Our highest honor is not easily achieved. Anybody can be an asshole. Some can even be an asshole for years without meriting special recognition — Louie Gohmert may some day win an Anal Pear, but he’ll never qualify for a Crystal Douchebag. For he lacks a special quality only few possess: The ability to really fuck things up.

The nominees are: Newt Gingrich, who hasn’t worked an honest day in his life; Rupert Murdoch, who pulled off the hat trick of undermining Democracy on three continents; Grover Norquist, who doesn’t need to run for President because he already wields ultimate veto power over everything; and Donald Trump, who has been building a decades-long case for a severe Estate Tax.

And the winner is…

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As is evident from the variety of candidates, there is no single qualification for this highly coveted award. It’s not something as simple as “Who had the most deleterious effect on our polity?” or “Whose energy-drink commercial annoyed us the most, especially since we don’t pay attention to Sport?” Instead, to honor the implement to which this is dedicated, the judgment is more intuitive: Who pissed the living shit out of us?

The nominees are: Joe Arpaio, whose incessant begging for attention finally produced results from the Justice Department; Newt Gingrich, whose revived Contract On America starts with keelhauling judges; Tim Tebow, who keeps distracting God from more pressing matters; and Barack Obama, who mercilessly taunts Glenn Greenwald with violations of Justice that nobody else cares about.

And the winner is…

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No, we sternly instructed the Judges, You cannot choose all of them. We tried to explain that Time would never choose everyone as Man of the Year, because that would just undermine the point of the exercise, but after the raucous laughter died down — and we threatened to withhold their Gift Bags — the Judges granted our point, and got down to work.

The nominees are: Michele Bachmann, who revealed that she’s one of those people who believes everything she reads in chain emails; Herman Cain!, who deployed the longest gap since Nixon; Jon Huntsman, who adorably expected everyone to take his serious candidacy seriously; Rick Perry, who revived one of our favorite Monty Python sketches; and Mitt Romney, who announced that he’s starring in a self-funded remake of Indecent Proposal.

And the winner is…

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The Judges wrestled with our newest category, roughly defined as “idiots who are taken seriously”, mainly because they feared that the ballot would be longer than a roll of toilet paper, which they seriously considered using. But finally they were able to skim off the cream of the crap.

The nominees are: Charles Krauthammer, representing the Washington Post editorial page, which has done more than any other journalistic institution to wrest the title of “Usual Gang of Idiots” from Mad magazine; David Gregory, representing Our Nation’s Political Journalists, who are taken seriously by nobody but themselves, but they do all the talking; Paul Ryan, representing every wingnut think-tank in the Beltway; and Newt Gingrich, who isn’t taken seriously by anybody, but you just can’t have a Propeller Beanie category without him.

And the winner is…

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This was the year of the Sexless Sex Scandal — which would have disqualified the category, if not for Exceptional American Ingenuity. For in the grand tradition of Our Supressed Puritan Forefathers, even the thought of sex is enough to put points on the board.

The nominees are: Herman Cain!, who had 999 problems but bitches weren’t 994; Christopher Lee, who resigned faster than he could take off his shirt, setting in motion a chain of events that flipped a historically Republican district; and Anthony Weiner, whose name finally caught up with him.

And the winner is…

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It was a good year for the One Percent, if only because all years are good years for the One Percent, since they grade their wealth and power on the curve. What, you say? They got tripped up by a bunch of meddling hippies? Then tell us: What happened to that proposed minuscule tax hike? Right.

The nominees are: The Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, which is behind every nasty piece of state legislation you’ve been hearing about all year; Bank of America, which won’t let a silly thing like legal requirements prevent it from foreclosing yer ass; The Nation’s Mayors and Selected University Administrators, who raised the practice of dislodging peaceful dirty hippies to a high art; Penn State, which proved that It Takes a College to cover up heinous sex crimes; and the U.S. House of Representatives, which must hate America, because we can’t think of any other explanation for their behavior.

And the winner is…

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We begin, as is the custom, with Foreign Entanglements, since nobody will wait all day if we save it for the end. And despite our reputation as Exceptional Americans, we do care about the rest of the world — as long as the rest of the world doesn’t try to drop Anchor Babies on us.

The nominees are: Julian Assange, who built an institution for the sole purpose of undermining it; the European Union, which will not rest in their quest to take the world down with them; Bernard-Henri Lévy, who defended Dominique Strauss-Kahn on the grounds that chambermaids are inherently untrustworthy, and, as we all know, Gentlemen Don’t Do Perp Walks; Tokyo Electric, whose efforts to create a real-life Godzilla went horribly awry; and Uganda, which continues to debate whether gay people have a right to live.

And the winner is…

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