Looking back on 2017 is like waking up after a party where you made some poor decisions, such as drinking tequila squeezed from the underpants of a person you do not really know. (At least you hope it was tequila.)
The next day finds you lying naked in a dumpster in a different state, smeared from head to toe with a mixture of Sriracha sauce and glitter. At first you remember nothing. But then, as your throbbing brain slowly reboots, memories of the night before, disturbing memories, begin creeping into your consciousness. As the full, hideous picture comes into focus, you curl into a ball, whimpering, asking yourself over and over: Did that really happen?
That’s how we here at the Year in Review feel about 2017. It was a year so surreal, so densely populated with strange and alarming events, that you have to seriously consider the possibility that somebody — and when we say “somebody,” we mean “Russia” — was putting LSD in our water supply. A bizarre event would occur, and it would be all over the news, but before we could wrap our minds around it, another bizarre event would occur, then another and another, coming at us faster and faster, battering the nation with a Category 5 weirdness hurricane that left us hunkering down, clinging to our sanity, no longer certain what was real.
Take “covfefe.” Remember? For a little while, it was huge. Everybody was talking about it! Covfefe! But then, just like that, it was gone. What the hell WAS it? Did it even really happen?
Another example: We have this vague memory that, for the briefest flicker of a moment, the White House communications director was a pathologically bronze man named Anthony Scaramucci, who — remember, this was the White House communications director — called up a reporter for the New Yorker and informed him, on the record, that he, Anthony Scaramucci, differed from White House chief strategist Steve Bannon in that he, Anthony Scaramucci, THE WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, was not trying to commit an act of self-gratification that would be extremely challenging even for a professional contortionist.
Did THAT really happen?
And were there really thousands of people marching around Washington wearing vagina hats?
And did the secretary of state really call the president of the United States a “moron”?
And did the president (of the United States!) respond by challenging the secretary of state to compare IQ tests?
There’s one thing we definitely remember happening in 2017: the “fidget spinner” fad. This was huge, and for a good reason: It was extremely stupid. In terms of mental stimulation, fidget-spinning makes nose-picking look like three-dimensional chess. You mindlessly spin the thing around and around, accomplishing nothing. It’s an idiotic, brain-cell-destroying waste of time.
So it was the perfect fad for 2017.
The perfect artistic achievement was “The Emoji Movie,” which was released in July and was widely hailed by critics as possibly the stupidest movie ever made. It was the fidget spinner of movies. One of the emoji voices was provided by the distinguished British actor Patrick Stewart, who has been awarded many honors, including a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II.
The role played by Sir Patrick Stewart was: Poop.
If that wasn’t the essence of 2017, we don’t know what was.
So now, finally, it is time to flush this turd of a year down the commode of history. But before we do, let’s don eclipse glasses to prevent retina damage, then take one last flinching look back at the events of 2017, starting with ...
January
... which begins with the nation still bitterly divided over the 2016 election. On one side are the progressives, who refuse to accept Donald Trump as president, their reasoning being that:
1. He is Hitler.
2. He is literally Hitler.
3. He is LITERALLY WORSE THAN HITLER.
On the other side are the Trump supporters, whose position is:
1. You lost!
2. You whiny liberal pukes.
3. SHUT UP, LOSERS.
So there does not appear to be a lot of common ground between these positions. Nevertheless as the year progresses, the two sides will gradually find a way — call it the open-minded generosity of the American spirit — to loathe each other even more.
For his part, President Trump, having campaigned on three major promises — to build a border wall, repeal Obamacare and reform the tax system — immediately, upon being sworn in, rolls up his sleeves and gets down to the vital task of disputing news-media estimates of the size of the crowd at his inauguration, which the president claims — and Fox News confirms — was “the largest group of humans ever assembled.” The president also finds time, in his role as commander in chief, to tweet out numerous randomly punctuated tweets.
Assisting the president as he pursues this agenda is a crack White House team that includes Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Michael Flynn, Reince Priebusand Sean Spicer, all of whom will, in the coming weeks and months, disappear like teenagers in a “Friday the 13th” movie. In the Trump White House, you never know who will get whacked next, but you know somebody will. Although Melania seems reasonably secure in the post of first lady. For now.
Meanwhile the big emerging journalism story is the Russians, who, according to many unnamed sources, messed with the election. Nobody seems to know how, specifically, the Russians affected the election, but everybody is pretty sure they did something, especially CNN, which has not been so excited about a story since those heady months in 2014 when it provided 24/7 video coverage of random objects floating in the Pacific while panels of experts speculated on whether those objects might or might not have anything to do with that missing Malaysian airliner. You can tune in to CNN any time, day or night, and you are virtually guaranteed to hear the word “Russians” within 10 seconds, even if it’s during a Depends commercial.
The most exciting Russian angle concerns an alleged “dossier” that allegedly alleges that Trump allegedly paid some alleged prostitutes to allegedly urinate on an alleged bed that had allegedly been used by President Barack Obama during an alleged visit to Moscow. There appears to be no evidence whatsoever that this allegation is true, but since it involves two U.S. presidents AND prostitutes AND urine, many major news outlets — you know who you are — have no journalistic alternative but to run with it.
The biggest political story comes at the end of the month, when Trump nominates Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, noting that the letters in “Neil Gorsuch” can be rearranged to spell both “Heroic Lungs” and “Lunch Orgies.” Democratic leaders pledge to give Gorsuch a fair and open-minded hearing, then destroy him.
Finally, in the month’s non-Trump news, we have this: You’re an idiot. There WAS no non-Trump news. This trend will continue in ...
February
... when the Russia scandal claims its first victim as Michael Flynn is forced to resign as the president’s national security adviser following revelations that he misled Vice President Pence about discussions he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, whose name can be rearranged to spell “Seeks Girly Yak.” Trump thanks Flynn for his estimated 2 h ours and 35 minutes of outstanding service to the administration, then resumes his laserlike executive concentration on the crucial task of emitting grammatically questionable tweets about FAKE NEWS. The already strained relationship between the Trump administration and the press deteriorates into open hostility, culminating in a White House press briefing that consists entirely of press secretary Sean Spicer and CNN correspondent Jim Acosta spitting on each other.
There actually are a few non-Trump events in February:
● NASA, in a major scientific discovery, announces that a star system less than 40 light-years away contains seven Earth-size planets, at least three of which appear to have a Starbucks.
●In the Super Bowl, 57-year-old quarterback Tom Brady leads the New England Patriots to a remarkable comeback victory over the Atlanta Falcons that definitely involved cheating. We just don’t know how yet.
●At the Grammys, Adele wins record of the year and song of the year for yet another one of those wrenchingly emotional Adele ballads that make you want to lie down and slit your wrists, or maybe that’s just us.
●The entertainment highlight of the month comes during the Academy Awards , when PricewaterhouseCoopers (motto: “The Fidget Spinner of Consulting Firms”) comes up with a brilliant gambit to enliven the 14-hour broadcast by handing Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the wrong envelope for best picture. Hilarity ensues, and PricewaterhouseCoopers is immediately hired by congressional Republican leadership to develop a strategy for repealing Obamacare.
In foreign news, North Korea, in what some observers view as an act of deliberate provocation, launches a missile that lands in downtown Honolulu. This seems ominous, but at the time everybody in Washington is still focused on the urination dossier.
No comments:
Post a Comment