6. Rupert Murdoch. Easily the worse Aussie import since "Men at Work." He initially appeared harmless, only wishing to replicate his network of crude tabloid newspapers. Instead, the father of "Fox News" has done more to coarsen the debate than any native-born American. He also recently sunk his hooks into the Wall Street Journal, where its wacko opinion page is beginning to seep into its news coverage, slowly sinking another great newspaper.
FINAL DESTINATION: Back to Australia. Not the present-day nation, but the one of the late 18th century, when the Brits turned it into a penal colony. Minus his wealth and his media empire, he can look at it as a fresh start. Murdoch would no doubt prosper in virgin territory, and pushing the age of 80, I'm certain he would not waste what time was left.
7. Keith Olbermann. He's witty, but uses his intelligence to be so overbearingly sanctimonious that he makes progressives look almost as bad as the right wingers. Listening to one of his 20-minute editorials is like the Bataan Death March, but without the enjoyment of the outdoors.
FINAL DESTINATION: He can actually stay, just not on MSNBC.
8. Sarah Palin. The New Yorker magazine noted in a recent article that no politician so convincingly erases the line between the governing and the governed. Which is a polite way of saying she's even dumber than Michele Bachmann, but with an outside shot of actually becoming president one day. That the nation will be paying for the sins of the last decade for the next few decades means this simply cannot come to pass.
FINAL DESTINATION: Roosha. As I noted in a previous entry, no place treats its citizens with more narrow-minded indifference than the former Soviet Union. She would fit in there like an iron glove.
9. Dick Cheney. One of the funniest and saddest lines in movie history is from "Dog Day Afternoon," when Sonny (Al Pacino) asks his dimwitted bank-robbing partner Sal (the late, great John Cazale) which country he wanted to escape to. The answer: Wyoming. "Sal, Wyoming's not a country," Sonny replied. That may have been the case in 1975, when the movie was produced, but the state's most famous son and history's scariest vice president has proved otherwise. A hard-headed bastard like Alberto Gonzales, but a hundred times smarter and meaner, Cheney lived to undermine the Constitution and torture anyone who might have even looked at pictures of terrorists. Read the amazing tragicomic Wyoming stories of Annie Proulx, and it becomes clear the place is a factory for misfits and psychotics, its motto "The Equality State" the biggest fraud since the Teapot Dome yet another fine Wyoming product.
FINAL DESTINATION: Cheney is about the only member of the Bush Administration who stuck around in Washington after he left office. Obviously, going home is very painful, so the hardscrabble nation of Wyoming is where he should go. With any luck, Cheney will be misidentified as a charging moose and be shot in the face by a hunter. As Cheney himself might say, do it to him before he does it to us again.
10. George W. Bush. Jeez, what can I say? The most uninformed, incurious and cold-hearted leader this country has ever had made Nixon look like Lincoln. He was just a couple of massive bailouts away from plunging the nation into total ruin. Even so, it will take God knows how long to recover from the frat party trashing left by Dubya and his minions. Fortunately, his thoroughly disgraceful tenure has been followed up by relative obscurity, and I picture him spending his days toiling to color in the books for his presidential library. Nevertheless, if he isn't kicked out of the U.S. of A, , who should?
FINAL DESTINATION: In 2004, Bush requested funding for a mission to Mars. "We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit," he said at the time. In his case, I couldn't agree more. We can put him in one of the shuttles that's being retired next year, and just hit the "Ignition" button. Don't let the Earth's atmosphere kick you in the ass on the way out.
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