The Biggest News Stories of 2021 that Became Comedy
Plenty of sites give you the top ten news stories of the year, but we take a different angle. We search for the stories that comics tweeted about, the topical material that stand ups joked about on stage, and the material that made it to late night monologues and Weekend Updates. These stories became fodder for jokes, parody videos, sketches, and one liners. These 12 stories dominated social media for days, spawned memes, Halloween costumes, and were talked about endlessly on talking head television.
In 2014 we looked back at the Fappening, Donald Sterling, and Rob Ford. In 2015, we obsessed on a liar (Brian Williams), a slaughtered animal (Cecil), and the Kardashians (Cait and Khloe). In 2016 it was more of the same, but this time a different liar (Lochte), a different slaughtered beast (Harambe), and a different Kardashian and her husband (Kimye). In 2017, Trump dominated the news but it was also the year of April the Giraffe, the Bro Romper and Tiki Torches. In 2018, nothing was bigger than the false alarm that left Hawaiians believing they were about to be nuked.In 2019, Jussie Smollet was the #1 story that became fodder for jokes, but we also talked endlessly about Theranos, bagel boss and Jeffrey Epstein. And last year, well lets face it, Rudy Giuliani owned 2020.
This year, the biggest stories of the year went on for months. Britney dominated the news this year, and it was difficult to look at the news without hearing about Covid. But there were a few other stories….lets see if you remember…..
Don’t forget you can also vote now for Comedian of the Year! Vote forComedy Movie of the Year! Vote for Comedy TV Series of the Year! Vote for Comedy Special of the Year! Vote for Best Comedy Book of the Year! Vote for the Best Comedy Album of the Year!
JANUARY
January 6 Capitol Riots
It’s been 352 days since January 6 and we’re still talking about it everyday. That’s not really that shocking that its still a headline. After all it is was kind of a big deal. It’s easy to say it wasn’t very funny, and on the one hand it wasn’t. This was a serious criminal breach. An attempt to prevent an important part of our democracy from taking place. Lawmakers were in real danger. People were injured. People died. On the other hand, there were deer heads and face paint and fat pick up truck drivers who thought they were intel officers. Everyone mocked the event form one side or the other, starting with Tim Dillon mocking Jacob Ensley, and ending with whatever was being said on stage in comedy clubs last night.
Honorable mentions: Bernie Sanders mittens got memed so hard, that we couldn’t stand to see one more picture of him. Subway was accused of having exactly zero tuna in their tuna. And Trump was banned from Twitter for life.
FEBRUARY
Trump Impeached and Acquitted
A (former) president getting impeached for the second time, only this time it was after he was out of office. Trumps impeachment trial and eventual acquittal dominated the news in February 2021. Yes lawmakers were rattled over January 6, but it was over, it was ancient history.
Honorable Mention: Tom Brady Wins a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Kim and Kanye file for divorce, Texas went into a deep freeze and changes to the Mr. Potato Head design became a hot button issue for conservatives and progressives to fight about.
MARCH
The Evergreen Gets Stuck
A giant ship got stuck in the Suez Canal and somehow nobody could figure out a way out of this predicament. The ship was wedged and blocked all traffic for six days which may not seem like much but its an eternity for the ships waiting to pass through. Come on you get freaked out if you have to wait 5 minutes for a traffic accident to get cleared off the road. $10 billion in trade was held up waiting for the Evergreen to get everclear.
Honorable Mentions: Megan and Harry sit down with Oprah, Wendy Williams Burp Farted on Tv, Dr. Seuss was “cancelled”, and Burger King suffered huge backlash from people who would never go into Burger King anyway when they tweeted that Women Belong in the Kitchen.
APRIL
White Boy Summer
The joy that resulted when known idiot and son of a movie star Chet Hanks declared that 2021 would have a white boy summer. The moment launched, crashed and burned in record time. But in the meantime, Chet Hanks generated a hell of a lot of jokes, sketches and videos thanks to his big fat movement.
Honorable Mentions:April was a dud of a month. It was all about Chet.
MAY
Armie Hammer is Into WHAT?!
Did anyone have “Armie Hammer is a Cannibal” on their 2021 Bingo Card? No? No one? Odd. What a shock it was to find out that a movie star who everyone liked was kind of into eating people or at least fantasizing about it, and talking about it a lot. The second this news started to come out, comedy writers scurred to their laptops to get to work writing, because something like this doesn’t come around too often.
Honorable Mentions: This was also the month when celebrities started to declare proudly that they don’t believe in showering, which in most months would be the winning new story. But you know, cannibals. In may the Friends reunion dominated entertainment talk, and Ellen announced she would be ending her show.
JUNE
Dem Aliens
In June, the Pentagon released all their alien papers and people speculated for weeks over what they all meant. Mostly, it turns out people ended up not caring that much. But we learned a lot of people in the service are convinced they’ve seen Alien Spacecraft.
