Fan Chit Chat Douchebag Of The Year Award 2010

[BobbyD 2]

 

It's that time again...The Fan Chit Chat Douchebag of the Year 2010.

 

Write-Ins are encouraged as usual. I tried to make it as difficult as I could.

[lizpeppermint 5]

This was the most difficult poll I've ever taken. They are all major douches! I went with Kanye but now I am second guessing myself. Maybe it should be Dina Lohan.

[GovMarley 90]

Agreed! Most difficult poll ever. But the Situation is the hugest douche ever.

 

IMO, they all deserve the crown! Great poll, BobbyD.

[Hihomumio 168]

Jesse James...for the win.

[fykeylicious 1,099]

I went with Mel, but I was torn between him and Jesse James. Dina Lohan was a close third.

 

I have a soft spot for the Jersey shore losers (don't judge me)

[theempress 80]

Ooh, this is tough; I'll need some time to think about my options before voting.

 

Is it just me, or has Paris Hilton been rather low-profile recently? Not that I mind.

[Hoyaheel 1,874]

Exceedingly difficult! They all annoy me and I think they're all douchebags, but some are easier for me to ignore, so I had to rank that way ;-)

[BobbyD 2]

Thanks, everyone.

 

I can't even decide either on my own poll.

 

Maybe Mel, but I did leave off Charlie Sheen. It's almost like they could be a part of the no sh*t, of course they are douchebags, list.

[Hoyaheel 1,874]

no sh*t, of course they are douchebags, list.

Isn't that the "well DUH" thread? :4biggrin:

[BobbyD 2]

no sh*t, of course they are douchebags, list.

Isn't that the "well DUH" thread? :4biggrin:

 

:4biggrin:

[Hoyaheel 1,874]

Kristin at EOnline has her own list: http://www.eonline.com/photos/gallery.jsp?galleryUUID=2653

 

Kanye, Leno, Taylor Momsen, Scott Disick, David Arquette, Mel Gibson, Kate Gosselin, John Mayer, Charlie Sheen, Jesse James

[BobbyD 2]

Golly, I sure did leave off John Mayer.

 

I finally made my pick...and it was Dina Lohan.

 

*stands up on soapbox*

 

This douchebag has constantly denied that her daughter has a problem from the very beginning. She blames the media, tabloids, the industry, the courts, judges, producers...everyone with a beating heart has had Dina's finger pointed directly at them.

 

In a Today Show interview this year, she couldn't even recall how many times her oldest daughter had been in rehab and didn't feel the least bit embarrassed or upset by it. But in all fairness, none of us know how many tears she's cried in private. Although, it would be a tremendous thing to hear her own up her share of the blame for her daughters spiral and make a vow to clean up her own life as well as devoting herself to keeping Linds and her other children from spiraling further. This admission (as well as Lindsays) could give some degree of hope that her daughter would improve, even it means getting away from the cameras entirely(yeah right).

 

So she's a douche and the doucheiest of douchebags, who had a hand in nearly cost her own daughter her life...I didn't even bring up the partying they did together years before.

 

When I see Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen, Jesse James, with marriage plans or in the company of a woman...my ears suddenly ring with a ticking sound, like the stop watch on 60 Minutes. Seconds ticking away that could eventually lead to an explosion of violence, rage, abuse. So to me, their douche-ness is a given(not acceptable). But I do see they are running away with the poll, at the present time. Before a troll appears and instigates that I am blaming the woman...I am not...I am looking at the men's histories. I am not blaming the woman they marry/date. But geez, the women have to know that these dudes have a substantial amount of baggage that could endanger themselves, regardless of the money and honey that oozes from his lips (if y'all know what I mean).

 

Carrie on.

 

*off soapbox*

[Persiaa 0]

Wow-this is really tough. I'm going to have to think for a bit.

[KikiTopaz 34]

I agree, BobbyD. Dina is the lowest in my book because she stood by and basically did nothing to get her daughter the desperate help she needs. She also trash talks her ex (I know, Michael Lohan is just as much of a famewhore) but does she realize the emotional damage she is causing her children? I think she's all about the fame and money and uses her kids to get it. She disgusts me.

Brett Favre got my second choice. I'm a Cheesehead (Packer fan) and he has lost all of my admiration. Is he guilty of wang shots? I'm sure of it. Is he a narcisstic pig? I'm sure of it. Does his wife deserve this? Absolutely not.

