2020 was a bad year for almost everyone. The one group of people that came through the year heads up, eyes shining were dinguses.
This was an absolute banner year for anyone who wanted to blithely ignore a catastrophic health crisis, kill grandmothers, start a coup, enrich themselves on the White House, spread conspiracy theories that get people killed, make a lot of money while claiming to be a victim of cancel culture, claim a small piece of cloth oppresses you, claim to not see color while calling the cops on your Black neighbors, and just be a general dingus.
In other words, this was the year people really showed their asses. And we don’t want to forget the important and vital work done by so many, many people to just be the absolute worst.
The Dingus Awards are new. They began in October when I was fired from a job for a very dumb reason. When I had that job, I began calling people dinguses because I had been encouraged to swear less. And “dingus” is not a swear word, although it might be when we get through with it. The weekly dingus, whom I crown on Saturdays (in a subscriber-only newsletter), was the idea of my friend, the journalist Karen K. Ho, who had seen me calling people dinguses, liked it, and then did what she always does: come up with a brilliant idea.
Picking a winner for Dingus of the Year for 2020 was difficult. So, I asked some of my friends to assist me in the crowning of the reigning dingus and submit their own entries. Absolutely no science was involved. No methodology was used. Unless rage counts as a scientific methodology, but I don’t think it does. I let the judges pick anyone. There was just one rule: We only punch up. That was a hard rule, because in this pandemic, so many of our friends and family members have shown themselves to be the worst. Oh, is Krista having a giant backyard BBQ for 100 of her closest friends? Did Tim just get COVID-19, then write 5,876 Facebook posts from quarantine, saying how he was super careful and we shouldn’t judge and masks are useless, even though you know he went to Disney the moment it reopened? Is your sister posting pictures of herself at an indoor maskless brunch and tagging the photos #selfcare #ineededthat? Yeah, these are dinguses.
It’s hard not to punch down or sideways in a year with so many punchable faces. But it’s important to recognize that the failures of this year started at the top and trickled downward. The only sort of Reaganomics that works. That said, I did allow two of our esteemed guest judges to combine these people into archetypes. So, while Tim himself is not a dingus this year, the maskless man is. Don’t worry, you get your catharsis.
If there is a grand unifying theory of the dingus, it’s this: The world is full of fart faces and chucklefucks, people whose buffoonery not only makes our lives harder and more unbearable, but is embarrassing, plain and simple, and all too often, they are the people in power. And there isn’t much we can do about it, except vote them out, or call them out as loudly as possible. And that’s what we are doing. These awards are offered in the spirit of the late columnist Molly Ivins, who said, “So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.”
So today, we ridicule the fraidy-cats and dinguses and place them here, in this noble newsletter, so we don’t forget.
Let’s begin with our guest judges’ picks. In the name of these great judges, I donated $150 to City Harvest in NYC and $200 to Fair Fight in Georgia. Please consider donating to help fight dinguses.
Bill Barr
Karen K. Ho is a global financial and economics reporter for Quartz. She’s brilliant, beautiful, and a genius. The dinguses were her idea, so it is only fair to let her have the first pick. And she picked…this guy.
Bill Barr may be officially resigning on December 23, but he did more than enough damage in his role as attorney general this year to qualify for the title of Dingus of the Year.
Barr's previous experience in the role didn't prevent him from carrying out a long list of questionable decisions, including his selective redaction of the Mueller report; how he intervened in the guilty convictions and sentences of former Trump advisors and major dinguses Roger Stone and Michael Flynn; his order for the U.S. federal government to restart cruel and unnecessary executions after 17 years; and the allegations he interfered in the removal of U.S. New York state attorney Geoffrey Berman.
At the time of Barr's interference in Berman's job, the state attorney's office had been investigating Trump's personal lawyer (and certified dingus) Rudy Giuliani, as well as Trump's inaugural committee. Barr had also attempted to avoid charges for Halkbank, a Turkish-owned financial institution, but Berman prosecuted them anyway even after the president of Turkey asked President Trump to help drop the charges.
Barr also showed how his elite education, high-level government experience, and legal training meant very little in the face of injustice against American citizens. He called the reaction to George Floyd's death "extreme," and he personally ordered that the streets around Lafayette Square in Washington should be cleared so that the President, Barr, the Secretary of Defense, and other administration officials could stage a photo in front of St. John's Church. This order from Barr literally resulted in federal law enforcement officers rushing protesters, followed by the use of smoke canisters, pepper balls, grenades, riot shields, and batons. People, protestors, and even reporters were shoved, beaten, gassed, and arrested in streets not far from the White House.
