E-Mail This Article to a Friend Annus horribilis, continued

THE POPE AND "MY HUMPS"

Meanwhile, zealots howled over ideological disputes like the public-school teaching of intelligent design and Terry Schiavo’s right to die. Taken together with the ascension of Pope Benedict XVI after the much-mourned death of Pope John Paul II, these issues laid bare the reactionary tenor of the times.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a Vatican hardliner called "God’s Rottweiler," and Der Panzerkardinal by critics, ascended to the Throne of Peter in April pledging to be "a simple, humble worker." One of his first tasks: reiterating Rome’s ban on gays in the priesthood. This is the man who will lead the Catholic Church, an ailing institution if ever there was one, further into the 21st century. In the Church, homosexuality will continue to be called a "troubling moral and social phenomenon," and gays will remain guilty of an "intrinsically disordered inclination." Benedict’s papacy will only entrench the Church’s pronounced conservatism, combating the "dictatorship of relativism" by further enforcing Vatican strictures.

But, really, who cares about a mean ol’ pope when we’ve got Nick and Jessica and Brad and Jen and Britney and Kevin and Katie and Tom to keep us entertained? Or the human car wrecks that are Ashlee Simpson and Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Ritchie? Or Michael Jackson, wan and frail in his pajamas, who in June was acquitted of 10 charges of child sexual abuse? (He remains guilty of being a horrific freak who hasn’t recorded a good song since the Reagan administration.)

Jacko’s worst dreck is positively anthemic when compared to a song like the Black Eyed Peas’ "My Humps," the most successful unsolicited single in history, and one of the most downloaded songs of the year:

"Whatcha gonna do with all that junk? All that junk inside your trunk?"

"I’ma get get get get you drunk Get you love drunk off my hump. My hump my hump my hump my hump my hump. My hump my hump my hump my lovely little lumps."

It’s a song music critic Hua Hsu calls "so bad as to veer toward evil." It’s also one that was purportedly recorded using a microphone "made specifically for Hitler." If that’s true, it’s in perfect keeping with an apocryphal quote from der Fuhrer: "How fortunate for our leaders that so few people think." (GOP strategerizers take note.)

Or take R. Kelly’s "Trapped in the Closet" (please), a tortuous, laughably absurd narrative of infidelity, crooned ad nauseam in hiccup-y cadence over a monotonous and lackluster melody. The New York Times even conceded that while it has "no chorus, no hook, no real beat even," it nonetheless "touches on the big entertainment megatrends: the branded franchise, the automatic spinoff to DVD, the self-updating content of podcasting, the campy soap opera of Desperate Housewives." That’s great. But the song? It sucks. The good news is that Kelly has at least 11 more chapters already in the can and ready to roll, so the adventures of Sylvester and Rufus and Chuck (and Bridget, and the midget) can carry us, morbidly compelled, into ’06.

Not every entertainer was oblivious to the manifest and manifold problems on this big blue marble of ours. Bob Geldof’s world-spanning Live 8 concerts tried, at least, to cure the world’s ills by enlisting multimillionaire rock stars to play to huge audiences for free. (No word yet whether the concerts succeeded in their mission to "Make Poverty History.") And, as ever, Bono mugged for cameras the world over as he worked to alleviate suffering in Africa. But for all the messianic Irish rocker’s years of hard work, Kanye West was able to jolt people’s complacency almost as much with a single off-the-cuff remark on a Katrina relief telethon: "George Bush doesn’t care about black people."

Even the Red Sox, who gave so much joy to so many people just 14 short months ago, had an off year. Yeah, they won 95 games (against all odds), tied for their division, and made the playoffs. But as soon as they made their early exit in the ALDS, the soap opera began. Manny demanded a trade. Mueller and Millar split. Damon might not return. The feel-good 2004 team, 25 guys who’d done what no other squad had been able to do for nigh a century, were more or less dismantled wholesale barely a calendar year later. Then Theo walked out, touching off a firestorm of acrimony, recrimination, and rumor-mongering that (as of press time, at least) is still smoldering. Spring training begins in two months. Maybe it’ll be the start of something good. We seem to do better with even-numbered years.