Be still your beating hearts, because the agonizing wait is over. Wake the kids. Rake the leaves. Fake speaking in tongues. Yes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year, when the eagerly awaited list of Top Ten Comedic News Stories of 2015 is finally, mercifully released. Yoke an ox. Toke some skunk. Poke Uncle Bud to make sure he’s still ambulatory.
Under no circumstances is this list to be confused with the Top Ten Legitimate News Stories of 2015. No. No. No. No. No. They are as different as back and forth. Like fireworks and 14-inch aluminum pipe wrenches. Yellow grape-tomatoes and marble Corinthian columns. Flaming hula-hoops dropped from CIA drones and the plastic to-go cups used by drive-through Margarita stands off highway 10 outside New Orleans. Feet and sleet.
These contents purposefully ignore the death, destruction and dastardly deeds of this past annum horribilis to focus on the delightfully diverting and droll. Herein, you will find no mention of Syrian refugees or Paris or San Bernardino or ISIS or FIFA or Boko Haram or Bill Cosby or Paris or even horrors of horrors, Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign.
Rest assured the 16th year of this new millennium garnered quite a few wacky and zany antics lending themselves to the tickling amusement of we, the American masses, and it’s time to take a fine-tooth comb to sift for the amusing bits so that we can mock and scoff and taunt and form a sort of mental scab.
10. The hacking of the Ashley Madison website, forcing Bill Clinton to spend 4 months trying to scrub his name off the client list. He probably got his people to copy and paste the damn thing as well.
9. The Hollywooding of Bernie Sanders, who went from little-known Vermont curmudgeon to leader of the Stop Hillary movement. He proves that while you can take the curmudgeon out of Vermont, you can’t take the pain-in-the-ass out of the curmudgeon. Or something like that.
8. Rachel Dolezal, the Caucasian head of the NAACP who claimed to be black, but was exposed when investigators found a Justin Bieber poster on her office wall. Also, she can’t dance for crap.
7. Faulty airbags. The first inklings of this scandal caused many folks to conclude the feds were going to recall Mitch McConnell.
6. Kim Davis, the Kentucky County clerk who apparently was told by God not only to deny gay couples’ marriage certificates but also get divorced three times then marry some guy who goes on national television wearing overalls.
5. Caitlyn Jenner, who finally succumbed to the excessive levels of estrogen floating around the Kardashian household. At least she demonstrated her independence by spelling Caitlyn with a “C.”
4. The Benghazi hearings, where Republicans revealed their test for Hillary - if she doesn’t float, she’s not a witch.
3. The Republican presidential debates, where the whole world witnessed the fight over the party’s very soul. Alas, the soul lost.
2. Deflategate, precipitated by Tom Brady’s belief that the ball was way too heavy with all that air in it.
1. The hot-air, force of nature that is Donald Trump. The candidate for every voter who just couldn’t cozy up to the intellectual elitism of Sarah Palin.
Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comedian and margarine smuggler