[kappy22 1]

I was torn between Mel and Jesse but Jesse won out in my case. Geez, this really was a year for douchebags, wasn't it?!

[Silliness 1]

I picked Jesse James. Tiger was a close second. However, Tiger's wife would have probably been my pick for hero of the year for beating the crap out of him with the golf club.

[BobbyD 2]

I picked Jesse James. Tiger was a close second. However, Tiger's wife would have probably been my pick for hero of the year for beating the crap out of him with the golf club.

Maybe that's a good idea for another poll? Who's the FanChitChat Hero of the year?

[KikiTopaz 34]

Sandra Bullock has my admiration. She stayed classy through all of the turmoil with Jesse and didn't flaunt the fact that she quietly adopted a child. I know she has also donated a lot of money to worthwhile causes, look at what she did for victims of Katrina. I guess with everything that she has done, that would be a hero.

[fykeylicious 1,099]

Sandra Bullock has my admiration. She stayed classy through all of the turmoil with Jesse and didn't flaunt the fact that she quietly adopted a child. I know she has also donated a lot of money to worthwhile causes, look at what she did for victims of Katrina. I guess with everything that she has done, that would be a hero.

 

agreed...I'm trying to think of another potential candidate for ~hero~ but I'm having a hard time coming up with one. Seems like Hollywood douchebags are a dime a dozen...the heroes, not so much!

[dixiedoodah 1,003]

Well, the (allegedly) newly engaged John Edwards is an early favorite for 2011.

[annabeast 24]

Well, the (allegedly) newly engaged John Edwards is an early favorite for 2011.

I was just coming in to post that I thought he belonged in 2010, but 2011 works for me!

[BobbyD 2]

Do fans punish stars for bad behavior?

Mel Gibson and Charlie Sheen may anger viewers, but 'The Beaver' and 'Two and a Half Men' unlikely to suffer

 

By Michael Ventre

TODAYshow.com contributor TODAYshow.com contributor

 

Mel Gibson has a movie coming out in March called “The Beaver.” It’s about an executive who can’t communicate, so he uses a beaver hand puppet to express himself.

 

The premise alone is enough to make you wonder how this film got made. But because of the notoriety Gibson has gained both with his drunken anti-Semitic rants and the more recent allegations of abusive behavior leveled by his former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, attention instead will be focused on the fact that it represents Gibson’s “comeback” film.

 

Mel Gibson and Charlie Sheen may anger viewers, but 'The Beaver' and 'Two and a Half Men' are unlikely to suffer. Americans have short memories, and a long history of entertainers with issues.

 

Gibson has come to represent not only a fallen star looking to resurrect his career, but also a coterie of individuals with similar rap sheets in the entertainment business. Charlie Sheen has been a negative publicity machine, generating headlines involving drug and alcohol abuse and charges of domestic abuse. Chris Brown had his infamous incident with girlfriend Rihanna, and recently caused a stir with rants he made on Twitter that involved homophobic slurs.

 

Should the public support these people? Or should fans avoid buying any entertainment products from individuals who have acted abominably outside their careers?

 

“Ultimately it depends on the audience member,” said Robert J. Thompson, a professor of communications and pop culture expert at Syracuse University. “From a rational standpoint, there have been a lot of people in the entertainment business who have had bad lifestyles but they were really good at what they did.

 

“If we made a rule that we would not consume products or things from people who did bad things, then there would be a lot of creative products we wouldn’t buy.”

 

Sheen is an interesting example. It may be that it's easier for fans to say they'll boycott entertainment produced by a bad-boy movie star than a television star because moviegoers must physically put down money to see a film. And he's never exactly had a squeaky clean off-screen persona.

 

"I think there are two reasons some viewers don't seem to have a problem with the headlines about Charlie," said Maureen Ryan, lead television critic for AOL Television. "The first is that he's always had a bad-boy image, so this wasn't exactly a new thing for him or his public persona. Also, his character is a playboy character — the reaction might be different if he were playing the wholesome father of small children on an ABC Family show. Truth be told, though, I don't really know why there hasn't been more of a public reaction about Sheen's behavior. I certainly do think that if this had been a female star engaged in these antics, the outcry would have been far more severe and condemning."

 

Larry Kehoe, a "Two and a Half Men" fan from Indiana, agrees. "(Sheen's) character on the show is more representative of his real-life persona than it is hypocritical of it," Kehoe said. "It's not like he's playing Father Flanagan on TV and then being Charlie Sheen in real life."

