Asshole of the Week

The other day, a friend sent this Phillyist a link to Bill Maher's Dickheads of the Year blurb from Rolling Stone. (Maher's obvious liberal partisanship aside, it's pretty damn funny.) We're kind of ashamed that neither this Phillyist nor any of the other Phillyists with a sick sense of humor and a liking for this kind of thing—Bill Hayes? Bill Hayes? Bueller?—didn't do a Countdown to 2008 list of the top dickheads of 2007. So, to remedy the problem, each week, we're now going to bring you Phillyist's Asshole of the Week. We'll try to keep these local, but if there's either a lacking of a major asshole story in the Philadelphia area (though we don't really see that happening) or an especially egregious story from elsewhere, we may expand the scope. And if anyone sees a story that presents a candidate for Asshole of the Week, send it to us!

Our first Asshole(s) of the Week are the Michael-Vick-wanna-be douchebags who beat, stoned and hanged a pit bull from a railing at an abandoned school in North Philadelphia. It's fitting that Vick was the lead in Bill Maher's aforementioned Dickheads of the Year writeup and these scumbags are our first Phillyist Assholes of the Week. We're going to give honorary Asshole of the Week awards to everyone like the wastes of life responsible for this latest animal brutality incident, because it's not like this is an uncommon occurrence. There were also two live pit bull puppies found dumped in a duffel bag elsewhere in North Philly. We fully believe in Mahatma Gandhi's observation that "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated," and Charles Doran's logical follow-up that "A man's soul can be judged by the way he treats his dog." We hesitate to call animal cruelists (yes, we made up the word, but we like it) "men" at all. Instead, we'll call them Assholes of the Week.

Image via Flickr user audreyjm529.