More Official Steve Burgess Guide to 2024: F to H

We’re almost through 2024. Why should you be forced to sit through it again? Because you secretly crave punishment.

Part 2 of our Tyee review of the year.

Face

The old saying goes, after a while you get the face you deserve. The face of America is the face of the president-elect. Feast your eyes, America. You earned it.

Kevin Falcon

It's surely a badge of honour to be studied in institutions of higher education. That must offer some small comfort for BC United Leader Kevin Falcon — political scientists will someday write papers about the implosion of his party. First the BC Liberal Party changed its name to BC United. Historically bad rebrands? “Hold my can of New Coke,” said Falcon. It was like watching a slow-motion video of a bullet going through a party balloon, or watching the scene in Jurassic Park where the T. Rex finds that lawyer hiding in the outhouse. The Falcon became the hunted. John Rustad is the new raptor in town.

Fascism

Whether it's measles, polio, cholera, tuberculosis, sheer idiocy or fascism, everybody loves a comeback story. This year had comebacks like acid reflux.

Fluoride

It was once said of the British that you could identify them as soon as they opened their mouths. Not the accent — the bad teeth. That has changed. Americans, by contrast, boasted good dental hygiene. Now the United States is getting a health and human services secretary who thinks fluoride is poison. And if the bad teeth aren't sufficiently Old English, they just elected a guy who wants to be Henry VIII. At this rate, the Yanks will spend 2025 driving lorries and eating crisps.

Fox News

J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Ursula Le Guin — these fantasy masters are revered for their ability to create entire new worlds. None of them hold a candle to Fox News. Dressing up like a Klingon at Comic-Con? Piss-ant stuff. The Rupert Murdoch-owned broadcast channel has managed to create an alternate universe superimposed upon our own, a world with its own facts and reality in which its viewers actually dwell. Fox News is Disneyland for chumps.

Francis Scott Key Bridge

In 1814 Francis Scott Key wrote the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Baltimore. They named a Baltimore bridge after him. The anthem declares that America is “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” On March 26, a container ship struck the bridge, which dropped into the harbour like a dynamited flagpole. In America, it was that kind of year.

Kinky Friedman

The Texas showman died June 27 at age 79. He gained a cult following as leader of Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, singing songs like “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore.” Eventually he turned to politics, running for governor of Texas in 2006 with the slogan “How Hard Could It Be?” He supported legalizing medical marijuana, more spending on education, and same-sex marriage. “I support gay marriage,” he said, “because I believe they have a right to be just as miserable as the rest of us.” He got 12.4 per cent of the vote.

Matt Gaetz

Rejected nominee for U.S. attorney general, apparently the man who finally proved Republicans were vertebrates, capable of standing upright and opposing Donald Trump's gang of toadies, chuckleheads and moral degenerates. But that's deceptive. Republicans put the kibosh on the Botox Bozo not because of morals charges against him — after all, the Republican messiah is himself a sex offender — but because they all hated his guts. If Gaetz had done a little more schmoozing, he could be having sex with schoolgirls in the Senate cloakroom and it wouldn't be a problem for him.

Gas prices

The single economic factor that lays bare the futility of all political action. To wit: a carbon tax combined with a rebate should leave most Canadian families no worse off, yet discourage fossil fuel use.

Too complicated! “Axe the tax” is three simple words. Carbon tax aside, gas prices are for the most part outside government control. Never mind — they make motorists angry, and angry people vote. The opposition candidate is openly authoritarian and has no realistic plan to reduce gas prices anyway? Too bad. We're pissed, so we're voting for the apple-munching martinet, or the Project 2025 guy. Fossil fuels hold not only our climate hostage but our politics too.

Genocide

This month, Amnesty International declared that sufficient evidence has been gathered to confirm Israeli actions in Gaza amount to genocide, saying “Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity.” The Israeli foreign ministry replied that Amnesty International was “deplorable and fanatical.” The same day, the Israeli military announced that air strikes on a Palestinian tent camp that killed 21 people had been aimed at Hamas.

Janey Godley

The beloved Scottish comedian, known among other things for greeting Donald Trump with a sign reading “Trump is a c**t,” died of cancer Nov. 2. At her Glasgow funeral, Rev. Kelvin Holdsworth said that Godley had forgiven all the people in her life, but “she still believed to her dying day that Trump is a COUNT-ry mile away from being anyone who should ever have come near to power.” The audience applauded.

Hawk Tuah

A case study of both modern fame and spelling. Haliey Welch (not a typo) is a Nashville resident who was interviewed last June in a YouTube video for the Tim & Dee TV channel. Asked if she knew any special sexual tricks, she replied that expectorating on a man's penis during oral sex — she described it as “hawk tuah”— was an effective strategy. And thus did the doors to fame and wealth swing wide. The “Hawk Tuah Girl” became a social media star, selling merchandise, making paid appearances, starting a podcast and a dating advice app, even throwing out the first pitch at a New York Mets game (not a spitball, for some reason). At last Welch reached the destination of all modern 15-minute sensations — a crypto coin called Hawk, which soared in value and then immediately plummeted over 90 per cent in a phenomenon known as a “rug pull.” Whither now for the Hawk Tuah Girl? Obscurity? The presidency of the United States? These days, one never knows.

John Horgan

Arguably the most successful BC NDP premier in the province's history, Horgan had long battled recurring bouts of cancer and died Nov. 12. He managed the rare feat of leaving office with his popularity intact. A major Star Trek fan, Horgan often repeated Mr. Spock's signature slogan. As it turned out, Horgan certainly prospered. Would that he might have lived longer.

Read Part 1 of the Steve Burgess Official Guide to 2024. On Monday, his year-in-review tracks I through Q.

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Happy holidays, readers. Our comment threads will be closed until Jan. 2 to give our moderators a much-deserved break. See you in 2025!