After twelve months of cultural foundering, three weeks of contentious deliberation, a lengthy celebration of the year’s chills and a denigration of its many frauds, Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators is pleased to announce the recipients of The 2014 BPoFD Chill and Fraud of the Year. The staff wishes to thank everyone who submitted an application, be they chill or fraud. Since time immemorial, the forces of chill and fraud have waged constant war in the hearts of men and women, vying for territory and influence, transforming chills into frauds but rarely vice versa. Like every year that has preceded it, 2014 proved once again that the lure of unthinking fraudulence is stronger than that of conscious chilldulence. 2015 is unlikely to buck the trend, but the essential character of chillness is endurance in the face of crushing, overwhelming fraudness. So endure, chills. Endure. Without further ado, here are the recipients of the 2014 BPoFD Chill and Fraud of the Year.
And The 2014 BPoFD Fraud of the Year Is…White People!
Where to begin. In 2014, white people were time and time again given the opportunity to prove themselves capable of social, ethical, and racial progress, and, time and time again, white people instead demonstrated their brutal lack of empathy, their dearth of self-awareness, their seemingly renewed dedication to the backwards economic and cultural hierarchies at the heart of so much suffering in the world. Reading social media over the past year has been, for chills, an exhaustive rereading of the Wikipedia page for the Dunning-Kruger Effect. You’d think having every societal institution rigged in your race’s favor would engender a modicum of sympathy for the less fortunate, but you’d be very, stupendously wrong. Fox News continues to air. Maroon 5 continues to sell albums. Murderous cops walk free and Wall Street swindlers receive bonuses and Mitt Romney is going to run for President again. It’s all because of these fucking people. Congratulations, frauds. You earned it.
And the 2014 BPoFD Chill of the Year is….Pope Francis!
Of the many miracles of Pope Francis’s papacy thus far, the most enduring may be his trenchant dedication to the humanism at the heart of Catholicism. After two thousand years of Catholic hypocrisy, Pope Francis has cast aside the opulence, materialism, and ethical obfuscation that has characterized the modern RCC, opting instead to be an actual Catholic. In doing so, Francis has transformed a bastion of medieval, insular conservatism into a organization striking in its liberalism. At times, the political message he presents is far to the left of his secular counterparts, an unquestioning embrace of all lifestyles and persons under God. His service to the sick and the homeless, his punishment of Catholic officials who seek wealth and power, should act as a template for countries, such as ours, that marginalize the former and empower the latter. Bro literally kisses other bro’s festering boils. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the chill, for ever. Amen.
baby pictures of famous dictators 