US

The Daily Caller Presents: The 22 LEAST INTRIGUING People Of 2016

Collage clockwise from top left: Shutterstock/Helga Esteb, YouTube screenshot/Al Jazeera English, Getty Images Sport, Getty Images/Carl Court, Reuters/Kevin Lamarque, Getty Images/Frazer Harrison, YouTube screenshot/Raw Story, Shutterstock/John Gomez, Getty Images Sport, Reuters/Jim Young

Font Size:

As the year 2016 finally, mercifully winds down, it’s time to look back at the politicians, talentless hacks and various other wearisome people who bored us most.

Someone please tell these 22 people — and groups of people — that it’s time to go far away:

22. Tim Kaine

You were Hillary Clinton’s safe choice for vice president because she thought she had the 2016 presidential election in the bag. You said nothing memorable. You did nothing memorable. You blew your one chance to make a difference by getting smoked in a debate against Mike Pence.

Tim Kaine Reuters/Scott Audette

Tim Kaine Reuters/Scott Audette

21. Kurt Eichenwald

The reporter for Newsweek (which somehow still exists) spent this year falsely accusing Iowans of booing when President-elect Donald Trump announced the passing of the late, great John Glenn. He also published a series of tweets suggesting that Trump had been institutionalized in the early 1990s, then said the tweets were totally part of a “series of jokes” and — and — a broader attempt to signal a source.

Kurt Eichenwald YouTube screenshot/CNN

Kurt Eichenwald YouTube screenshot/CNN

20. Clinton lapdog David Brock

The WikiLeaks emails torrent exposed the fact that Democratic Party leaders view Brock as a wacky sideshow. Neera Tanden, an adviser to Hillary Clinton, called Brock a “Republican plant” in a January email to John Podesta. In the aftermath of Trump’s victory, Brock has decided that the reason Clinton lost is because she was “poorly advised” by her campaign. It’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Brock in the same way that it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for that kid in junior high school who has zero friends. At the same time, wouldn’t it be better for us all if the Media Matters founder could find a job quietly delivering pizza or something?

David Brock YouTube screenshot/Bloomberg

David Brock YouTube screenshot/Bloomberg

19. Kanye West

The bitchy-faced rapper whose perpetually perilous mental state led to a recent psychiatric evaluation and then a stint in a hospital, is trying really hard to stay relevant these days. He spent this year behaving like a toddler, pleading for money, feuding with other celebrities and, of course, supporting Donald Trump for president. It’s time for America — and the world — to stop giving this man attention.

Kanye West Shutterstock/Liam Goodner

Kanye West Shutterstock/Liam Goodner

18. Wesley Lowery

The special-snowflake journalist who somehow became famous because he believes he can stay in a McDonald’s as long as he wants managed to win a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. The best part: He and his pals at The Washington Post allegedly stole the idea that led to the Pulitzer from a small alternative weekly in Reno, Nevada. So smart! So original! So cutting edge! You stay classy, Wes.

Wesley Lowery YouTube screenshot/The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

Wesley Lowery YouTube screenshot/The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

17. Brian Stelter

The “backstabbing and duplicitous” CNN host believes women have dated him to spy on him and flaunts himself as the arbiter of what is and is not real journalism, which is hilarious because his organization routinely butchers the truth left and right. Generally speaking, Stelter is a one-sided guy who is perpetually obnoxious. It’ll be a great day when television news puts him out to pasture.

Brian Stelter YouTube screenshot/Raw Story

Brian Stelter YouTube screenshot/Raw Story

16. Trevor Noah

America continues to wait patiently for the people who run Comedy Central to use a big vaudeville hook to forcibly remove Noah from the stage. When will the suits at Viacom realize that this guy is nowhere near as good or even as annoying as his predecessor? “Tosh.0” and reruns of “Futurama” can only generate goodwill for a cable station for so long.

Trevor Noah Shutterstock/Sky Cinema

Trevor Noah Shutterstock/Sky Cinema

15. Hillary Clinton

You might think this ranking is a bit low. After all, Clinton was officially The Daily Caller’s least intriguing person in 2015. However, the corrupt, scandal-ridden former first lady is something of a tragicomic figure at this point — so terrible at politics that she couldn’t even beat the one person everybody figured she could beat. No one will remember anything Hillary has ever done except her uncanny ability to lose — not once but twice — when contemporary conventional wisdom called her a sure thing. But, of course, what difference, at this point, does it make?

