Celebrities. How do they do it? How do they manage to be the best and worst humans, and nothing in between — well at least the ones in between won’t find themselves on this list. This list is reserved for the absolute batshit ones that were this year’s pillars of insanity, the ones whose names became synonymous with the highest number on the crazy scale (e.g., “Yo that’s Amanda-Bynes-level crazy.”). They’ve set a bar this year that will be pretty hard to meet next year, but I have faith (counting on you, Kanye). Let’s take a look back at the most talked about celebrities and entertainment stories ever, plus an obligatory royal baby mention and the beginning of the end for TV’s second Golden Era.
(In no particular order)
1. Miley Cyrus Twerks Her Way Into Our Brains
Sure, Miley Cyrus has been a pretty big star since her “Hannah Montana” days, but this year she obtained true zeitgeist status by giving herself an extreme makeover and acting like a pull-toy that twerks and sticks out its tongue on your command. She was a headline-churning machine this year, starting with her twerk-filled performance with Robin Thicke at the VMAs, which showcased her heavy appropriation of ratchet culture and got all the bloggers talking, to her “Wrecking Ball” video, in which she humps a chain naked, to her feud with Sinead O’Connor, to her aggressive marketing campaign to promote her new stoner persona.
2. Kate Middleton Gives Birth to Royal Baby
I remember how excruciating it was, those days surrounding Kate Middleton’s due date when editors had their laptops at the ready and expecting their phones to go off at all hours of the day and night for the big announcement. It was like the election night of celebrity news. That’s not even counting the months we spent on bump watch, dissecting every outfit and crowning the Duchess of Cambridge the Queen of Maternitywear for wearing XL nightgowns with polka dots — OMG! Genius! And it wasn’t just the media who was obsessed.
3. Paula Deen Confirms She’s a Racist, Nobody Is Surprised
Paula Deen’s buttery empire melted before her eyes after a legal deposition was released that confirmed she used to use the N word on the regular. Her endorsers and employers started dropping her like kale chips, including The Food Network, Walgreens, Target, Home Depot and JCPenney. In addition to admitting that she used to sound like the script for “Django Unchained,” the deposition also revealed that she once fantasized about an antebellum-style wedding with black men dressed up as slaves. Since she couldn’t keep her rhubarb pie hole shut then, she and her team had to backtrack to contain the situation, and even though a federal judge in Georgia threw out the racial discrimination claims against her, the damage had already been done.
4. Amanda Bynes Takes Crazy to the Next Level
5. Kanye West Was Himself
Besides Kanye being Kanye, Kanye also gave birth this year! He and Kim Kardashian’s little future Instagrammer, North West, was born on June 15, but the spotlight on her joining the world was brief and was quickly overshadowed by her dad. In September, Kanye went on yet another Twitter rant, this time targeting Jimmy Kimmel, who mocked the rapper’s super earnest interview with the BBC. That wasn’t the only rant he went on this year, however, as Kanye also fervently ranted about how Obama isn’t connected like oil people or Jewish people. And he also compared what he does for a living with what police officers do, which prompted an Ohio police officer to write a hilarious open letter to him, in which a liberal amount of sarcasm is used.
6. Alec Baldwin Loses Us All
The occasionally hostile actor had an especially tumultuous year, revealing the once beloved “30 Rock” actor’s true colors. Like Deen, Baldwin fell out of favor with the public for using unsavory language directed at a whole population of people. When Daily Mail reporter George Stark accused Baldwin’s wife, Hilaria Thomas, of tweeting during James Gandolfini’s funeral, the husky-voiced star fired back at Stark, calling him a “toxic little queen.” Then there were the multiple altercations with the paparazzi, including a recent run-in in which Baldwin called the photographer a “cocksucking faggot.” The latter incident cost him his newly launched MSNBC late-night talk show, “Up Late,” which was a little too much like a bad David Lynch-directed “SNL” skit anyways.
7. ‘Breaking Bad’ Ends
This one is going to reopen old wounds for me — and just when I was starting to get over it — so I’m just going to keep it quick. “Breaking Bad,” aka the greatest show that ever existed, ended after five perfect seasons. The last few episodes, particularly “Ozymandias,” were some of the most gripping and nail-bitingly tense television the world has ever seen.
8. Justin Bieber Annoys South America, and Everyone Else
What hasn’t Justin Bieber tried this year? There was marijuana, prostitutes, strippers, fighting, peeing in mop buckets… It’s as if he were a normal, average 19-year-old. In just South America alone, Bieber pissed off fans by walking off stage, pissed off an entire country by kicking the Argentine flag and spent several hours at a brothel, where he picked up a few ladies to take home. In addition to that, the Biebs also tried to steal a bike, got pulled over without a valid license, allegedly touched a stripper’s booty, spat in his neighbor’s face, started a fight at a Southampton bar, tried to bring a monkey into Germany without papers, referred to Anne Frank as a Belieber and pissed into a mop bucket while cursing Bill Clinton. To cap the year off, Bieber told an LA radio station that he was retiring. It’s too bad he was only joking because that would have been the perfect ending to a banner year of being annoying.
