The horror...

The Washington Post's brackets for their Most Influential Person of the Decade poll. Hey, an all Muslim final in the East! Al Gore has got to feel hard done by. The Harry Potter books and films were great, but the energy industry and most Republicans in Congress would agree that An Inconvenient Truth was the best fiction book and movie adaptation of the last decade.

I think that any decade "Most Influential" poll where you can not only place Paris Hilton alongside two Presidents, tech leaders, and public officials, but credibly argue that she wasn't given enough credit by voters as an important influence, pretty much cements the entire decade as one you need to use gallons and gallons of grain alcohol to completely purge from your memory.

On the bright side, the decade bar has been set so low that the remaining 9 decades will only have to avoid the complete collapse of society to ward off "Worst decade of the century" plaudits. The downside to that is the first decade of the 21st century spent so much time ignoring and exacerbating problems that it made it all the more likely that collapse would happen in the second decade. I just look forward to voting on the esteemed collection of hobos, drifters, and regional warlords that will make up the 2020 "Most Influential" list.