Barr responded to reports of this police violence by first falsely claiming that pepper balls were not chemical irritants and then invoked qualified immunity so he would be protected from liability in a lawsuit.
On top of everything he did this year, Barr spread and helped increase doubt about this year's national election. He made false assertions about indictments for fraudulent ballots. He repeated false claims about foreign counterfeit ballots. He made false claims about the validity and integrity of mail-in ballots. He was literally a taxpayer-funded source of misinformation.
In addition to the many terrible statements that Barr has made in support of the President and his false claims about the election, Barr is so bad and questionable at his job that other prominent lawyers have openly written about it, twice. This year, more than two dozen of his peers filed a complaint against him with the District of Columbia Bar. The group included legal ethics experts, former government lawyers, and four former presidents of the District of Columbia Bar itself.
In October, more than 1,600 former attorneys from the Department of Justice also signed an open letter stating their fears about Barr and their worries he intended "to use the DOJ’s vast law enforcement powers to undermine our most fundamental democratic value: free and fair elections."
When we are kids, we are taught the difference between right and wrong. We are told bad guys get punished. That the law has rules for what happens when people are mistreated. Barr exposed exactly what happens when the government official in charge of the law is a bad guy himself, and enables other people to flagrantly break the rules over and over again. Barr never represented justice for Americans. He was one of the worst examples of corruption and misuses of power in a presidential administration with plenty of candidates for the title. That's why he's my Dingus of the Year.
Jared Kushner
Jared was picked by my friend Sarah Weinman, a National Magazine Award–nominated writer, the author of the book The Real Lolita, and editor of the collection Unspeakable Acts. Sarah is one of the smartest people I know. She reads 27.5 books a day and still has time to answer my group texts. Here is her reasoning.
There is a Yiddish expression I think of often, but especially during this utter hellscape of a miserable 2020: A shanda far di goyim, translated as “a shame before the nations,” or when the appalling, obscene behavior of certain Jews is witnessed by the rest of the world (or, non-Jews). There are so many terrible Jews in the outgoing administration, and I hate them all, but the one I keep returning to is Jared Kushner, the worst example of a son-in-law in recent memory. One who prioritizes grift above all else, whether it’s botching PPE delivery in the early days of the pandemic, spectacular failures of diplomacy he had no business being involved with in the first place, and “spearheading” a re-election campaign straight into the family coffers. May his name be blotted from the record.
The Maskless Man
The Maskless Man was picked by Laura Lippman, the absolutely incredible crime novelist and essayist. Laura is one of my favorite writers. You can buy her books here. She lives in Baltimore. She is also a member of the LL club. She’s truly as smart, beautiful, and talented as you think.
The spring was unusually cold here, so I’m unclear if I met my dingus in March or April. I believe it must have been March, because he wasn’t wearing a mask and Maryland was pretty quick to require masks in indoor spaces. I had talked to the local bank, where I hoped to use the ATM, which was inside a vestibule. It was before banking hours, and a young man was already inside using the ATM. Rather than share an enclosed space, I waited outside the door. An older man, maskless, blammed past me. I watched as he paced inside the small vestibule, repeatedly violating the six-foot social distancing policy that was already well-known. And then he insisted on engaging the younger man in conversation. Finally, the younger man left, stopping to apologize to me, although he had done nothing wrong. Then, to my amazement, the older man in the vestibule just continued to pace inside the vestibule. I opened the door and said, “Excuse me, I’m waiting to use the ATM. If you’re not going to use it, would you please leave so I could?” He said: “I’m waiting for the bank to open. It won’t be long.” In 20 years as a reporter, I was in exactly one shouting match (it was with George W. Bush, campaigning for his father in Texas in 1988), and I am not much of a yell-er in general, but I began screaming at this man: GET OUT, GET OUT! YOU CAN WAIT OUTSIDE UNTIL THE BANK OPENS! IT’S NOT THAT COLD! DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY? He left, muttering under his breath. I have been meeting incarnations of this particular dingus every day since — people who don’t want to wear masks, people who wear their masks below their noses, people who are EXTREMELY confused about what six feet is. I don’t yell at them anymore because they clearly can’t hear anything. I eye-fuck them into oblivion.
