Dave Barry’s Year in Review 2012

If you've ever watched Gold Rush, you know that you need to move an awful lot of dirt to find a nugget. There are a lot of them in this piece and they're closer to the surface.

t was a cruel, cruel year — a year that kept raising our hopes, only to squash them flatter than a dead possum on the interstate.

Example: This year the “reality” show “Jersey Shore,” which for six hideous seasons has been a compelling argument in favor of a major Earth-asteroid collision, finally got canceled, and we dared to wonder if maybe, just maybe, we, as a society, were becoming slightly less stupid.

But then, WHAP, we were slapped in our national face by the cold hard frozen mackerel of reality in the form of the hugely popular new “reality” show “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” which, in terms of intellectual content, makes “Jersey Shore” look like “Hamlet.”
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February

Tensions between the United States and Pakistan mount after eyewitnesses in Waziristan claim that an unmanned U.S. Predator drone robbed a convenience store.
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March

In the Middle East, tensions rise between the United States and Pakistan after an unmanned Predator drone destroys the only working toilet in Waziristan.
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May

... Newt Gingrich finally suspends his presidential campaign, despite an emotional plea to keep fighting from his base of supporters, namely Mrs. and Mrs. Elrod Pomfurter of Oklahoma City, who, after months of deliberation, had just invested in a bumper sticker.
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In sports, Usain Bolt, running in his final tuneup race before the Olympics, wins the Kentucky Derby.
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August

Closer to home, suspicions that the Mexican military may be involved with drug trafficking are heightened when a U.S. surveillance satellite photographs a Mexican army convoy transporting what appears to be a 200-foot doobie.
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October

With polls showing a very tight race, the final weeks of the campaign are a textbook example of what this great experiment called “American democracy” is all about: two opposing political parties, each with valid positions, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on comically simplistic radio and TV ads designed by consultants to terrify ill-informed half-wits.

The good news there is the half-wits sorta lost.

Many more, and since I may not be the best judge of nuggets, go look for some yourself. Use of the pan and sluice box is free!

Happy New Year!