For the sake of expediency we will ignore the contemporary crop of crustacean craniums currently darkening our towels. (George Bush and the like, c'mon -that's just shooting fish in a barrel of monkeys and lawyer's faces, and after all; their exploits are well documented and looped in 24 hour cycles for your viewing displeasure). In no particular chronology here they are...you keep 'em, I don't want 'em.
Worst Wanker #1 --Cosimo Caccini, a self-seeking simpleton who shames the Florentines for having been born in their locale. Caccini became a Franciscan monk and was known for being a gasbag from his pulpit of putridity. He used his position to vilify condemn and denounce. So much so, the (I didn't make the title up folks...though I would have...) Archbishop of Bologna was brought in to reprimand him for creating scandals.
He frequently stunk up the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence with his hateful disdain, which would later be the site of his most infamous blathering. A century earlier, A Father Savanarola had preached there, and the legacy of this monk's oratory skills lived on. Caccini, envious of Savonarola's reputation; soon showed that he had a knack for longwinded balderdash and inflammatory babbling.
Soon after his novitiate he was preaching Lenten sermons (The big show!). His reputation as a verbose snake oil salesman spread like a rash, and he was invited by churches in other cities to perform the same act. Caccini was, however, was nothing more than a pale imitator of Savanarola. A fanatic egotist, his personal ambition for advancement within the Dominican order was the inspiration for his sermons condemning everyone but his bosses. He chose to take the name Tommaso, as he saw himself as the new Thomas Aquinas, the order's (and the Church's) greatest theologian. But in truth, his published works were derivative third-rate crap.
Cacinni would just be another ambitious carnival side show barker, unworthy of mention except for one thing. His shtick, if you will; was condemning anyone who threatened church doctrine no matter how demonstratively wrong it was. Doctrine was absolute and unquestionable. Now right about this time people, Galileo was discovering the four largest satellites of Jupiter. He observed that the planet Venus exhibited a full set of "phases"(like the Moon does). Both of these discoveries supported the heliocentric model of the solar system developed by Copernicus.
(The idea that the Sun was the center, not the Earth).
Galileo was the first westerner to report sunspots (Mayan and Chinese astronomers seem to have been 1st) . He argued from the occultation of stars (visible only through a telescope) that the Moon is not a perfect sphere but has mountains. His experiments in dynamics paved the road for Kepler's and Newton's laws of motion. He was also one of the first scientists to use the experimental method. His study of balls rolling down inclined planes convinced him that falling objects are accelerated independent of their mass, and that objects retain their velocity unless a force acts on them. Galileo observed that a pendulum's swing always take the same amount of time, a discovery which made precise clocks possible. Galileo was both an accomplished scientist and a Christian believer. A Catholic. But for publishing his observations, thanks to the self serving sanctimonious swift-boating provided by Caccini. Galileo would be jailed.
Historian Andrew Dickson White wrote:
"The Dominican Father Caccini preached a sermon from the text, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" and this wretched pun upon the great astronomer's name ushered in sharper weapons; for, before Caccini ended, he insisted that "geometry is of the devil," and that "mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies." The Church authorities gave Caccini promotion. Father Lorini proved that Galileo's doctrine was not only heretical but "atheistic," and besought the Inquisition to intervene. The Bishop of Fiesole screamed in rage against the Copernican system, publicly insulted Galileo, and denounced him to the Grand-Duke. The Archbishop of Pisa secretly sought to entrap Galileo and deliver him to the Inquisition at Rome. The Archbishop of Florence solemnly condemned the new doctrines as unscriptural; and Paul V, while petting Galileo, and inviting him as the greatest astronomer of the world to visit Rome, was secretly moving the Archbishop of Pisa to pick up evidence against the astronomer. But by far the most terrible champion who now appeared was Cardinal Bellarmin, one of the greatest theologians the world has known. He was earnest, sincere, and learned, but insisted on making science conform to Scripture. The weapons which men of Bellarmin's stamp used were purely theological. They held up before the world the dreadful consequences which must result to Christian theology were the heavenly bodies proved to revolve about the sun and not about the earth. Their most tremendous dogmatic engine was the statement that "his pretended discovery vitiates the whole Christian plan of salvation." Father Lecazre declared "it casts suspicion on the doctrine of the incarnation." Others declared, "It upsets the whole basis of theology. If the earth is a planet, and only one among several planets, it can not be that any such great things have been done specially for it as the Christian doctrine teaches. If there are other planets, since God makes nothing in vain, they must be inhabited; but how can their inhabitants be descended from Adam? How can they trace back their origin to Noah's ark? How can they have been redeemed by the Saviour?" Nor was this argument confined to the theologians of the Roman Church; Melanchthon, Protestant as he was, had already used it in his attacks on Copernicus and his school."On June 22, 1633, the Roman Inquisition started its trial against Galileo, a 69 years old man who pleaded for mercy, based on his failing health . The inquisition responded by threatening him with torture, imprisonment and death on the stake.
