9. The Bush sisters give OutKast mad/embarrassing props (2004)
For the 2004 Republican convention, speechwriter Karen Hughes needed a "hip" contemporary pop-culture reference to brighten up the Bush sisters' "comic" speech, which was designed to radically alter their public personas from lightweight, dim-witted, hard-drinking party girls to lightweight, dim-witted, hard-drinking party girls capable of stiffly reading terrible jokes from a Teleprompter. After no doubt consulting a 14-year-old nephew, Hughes dreamed up a stilted bit of wordplay for Jenna about how her parents may be square, but they aren't so out of it that they don't realize that this newfangled "OutKast" entity is a "band" and not "a bunch of misfits." Also, apparently when pressed, the President and First Lady will "shake it like a Polaroid picture." The Bush sisters' reign as distaff Marx brothers was understandably short-lived. As Mr. Show's Professor Murda might put it, science was insufficiently tight.
10. Happy Feet makes "The Message" unbearably precious (2006)
Though relatively stilted, shrill, and heavy-handed by today's standards, Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five's "The Message" holds a vaunted place in hip-hop as the first real "message" song and a milestone in socially conscious, political hip-hop. The criminally overrated jukebox musical Happy Feet perversely re-imagines Melle Mel's grim warning of the dangers and evils of inner-city life as an adorable little song for a baby penguin to sing to assert himself. Seldom has musical revisionism been this insufferably cute or utterly wrong-headed.
11. Kevin Federline releases Playing With Fire; America averts eyes, slowly walks away (2006)
Is there anything left to say about Britney's baby-daddy's ill-fated foray into hip-hop? Those last few seconds are rapidly ticking away on K-Fed's 15 minutes of utterly undeserved infamy.
12. MC Rove drops science (2007)
Having learned little from the Bush sisters' convention speech, the Republicans tried to humanize the sour-faced cauldron of evil that is Karl Rove with a queasily fascinating rap tribute at the Radio And Television Correspondents Dinner, where he was surrounded by a group of hacktastic improvisers so he could gyrate erratically and rasp "MC Rove" whenever a microphone was shoved in his face. Someone really should have told Rove that "MC" stands for "master of ceremonies," not "hateful old white man gesticulating randomly and growling two words in a bizarre, inexplicable caveman voice." Did anyone else notice that Rove's "Rapping Dance" looks suspiciously like the moves performed by the ghouls in the Thriller video? Apparently even the undead have more soul than the GOP.
13. Diddy wins something called "The Fifi Award" for Best Fragrance (2007)
If that ain't gangsta, what is?
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