. It's not because rap has replaced R&B as the most socioculturally relevant form of black popular music. It's because Lou Rawls, Wilson Pickett, Billy Preston, June Pointer, Gerald Levert, and, today, James Brown (I'll have more about that later) all died. :-(
Donald Rumsfeld. The Iraq War was certainly a blunder, but if there was any chance of it coming out even mildly favorable for the United States, Rummy pretty much ruined it. Good riddance.
And finally. . .
George W. Bush. Let's look on the bright side - Karl Rove could have set up a hospital and made W his chief brain surgeon.
Merry Christmas, and a happy new year. Please note that no one made the losers list for getting downsized from two jobs in one year. ;-)
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