2009 was a year stuffed to the gills with egregious behavior from spectacularly ridiculous people. With so many crude epithets at our disposal to describe these knuckleheads, none is so apropos as the one sobriquet that aptly describes quitters, hecklers, teabaggers, extortionists, and balloon hoaxers alike: douchebags.

Given the explosion of douchiness all around us, we had to dig deep to select these profiles in ignominy, but here they are — our awards for this year’s 20 biggest douchebags in America.

10. The 7 Most Depressing Songs Ever Sung By a Muppet (Topless Robot)
9. Top 10 Apologies of 2009 (Time)
8. 25 Most Embarrassing Political Moments of the Decade (About.com)
7. The 20 Most Bizarre Craigslist Ads of All Time (Telegraph)
6. 25 Awesome Cubicle Pranks (Holy Taco)
5. Top 10 Moments Caught on Google Maps Street View (urlesque)
4. The 15 Best News Bloopers of All Time (Huffington Post)
3. The 40 Funniest Protest Signs of 2009 (About.com)
2. 11 Sexy Photos Totally Ruined by People in the Background (11 Points)
1. 11 Photos of People Totally Ruined by Sex in the Background (11 Points)

Perhaps it’s a sign that the economy is on the rebound when someone in Chicago had enough extra scratch to buy a personal appearance from disgraced ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D for Douchebag-IL) for a block party last weekend.

Watch as the world’s worst Elvis impersonator performs a version of “Treat Me Nice” that is so bad, it could probably raise The King from his grave. The correct question is posed by the woman at the 0:47 mark: WTF?!?

You only have to watch a few episodes of “Northern Exposure” to understand why Sarah Palin is so popular. She’s exactly like Shelly Tambo. Shelly, a former beauty pageant winner, is the hot, not-so-smart barmaid who wears tight clothing and always looks a little bit confused about what’s going on. She works at The Brick, a local tavern on main street in Cicely, Alaska.

She only came to town for one reason—Maurice Minnifield, the former astronaut/military man who fell in love with her while she paraded down the runway of the Miss Juneau Pageant.

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When political debate gets tangled in the ropes of the pro wrestling business, you get… a pugnacious progressive rant for the ages?!

Pro-wrestling manager Jim Cornette recently tore apart WWE’s Joey Styles for making a series of anti-Obama remarks on Twitter, while also scattering a wide swath of rhetorical buckshot at the Right.

His epic rant — consisting of ten minutes of NSFW bare-knuckled liberal id wrapped with the twin barbed wires of humor and perspicacity — is not to be missed.

Today’s “Word”: FiBADO
I want to coin a new term in politics. We hear all the time about the NIMBY effect, where a prison or a landfill or an unfathomably long-term nuclear waste disposal site is proposed, and anti-prison, anti-waste, anti-slow-painful-cancer-death wackos come out of the woodwork and say ‘Not In My BackYard!’ First of all, you’re all pussies. Second, I think there is a related movement working in politics I’m going to call The FiBADO Effect (pronounced “fibado”): Fine Being A Dick to Others.
No single poll is correct, but it’s …