Hillary Clinton Reuters/Jim Young

Hillary Clinton Reuters/Jim Young

14. Rachel Maddow

The MSNBC hostette  spent 2016 comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler, arguing that George H.W. Bush signed the North American Free Trade Agreement into law, issuing trigger warnings about anti-Hillary Clinton buttons and urging a presidential election vote recount in Florida — a state Trump hardly won by the skin of his teeth. Yes, the American left needs celebrity television personalities like everyone else. But must such personalities be morons? Can MSNBC really do no better?

Rachel Maddow Getty Images /D Dipasupil

Rachel Maddow Getty Images /D Dipasupil

13. Nick Saban

Okay, coach, we get it: You are really good at stockpiling blue-chip recruits, winning college football games and, of course, abusively berating your colleagues on live national television. College football is fun with you around, in the sense that a hated villain makes anything more dramatic. At the same time, those halcyon days when you were a thoroughly mediocre NFL head coach are looking sweeter and sweeter.

Nick Saban Getty Images Sport

Nick Saban Getty Images Sport

12. Amy Schumer

A magazine called People which was somewhat relevant way back in the 1980s declared that Schumer was the most intriguing person of 2015. Leaving that monumentally stupid decision aside, the vagina-focused comedian has had a shaky 2016. She threatened — but, sadly, failed — to leave the United States if Donald Trump won the election. She became decidedly less funny and was accused of stealing jokes. She even seems to have managed to cause a decline in the sales of beer. Yet for some reason she has been cast for the lead role in a new Barbie movie. What did we do to deserve this kind of treatment?

Amy Schumer Shutterstock/Helga Esteb

Amy Schumer Shutterstock/Helga Esteb

11. John Podesta

Here we have an allegedly ultra-smart Clinton campaign boss who was suckered by an embarrassingly obvious email phishing scam. He gave away his email sign-in information to foreigners — almost certainly Russian spies — who then proceeded to influence America’s presidential election by slowly leaking thousands of his emails. Otto von Bismarck famously said that “God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.” However accurate this statement may be — and however great or disastrous President Trump may become — we are certainly fortunate that halfwits like Podesta won’t control real levers of power.

John Podesta Getty Images/Justin Sullivan

John Podesta Getty Images/Justin Sullivan

10. Lena Dunham

For her latest flap, abortion enthusiast Lena Dunham announced to America: “I still haven’t had an abortion, but I wish I had.” The part-time actress and full-time social justice warrior also spent 2016 telling ordinary Americans they are terrible and, thus, should vote for Hillary Clinton. She threatened to move to another country if Trump won the election in November. Sadly, she hasn’t.

Lena Dunham Getty Images/Frazer Harrison

Lena Dunham Getty Images/Frazer Harrison

9. All celebrities who meddle in politics

Most of America’s big celebrities are liberal. That’s fine. It’s what you would expect of people who work only sporadically and produce almost nothing of value. The problem is that these people spend their time instructing everyone else how to vote and how to view politics. Sorry, Quentin Tarantino: your ability to make overly violent B movies is not a license to give political lectures. Sorry, Sean Penn, you are an obnoxious hypocrite. Please, you guys! Do America a favor and shut the hell up.

Sean Penn in Team America YouTube screenshot/Movieclips

Sean Penn in Team America YouTube screenshot/Movieclips

8. All social justice warriors

These self-appointed social critics — who tend to come from privileged, comfortable backgrounds — have long worn out their welcome among ordinary Americans, who are generally content to live and let live. Stop trying to foist “holiday placemats for social justice” on us. Stop pestering us with stupid, artificial pronouns. Cut it out with the ludicrous safe spaces. Even President Obama is sick and damn tired of social justice warriors. “Don’t feel like you got to shut your ears off because you’re too fragile and somebody might offend your sensibilities,” he said during a commencement address this year. “Use your logic and reason and words. And by doing so, you’ll strengthen your own position, and you’ll hone your arguments. And maybe you’ll learn something and realize you don’t know everything.”

social justice warriors YouTube screenshot/LaughingAtLiberals

social justice warriors YouTube screenshot/LaughingAtLiberals

7. Transvestites

Speaking of worn-out welcomes, it’s time for some serious resistance against America’s tiny cross-dressing population. You like to don women’s clothing, or men’s clothing, or whatever. You love — and take pride in — a parade. We get that. Go to town! Have a ball! But many people — particularly, say, high school girls — feel uncomfortable using bathrooms and taking showers with you. It’s time to take America’s restrooms and locker rooms back.

transvestites Shutterstock/John Gomez

transvestites Shutterstock/John Gomez

6. Richard Spencer

The white nationalist “alt-right” leader has a meager following that is dwarfed by the annual gathering of dudes who like to dress up in “My Little Pony” outfits. He won’t condemn Adolf Hitler. He admits that his white separatist movement has nothing whatsoever to do with conservatism. Spencer was an early member of the Trump-for-president bandwagon, though, and his fringe movement received lots of oxygen as a result. That’s very sad. But it’s time for you to go now, dude — far away, never to be seen or heard again.