The Couple Where the Man Isn’t Wearing a Mask but the Woman Is
This entry was submitted by Colin Dickey, foremost expert on ghosts and aliens and conspiracies. Colin’s books are so good, my dad steals them from me. I do regret to inform you, he doesn’t think ghosts are real, which is displeasing. But he’s otherwise trustworthy. Please buy his books and read everything he writes. Although he made me type this up from a text message.
Why are you dating him? He is 100 percent going to give you a disease, and it’s not going to be COVID-19. It’s going to be an STI. Run, girl!
Chris Cillizza
I am sorry to report, Elon Green is a friend of mine. He is the author of the forthcoming The Last Call, which is incredible. Oprah already put it on a list. I swear to god, if he sells more books than me (a low bar), I will end our friendship. He picked CNN commentator Chris Cillizza. Here is a profile I wrote of Cillizza in 2017. Elon also made me type this up from a text message.
Chris didn’t do anything particularly objectionable this year and indeed was overshadowed by a sea of mediocrities. But a lifetime of such sterling, unmitigated failure in the world of media commands respect. I also resent being reminded he exists.
Rudy Giuliani
Josh Gondelman is an incredible comedian and writer. He writes for Desus & Mero and is the host of the Make My Day podcast, which actually will make your day. Josh is the kindest person in the world. But man, he really let Rudy eat it on this one. Once you read this dingus assessment, you will realize you don’t want my commentary, you only want Josh’s. And I don’t blame you.
The word “dingus” doesn’t really begin to cover the year Rudy’s had. And while Lyz runs a polite, Midwestern newsletter, I’d personally opt for a designation such as “dumbass,” “dipshit,” “dickhead,” “douchebag,” or “dildo,” and those are just the other D words.
Giuliani’s current relevance stems from his work as Donald Trump’s horrible personal lawyer, a job he earned by being the horrible mayor of New York City. Since leaving public office, Rudy is most notable for becoming the chief beneficiary of 9/11 after Osama bin Laden, the previous title holder, was killed by (if I remember correctly) Chris Pratt. Oh, and he’s also a dubious but well-compensated cybersecurity expert with an ass that won’t quit accidentally calling reporters. Giuliani’s 2020 has been defined by a degree of humiliation that must be sexual for him, or he would have called Dr. Harold Bornstein about a script for cyanide pills by now. He’s been caught on camera by Borat, repeatedly pranked on a YouTube show, and duped into hosting a press conference at an establishment called Four Seasons Total Landscaping, which in his defense is an easy mistake to make if you’re an incompetent nihilist whose numerous failures and misdeeds have never resulted in personal consequences. Most recently, he’s been the weathered face of a series of lawsuits that were designed to subvert the will of American voters but have amounted to an old man repeatedly sitting on his own balls. Political news in 2020 has essentially been a Truman Show scenario for Rudy Giuliani’s near-constant embarrassments.
All of this has happened while Giuliani’s body has decomposed before our eyes, like a vampire touched by the first light of dawn. Obviously, none of us will escape the ravages of time, and aging is a natural process, but Rudy’s body is breaking in public view at time-lapse speeds. This fall, he contracted Covid-19, presumably at one of the many highly visible mask-free Republican science-flouting festivals. Giuliani quickly recovered from his illness, a convalescence made possible thanks to either the Mötley-Crüe-bender volume of drugs he had available to him while tens of thousands of people suffered from the same disease with no relief, or because the novel coronavirus abandoned his desiccated flesh, assuming its host was already dead. Then Giuliani farted on camera during one of his voter fraud hearings, providing the perfect soundtrack to underscore the farcical nature of the event. If his last droplet of self-awareness hadn’t dribbled down the side of his face during a press conference, he’d bow out of the spotlight, living out his golden years (named after the color of his teeth) surrounded by the few blood relatives he hasn’t alienated with his repellant politics or by marrying and divorcing them.
Soon though, Rudy will be gone, if only because there is a limited number of organs in a human body that can fail while still permitting said corporeal form to be dragged in front of a camera for a frothing, incoherent Fox News appearance. But when he disappears from the public view, he must not be forgotten. He is, after all, the perfect avatar for Republican leadership: a necrotic goblin, physically disintegrating in public view while desperately accruing personal wealth, in hopes that when he gets to hell he’ll be able to insinuate himself into Satan’s donor circle, especially considering their shared set of interests and vast network of mutual friends. The GOP should replace their elephant mascot with Giuliani’s face, or better yet just the outline of his aforementioned dental profile, a silhouette as jagged and unmistakable as the skyline of the city where he once served (the wealthy) as mayor. Let that be the legacy of Rudy Giuliani, the Dingus of This Year, yes, and truly a dipshit for the ages.