 

Kehoe also notes that a show's own likability can go far to make viewers forget about actors' off-screen antics, admitting "I tend to rationalize the more criminal aspects (of Sheen's behavior) away because I like the show."

 

Different celebrities and infractions, of course, receive different treatment by the public.

 

“There are so many variables,” noted Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon.com. “It isn’t just one size fits all. So much depends on the grievousness of the transgression and how sincere the attempt is at atonement. And frankly, the body of work. We give different latitude to people who do different creative things.”

 

Williams cited the examples of Michael Richards and Roman Polanski as two figures who hold vastly different places in the entertainment community.

 

Richards became a household name playing Kramer on “Seinfeld.” But he tainted that name with a racist rant at a comedy club in a misguided attempt at creating edgy comedy. “Nobody really cares if Michael Richards makes a comeback or not,” Williams said, pointing out that Richards’ star seemed to have already faded anyway before the incident.

 

Polanski is another situation entirely, she said. “He is one of my favorite directors,” Williams said. “But after the extradition (attempt) and the fact that he couldn’t be a man and admit what he did was wrong, I said I don’t want to support this person with my dollars anymore. And I love his work.”

 

She said she didn’t see the Polanski film released early in 2010, “The Ghost Writer,” and doesn’t plan to. “He’s living a perfectly luxurious life in exile,” she explained, “but I don’t want to give my $10 to support a sex criminal.”

 

Thom Geier, senior editor at Entertainment Weekly, said the celebrity who generates scandalous headlines is nothing new, and neither is the idea that audiences judge Hollywood’s miscreants on a case-by-case basis.

 

“I think if you look back historically, there are examples both ways,” he said. “There was Fatty Arbuckle, a silent film star (who was eventually cleared after an incident in which a woman died at a party), or Eddie Fisher (married to Debbie Reynolds, he had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor in the 1950s), whose careers took real nose dives after real life acts that turned the public off.

 

“But there are also plenty who rebounded from personal peccadilloes and got back into the public graces. It’s hard to say that, short of something like O.J. Simpson did, what a celebrity would have to do that would completely turn people off.”

 

Tom Cruise is a recent example, said Geier, of a celebrity who seems to have withstood a spate of bad taste left in the mouths of fans. “A lot of people were turned off by Tom Cruise and his Scientology stuff, and the couch jumping on ‘Oprah,’” Geier said. “But he did a cameo in ‘Tropic Thunder’ that was hilarious, and people seemed to love him again.

 

“If you put out a good product, people will want to see it. If you make a good record, or movie, people tend to ignore the bad things you did.”

 

That is especially true, Thompson said, when you add time. In a culture dominated by the 24-hour news cycle, the public’s attention span is short, and generally speaking, so is the amount of time that people hold grudges against stars.

 

“With time, it begins to disappear,” he said. “There are probably some Mel Gibson movies people will watch 100 years from now. There might be trivia people, or film scholars, who will know about the scandals he was involved in during the 21st century. But those things tend to fade.

 

“The personal lives of these people recede into the arena of bibliographical scholars, whereas the things they leave continue to play in purity.”

 

Michael Ventre is a frequent contributor to TODAYshow.com.

[kappy22 1]

From yahoo news . . . .

 

Sandra Bullock's former husband Jesse James -- whose alleged infidelity triggered their divorce last year -- has split up with tattoo artist girlfriend Kat Von D, whom he was going to marry.

 

Motorbike-riding TV presenter James, who had said 2010 was the best year of his life because he fell in love with Von D, said he was devastated by their separation.

 

"I'm so sad because I really love her," James told People magazine. "The distance between us was just too much."

 

Von D -- or Katherine Drachenberg -- said on her Twitter feed: "I am no longer w Jesse, and out of respect for him, his family and myself, thats all the info I'd like to share. Thanks for respecting that."

Translation - He got caught again! (or so I'm assuming)

 

Couldn't happen to a nicer couple.

[Maxiemom 623]

And here I had chalked the split up to Kat getting Jesse's picture tattooed on her......

 

But yes, it couldn't happen to a "nicer" couple.

[princess 1,712]

For 2011 my vote is Dr. Conrad Murray (he was found guilty today). Not because it's Michael Jackson, but because he represents all the doctors who give into their junkie clients' demands.