The mockery of a trial forced Galileo to "abjure, curse and detest" his work. He was forced to swear to denounce others who held his prior viewpoint. Galileo did everything the church requested him to do. The threat of torture and death Galileo was facing was a real one. In the earlier trial against Giordano Bruno, he was burned at the stake for holding a naturalistic view of the universe. The Grand Duke Ferdinand II de' Medici asked for lenience regarding Galileo, and it's likely without the Duke's influence, Galileo would have been ignited on a stake as well.
Galileo was put under permanent house arrest, Because of a painful hernia, he requested permission to consult physicians in Florence, which was denied by Rome, warning that further such requests would lead to imprisonment. Under arrest, he was forced to recite penitentiary psalms regularly, and his social contacts were highly restricted, but he was allowed to continue his less controversial research and publish under strict rules of censorship. He went blind in 1638 (his petition to the Inquisition to be released was rejected, but he was allowed to move to his house in Florence where he was closer to his physicians). His Dialogue, in which one of the conversationalists suggests the planets and sun do not revolve around the earth was put on the Index librorum prohibitorum, a black list of banned books, until 1822.
Let's hear that Bronx cheer for Caccini and of course again for his cohorts.Though many were involved in the tormenting and suppression of Galileo, without Caccini beating the war drum he may well have remained unmolested. One must question all those who fight new ideas in favor of mere convention. History has not once revealed them in a favorable light. All progress comes from those who question status quo, not those who defend it.
Worst Wanker #2 --Tennessee Governor Austin Peay
Peay signed the Butler Act into law on March 21, 1925.
Americans, after the turmoil of World War I were generally seeking out the nostalgic normalcy of their prewar society . In rural areas, particularly in the South and Midwest, Fundamentalist preachers preyed on their yearnings by suggesting the cause of turmoil was because people didn't believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, particularly "their" interpretation. These Americans found a degree of comfort and stability in these new religions which sprung from door to door salesmen, hucksters and flimflam men with little or no theological education. This was the era when many Americans lost their faith in more metaphysical aspects of religious philosophy and embraced the one dimensional simplistic fundamentalist religions that required no thinking but demanded blind adherence from their followers. Fundamentalists, who believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible, hated Darwin and the theory of evolution referring to evolution as "the most present threat to the truth they were sure they alone possessed" (Sherwin D. Smith, "The Great 'Monkey Trial,'" New York Times July 4, 1965 ) With evolution as the enemy, they set out to eradicate it.
By 1925, Oklahoma, Florida and Mississippi had such laws, and narrow margins determined those in North Carolina and Kentucky. In Tennessee the Butler Law passed in early 1925, for although the governor was not a fundamentalist, many of his constituents were. As he said, "Nobody believes that it is going to be an active statute". And this is why he is singled out as a buffoon. He knew this law was nonsense, but passed it anyway to get votes from the bible thumpers. The ACLU set out to initiate a court case to test the constitutionality of the Butler Law. The entertaining Scopes monkey trial ensued. At least it made for a good Spencer Tracy movie.
The Dayton Monkey Trial
More a festival of opportunism than anything else, the streets of Dayton turned into a small-town fair, with people selling food, souvenirs and religious books. On the side of the courthouse ran a banner blaring "Read Your Bible Daily!" The media came from as far away as Hong Kong, and more than two million words were published during the trial. (H.L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun, known for his caustic wit and cynical observations had much to make hay of.)