Christopher Ruddy
Talia Lavin is the author of Culture Warlords, which was one of my favorite books of the year. It was also one of TIME’s favorite books of the year. She’s an incredible writer. So talented, she leaves me breathless. Plus, she owns swords and knows how to fight Nazis.
Christopher Ruddy is the head of Newsmax, trying to outflank Fox News from the right by spewing ever-viler lies to prop up the swollen, shambolic Trump coup. Ruddy earns my special ire because reporters love him. LOVE HIM. He has been cited as a “source close to Trump” or “Trump friend” literally hundreds of times in the New York Times and Washington Post — once you notice it, you don’t stop noticing it; nearly every pointless palace drama story about the White House features a Ruddy quote ostensibly offering some golden nugget of insight into the mad king’s state of mind. It’s really gross. And what’s more, this week Newsmax had to issue a truly farcical retraction about their abhorrent lies about two voting-machine companies, Dominion and Smartmatic. The lies were designed to whip its credulous audiences into full, Trumpist conspiracy frenzy. It amounts to a hasty retraction of the idea that Commies and Jews stole the election from red-blooded honest Christian whites, and I reproduce it here in its full dingus glory:
We have no evidence Dominion uses Smartmatic’s software or vice versa. No evidence has been offered that Dominion or Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election. Smartmatic has stated its software was only used in the 2020 election in Los Angeles, and was not used in any battleground state contested by the Trump campaign and Newsmax has no evidence to the contrary.
Dominion has stated its company has no ownership relationship with the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s family, Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s family, the Clinton family, Hugo Chavez, or the government of Venezuela.
Neither Dominion nor Smartmatic has any relationship with George Soros.
Smartmatic is a U.S. company and not owned by the Venezuelan government, Hugo Chavez or any foreign official or entity.
Smartmatic states it has no operations in Venezuela. While the company did election projects in Venezuela from 2004 to 2017, it states it never was founded by Hugo Chavez, nor did it have a corrupt relationship with him or the Venezuelan government.
And finally…
Dingus of the Year: Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds
Donald Trump couldn’t have messed up a pandemic so badly if he hadn’t been enabled by his faithful companions, Republican state governors. But there is one among them all who stands out in dingusry: Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. And I know you are thinking, but wait, my governor is also terrible, but just hear me out. Reynolds has done it all. It’s dingusry on an inspiring #girlboss level. For starters, she’s appeared maskless in large crowds; hell, she’s hosted large maskless gatherings. She has (and continues to) actively hide vital information in a public health crisis. Something she’s actually being sued for. She’s protected the food processing industry that was and is knowingly infecting and killing employees and taking bets on it. She mocked politicians who took the pandemic seriously. Tried to use the pandemic to restrict access to abortions. Misspent CARES Act money on a new computer system and raises for her entire staff. She’s returning some of it. Reynolds has sold away our state testing system for a pile of magic and completely worthless beans, but beans that came highly recommended by Ashton Kutcher. She’s never failed to blame the press for all of this. And Reynolds took the pandemic seriously only after hosting large super-spreader events in the state. But it wasn’t all pandemic mismanagement. She also mismanaged a devastating natural disaster by not even submitting a federal disaster aid request until almost a week after Iowa’s devastating derecho. But wait, there is more! A whistleblower lawsuit against Reynolds claims that she approved of sexual arousal studies on mentally disabled residents at an Iowa state-run care facility. The Justice Department recently ruled that this violated the residents Constitutional rights. Reynolds is great at violating the Constitution. She does it every time she signs an unreasonably restrictive abortion bill. It’s Iowa’s favorite yearly tradition: Reynold’s restricting the rights of the rubes!
This is mismanagement compounded by cruelty, all managed with a nice smile and a pink blazer. Is it ineptitude? A general lack of caring? Is it Maybelline? We may never know.
People’s Choice Award: Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr.
Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. is a man who can take any piece of legislation and turn it into a pile of two-week-old goulash. The majority leader in the Senate, he’s the reason Americans aren’t getting more stimulus money, but big companies are getting liability waivers. It’s Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. who is literally stopping any good law from passing. As one reader, Anne Holland, wrote, “He’s the broken widget that stops the entire machinery of government from working. Also, his little satisfied smile.”
