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The Most Moronic Stories of 2000

Let's try to be smarter next year, eh?

2000 was a troubling year. It seemed like everywhere we turned, something stupid was going on. We have revisited all the articles written this year, and constructed our list of the most moronic stories of 2000. You can expect most of the news links in these stories to be broken, but hopefully you can get the idea. Also, this page is best viewed with a standards-compliant web browser as it uses new-fangled CSS2 trickery.

10 At the bottom of the list is the Pope, who whined about how bloody insulted he felt that people were being gay. We pointed out a few things about some inquisitions and holocausts and stuff that we thought everyone else could find insulting.

9 Next, the huge hole in Red Hat Linux. Our first (and thus far only) morons of the month award went to Slashdot for their article about how a huge security hole was a victory for open source.

8 The American Family Association brings us our next moronic story for the year for demanding Bryant Gumbel be fired for a comment inadvertently picked up on camera, saying that he wasn't being very tolerant!

7 Yahoo being sued by a French organization takes the next position. The organization eventually won, but as Yahoo isn't a French company...

6 Girl suspended for witchcraft and also had her civil rights violated. When will they learn?

5 The Oregon Christian Coalition and Oregon Citizen's Alliance brings us #5, the "Student Protection Act", a solution looking for a problem. Using the usual right-wing anti-gay lies they managed to get the initiative on the ballot that would have prevented schools from doing things like telling gay students they're not evil. Fortunately the initiative lost in a close vote.

4 The first amendment right of people to peaceably assemble was trampled on a number of times this year. Notably in Washington and LA and Pennsylvania. Police officials made comments that would have made the founding fathers weep in agony and acted well outside due process. Each situation was a great embarrassment.

3 Focus on the Family was kind enough to act painfully dumb for us on a regular basis. These are the anti-freedom radical religious right activists who proclaim their moral superiority at ever turn. They gave us the article that started it all, claiming that homosexuality can be treated and cured (and should be at all costs), and were kind enough to follow up by having their ex-gay poster boy show up in a DC gay bar for 45 minutes, only to leave after his identity was discovered. Always accusing gays of being sexually libertine and child molesters, they also were kind enough to have a top official resign after it came to light that he'd been cheating on his wife and one of their members found guilty of child molestation.

2 This was the year of MP3 craziness. Even though people have been making cassette copies of CDs for decades and taping music off the radio for longer, the popularity and easy access of MP3 files sent Metallica into a tissy, followed closely by Dr. Dre (who was also being sued for copyright infringement for the samples he'd stolen). Not to be outdone, the RIAA joined the fight suing Napster and later suing Scour, a basic search engine. Napster later settled with BMG and worked out a deal with the RIAA to charge for access, although we believe they and scour were not guilty by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

1 And the biggest moron of them all for 2000 (which you surely must have figured out by process of elimination by now): "Dr." Laura. I say "Dr." because she has a doctorate in physiology, not psychology, and she's not licensed to practice counseling. Known for her rabid anti-gay rhetoric, she became even better known for lying and contradicting herself, such as when she claimed to have tons of gay friends. She couldn't decide if free speech was a good or a bad thing. And when all else failed, she felt as sorry for herself for being persecuted by the people she claimed were products of a "biological error" and who are commonly "predatory on young boys". At one point she compared herself to the pope in an interview, saying "I don't see stopthepope.com, do you?" (referring to stopdrlaura.com). That was the time when we went into action and registered stopthepope.com and made it redirect to a page on morons.org. Dr. Laura got her sought-after TV show, and it had roughly the worst ratings ever in its timeslot, and went rapidly downhill. The outlook isn't good for her on TV as it turns out her negative, hostile, and confrontational tone is best suited for the safety of her radio studio.

And there you have it. The top 10 moronic stories of 2000. Let's hope for a more intelligent 2001!