Frank Cross’s News Reel for 2008 [news]

If you have not seen the immortal holiday classic SCROOGED with Bill Murray, we heartily recommend you see it. Your life may just depend on it.

If Newsweek and every other two-bit rag can run a news retrospective to remind you what it was about 2008 that was worth remembering into 2009, we figured we could do the same but geek up these already over-reported moments with topical intros from that most quoteable of all holiday romps, the gospel according to SCROOGED.

In 2008, after months of passionate campaigning on such deeply important policy issues as whether it would be sexist to vote against her or for her, Hillary was defeated in the Democratic primary by a beardless too-thin version of Jesus. Stunned for several minutes by the minor setback that is sometimes called the will of the people (i.e. manocracy), Hillary rallied magnificently and was back to her old self in time to piss off the Obama camp enough to nearly forfeit the proffered “no hard feelings” cabinet appointment. Say what you want about Hillary and the Clintons, but they always have their knives out and they are always sharp enough to cut a tin can as easily as a tomato.

In 2008, for the first time in recorded history, a politically elected representative of the American people, Elliot Spitzer, had sex with a woman for money. No, not the woman in the picture above. That’s his wife, who is obligated by the standard unwritten prenumptial rule of women who agree to stand by the politicians they marry at just these kinds of occasions, even though it will inevitably make it that much easier for America to compare her hotness unfavorably to the slut her husband was boning.

In the same year that John Edwards confessed to cheating on his wife while she was suffering from cancer (n.b. technically, while she was in remission) and given that the Spitzer story lacks the delicious perversity of Republicans buggering pages (2006) and messing about in airport restrooms (2007), why did this story even make the news? Because in 2008, Democrats started to take back the new mellinium of sex scandals by proving that they, too, occasionally have sex with people they aren’t married to, albeit still in the missionary position. Look for the Democrats to reclaim “woman on top” and much much more in 2009.