William Jennings Bryan
According to "Scopes Evolution Trial" (from Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Summer, 1981)
"Into this media circus meets religious revival rolled two of the greatest legal minds of the time, facing off to battle each other. William Jennings Bryan called the trial a "contest between evolution and Christianity ... a duel to the death". Known as The Great Commoner to the people, Bryan was a three-time presidential candidate and former Secretary of State to Woodrow Wilson. After a few years of retirement, he joined the Chautauqua circuit to rail against Darwin in tent revivals across the country.
Across the courtroom at the defendant's table was Clarence Darrow, with a sharp criminal lawyer's mind and an infamous reputation. To Bryan, he was "the greatest atheist or agnostic in the United States." Darrow himself joined the defense table because "for years," he said, "I've wanted to put Bryan in his pace as a bigot".
From the moment of Bryan's arrival in Dayton, the weight of public sentiment was in his favor. The records of the trial indicate that the townspeople came out for the trial in record numbers, packing the small country courthouse. Cries of "Amen" peppered the trial proceedings until the judge had to ask the observers to lower the noise level. Bryan planned to end the trial with a speech consummating his lifetime of preaching, one he had been preparing for seven weeks. Darrow, however, had other plans. Since the intention was to test the constitutionality of the Butler Law, Darrow wanted the jury to find Scopes guilty, so he could then appeal the decision in a higher court. He did not, however, plan to call Scopes to the stand, for if he were to do so, it might surface that Scopes had, in fact, not even been in school on the day mentioned in the indictment. He was meticulous in his effort to keep the trial free of technicalities. Just one could get the case thrown out with the law itself yet untested. Darrow also planned to call expert witnesses to give testimony about evolution. But when the judge ordered that Darrow could not call the scholars as witnesses, he shifted his plans.
The monkey business, the contempt for intellectual honesty, continues to this day. OK ready? THREE CHEERS (Bronx style) for Austin Paey and political opportunists everywhere!
After the judge moved the trial outside because of the 100-plus degree heat inside and the instability of the courtroom floor under the weight of so many spectators, Darrow, in a fantastic gesture, called William Jennings Bryan to the stand. The interchange which follows targets the essence of Darrow's argument and signals the turning point in the trial, which brought public sentiment decisively over to Darrow's side:
Clarence Darrow"You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?"Darrow had set his trap and Bryan walked right in.
"Yes, sir; I have tried to ... But, of course, I have studied it more as I have become older than when I was a boy."
"Do you claim then that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?"
"I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there ..."
Darrow continued to question Bryan on the actuality of Jonah and the whale, Joshua's making the sun stand still and the Tower of Babel, as Bryan began to have more difficulty answering.
Q: "Do you think the earth was made in six days?"
A: "Not six days of 24 hours ... My impression is they were periods ..."
Q: "Now, if you call those periods, they may have been a very long time?"
A: "They might have been."
Q: "The creation might have been going on for a very long time?"
A: "It might have continued for millions of years ..."
Worst Wanker #3-- Robert Mugabe
In 28 years he has managed to take one of the wealthiest countries in sub-Saharan Africa and ruin it in a stupefying variety of ways. He annihilated the agricultural sector (once a leading exporter of corn and tobacco) by seizing commercial farms and giving them to cronies who failed to use the land at all. He prosecuted a kleptomaniacal war in the Congo, spending $1 million (U.S.) a day in hopes of stealing enough land and resources from the Congolese to make a profit.When Zimbabweans have tried to vote him out of office, he has punished them with violence and economic repression. A passage from "The State of Africa," by Martin Meredith, recalls the explanation offered to citizens for cutting off their food supplies: "First you will eat your chickens, then your goats, then your donkeys. Then you will eat your children, and finally you will eat the dissidents."
Zimbabwe's leader gets the razz. Technically he is a contemporary, but because he has been destroying Zimbabwe for over 30 years...I think he is quite eligible and certainly deserving.
