The ranking goes on and on although the basis might seem questionable to some persons, President Barack Obama of the United States of America was among the unlucky few who were listed as most influential with a caricatured image.
According to GQ Magazine another year, another round of people who took up vast clouds of oxygen, gave us back nothing of use, and probably helped accelerate the death of our planet.
Here they are, in no particular order, although you’ll probably assume we ranked them anyway, because most of you probably skipped this part.
1. Bono and U2
The Tom Friedman of rock and the rest of his band collaborated with Apple to strong-arm their new album into your iTunes library without your consent. You couldn’t even delete it! Apple had to send out specific instructions for how to wipe Songs of Innocence (God, that title) off your computer. The worst part was the way both Apple and U2 treated this, like it was some kind of noble gift to The People; in fact this was a $100 million marketing campaign. Yes, $100 million to turn U2’s socially conscious dad-rock into a piece of direct mail.
2. Barack Obama
Why are you still on Martha’s Vineyard?! Missouri is BURNING. Putin is conquering Europe. The CDC is playing nude Twister with Ebola patients. U2 is forcing bad songs on everyone. The NSA won’t stop watching me masturbate. I need you ON THIS. Are you even president anymore? When Obama got blasted for golfing shortly after ISIS beheaded journalist James Foley, he said, “I should’ve anticipated the optics.” How do you win the presidency without knowing that golfing makes you look rich and indifferent?
3. Donald Sterling
The racist/slumlord/pervert/nudist ex-NBA owner displayed a remarkable lack of power in 2014. He failed to keep his girlfriend from recording him saying a bunch of horrible shit about black people. He failed to keep the NBA from taking over his Los Angeles Clippers. He failed to keep his wife from selling the Clippers to that bald guy from Microsoft. He failed at every attempt to sue his way back into ownership. He failed to win even a shred of our sympathy in a hilariously misguided interview with Anderson Cooper. And the best part is that it all caught him completely off guard. You mean I’m not allowed to be a rich bastard who gets away with everything anymore? That’s not fair!
4. Carter Bays and Craig Thomas
These were the men in charge of the How I Met Your Mother finale. SPOILER ALERT: In a surprise twist, the mom turns out to be dead. Dead! You labored through all those years of Neil Patrick Harris screaming out jokes about his dick, just to meet a corpse. It’s a sitcom. Why does it even NEED a twist? It’s not as if Cheers ended with all the characters turning out to be ghosts.
5. Zach Braff
Can we all agree never to crowd-fund a movie again? Please? Who are these people who gave Zach Braff $3 million to make a Garden State do-over? Who has that kind of money to burn? Even though Braff is rich, he took the money, and just as he promised he would, he made yet another mope-piece that ached to be taken seriously as art. He should’ve just filmed himself rubbing that money on his armpits.
6. Roger Goodell
He’s made liking football feel gross and wrong. He should be fired for that.
7. Stephen A. Smith
He went on ESPN and ranted about how Ray Rice’s fiancée may have egged him into knocking her out (“Let’s make sure we don’t do anything to provoke wrong actions”), then tried to explain himself on Twitter and said something even dumber (“What about addressing women on how they can help prevent the obvious wrong being done upon them?”). Did he get fired for it? Of course not! How can ESPN fire SAS for being an idiot when they hired him specifically to be an idiot?
8. Dwyane Wade
LeBron can talk all he wants about righting past wrongs, coming home, etc…. We all know the real reason he left Miami is because the once great Wade can’t guard a column of marching ants at this point. His knees are the only things in America right now that are rusting faster than Cleveland.
9. CNN
They’re still looking for that fucking plane! Is it in the ocean? Did it travel to another dimension? WAS IT A ZOMBIE PLANE?! We need to put the folks at CNN out of their misery. I can get better news standing at a goddamn bus stop.
10. Eric Cantor
“Campaign in my local primary? But I’m already in Congress! People love Congress! I think I’ve done enough to earn the loyalty of the great people of Virgini… OOPS!”
Christie couldn’t stay out of trouble; Jeter couldn’t stop booting grounders.
11. Derek Jeter
4 HR, 50 RBI, .256 BA, 87 strikeouts, 11 errors.
12. Jay Nixon
He’s the governor of Missouri. Did you know that? Pretty sure the people of Ferguson don’t. They think their governor is a very large tank.
13. Rick Perry
Is he really gonna run for president again? Hasn’t he heard himself talk? Doesn’t he know he’s under indictment? He should be able to see all that with his new “smart feller” glasses.
14. Benny Johnson
Think about how hard it is to plagiarize when you’re a writer for BuzzFeed. How do you plagiarize shit for a post called “10 Ways America Is Still Number One”? Is it really so hard to think of reasons why we’re number one? Food trucks. There ya go.
15. The Brazilian soccer team
Seven to one! Holy shit, that is a churrascaria of ass-kicking. How do you lose that badly when you’ve got a player named Hulk? HE’S THE HULK! I guess they’ve got the Eric Bana Hulk and not the Mark Ruffalo Hulk. And this is a country that requires winning soccer games in order for their crops to photosynthesize.
16. Johnny Depp
Here’s a crazy idea: What if Johnny Depp played an actual human being—one who could plausibly exist in real life? Not a dude living inside the Singularity. Not a rock-star pirate. Not a surrealist take on Hunter S. Thompson. An actual person. Can he even do that? Or is Johnny Depp just some kind of advanced mascaradroid prototype?
