If there is anything to make you wistful for the good old days of 2012, it is the year we see today in our rear view mirrors.
And if anything could surpass the limits of our forbearance – already sorely tested by government shutdowns, fiscal cliffs and the lumbering roll-out of Obamacare – it was the assorted cast I fondly think of as the “Diplomats of Nuttiness” that slogged their collective way through the slime-riddled roads of 2013.
In sports, as if we really needed something to worry about besides assessing which ballplayers owed their talents to a plethora of pharmacological aids, the inspirational story of the relationship of Manti Te’o with a nonexistent woman took us to new romantic heights.
Manti Te’o found fame as a rising football star at Notre Dame. His exemplary game play following what was reportedly the death on the same day of his grandmother AND his leukemia-stricken girlfriend (purportedly succumbing in a tragic auto accident) rendered the country awash in heart palpitations. Shockingly, the girlfriend was pure fiction, and Manti Te’o became fertile joke fodder for late night comedians. Was Manti Te’o an innocent victim of his own idealistic dreams? Was he a victim of a malicious hoax perpetrated by a cruel acquaintance? Do we even care?
Fortunately for Manti Te’o, he recovered brilliantly, becoming an NFL player for the San Diego Chargers, but the die was cast, and 2013 lumbered into even more bizarre terrain.
In what will surely live as the most ironic quote ever, Lance Armstrong, the man who made the statement after winning his seventh Tour de France, stressed that “… there are no secrets – this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it.” Yes, hard work and a lot of spinning. Not of expensive bicycle wheels but of a spinning web of lies. Armstrong eventually confessed to Oprah that he was a dope … er, he doped during each of his seven conquests of the world’s most prestigious bicycle race.
In the world of entertainment, a lizard-tongued Miley Cyrus dropped collective jaws across the country by performing (and I mean that in the broadest possible sense) on the MTV Video Music Awards, gyrating up close and personal with pop singer Robin Thicke. Miley (wearing, what? Underwear?) apparently tossed aside her wholesome “Hannah Montana” image in favor of such interesting accouterments as a foam finger and a wrecking ball. Later, we learned Miley’s “dance moves” were something called “twerking.” Who knew a movement reminiscent of a bag of cats actually had a name?
But it was in politics that 2013 became the year of the ultimate sleaze fest. The title for the most sordid grubbiness seemed, for a change, to be the province of big city mayors – or wannabes.
Take, for example, San Diego Mayor Bob (motto: “I only LOOK like a dirty old man”) Filner. Accused of kissing and groping constituents and staff alike, even Filner’s fiancé dumped him. In one of the more heartfelt (not) apologies seen on TV, Filner promised to take a generous two weeks off for treatment of his, er … “condition.”
It will take an even longer stay in rehab for former U.S. representative and New York mayoral candidate Anthony “Carlos Danger” Weiner to become cured of a case of uninterrupted idiocy. Back in politics way too soon after “sexting” less than impressive shots of his nether regions, apparently taking a stab at the vacating mayor’s seat proved too tempting for the shy and retiring New Yorker. But who knows; like the undead, this guy could come back. New campaign slogan? “Don’t Text Your Junk.”
But the United States is off the hook in the case of Toronto mayor, Rob Ford, the porcine Canadian prone to smoking crack cocaine (but only during “one of my drunken stupors”) and rampaging, bull-like, about his governmental headquarters, knocking down unsuspecting women and children or whatever else that might get in his way.
With his impressive array of four-letter words, Ford provides for us the lone shining, unalterable truth for the departed 2013: Not all sleaze bags build their homes in America.
Gale Hammond is a writer and freelance photographer who has lived in Morgan Hill since 1983. Reach her at
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