In honor of our 100th edition, we decided to do something a bit different. Over the course of our first 99 issues we've encountered numerous joys and horrors. We thought that we'd take a look back at some of the most shocking happenings, admirable heroes, and dastardly villains we've encountered so far. And what better way to honor them than through an awards show! That's why we bring to you the first-ever Current Affairs News Briefing BRIEFY AWARDS!
GREATEST INNOVATOR IN POLITICAL CORRUPTION:
There is really no other choice here besides Congressman George Santos, who took the phrase “fake it ‘til you make it” to heart by fabricating basically every aspect of his career and personal life. This is actually not what brought him down, though. He flew a bit too close to the sun by, according to a federal indictment, stealing the credit card information of donors and starting a fake nonprofit whose proceeds he used to buy designer clothing, among other things. (In the United States Congress, being corrupt is perfectly ordinary; the only real crime is being corrupt too loudly, and drawing attention to all the others.) (Oct. 13, 2023)
(DIS)HONORABLE MENTIONS:
- Senator Bob Menendez, and the many bars of gold from shady Egyptian businessmen that were found in his closet. (In a really astonishing bit of excuse-making, Menendez tried to argue he had “intergenerational PTSD” from when his parents fled revolutionary Cuba in the 1950s, which caused him to hoard valuable objects. He might as well have just blamed the dog.) (Sept. 26, 2023 and Jan. 5, 2024)
- North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who hacked his way onto the GOP debate stage by paying voters with $20 gift cards to donate to him so he’d reach the small-dollar donations threshold. Burgumania may never have taken off, but we'll always remember him for this. (July 14, 2023)
- Representative Henry Cuellar, who was charged with accepting around $600,000 in bribes from Azerbaijan during its campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Yikes. (May 7, 2024)
- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was accused of “hijacking” his office to do various favors for one of his top campaign donors, but narrowly avoided impeachment. Even the corruption, it seems, is bigger in Texas. (September 8, 2023)
MOST DYSTOPIAN ROBOTIC ENTITY:
The newly available flamethrower dog, from the appropriately named company ThrowFlame, which can be purchased in 48 American states. (Apr. 26, 2024)
(DIS)HONORABLE MENTIONS:
- Eric Adams’ NYPD Robot, who patrols the subways for crime at a blistering three mph. (Sept. 26, 2023)
- AI Putin, who appeared at a news conference to ask the real Putin about his opinions on the dangers of artificial intelligence (Dec. 15, 2023)
- “Ask Jesus,” the Twitch chatbot which allows to ask an artificially generated Jesus any question you like. (Aug. 4, 2023)
- nhPredict, the AI that the UnitedHealth Group used to generate lowball estimates for how much care elderly patients “should” require and deny anything above the threshold. (Nov. 21, 2023)
- The holographic versions of KISS that will no doubt haunt the world’s concert venues long after the band itself had departed this earthly plane (Dec. 5, 2023) (...)
COP OF THE YEAR:
Jesse Hernandez, the Florida sheriff’s deputy who mistook the sound of a falling acorn for gunfire, panicked, and emptied the magazine of his service weapon into his own car (while a handcuffed Black man sat inside.) The competition was stiff this year, but nobody else embodied the combination of cowardice, random violence, and reckless disregard for the lives of others that characterize the American police quite so well.
[ed. From the link:]
by Current Affairs Staff: Stephen Prager, Alex Skopic, Nathan J. Robinson, Lily Sánchez, Cali Traina Blume, and Justin Ward | Read more:"A Florida cop got scared by a falling acorn and opened fire on his own car. The cop in question—a sheriff’s deputy named Jesse Hernandez—apparently mistook the sound of the nut hitting the roof of his patrol car for a gunshot, and unleashed what we might euphemistically call an “officer-involved ballistic-type situation.” In the bodycam video from the incident, we can hear Hernandez yell “shots fired!”, drop to the ground and roll, and then proceed to empty the magazine of his service pistol into his own car, firing around 15 shots in the general direction of the sound.
This alone would be pretty ridiculous, but the story gets worse: there was an unarmed, handcuffed Black man sitting in the car at the time, who Hernandez apparently assumed was shooting at him. His name was Marquis Jackson, and he’d been arrested earlier in the day. Miraculously, Jackson survived Hernandez’s hail of bullets, but posted on Facebook that he’s been “damaged for life” by the traumatic experience.
Of course, it’s not exactly news that the U.S. police are twitchy and paranoid. In 2016, Harper’s Magazine published a long list of innocuous items they’ve mistaken for guns over the years, including wallets, phones, sunglasses, a sandwich, and even a pair of underwear. Now we can add “acorns” to the inventory. Many of those past cases ended with the police shooting someone, and a lot of the victims were Black men like Marquis Jackson. There are several reasons for this. It’s partly a consequence of the ridiculous training a lot of cops go through, which emphasizes a so-called “warrior mentality” and teaches police to see everyone around them as potential enemies. It’s partly just plain old racism. And it’s partly the blurred line between police and the military—according to The Washington Post, Jesse Hernandez “didn’t have any prior law enforcement experience,” but was in the Army Special Forces for 10 years before becoming a deputy. Taken together, these factors make police more of a danger to the wider community than they are protectors of it."
Images: Various CA staff
[ed. I haven't read all the links, but there are a ton more...]
