Dave Barry is a novelist and a former humor columnist for the Miami Herald.
How stupid was 2024?
Let’s start with the art world, which over the centuries has given humanity so many beautiful, timeless masterpieces. This year, the biggest story involving art, by far, was that a cryptocurrency businessman paid $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction for ...A banana. Which he ate.
“It’s much better than other bananas,” he told the media.
And that was not the stupidest thing that happened in 2024. It might not even crack the top 10. Because this was also a year when: The Olympics awarded medals for breakdancing. Fully grown adults got into fights in Target stores over Stanley brand drinking cups, which are part of the national obsession with hydration that causes many Americans to carry large-capacity beverage containers at all times, as if they’re setting off on a trek across the Sahara instead of going to Trader Joe’s.
Despite multiple instances of property damage, injury and even death, expectant couples continued to insist on revealing the genders of their unborn children by blowing things up, instead of simply telling people.
The number of people who identify as “influencers” continued to grow exponentially, which means that, unless we find a cure, within 10 years everybody on the planet will be trying to make a living by influencing everybody else.
Hundreds of millions of Americans set all their clocks ahead in March, then set them all back in November, without having the faintest idea why. (Granted, Americans do this every year; we’re just pointing out that it’s stupid.)
But what made 2024 truly special, in terms of sustained idiocy, was that it was an election year. This meant that day after day, month after month, the average American voter was subjected to a relentless gushing spew of campaign messaging created by political professionals who — no matter what side they’re on — all share one unshakable core belief: that the average American voter has the intellectual capacity of a potted fern. It was a brutal, depressing slog, and it felt as though it would never end. In fact, it may still be going on in California: a state that apparently tabulates its ballots on a defective Etch a Sketch.
For most of us, though, the elections, and this insane year, are finally over. But before we move on to whatever (God help us) lies ahead, let’s ingest our anti-nausea medication and take one last cringing look back at the events of 2024, starting with ...
... when the nation finds itself trapped in a 1970s slasher movie, the kind in which some teenagers (played by the major political parties) are in a creepy house, being pursued by a terrifying entity (played by a rerun of the 2020 presidential election).
The only sane thing for the teenagers to do is get the hell out of there, but instead they pause by the dark, scary-looking doorway leading down to the basement, and — despite the fact that the theater audience (played by the American public) is shouting,“DON’T GO DOWN THERE! JUST LEAVE THE HOUSE YOU IDIOTS!” — the teenagers decide to go down into the basement, only to find OH GOD NOOOOOO ...
And so, thanks to our political system under which the nominees for the most powerful office in the world are chosen by approximately 73 people in approximately four rural states while the vast majority of Americans are still taking down their Christmas decorations again find ourselves facing a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Both candidates carry baggage. Trump is wanted on criminal charges in something like 23 states and, if elected, could become the first president to govern from a secret hideout. His speeches are sounding increasingly unhinged, which is no small feat since he did not sound particularly hinged in the first place.
For his part, Biden keeps saying words that do not appear in any known human language and gives the impression that any day now he’s going to shuffle into a state dinner wearing only a bathrobe. But not necessarily his bathrobe.
In other words, we have one candidate who lost the last election but claims he won it, and another candidate who won the last election but might not remember what year that was. America, the choice is yours!
Meanwhile, the nation is facing a number of serious problems. Foremost among them is the situation on the border with Mexico, which at one time was a legally separate nation from the United States but is now basically functioning as a vestibule. This has resulted in a tense confrontation between the federal government and Texas, which is alarming because, in the words of one military analyst, “Texas has way more guns.”
In government news, the Pentagon is harshly criticized for taking more than three days to notify the White House that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had been hospitalized. This prompts the administration to check up on the rest of the Cabinet, only to discover that at least four other secretaries are missing and the secretary of commerce apparently died three years ago.
Abroad, fighting continues to rage in both Ukraine and Gaza, although these conflicts are no longer getting a ton of attention in the U.S. media because of all the news being generated by Taylor Swift.
In a troubling aviation incident, an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 flying at 16,000 feet suddenly develops a refrigerator-sized hole in the fuselage when an improperly attached panel blows off, terrifying passengers who have reason to wonder whether the airline crew, instead of making a big deal about the position of everybody’s tray table, should maybe be checking to see whether the plane has been correctly bolted together. As a safety precaution, the Federal Aviation Administration grounds all Max 9s and advises passengers on other Boeing aircraft to “avoid sitting near windows.” For its part, Boeing states that “at least the plane didn’t lose a really important part, like one of the whaddycallits, wings.”
