Annus horribilis

If you read the news (as I regularly do), there’s a part of me that would say 2015 was an annus horribilis.

Greece’s debt. Syria’s Civil War. Syria’s refugees. Syria falling apart. ISIL’s death cult. ISIL’s media executions. The destruction of the ancient city sites of Nimrud, Hatra, and Dur-Sharrukin by ISIL. Paris (yet again). Suicide bombings in Beirut. Suicide bombing in Ankara. (Yet) another gun massacre in the United States. Saudi Arabia’s ridiculous justice system. Did I forget anything? Probably a lot.

However, there were still a few things to be in awe of, particularly when it had nothing to do with human beings killing other human beings. A probe the size of a refrigerator finally reached Pluto after nine years and took some amazing photographs that may have rivalled 2014’s comet landing. We’re now up to 2,030 exoplanets outside of our solar system. Those are just amazing stories. If all we read were science stories, 2015 might be a really good year. But it wasn’t.

Nevertheless, 2015 did offer stories with karma, schadenfreude, belly laughs, and silliness. Here are just a few of them.

From the belly laugh department, the Star Wars Marketing Machine was satirized recently for going a little over the top in its nonstop no-holds-barred merchandising.  I just saw an ad for a catheter called “R2D2” with a masked surgeon in the background. “Makes authentic R2-D2 sound effects when inserted” touted the ad.

In the schadenfreude department, Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG, was just arrested on allegations of securities fraud. You might remember that Shkreli was the boyish drug company entrepreneur who increased the price of a life-saving HIV drug from $13.50 to $750 (5,000 per cent) per pill, was accused of outrageous price gouging, and became a symbol for everything that was wrong with America (including his purchase of the only copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s new album for $2 million).

When Shkreli jacked up the price of his newly owned life-saving drug, he said: “If there was a company that was selling an Aston Martin at the price of a bicycle, and we buy that company and we ask to charge Toyota prices, I don’t think that that should be a crime.”

Andy Borowitz, who writes the “Borowitz Report” for The New Yorker (which, as everyone knows, is satire like The Onion) weighed in with a story about Shkrelli’s lawyer: “A criminal lawyer representing . . . Martin Shkreli has informed his client that he is raising his hourly legal fees by five thousand percent . . . hiking his fees from twelve hundred dollars an hour to sixty thousand dollars. Shkreli . . . cried foul and accused his attorney of outrageous price gouging.”

By the by, if you’re looking for a Christmas gift to give to someone, buy them a subscription to The New Yorker. I’ve been subscribing to it for almost 20 years. My wife wants me to get rid of all my copies (many of them in the extremely tight bathroom-library) so we can eventually move to a smaller place (with a smaller bathroom and no library). It’s just that there’s something magical about picking up a copy from 10 years ago and reading an article that I might’ve missed, or might’ve forgotten about, and been profoundly happy that I didn’t throw it out. (My name is Tony and I’m a New Yorker hoarder.)

In fact, just last night, in an edition from the summer, I saw a cartoon where a Roman gladiator was booed by the crowd for killing a lion. Said the shocked gladiator: “Come on . . . no-one told me it was a FAMOUS lion.”

Speaking of lions, in the silly department, the story of Cecil the Lion was among the most goofy news stories of the year. Yes, lions should be photographed, not lured out of protected enclaves and shot. I get that. But nobody seemed to blame the Government of Zimbabwe for charging and collecting $55,000 for the hunting permit. Instead, everyone wanted to see the dentist’s head on a pike.

Strange how nobody seemed to chastise PETA’s president and founder Ingrid Newkirk calling for the dentist to be hanged if found guilty in a country that does not actually hang lion poachers. So much for PETA and the rule of law.

Goodwell Nzou, a doctoral student in molecular biosciences from Zimbabwe who studies at Wake Forest University, wrote an editorial in the The New York Times about Cecil the Lion: “We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people. . . . Don’t offer me condolences about Cecil unless you’re also willing to offer me condolences for villagers killed or left hungry by his brethren, by political violence, or by hunger.”

And, as for hard-to-categorize stories, all you have to do is listen to what Donald Trump is saying on a regular basis about Mexicans (rapists) or Muslims (terrorists). Every time he says something outrageous, his poll numbers go up. He wants Muslims banned from entering the United States. He wants a database on Muslims. God knows when he’ll want Muslims to wear yellow crescent moons on their lapels. Let me know so that I can wear one, too. And, of course, one has to wonder when it will be the Brits, the Scots, the Ecuadorians, or the Canadians that are subject to these indignities.

It’s a big problem for Trump’s brand throughout the world. In Vancouver, there’s a growing surge by local politicians to force the soon-to-open Trump Hotel Tower owned by Holborn Group to rebrand, but Holborn has the same legal right to use the Trump name as the entire population of Vancouver has to boycott the bars and restaurants in the complex because of “the T word.” Maybe we shouldn’t use the word “Trump.” Maybe we should simply call it “The T Word.”

Better yet, maybe the City of Vancouver should allow Trump Tower to have the biggest sign in the city, except that it can’t show the letter “T.”

And finally, from the history department, Roger Cohen’s column in The New York Times “Trump’s Weimar America” is revealing.

Says Cohen: “The Weimar Republic ended with a clown’s ascent to power, a high-energy buffoon who shouted loudest, a bully from the beer halls, a racist and a bigot. He was an outsider given to theatrics and pageantry. He seduced the nation of Beethoven. He took the world down with him.”

Let’s hope 2016 has better news.