Richard Spencer YouTube screenshot/Al Jazeera English

Richard Spencer YouTube screenshot/Al Jazeera English

5. Keith Olbermann

Once the host of primetime news and national sports shows, Olbermann is now GQ’s special YouTube correspondent. TheDC is not making this up. He currently hosts a YouTube show in front of what appears to be construction paper. It’s so pathetic and, simultaneously, so righteously delicious. In any case, Olbermann — who until July of this year lived in a $3.8 million apartment in New York City’s Trump Palace — will probably be doing cat videos next year.

Keith Olbermann YouTube screenshot/GQ

Keith Olbermann YouTube screenshot/GQ

4. Barack Obama

You’ve probably forgotten — and, if so, good for you — but, back in 2008, America’s chattering class was ablaze with dude-you-must-be-joking, messianic zeal about Obama. He promised us hope. He promised us change. He titillated nerdy liberals with “a grander moment, as if history” “stopped flowing passively by,” according to parochial Washington rube-nerd Ezra Klein. Eight years later, America has a complacent economy and an aimlessly limp foreign policy. Meanwhile, Obama is spending actual presidential time reminiscing about that time in 2000 when his credit card got denied. Buh-bye.

Obama Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Obama Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

3. Ta-Nehisi Coates

America’s premier affirmative-action-hire intellectual continues to be to thoughtful discourse as a single kazoo playing underwater is to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Earlier this month, Obama had to explain to Coates — gently, using small words — that reparations payments for black Americans simply aren’t politically feasible. This upcoming semester, a book by Coates will be required reading in a course called “The Problem of Whiteness” at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The class “will ask what an ethical white identity entails, what it means to be #woke.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates Getty Images/Anna Webber

Ta-Nehisi Coates Getty Images/Anna Webber

2. Julian Assange

The WikiLeaks co-founder insists that the Russian government was not his group’s source for emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. But come on, man! He’s a perfect albino spy novel villain from central casting. He even lives in a villainous lair. Whether the Russians have bankrolled this guy or not, foreigners should not be influencing America’s free, fair elections. It’s an outrage to our democracy and to our sovereignty that this guy has been able to do so without the unholy wrath of our power coming down upon him.

Julian Assange Getty Images/Carl Court

Julian Assange Getty Images/Carl Court

1. Colin Kaepernick

The Commie dictator-supporting NFL quarterback has disrespected the United States of America for the duration of this year’s NFL season by refusing to stand for the national anthem. He has all but spat on the soldiers who died for his freedom. Even staunchly left-wing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg finds Kaepernick absurd. “If they want to be stupid, there’s no law that should be preventive,” Ginsburg said of Kaepernick and other grossly overpaid professional athletes who have decided to kneel for The Star-Spangled Banner. Best of all, though, Kaepernick has had the temerity to suck hilariously badly at football. Where have you gone, Joe Montana? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Colin Kaepernick Getty Images Sport

Colin Kaepernick Getty Images Sport

Follow Eric on TwitterLike Eric on Facebook. Send story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.

In-story photo credits: Reuters/Scott Audette, YouTube screenshot/CNN, YouTube screenshot/Bloomberg, Shutterstock/Liam Goodner, YouTube screenshot/The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, YouTube screenshot/Raw Story, Shutterstock/Sky Cinema, Reuters/Jim Young, Getty Images/D Dipasupil, Getty Images Sport, Shutterstock/Helga Esteb, Getty Images/Justin Sullivan, Getty Images/Frazer Harrison, YouTube screenshot/Movieclips, YouTube screenshot/LaughingAtLiberals, Shutterstock/John Gomez, YouTube screenshot/Al Jazeera English, YouTube screenshot/GQ, Reuters/Kevin Lamarque, Getty Images/Anna Webber, Getty Images/Carl Court, Getty Images Sport

Eric Owens