JANUARY 2024
Apple launches the much-anticipated Vision Pro, a virtual-reality headset costing more than your grandfather paid (just ask him!) for his first car. But it’s worth it because when you put it on, thanks to a revolutionary “spatial computing” system coupled with 12 cameras and a 23 million pixel display, you look like an idiot.
Special counsel Robert K. Hur concludes his year-long investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents by releasing a 388-page report concluding that Biden “does not appear to have all his oars in the water.” An angry Biden immediately holds a news conference, during which he heatedly denies Hur’s assertion and (this really happened) refers to Egyptian leader Abdel Fatah El-Sisi as the “president of Mexico.”
In other White House news, CNN, after reviewing documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, reports that the Biden family’s German shepherd, Commander, bit Secret Service personnel in at least 24 incidents, eclipsing the record previously held by Dick Cheney.
Meanwhile, Trump, who is appearing in court more often than Perry Mason, is found guilty by a New York civil judge on charges of financial fraud, aiding and abetting, aggravated contempt, disorderly obstruction, second-degree vagrancy, and loitering with intent to conspire. The judge fines Trump nearly half a billion dollars and bans him for the next three years from riding in any motorcade more than six cars long.
Two days later a defiant Trump attends an event called “Sneaker Con,” where (this also really happened) he unveils a line of footwear, including the gold-colored Never Surrender High-Top sneaker (actual marketing slogan: “your rally cry in shoe form”).
In a highly controversial decision, the Alabama Supreme Court rules that frozen embryos are, for legal purposes, children, and therefore must immediately be thawed out and provided with iPhones.
Tucker Carlson conducts a two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin, offering Westerners a rare opportunity to find out what the Russian leader really thinks. It turns out he thinks Carlson is a useful idiot.
In a Super Bowl for the ages, two teams compete against each other under the watchful gaze of Taylor Swift.
February 2024
MARCH ...President Biden, seeking to dispel persistent rumors that he is an elderly man, delivers a State of the Union Address consisting almost entirely of shouting. This performance does not significantly improve his poll numbers, but it’s a big hit with members of the Washington press corps, several hundred of whom decide, independently, to describe the speech as “fiery.” In their response, the Republicans, always looking for new ways to demonstrate their incompetence, elect to have Alabama Sen. Katie Britt deliver a disturbingly melodramatic talk from (Why not?) her kitchen, where she gives the impression that she has just ingested a wide range of pharmaceuticals, and nobody, least of all Sen. Britt, knows which one is going to kick in next.
Yet another federal budget crisis is averted at the last minute when Congress passes a $1.2 trillion spending bill, which will enable the government to keep spending insanely more money than it takes in. The U.S. debt is now growing at the rate of a trillion dollars every 100 days, but fortunately this is not a problem because it will be taken care of by future generations. “No problem! Just put it on our tab!” is the view of future generations, and that is why we love them.
In other high-finance news, Donald Trump’s lawyers tell a New York court that he cannot raise the nearly half-billion dollars he needs for an appeal bond, having been turned down by more than 30 bond companies and an individual known as Anthony “Tony Three Nostrils” Avocado. Trump gets a break when an appeals court lowers the amount to $175 million, which Trump says he definitely has, although he left it in his other pants.
In a possibly related development, Trump announces that he is selling—we are not making this up—“God Bless the USA” Bibles for $59.95 a pop. “It’s my favorite book,” he states, moments before being struck by lightning. No, that did not happen, and you are a bad person for even fantasizing about it.
In aviation news, a Boeing plane flying from Australia to New Zealand suddenly goes into a nosedive, injuring 50 people. Another Boeing plane, taking off from the San Francisco airport, loses a piece of landing gear. A Boeing spokesperson says that the company, after conducting an in-depth review, has tentatively identified the root cause of the recent problems. “We think it’s gravity,” said the spokesperson. “It seems to be getting worse.” As a safety precaution, Boeing is advising pilots to avoid taking off, and simply taxi the planes from city to city, which the spokesperson says “may result in delays, especially to overseas destinations.” Speaking of exciting things happening in the sky, in...