17. Cliven Bundy
Listen to the infamous Nevada cattle rancher on the subject of race: “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro…. There is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch…. And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton.” It’s funny that Bundy can say this while failing to mention that he would like free use of federal lands, in perpetuity, for his cattle to graze. The only difference between him and a welfare queen is that Bundy could point a gun at a federal officer and get away with it.
18. Suey Park
“Twitter activist” (we can probably stop right there) who began a “movement” to cancel Stephen Colbert’s talk show (#CancelColbert) because Colbert made a joke about Asian stereotypes that was actually a joke about Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder. Two weeks later, Colbert was chosen to replace Dave Letterman. I want to be the target of Twitter activism. Maybe I’ll wind up in bed with Pippa Middleton.
19. Tom Wheeler
The FCC chairman is actively facilitating the demise of net neutrality by permitting a “fast lane” for web access. Note that this plan sorta glosses over the “slow lane” part. It will also enable ISPs to charge more for (probably) worse service. Did I mention that Wheeler is a former lobbyist for cable companies? WHAT A SURPRISE.
20. Chris Christie
Would it shock you to learn that the investigation Chris Christie commissioned into investigating Chris Christie (for Bridgegate) ended up exonerating Chris Christie? Maybe Tom Wheeler was in charge of it.
UPDATE: Since the print publication of this list, Christie, in his capacity as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, helped decisively turn the midterm elections in the Republicans’ favor, which makes him a bit more influential than we initially gave him credit for, post-Bridgegate. So when your state governments do absolutely nothing for you for the next four years, be sure to thank him!
LaBeouf, unrecognizable here without the brown bag over his head; Brazil’s soccer team, unrecognizable with all those goals whizzing through their legs
21. Shia LaBeouf
I know it’s weird to put him on this list, given that he wrote King Lear, directed The Godfather,and was briefly the U.S. poet laureate. But I’m telling you, there’s something off about this LaBeouf fella—like he isn’t everything he claims to be…. By the way, enough with celebrities excusing their asinine behavior—like, say, wearing paper bags over their heads—by claiming they were conducting some kind of sociological experiment about HUMANITY.
22. John McCain
No matter what foreign-policy stance the president takes, you can be certain that ol’ Johnny Boy will be there to call him a pussy—for either (a) not bombing people or (b) not bombing them enough. McCain requires ALL of the bombing. If we don’t keep bombing everyone, then the mad dictators will think we look weak! And if we’ve learned anything, it’s that when mad dictators think you’re tough, they’ll say sorry, dismantle all their anthrax guns, and buy everyone a box of kittens.
23. Woody Allen
Thankfully, you didn’t have to feel gross for liking a Woody Allen movie this year, because he made Magic in the Moonlight and no one saw it. Does that movie feature yet another man wooing a woman who is half his age? Of course it does. Just to throw us off, Woody needs to make a movie where Justin Bieber nails Cloris Leachman.
24. The Secret Service
“Welcome to the White House! Come right in! Would you care for a knife? Oh, you already have one! Marvelous. Private elevator rides with Obama are every hour on the hour, if you’re interested.”
25. Robin Thicke
Reportedly cheated on his wife. Wrote an album named after her to get her back. Literally titled the first single “Get Her Back.” Sold just 530 copies of the (shitty) album in the UK in its first week. Still getting divorced. The rest of this cheeseball’s career is our collective punishment for making “Blurred Lines” popular. Let’s ALL get a divorce from this man.
26. Sarah Palin
She barely even get out of the limo! Some dude is reportedly calling her daughter a slut and a cunt, and the rest of her family is brawling at a kegger, and there’s Sarah in the fucking limo (of course she’s in a limo), letting her Wasilbilly family rumble while she’s probably Googling herself without a care in the world. She only finally gets out of the limo to name-drop herself to the cops! Does she even know she has a family? Or does she think those people are stock models provided for her by GOP donors?
27. Dinesh D’Souza
The conservative filmmaker was convicted of violating federal campaign-finance laws this year, but that’s not why he’s on this list. No, this tweet is why he’s on the list: Which is worse: EBOLA, the disease; or OBOLA, the dream from [Obama’s] father? There you go, America. There is your worst Obama pun yet. You’re shit out of luck, Obummer and Nobama. OBOLA will wipe the floor with you and then infect you with a blood virus. How do you make that pun and not get immediately struck by lightning?
28. Desmond Hague
Former Centerplate food-services company CEO. Caught on camera kicking a dog. That sounds about right for a CEO.
29. Mary Barra
The GM CEO presided over the recall of over 2.6 million cars (in addition to the over 28 million other cars it recalled this year!) that featured an ignition-switch defect responsible for the deaths of at least thirty people. Would it surprise you to learn that GM knew about this defect for YEARS without telling anyone? I’m glad we bailed out GM so that itcould continue to surprise and delight us by making a SUDDEN BLACKOUT option standard on all vehicles. I would have preferred a moonroof, but I’ll take what I can get.
30. Cops
The whole point of having police officers is to maintain law and order, which means they become useless when they decide to arm themselves like a bunch of space soldiers in Halo, roam the streets, aim their rifles at everyone they see, and choke out asthmatic black men. This is bad police work! This is not how you police. We’d be better off arming our cops with lollipops.
