The Worst Cads of 2009
DoubleX's guide to badly behaved men.
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1 of 10
John Phillips
Though Phillips has been dead since 2001, this year’s stunning revelation from daughter Mackenzie that the two had a “creepy, incestuous” relationship makes the Mamas and the Papas star “the worst person in the world.” He is additionally reviled for “injecting Mackenzie with heroin” and cannot even be saved with a “morally dubious” genius exception, as “his music isn’t good enough to buy at Goodwill.”
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2 of 10
Chris Brown
Another musician who did not distinguish himself this year, Brown, who beat up now ex-girlfriend Rihanna, is even more awful for “insisting he does not remember what happened” that night in February. Domestic violence is an “automatic fail” for a human being. Moreover, Brown’s song “Forever” is “stuck in my head, and I hate it.” But despite Brown’s transgressions, “at least Rihanna got a good album out of it.”
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3 of 10
John Edwards
The former North Carolina Senator gets points for the “most poorly conducted affair ever” when he cheated on his “smart as shit, truth-seeking missile of a wife” Elizabeth (who, “P.S., is also dying”). He also “lied during a presidential campaign” and is “not as good-looking as he thinks he is.” Edwards’ sleaze level is heightened when one considers that he “fathered a child” with ex-mistress Rielle Hunter and likes the Dave Matthews Band even though he is “not a 10th grader and it is not 2001.”
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4 of 10
Tiger Woods
“If all his mistresses look the same, why didn’t he just choose one?” wonders one respondent. Woods’s extramarital hook-up count is now in double digits, and the “perfect-gentleman golfer” image he used to project has now been replaced with the less marketable “sports asshole” vibe. But he does not top the list, because no one should be “surprised that a world-class athlete who has smoke blown up his butt 24/7” would cheat on his beautiful Swedish wife.
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5 of 10
Jon Gosselin
The reality TV star and father of eight has the “undeniable tool factor,” what with his “Ed Hardy T-shirts and divorce paunch.” Though some find him “thoroughly repulsive from start to finish” because he is helping “drag his kids through the tabloids,” others are more sympathetic, as he was “chained to a succubus of a wife,” so his sins are the “most understandable.”
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6 of 10
Michael Duvall
The disgraced California state assemblyman was “caught bragging on tape” about “bagging conquests” during an appropriations committee meeting. The boasting was “so gross” that some respondents “threw up a little” in their mouths “while listening to it.” What’s more, Duvall “slept with a lobbyist,” which is just “poor form.” As any smart politician knows, “a gentleman does not kiss and tell.”
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7 of 10
Mark Sanford
South Carolina Gov. Sanford's press conference back in June where he admitted to a longtime affair may have been "emotionally and morally retarded," not to mention "longwinded," but the fact that he seems to have discovered "love for the first time" with his South American sweetie is "almost touching." Which is why Sanford, though his public mooning was almost "too embarrassing to believe," is only “semi-deplorable.”
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8 of 10
Alex Rodriquez
The Yankees’ third baseman loses cad credit for “being an old cliché” because he cheated on his wife with “Las Vegas strippers,” a “series of prostitutes”— i.e., the whores—and then a “Madonna.” His already dubious ethical standing was further diminished in February, when news broke that he had been “juicing like mad” earlier in his career. Though his transgressions seem tame compared with revelations of incest, his “stupid smug face” just “annoys” and “enrages” many respondents.
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9 of 10
John Ensign
Nevada Sen. John Ensign ranks “pretty low on the list” because, even though it is “dodgy to have an affair with the wife of your top aide,” it is “klassy to cut her a check for $100,000” when the relationship is over and to try to get the cuckolded husband “some work.” (However tactful, it is a “bit iffy, legally speaking.”) Besides, with “that hair,” and “that tan,” his leathery visage almost “almost obliged him to be a creep.”
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10 of 10 David Letterman
The married Letterman “never pretended to be perfect” but his televised admission about his affair with a former staffer (and the concomitant blackmail by her “psycho boyfriend”) was the “most dark, confusing apology ever.” While a few respondents feel that Letterman’s “private affairs are not anyone else’s business,” others are still perturbed by the unresolved “hostile workplace potential” of Letterman “sticking his pen in the company ink.”