Worst Wanker #4 --Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig
The Somme battlefield in northern France is largely a matter of going from one cemetery to another. The graveyards are everywhere, some of them very small, comprising only a handful of white Portland marble stones, many bearing the inscription, A Soldier of the Great War / Known unto God. One sees so many of these cemeteries and so many stones—along with the vast memorial at Thievpal bearing the names of some 70,000 British soldiers whose bodies were never recovered—that after a few hours of it, you are numb. Overwhelmed.
The volume of the battle still stuns one's imagination. The Somme was an epic of butchery and futility alike; a profligate waste of lives and material such as the world had never seen.
On the morning of July 1, 1916, 110,000 British infantrymen went “over the top.” In a few hours, 60,000 of them were casualties. Nearly 20,000 of these were either dead already or would die of their wounds, many of them lingering for days between the trenches, suffering in no man’s land. The attacking forces did not gain a single one of their objectives.
A staff colonel had the balls to write: “The events of July 1st bore out the conclusions of the British higher command and amply justified the tactical methods employed.”
Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, chief of staff of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and architect of the battle, agreed. On the day after the debacle, stating that the enemy “has undoubtedly been shaken and has few reserves in hand,” he discussed with subordinates methods for continuing the offensive.
Which he did, with a kind of transcendent stubbornness, for another four months, until winter weather forced an end to the campaign, if not the fighting. By then, Haig’s army had suffered more than 400,000 casualties. For the British, in the grave judgment of noted military historian John Keegan, “the battle was the greatest tragedy…of their national military history” and “marked the end of an age of vital optimism in British life that has never been recovered.”
But Haig was not done yet.
The great commanders of history intrigue us, and we read their biographies looking for insight into character attributes which might have accounted for their success. For instance Napoleon, we might think imagination. In General Lee, we see audacity. Wellington seemed to possess composure. Hannibal exemplified daring. Of course, great generals seem to possess all these qualities to some degree. They are artists in some sense blending intelligence, intuition, courage, calculation and many other traits that allow them to see what others cannot and to act in a rhythmic certainty. In military history, the question of what makes great commanders is an inexhaustible one.
Unsuccessful generals are seldom discussed any more than we like to read about mediocre runners who never won a race or ballplayers who hit .200 lifetime. There is nothing terribly enlightening in the biography of, say, Ambrose Burnside or any of the other Union generals tormented by Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley.
But Douglas Haig is the exception to the rule. Because in spite of the multitudes of graveyards and inconclusive, costly battles; some claim he was not unsuccessful. At the end of the war, after all, the army he had almost ruined—was, (victorious may not be the word) on the winning side.
Haig did not merely fail to achieve his stated objectives in the great battles of the Somme and Ypres. He failed in a much larger sense; in the fashion of Pyrrhus, who lamented after the battle at Asculum, “Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone.”
Bronx cheers galore. It takes more than a stiff upper lip to make Haig appear palatable.
Worst Wanker #5 -- Whoever invented this:
I mean why run on a treadmill or run outside if you can run on a treadmill outside?
Why indeed! Well at least it isn't fossil fuel powered and has no beer can holder built in.
(they sell it separately).
Bonus Bozos- Tied for Worst Wanker #6 are 10 leaders of nation who lined their pockets at their countries expense. (I know, it's so common it would be more of a news item if we found someone who didn't rob and pilfer.)
Thieving Corrupt Leaders!
| Name | Position | Funds embezzled2 |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Mohamed Suharto | President of Indonesia (1967–1998) | $15–35 billion |
| 2. Ferdinand Marcos | President of the Philippines (1972–1986) | 5–10 billion |
| 3. Mobutu Sese Seko | President of Zaire (1965–1997) | 5 billion |
| 4. Sani Abacha | President of Nigeria (1993–1998) | 2–5 billion |
| 5. Slobodan Milosevic | President of Serbia/Yugoslavia (1989–2000) | 1 billion |
| 6. Jean-Claude Duvalier | President of Haiti (1971–1986) | 300–800 million |
| 7. Alberto Fujimori | President of Peru (1990–2000) | 600 million |
| 8. Pavlo Lazarenko | Prime Minister of Ukraine (1996–1997) | 114–200 million |
| 9. Arnoldo Alemán | President of Nicaragua (1997–2002) | 100 million |
| 10. Joseph Estrada | President of the Philippines (1998–2001) | 78–80 million |
Worst Wanker #7 -- Former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin
When you eat the brothers, they tend to frown on you. ..enough said.
Worst Wanker #8 --Jack Whitehead
The first "King of Strike Breakers" --through the significant numbers of strikes during the 1890s and very early 1900s, strike breaking by recruiting massive numbers of replacement workers became a noteworthy activity. Jack Whitehead saw opportunity in labor struggles; while other workers were attempting to organize unions, he walked away from his own union to organize an army of strike breakers. Whitehead was the first to be called "King of the Strike Breakers"; by deploying his private workforce during steelworker's strikes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Birmingham, Alabama, became quite wealthy. By demonstrating how lucrative strike breaking could be, Whitehead inspired a host of imitators who further "perfected" the art.
Companies lavished money on violent union busters like James Farley and the Bergoff brothers.
By the 1930s, agencies began to rely more upon the use of informants and labor spies.
Spy agencies hired to bust unions developed a level of sophistication that could devastate targets. "Missionaries" were undercover operatives trained to use whispering campaigns (unfounded rumors to create dissension) on picket lines and in union halls. The strikers themselves were not the only targets. Often female missionaries might systematically visit the strikers' wives in the home, making up a sob story of how a strike had destroyed their own families. Missionary campaigns have been known to destroy not only strikes, but unions themselves. In the 1930s, the Pinkerton Agency employed twelve-hundred labor spies, and nearly one-third of them held high level positions in the targeted unions. The International Association of Machinists was damaged when Sam Brady, a veteran Pinkerton operative, held a high enough position in that union that he was able to arrange a premature strike. All but five officers in a United Auto Workers local in Lansing, Michigan were driven out by Pinkerton agents. The five who remained were Pinkertons themselves. Nathan Shefferman committed numerous illegal actions, including bribery, coercion of employees and racketeering. Shefferman built his business on a foundation of lies and deceit. The history of the suppression of labor organizing is dark and loathsome. Violence and murder were no strangers here.
Worst Wanker #9 --Joseph Kony, Commander of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)
Uganda is spotlighted again! Quote: "[The spirits] speak to me. They load through me. They will tell us what is going to happen. They say 'You, Mr. Joseph, tell your people that the enemy is planning to come and attack.' They will come like dreaming; they will tell us everything."
Yes another religious wingnut, this one is a Christian, who during two decades of civil war, killed more people than al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.
Kony, a former altar boy, aims to overthrow the Ugandan government and establish a regime based on the Ten Commandments. In pursuit of this goal, the LRA has abducted over 20,000 children to serve as soldiers and sex slaves, often forcing them to kill their own parents.
Have an extra crispy KonyDog, no that ain't ketchup.
Worst Wanker # 10 --Dov Lior, Head rabbi of Kiryat Arba settlement, a Jewish settlement near the turbulent West Bank town of Hebron, and leads the council of rabbis for the West Bank settlements. He has stated repeatedly that the killing of Palestinian civilians is compatible with Jewish law and that the commandment "thou shalt not kill"applies only to Jews. He has claimed "A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail." Lior has also issued a religious ruling forbidding Jews from employing Arabs or renting them property. Nice!
Getting tired of razzing? Use a whoopie cushion.
Last but not least Wanker (for this post) --Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of Hezbollah
who said "If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak, and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology, and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice I do not say the Israeli." Nasrallah and several colleagues formed Hezbollah in the wake of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Since then, the group has become a unique political entity - an Islamist political party, a terrorist militia, and a state-within-a-state in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah's 2006 battle with the Israel Defense Forces has surely boosted its prestige. Nasrallah studied Islam at a seminary in Najaf, Iraq, as a teenager and follows the brand of Shiite Islam developed by Iran's late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He is a major power broker in Lebanese government. Though Nasrallah has stopped calling for an Islamic revolution and seems willing to work within the state, he has not moderated his stance on Israel, and still calls for the "Zionist entity" to be wiped off the face of the Earth.
Instead of the traditional Bronx Cheer, let's cleanse our pallets with Lennon's vision of a world at Peace...Imagine!
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