An anonymous reader wrote: “Winner in terms of sheer destruction of the country.”
Runner-up: Donald Trump
It’s important that Trump doesn’t win anything at all this year. Not even a dingus award. The best he can get is second, to literally everyone. I don’t even think he’s the worst president in American history. He’s like the less effective cousin of Warren Harding and Andrew Jackson. All their bad ideas and murder, none of the efficacy. But he’s definitely a dingus. As one reader named Liz wrote, “How much time ya got? Playing golf instead of working on problems; absolute failure of leadership re: Coronavirus; refusal to concede his loss in the election; manipulating his supporters into unwarranted anger over his loss, firing Mr. Vindman, firing Mr. Krebs, trying to sway election officials and legislators in Michigan to make him the winner.”
Well put, Liz. Well put. And Mr. Trump, you get last.
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Okay, so the Boulton thing, and also what we have that passes for Dem around here, because I've got a few more dinguses for you.
So my state senator, Joe Bolkcom, generously shared half an hour with me to talk about Boulton's elevation to assistant leader. (Joe's been in a long time. His big issue is weed.) Unfortunately, nothing else Joe had to say was good. According to him, there was no "vote" on Nate; it was just that nobody objected. Six positions were open, four people put themselves on the list, he was one. Among Joe's excuses for not saying a word in the process:
- Nate's sexual assaulting is fine by his constituents
- sexual assault, you know, it's a matter of opinion
- lots of people think it's fine
- even if Joe did say anything, he'd just be burning political capital for nothing, because not enough people agree
- he tried to speak with Nate and his sexual-assaulting heart one-on-one and he thinks Nate's coming around because he's not drinking his face off so much anymore
- he has faith Nate will get it together
etc. His rhythm's slower than Stephanopoulos's in The War Room, but the dance ain't much different. I asked him how he thought this would've gone if Nate had been talking racist talk instead of out playing grab-women's-hineys games. Joe was not capable of seeing any equivalence between misogyny and racism, so he kept asking if I was saying that Nate was a racist and being offended by that.
I told him that I saw what was going on with his silence and others': they leave the heavy lift to women, who pay a political price. More silence on this from Joe. When we got to talking about Franken, he was down to rhetorical maneuvering and started talking about how lots of people thought Franken never should've resigned and how it was possible only because the country was on fire from #metoo, which I guess means Joe is capable of opening his mouth only if there's a raging social movement behind whatever comes out. Unless it's about weed, then he waxes lyrical and spills a lot of ink. Weed is the bomb for sure.
He also kept going back to how Nate's constituents apparently forgave him and seemed very surprised that this was not the group of people whose forgiveness Nate requires, also that the point here is not for Nate to say some string of words, but essentially to become a different person before he's a fit leader of anything. This also confused Joe, who wanted to know what on earth I was looking for then. The idea that when people change, which takes a long time, you can see it, set off more rhetorical windmilling about how this was IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to know because nobody was close enough to Nate to be able to know if he'd changed, so apparently shuffling around and earnest eyebrows is the gold standard.
What else did I waste my time with this man about? Oh, right. Joe has, as far as I've seen, one rhetorical move if he's not getting anywhere with you, which is to ask exasperatedly what you want to have happen. You tell him this and then he can tell you sixteen reasons why it isn't possible and how gosh-darn sick he is that it isn't. If you point out that one of them is total nonsense and of course he can do that thing, you get more windmilling and goalpost-shifting.
So I asked Joe why, at this point, progressive Iowans should not abandon the Dems and run third-party candidates, and he said, and I quote:
"I don't know."
Not even an attempt, man. Not even an attempt. So, you know. What we have here is a bunch of that jelly that comes out of the cold-packs they ship frozen stuff with. And I can't say that I've seen anything more vigorous and genuine from anyone but Cathy Glasson and Roxanne Conlin in years. Yeah, sure, Zach and his techbro friends have a lot of righteous-eyebrows vigor, but it's baloney and he's all measured up for his good-ol-boy suit, and he's able to walk through to the leader position despite his youth and inexperience because there's *nobody there*. Party of Zach.
So. Hell with it. Third party lefties, this is your time to shine in Iowa. We've got nothing to lose. Oh, the other guy, Leshtz. I'll leave him for another post.
I like that appropriation of Reaganomics.