Good Riddance to 2010

article image

With the near-biblical floods in Pakistan, a public health-care debacle that gridlocked Congress and the news media, Deepwater Horizon’s untimely tantrum, and the Bieber-Kanye-Gaga Trifecta of Pop Culture Doom, it’s a wonder humanity survived 2010. Admittedly, we’ve all had bad years. But–to say the least–the final 365 days of the past decade were not especially fortunate for the people of Earth.

Or, in the satiric words of The Miami Herald’s Dave Barry:

Let’s put things into perspective: 2010 was not the worst year ever. There have been MUCH worse years. For example, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, the Earth was struck by an asteroid that wiped out 75 percent of all the species on the planet. Can we honestly say that we had a worse year than those species did? Yes we can, because they were not exposed to Jersey Shore.

So on second thought we see that this was, in fact, the worst year ever.

Barry’s hilarious, apocalyptic, month-by-month excoriation of the year that was 2010 will leave you breathless (from uncontrollable laughter) and dejected (from a freshly rekindled universal cynicism). Here are a few of Barry’s choicest dispatches-from-the-recent-past.

From July, on the once-trapped Chilean miners:

In the month’s most dramatic story, 33 copper miners in Chile are trapped 2,300 feet underground following a cave-in caused by a runaway Toyota Camry. The good news is that the men are still alive; the bad news is that the only drilling equipment capable of reaching them quickly belongs to BP. Informed of this, the men elect to stay down there for the time being.

From October, on the state of the Democratic Party:

President Obama, continuing his quest to find candidates willing to accept his help, winds up campaigning in what White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs describes as “some very key student-council races.” Meanwhile Sarah Palin, raising her stature as a potential 2012 GOP presidential contender, weighs in on the issues with a number of important tweets.

I could keep cherry-picking quotes from Barry’s essay, but I’d soon find the entire article copy-pasted into this post.

Good Riddance, 2010! Let 2011 be at least little more heartening!

Source: The Miami Herald

Image by jeff_golden, licensed under Creative Commons.

UTNE
UTNE
In-depth coverage of eye-opening issues that affect your life.