I thought we could take a little trip down memory lane to highlight my favorite images of the year.
Hey, everybody does end-of-year retrospectives, so why not? Later this week, I’ll also be featuring Dianny’s Ten Most Tiresome People of 2021. But before I do that, here are Dianny’s favorite images of 2021.
Where to begin. At this risk of sounding arrogant, there were quite a few favorite images this year. I tried to winnow the list down to what I think were the most fun:
While I did GOBS of Dianny images of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019 and 2020, by 2021, I kinda got tired of her, if you want to know the truth.
But Alexandria’s hyper-dramatic screeching over the 3-hour riot on January 6 was impossible to ignore. She accused Ted Cruz of trying to get her murdered, for Pete’s sake. Then she denied it. She tried to pull at our heartstrings by claiming she was a previous victim of trauma and her experience on January 6 brought it all back.
Remember when she led a Congressional struggle session in February?
For crying out loud, she even claimed that living through January 6 was like serving in war.
And when we learned that Alexandria wasn’t anywhere near the Capitol building during the 3-hour riot, despite claiming she was almost murdered by the rioters, this image was a foregone conclusion:
Then there was Andrew Cuomo. 2021 was a very bad year for New York’s blowhard governor. He began the year as the country’s COVID superstar. Then New York Attorney General Letitia James started investigating him both for killing countless seniors in nursing homes and for sexual harassment.
Things got so bad for the guy, I started referring to him as New York Nixon. So in August, when Cuomo announced he was resigning rather than risk getting impeached, this seemed the perfect image to accompany my column:
Another one of my favorite images of 2021 isn’t exactly what I would call one of my best. But it made the list because USA Today actually ran a fact-check on it and determined that it was “altered.” Man, I laughed my ass off when that happened.
The image was made to accompany a post about Jill Biden’s non-existent fashion sense titled “Dear First Lady: The 80s called; it wants its fashion back.” Someone posted the image to Facebook and USA Today felt it was necessary to assure its readers that the image I made wasn’t a real picture of Jill.
What idiot would think I was trying to pass this off as a real image of Jill?
Naturally, Joe Biden features prominently in this year’s favorite images. Joe is always fun to Photoshop, and I made full use of him in 2021. Here are a few favorites:
When Biden sat down with George Stephanopoulos during his bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, he pulled his own version of Hillary’s “What difference at this point does it make” moment when he dismissed the images of Afghans dropping from airplanes and plummeting to the ground by exclaiming, “That was four days ago, five days ago.”
I called that “Benghazi Redux.”
Another favor ‘Shop image target this year was Kamala Harris. The cackling, the deer-in-the-headlights panic when she gets caught lying — it’s hard not to poke fun of this vapid loser as it is. But when the hit-pieces started coming out chronicling what a horror she is to work for, it gave me ample material to work with.
It turns out, Kamala Harris is the real-life version of the TV show “VEEP.”
The Washington Post hit-piece that came out in early December made Kamala sound less like Julia Louise-Dreyfus’ character Selena Meyer and more like Mommie Dearest.
It’s also fun doing Kamala/Joe combo images.
When I did a column comparing the Biden administration to the Oberlin College Student Council, I decided to use that picture of Kamala’s step-daughter Wednesday Addams Emhoff and her weird-looking boyfriend.
The original picture is creepy enough. But the ‘Shopped version of Joe and Kamala as the undead American Gothic is even creepier.
Actually, it’s the creep factor alone that makes this one my favorite images of 2021:
As he did in 2020, Anthony Fauci got the Dianny treatment quite a bit this year – from comparing him to the Heaven’s Gate Cult leader to making him the Ron Jeremy of COVID Panic Porn.
But my favorite Fauci image of 2021 was inspired by his repeated declaration that attacking him is attacking science because he is science.
Liz Cheney’s transformation from neo-con Republican into Pelosi’s lap dog gave me plenty of material as well this year.
I especially enjoyed making her Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction and turning her into the female John McCain.
But none of my Liz Cheney images summed up Liz’s transformation better than this one:
Another one of my favorite images from this isn’t of one particular person. Instead, it is the image I created after the Biden administration fell for the internet hoax about Border Patrol agents using “whips” on Haitian illegals.
I did a column titled “The Twitter Administration: Governing by Internet Hoax” and I wanted to put together a number of internet hoaxes into one image. So I came up with this:
And finally, with Andrew Cuomo now history, New York got the also-ran Kathy Hochul in his place.
And Hochul wasted no time exploiting COVID to say some remarkably ridiculous things. In September while speaking at a church, Hochul proclaimed the COVID vaccines were from God and that she needed the congregation to be her apostles in spreading the Gospel according to Pfizer.
I declared her Saint Kathy Hochul, Our Blessed Lady of the Sacred Jab.
The cherubs in masks were an especially nice touch.
Whelp. There they are, Dianny’s favorite images of 2021.
I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane.