Editors' Note: Every year, your editors take time from their hectic year end schedules and trips to Foxwoods to sift through the thousands of nominees chosen by readers as worthy of the Spy's highest annual honor: Douchebag of the Year. This year saw a bumper crop of relatively new douches, even as scores of past winners continued their douchey ways into another year. Sadly there can only be one winner [Two years ago there were two – Copy Ed.], so all those Republican Congressmen, TV reality stars, and overpaid titans of Wall Street will have to wait. We hope they'll keep a stiff upper lip. Come to think of it, though, maybe if they hadn't, they might have bawled their way into the Winner's Circle, like this year's . .  

2009 DOUCHEBAG OF THE YEAR: GLENN BECK

It's nothing to cry about . . .

By Geoffrey Dawson
and the Board of Editors

Almost half a century ago, then-FCC Commissioner Newton Minow decried television as a "vast wasteland."  That was the era when families could choose between top-notch entertainers on The Ed Sullivan Show and moderately stirring scripted dramas like Bonanza.  On some Saturday mornings, you could deposit the little monsters in front of the box for a live Young People's Concert with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.

Those were the days, my friends. Now television, having expanded from four to four million channels, could more precisely be described as a barren gaseous universe, devoid of intelligent life. What's on?  Outside of baseball season, you've got two choices: hate-filled ranters and mentally ill substance abusers shrieking before pounding the crap out of each other.

Never let it be said that television doesn't advance, or at least run around in circles. This year, thanks to the lucubrations of this year's award-winner, television viewers were able to, um, enjoy a new format, representing a synthesis of both streams of reality television: hate-fill rant and inappropriate affect due to personality disorder. Such an achievement should not go unrecognized. Therefore after much screaming, crying, and fighting (by our honoree, not the judges), we have unanimously chosen TV pioneer Glenn Back the Spy's 2009 Douchebag of the Year.  

Let's wipe away the tears and focus more closely on Glenn's specific abreactions [Surely, actions? – Ed.]. Like millions of others who battle crippling mental illness, Glenn tends to decompensate under the slightest stress, such as the election of a President who's neither white nor Republican.

As a result, poor Glenn has at various times termed President Obama, who packed his White House staff and Cabinet with white people, a "racist," and, following the President's decision to follow in Teddy Roosevelt's footsteps by regulating the excesses of the marketplace, a "Marxist." What Marxist doctrine Glenn thought Obama had adopted he didn't say (or know). We think we're on stronger ground when we call our winner a Marxist, because he slavishly follows a core Marxist principle: "No matter who proposed or commenced it, I'm against it." [No one will get that one. – Copy Ed.]

The election of a President and Congress who don't share Beck's dotty political views appears to alter Beck's neurochemistry in other alarming ways. He's a great believer in the reductio ad Hitlerum, e.g., (a) Hitler built highways, (b) the Democrats in  Congress passed a highway bill, ergo (c) those Democrats are Nazis. Don't believe us? Click the Media Matters link below.  

In his manic phases, Beck exhibits not only paranoia but megalomania. He fancies himself the leader of a great mass movement (like Hitler?) which succeeded, with financing from rich reactionaries, in busing 70,000 whack jobs to Washington to demand that the Government keep its hands off their Medicare.

It's probably not healthy for Beck to continue to associate with equally undermedicated loudmouths who make up his guest list. Paranoia loves company, and it doesn't take more than a few minutes of chat for Beck to leave Planet Earth.

Thus, he'll readily agree that a health care bill establishing an advisory panel to evaluate whether particular treatments do any good is tantamount to appointing a Euthanasia Commission that will deny life-saving medical care to the old, the halt, and those afflicted with crippling physical or mental illness [So that's why he's so worried – Ed.].

And any talk of raising taxes on rich people to the levels prevailing during the Reagan Administration gets Beck and his guests running to the gun cabinets for the Sidewinders needed to shoot down the IRS's black helicopters (which it borrowed from the UN).

So far, not so different from any other hour of Schlox "News" programming, but unlike Bill O'Reilly, who dishes up his drivel with the cynical anger of an aging porn star, or Sean Hannity, who squeaks in feigned indignation, Glenn proves how deeply he feels his pain by turning on the waterworks.

Only a world-historical douchebag like Beck would have the genius to express his primitive hatreds not through snarling or squeaking but by crying great salt tears. Remember that girl you went out with for a couple of weeks until she started to berate you every time she saw you talking to another female older then twelve and younger than eighty? Remember how after she busted your chops for a few hours she broke down in tears and you felt guilty? Want to relieve those glory days? Check out our winner!

It's another Great American Success Story, on a par with those of past DOTY's George Bush and Richard Nixon: a white man of no particular intelligence, energy, charm, or ambition nonetheless succeeds because he serves so faithfully the interests of those who pay him. That's why Glenn has risen from failed stand-up to one of the crown cubic zirconia in the Schlox News diadem.

But don't think that Beck pipped other high-octane douchebags at the post just because of his lachrymose ravings. There's also Beck, the author and performance artist. Just last Christmas, scores of filmgoers were, um, treated to Beck's retelling of his children's remainder [Surely, classic? – Ed.] The Christmas Sweater, which is about a boy who wanted a bicycle but got a sweater and a bottle of Adderall instead. Or something. Somehow Beck, wearing his sweater, padded this out for several hours with choir and rented children. When Jerry Lewis finally drops dead during the telethon, we've got just the guy to replace him.  

There's so much more and if you haven't recently had a large meal and want to pursue our winner's brilliant career, we'll turn you over to Media Matters for America. Looking back on Glenn Beck's paranoid delusions, and the appetite that a couple million TV viewers with similar reality disorders have for them, we don't know whether to scream or to cry. But then, we're no Glenn Beck.