Idiot of the Month: Kelly Loeffler eclipsed by even bigger moron

On Jan. 9, three days after a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team staged a protest before their game against the Florida Gators. Wildcat players and coaches, including Calipari, took a knee during the national anthem in a show of unity. Then, the highest-paid public employee in the state of Kentucky threw his team under the bus. A few days after the game, Calipari said: “These kids are good kids. They’ve got good hearts.” But in “this political time,” it’s “probably not a real good time” to protest. But as Donovan Dooley astutely pointed out, when is it a “good time” to protest? “The whole point is to shed light on issues that are being ignored,” Dooley wrote. “There will never be a ‘right’ time for people who don’t want to hear what you have to say.” The closest Kentucky basketball players got to a public apology was an all caps tweet from their coach. Calipari’s team also sucks this season. So there’s that, too.

Coach K was tripping this month. Not only is his team in jeopardy of missing the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995, but he forgot how to act when he addressed a student reporter in a condescending tone. After a loss to Louisville, a student reporter named Jake Piazza, asked Krzyzewski an extremely fair question (What was the next step forward for his team?) and the Hall of Famer decided to try to teach the young reporter a lesson in “empathy.” It was not only unnecessary and belittling, but frankly pathetic on the longtime coach’s part. It’s not easy to be a young reporter in this business. And the student journalist was a student, after all, while Krzyzewski is a paid educator of the school. The bottom line? It’s not Coach K’s responsibility to go out of his way to teach that reporter a lesson. The only responsibility he had was to answer the question. There was no need to be a jerk.

Thousands of idiots terrorized the Capitol on January 6 because they believed a lie. But there is one profoundly moronic human who deserves special recognition for his stupidity. U.S. Olympian Klete Keller attended the Capitol riot. That alone is enough to land him a spot on this list. But, no, just wait. According to a federal criminal complaint, Keller was easily identified as he wore his U.S. Olympic Team jacket while occupying the Rotunda. He was later arrested and charged with “participating in a deadly riot.” These are not very fine people, nor are they very bright.

Former United States Senator and Atlanta Dream co-owner Kelly Loeffler has been taking Ls all month. The former senator and Deadspin’s 2020 IDIOT OF THE YEAR has been trash for a while now, and it looks like the world has finally caught up with her stupidity. She lost to the Rev. Raphael Warnock in one of the most pivotal Georgia Senate races ever, even after resorting to tactics like darkening Warnock’s skin in a campaign ad, taking a photo-op with a former Klansman, and pushing Congress to overturn the results of a democratic election. Now there are reports that the Dream will be sold soon, leaving her with no stake in the team, just like the players wanted. Loeffler just keeps losing, and she keeps looking stupid. Welcome to what may be your last IDIOT OF THE MONTH list as you mercifully vanish from public life and sports ownership.

In essence, giving Tommy Tuberville this award is merely a reflection of ourselves. Or a reflection of part of ourselves, as it were. Tuberville will always be a corn-fed dope. But if it weren’t for the actions of many others, the former Auburn football coach would be restricted to being a corn-fed dope at various autograph shows and radio appearances in various locales in the South. He wouldn’t be an emblem of what is driving the nation into a yet-unknown level of hell. So a bad month for Tuberville is really a bad month for all of us. It would be fine if his own brand of ignorance and idiocy were merely pointing the figurative shotgun at his own face. Instead, he is the shotgun pointed at our face.

So when he’s in a meeting with President Trump and crew on January 5th, the evening before the attempted coup on the Capital, it’s really us who put him in the room. When Tuberville exhibits that he’s never actually read the Constitution, that’s our ignorance. When he wants to keep a president who has allowed nearly half-a-million so people so far to die from COVID-19 in charge to deal with that very pandemic, it’s not just Tuberville who displays no concept of the virus, its impact, or how it was allowed to spread at such a deadly rate. It’s our inability to come to terms with the situation, or even try to understand what has gone on here. Being Rudy Giuliani’s go-to stooge in a bid to try and hold up the ratification of the election is an indictment on both Tuberville and Giuliani, for sure, as together they form “Statler And Waldorf Huffing Paint.” But then whose fault is it that such a cretin exists within the walls of the senate for Giuliani to even call? Whose fault is Giuliani, ultimately?

The problem when an overmatched nitwit like Tuberville keeps falling upward is that they eventually land in a position where they can do real damage. The stakes actually become real. It’s not just a college football program anymore, where the only thing that he can cock up is a win-loss record and maybe a recruit or two. Possibly some funding from boosters. But now Tuberville can author real consequences, and already has. There are people in Alabama that really need help with life matters that they won’t get because this dipshit is too busy doing whatever it is he does. It’s another voice in the lunatic fringe that we’ll never be rid of.

He never belonged on a ballot, much less in Washington D.C., and he’s just another symptom of the stupidity plague that has gripped us. He has never displayed any understanding of any issues, other than he agreed with the demonic moron in the Oval Office at the time, sounded like a Good Ol’ Boy, and was a name that a lot of people already knew. And that’s all it takes far too much of the time. He did enough to show people in Alabama that he would blame others for their problems, which is always music to the ears of a swath of voters, be it immigrants or Black Lives Matter or whatever else. It’s certainly not the constant selection of shitheads like Tuberville that keeps everyone down.

Tuberville only exists to be part of a blockade to liberal solutions, make his constituents feel more secure in their racism and ignorance while telling them it’s not their fault they barely have a pot to piss in, and not provide any ideas of his own. Which is how we keep ending up here.

His medicine-show salesman charm isn’t hard to see through. He wasn’t a good college football coach, and everyone can always see through him as he planned his next move to a bigger program that he could fuck up more royally before doing it all again. There’s nothing about him that suggests he’s even providing a good show to cover for the fact that he knows jack shit about jack shit. It’s right there in clear relief. And yet he seems to keep failing upwards.

Luckily, there’s always a chance that someone like Tuberville will just fall down an open sewer hole or simply forget how to breathe. Hope springs eternal.