From Sarah Palin to AIG's pamper-hungry sales reps, the following characters have made us less than proud

In at least one obvious way, 2008 was a pretty good year in my country. We made history in electing an African-American president. I and 67 million of my fellow citizens brought the era of conservative dominance to a thundering close. For those of us who've been told for eight years that we weren't real Americans - liberals, urbanites, non-believers, cabernet-sippers, same-sex lovers, anti-war-mongerers, Volvo drivers - well, the tables have turned. We're the real Americans now.

But ill winds still blew, and blow, across the republic. It being the duty of journalism to take the measure of these winds, I hereby dedicate my year-end column to ranking some of the worst Americans of the year. It started as a bottom 10 list, but consultations with various associates persuaded me that 10 was not enough, and further research suggested that a non-round and totally capricious number better suited the exercise. Herewith, the Tomasky List of the 19 Worst Americans of 2008.

19 ED Hill. Ms Hill is the Fox News anchor who referred to Barack and Michelle Obama's on-stage fist bump in early June as a "terrorist fist jab". I guess she's well familiar with the various and sundry ways in which couples express intimacy - she's been married three times herself. Fox announced in November that it wasn't renewing her contract.

18 Don Blankenship. Who? He's the head of a huge coal-mining company that is an industry leader, if one must put it that way, in so-called mountain-top removal mining. It's a hideous practice that destroys mountains and communities, and Blankenship is its poster child. Our supreme court has agreed to hear a case in which Blankenship financed the election of a state judge who, in a $50m lawsuit, ruled for Blankenship's company. Google Caperton v Massey, read more about Massey, and tell me if this fellow shouldn't perhaps be even higher.

17 Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. The man better known as Joe the Plumber wasn't a licensed plumber. He owed back taxes. He shocked even a Fox News anchor with his cavalier relationship to the facts. Let's hope he's 14 minutes into his allotted 15 minutes of fame.

16 John Edwards. How could a person run for president knowing that he'd cheated on his cancer-stricken wife with a woman who subsequently bore a child? (He denies paternity.) What if he'd actually won the nomination, and then this news came out? He gives bad judgment a bad name.

15 Heath and Deborah Campbell. You know, the parents who named their son Adolf Hitler Campbell. Nuff said.

14 Geraldine Ferraro. One of the worst vice-presidential candidates in recent history distinguished herself in 2008 as one of the worst political surrogates (for Hillary Clinton) in recent history. In between, she found a way to lose two Senate races that she once led by 20 points. What a career.

13 Stephen L Johnson. The Bush administration's chief environmental enforcement officer is ... about what you'd expect out of the Bush administration's chief environmental officer. He's loosened rules, ignored subpoenas and been rebuked by his own staff.

12 Sam Zell. Yes, market forces and technology are putting the American newspaper on life support, but that doesn't mean that the man who bought the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times should stroll into the intensive-care unit and pull the plug. Zell's belief that productivity should be measured purely by word output is a death knell for intensive, investigative work that uncovers corruption.

11 David Addington. Dick Cheney's top aide told Congress in June that he didn't even know what the unitary executive theory of presidential power was. This would be rather like Lavrenti Beria insisting that Lubyanka prison was actually a hotel.

10 The boys from AIG. Less than a week after the insurance giant received an $85bn federal bail-out, some AIG execs and sales reps spent $440,000 on a retreat at an exclusive resort, including $23,000 in spa charges. Well, they were under tremendous stress, you know.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/31/usa-palin-barack

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