Honorable Mention: Two other stories dominated the news in June. First- if you care about such things- Bennifer was back. But more importantly, a photo circulated around the internet where it really appeared that Trump was wearing his pants backward. Aliens…? Who cares. Backwards pants? Now THAT shit is news we can get into.
JULY
It’s All About That Biles
In July, everyone was talking about the Olympics and there was so much to talk about. Covid restrictions….weird cardboard beds that were designed to prevent sex in Olympic Village, two high jumpers decided to split the gold medal, a runner fell and still won, but nothing could have prepared us for the biggest story of July. Simone Biles headed to Tokyo at the top of her game. The GOAT. Unbeatable. And then she shocked us all by stepping down, and not even competing in many of her events. It ignited the biggest sports debate of the year and all sorts of conversations about mental health. And you couldn’t turn on a talk show or go on a social media network without hearing someone crack jokes at Biles expense.
Honorable Mentions: Bezos finally made it to space, and Jada Pinkett Smith had her now infamous Red Table Podcast episode where she casually revealed that she has cheated on Will Smith.
AUGUST
Gov Cuomo Quits
Governor Cuomo isn’t governor anymore. He stepped down in August amid intense pressure to resign. He tried so hard to ride out the allegations that he was sexually inappropriate with the women who worked for him. After all, in 2020 he was Mr. Popularity with the public for his televised response to Covid-19. But the problems added up too quickly. Allegations that his Covid response was not heroic, and was in fact, criminally negligent started in January. Groping allegations began in February, and in August the Attorney General issued a 165 page report on investigations into Cuomo’s behavior with women. On August 10, the Governor could hold out no longer. It was quit or be fired, and so he resigned as Governor.
Honorable Mention: In August Only Fans announced that they were banning porn from the network, and that really freaked everyone out including the women making bank on the network and the men who love them. Matt Damon had a massive controversy over his use of the F word, and Jeopardy found themselves in trouble when they chose a permanent replacement for Alex Trebek only to learn that their choice had a history. And not a good one.
SEPTEMBER
Britney Freed!
2021 was all Britney all the time. The Free Britney movement was at a fever pitch while we watched the pop star twirl and get progressively more naked on her Instagram account. Finally in September, a Judge declared the conservatorship would end and Brit fans went bananas.
Honorable Mention: Kanye officially became just plain old “Ye”, the internet was outraged that Chris Pratt was chosen to voice Mario for a Mario Bros movie, Big Brother History was made when the Cookout became the first all-black final 6 in the Big Brother house,
OCTOBER
People Lose Their Shit Over Squid Games
We’re still hearing too much about Squid Games, a sort of fun, halfway decent Netflix show that got way too much love from every single person on the planet. The Netflix show exploded and in days, every late night monologue had some take on the series, parodies of the show were everywhere on the internet, and Halloween costumes were planned. It’s December now but new memes are still being made every day about this crazy show.
Honorable Mentions: William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk on Star Trek during the series initial run in the sixties actually got to go into space at the age of 90, on Jeff Bezos Blue Origin rocket. Facebook Instagram and Whats App had world wide outages soon after a whistleblower appeared on 60 Minutes. And Hooters announced that their short shorts weren’t short enough and servers would be required to wear new shorter shorts to show off the ass as well as tits.
NOVEMBER
Aaron Rodgers Started Weird, Got Weirder
Aaron Rodgers has been weird all year. He’s been in the news almost as much as Britney. But shit peaked in November when he got covid, admitted that he had lied about being vaccinated, and had a series of crazy appearances on the Pat McAfee show. Ivermectin! Joe Rogen! Covid Toe Oh My! Rodgers lost at least one sponsorship over the whole crazy affair but he’s back and considered a favorite to go to the Super Bowl in February. Can’t wait to see what happens next.
Honorable Mention: QAnon, already pretty weird, got weirded when they traveled to Dallas because they were expecting JFK Jr. to return and meet them there. And November was also when American fell in and out of love with the Island Boys of TikTok.
DECEMBER
Cuomo Fired Part Deux
No, Andrew Cuomo didn’t lose another gig. This time it was Chris Cuomo’s turn in the corner of shame. It was discovered that Cuomo had used his CNN connections to lead information and assistance to his brother Andrew, back over the summer when he was under fire. At first CNN just suspended the popular talk personality, but very quickly decided it was over- Cuomo had to Gomo.
Honorable Mention: Remember when someone burnt down the Fox Christmas tree and it was the biggest story for days? Seems like only yesterday. Oh yeah, it pretty much was. That was the big story until the word Omicron became the most most spoken and most mispronounced word in the month of December. Hopefully this will blow through like a bad dream and we can talk about something else next year.
