I didn't mean Black

Today we have two politicians who have been getting a lot of black... er, flack, for some racist blunders.

The first moment was triggered by a tragedy. Bob Holness died today at 83. The TV presenter, well-known as host of the UK Blockbusters game show, received many farewells today, but none were as unfortunately hilarious as Ed Miliband's. Labor Leader Miliband's memorial tweet read:

"Sad to hear that Bob Holness has died. A generation will remember him fondly from Blackbusters."

Yeah, "Blackbusters."

With an A.

The offending tweet was quickly taken down and replaced with the proper spelling, but not before the twitter hashtag #Blackbusters exploded.

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Our second offender this week is twice as black- BAD. Twice as bad.

Rick Santorum, US presidential candidate, said this a few days ago about why he dislikes Welfare and Medicaid:

"I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money."

(You can watch the video here. Statement is 19 seconds or so in.)

That in itself is more cringe-worthy than funny. It gets lol-tastic when Santorum tries to explain himself, by claiming that he didn't say "black people". He really just stumbled over his words and said "blah people."

...Right. That sounds reasonable.

Tragic Love Story of 2011

Our political Romeo and Juliet of 2011 are Muammar Gaddafi and Condoleezza Rice! Well, not quite Romeo and Juliet... at all. But it seems that the late Gaddafi had quite the thing for Rice.

Before he was ousted and killed in this year's civil war, the (now ex-)leader of Libya had expressed his admiration for (now former) U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on a few occasions. He showered her with gifts on her diplomatic visit to Libya. But the oddest thing is what was discovered by Libyan rebels while raiding his compound in Tripoli. A photo album.

Filled entirely with pictures of Rice.

Creepy or cute? You tell me.

2011 Best Hair

The best hair in politics of 2011 goes to.... Donald Trump!

Just look at that helmet. It's glorious, luxurious, and delicate. It's lovely and --

But wait, I thought this blog was about politics! Why's this sleazy businessman and reality TV celebrity on here?

Well, because Donald Trump was a contender for U.S. President for a while. Back in the spring, the fucker was even leading Republican polls. Like half of our presidential candidates, of course, he was just in it for the publicity, and never intended to run, let alone win. But he's still hinting at a possible run as an independent. (Still not gonna happen.)

But the fact that the Apprentice's TV star was taken seriously as the country's possible next president for a while is enough to bring on the lols and earn him a position of honor for his lovely locks. You're fired, Don.

(An unrelated note: I promise I'll be a bit less U.S.-centric as time goes on. But since the U.S. election season lasts for so long, is relevant to me, and is such a clusterfuck of hilarity, this blog is also in for a lot on that topic. In the meantime, if you have any other Lolitical News to suggest, feel free to toss me a link or a heads up in the comments! =D)

Video of 2011

The funniest political video of 2011 goes to Herman Cain's campaign ad! Back before Cain's history of sexual harassment and extramarital affairs caused him to drop out of the presidential race, he was my favorite candidate to laugh at. This campaign video may have been my absolute favorite Herman Cain moment, though there were many.

I can't embed it, so you can just watch the video here.

The awkward dialogue, the dramatic drag on a cigarette, the cheesy music, the CREEPY 8 SECOND SMILE. It's no wonder this video was parodied by pretty much every comedy show and person with a camera in existence. Here are some of the best (IMO).

Start at 1:19 for the Letterman parody:

And the Dramatic Chipmunk treatment:

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The runner-up for the most lulzy political video of 2011 also comes from a GOP presidential candidate. Rick Perry's Strong campaign video is so horrible that, within days of its release, it racked up the most Youtube dislikes EVER. It even beat out Rebecca Black's Friday - as of this writing, Strong has over twice as many dislikes.

Like most of the funniest things in politics, this is a case of someone saying stupid things completely seriously. It actually warms my heart to see how hated this video is. It reminds me that, as scarily common as the douchebaggery Perry espouses is in the U.S., that douchebaggery really is overwhelmed by decent people. On Youtube, at least.

It's only 30 seconds long but I can't be bothered to write you a transcript, so here's how I remember it off the top of my head:

"I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a bigoted cockface. As a powerful, rich, Christian, white, cis, straight man in the United States, I feel oppressed and scared that people who are different than me exist. Can we please just have a theocracy already? I'm Rick Perry, and I am a gigantic cuntwaffle."

Ah, Rick. Stay classy.

Captions of 2011

This one's recent. I tried to come up with my favorite political, meme-style captioned images of the year. I settled on The Final Words of Dear Leader, a collection of (fake) last words of Kim Jong Il, North (Best) Korea's late ruler.

News broke of Kim Jong Il's death just this month. The man was equal parts evil and crazy; he'd kill your family while establishing a plan to breed giant rabbits for food. He had a heroic mythology created for himself: he supposedly controlled the weather, did not poop, and was born under a double rainbow (all the way). His reported cause of death was that he was so busy working for the people of North Korea that he died of overwork.

So the tumblr The Final Words of Dear Leader made an image of Kim Jong Il floating up to heaven on a rainbow, and captioned it with funniness. The captions reflect things like food shortages in North Korea, Kim's supposed superpowers, and other madness. Here are a few - they are best read in a mysterious, ghostly voice:

"I invented dying."

"Cancel tomorrow's brunch with the shape-shifting reptilian humanoids."

"Manufacture Typewriters with a comic sans font to revive the economy."

2011 Best Bod Award

The winner of the Best Bod in politics for 2011 would also win the Best Pun category: Weiner's Weiner.

That's right, folks! Politicians (who aren't Vladimir Putin) tend to keep their clothes on. But suits were a bit too stuffy for Anthony Weiner, Democratic Representative from New York.

It all starts off with this bulge photo tweeted to a female student from Weiner's Twitter account:

It doesn't look like anything to be ashamed of, but for some reason, Weiner denies all responsibility. That could be anybody! My account was hacked! But thanks to all the publicity, more photos came to light. And more. And more. Turns out that snapping lewd photos and spreading them around was a regular thing for the guy. Here are eleven pictures Weiner took of himself at the Congressional gym. Then there's this one he sent to another woman:

Want to see more? Apparently Anthony Weiner assumes everyone always wants to see more. So inevitably, the cock shot surfaces. Weiner's weiner. In the flesh. Since the photo is obviously horrifically NSFW, I'll just point you to the picture of Anthony Weiner's dick over at Gawker.

After some struggle, Weiner finally agreed to resign. Of course, harassing women with unsolicited nudes isn't a laughing matter, but the jokes that came out of this scandal along with Weiner's rockin' bod were enough to make this story ...rise... to the top of my list for hilarious 2011 moments in politics.

2011 Phrase of the Year

The winner of 2011's Phrase of the Year wasn't even a contest. It could only be John Kyl.

Every year, the U.S. government passes its annual budget. Sounds simple, right? Well this April, instead of passing a budget, the government almost shut itself down. Yep, the U.S. government was mere hours from grinding to a halt because the Democrats and Republicans couldn't agree on a budget. Must have been some pretty huge disagreements, right?

Not really.

As the clock was ticking closer to the deadline, a number had more or less been agreed upon. The only sticking points were a few tiny budget items that Republicans wanted to do away with, like funding for family planning.

Why were Republicans willing to risk so much to stop giving poor people pap smears and birth control? Because Planned Parenthood gets some of those funds. And Planned Parenthood also does abortions.

This story is funny because no federal funding could be used for abortions anyway - that was already forbidden. It's funny because a near shutdown over such small things demonstrates just how broken our political system is. But the funniest part is yet to come - enter Republican Senator from Arizona, John Kyl.

While speaking in the Senate (see video above) about the utter necessity of defunding contraceptives, breast exams, and STD testing for low-income people, he let out this gem:

"If you want an abortion you go to Planned Parenthood, and that's well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does."

This was, of course, a blatant lie pulled out of Kyl's rectum. About 3% of Planned Parenthood's services are abortion. Keep in mind that this is entirely irrelevant to the discussion about funding, because abortions aren't funded anyway. This STILL isn't the good part.

The bit Kyl gets the Phrase of the Year award for comes when his office responds to criticism about the wildly false statistic, saying that Kyl's remark

"was not intended to be a factual statement."

...

Yep.

Everyone making fun of Kyl's lie was just being mean and oversensitive; we should have known not to assume his words were based in reality.

This spawned the Twitter hashtag #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement, championed by Steven Colbert, who spent the day tweeting things like:

John Kyl is the only person who can sneeze with his penis. He calls it a "sneenis." #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

John Kyl, being the classy and totally non-sleazy guy he is, took it upon himself to delete the offending non-factual statement about Planned Parenthood from the Congressional Record. But his "not intended to be a factual statement" response exploded and is still, 8 months later, part of the vocabulary of politically-aware Americans. Even though the quote itself came from a staff member rather than directly from Kyl himself, I'll give Kyl the credit and award him the funniest 2011 Phrase of the Year.

Just because I like him so much (#NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement).