Schadenfreude. The joy or pleasure one derives from hearing about, witnessing, or learning of someone else’s misfortune. A simple joy, yet one that I’m sure we all delight in every now and then (or often, if you’re a callous a-hole). Why have I taken the trouble of explaining this phenomenon? Because today we’ll be schadenfreuding the hell out of some people taking Ls. The way this works is that I, Patrick Duong, experienced L-taker, will be ranking some people or entities proportionately to the magnitude of their Ls. My goal is not a noble one; it is not to shed light on some great injustice or snidely mock the deserving (although there will be plenty of that). It is instead to show that the L is a remark on the commonality of the human condition; that our suffering indeed unites us as mankind. JK, it’s cause people are stupid and this is kinda funny. Disclaimer: I swear I’m not as toxic in real life as I am hiding behind a screen poking fun at random people.
- Chris Paul and Rajon Rondo
Credit: 12UP
Ah, Chris Paul. He’s the one getting freaked in the picture up there, next to a mildly disgusted Carmelo Anthony (the strapping man with the headband). Paul is the wily point guard of the Houston Rockets; a somewhat polarizing figure in the NBA due to his reputation as both a “good guy” and a snake. You can either love him or hate him. And quite a few people hate him, including Rajon Rondo, the point guard of the Los Angeles Lakers (the man in yellow on the left). So, what exactly is happening here? Tensions flared during a heated moment at the Lakers v. Rockets NBA game on October 21st, resulting in Rondo “allegedly” spitting in Chris Paul’s face (nah he 100% did, I saw that video). Chris Paul fights back with a strong poke to the face, and Rondo follows up with the glorious swing in the above picture. Rondo ended up with a 3-game ban, while Paul ended with a 2-game ban. Rondo gets an L for spitting in someone else’s face. Paul gets an L for getting thumped and for being Chris Paul.
- Megyn Kelly
Credit: People
Let’s start off this L with a little contextualization. Imagine you’re tuning into NBC Today, your favorite way to start off the day by injecting some intellectual conversation into your morning. An inflamed discussion regarding racially charged Halloween costumes ensues, with one particular woman named Megyn stating: “But what is racist? Because you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.” Uh-oh. Meg done goofed. Especially in today’s America, where tensions about race and the portrayal of minorities are central talking points in the ever-deteriorating political conversation. Now facing the possible cancellation of her NBC show, Megyn (former commentator at Fox News and conservative panelist) is feeling the burn. Kelly isn’t new to controversy and this isn’t her first rodeo of saying wack stuff, but she takes a fat, fat L for perpetuating the idea that portraying a figure means wearing their skin. And if you agree with her, take this L as well.
- Pete Davidson and Ariana Grande
Credit: W Magazine
Their romance took the world by storm. Their love: pure. Their commitment: unending. Their social media posts: adorable AF. They tattooed each other’s name on themselves. After three weeks of dating, SNL comedian Pete Davidson and pop princess Ariana Grande were engaged in June. Truly, this was a relationship that children’s authors would write stories of; that Disney would make a movie about in a couple of years. But after three months- like the vast majority of celebrity flings- we find them split, on their separate ways, putting distance between each other. It’s not like we’ve never seen this before, but it always hurts to see Ariana Grande once again searching for a man. As for Pete Davidson, screw him and his comedy; a solid 10% of his jokes are funny and the other 90% give a bad name to dark humor. An L to Ariana for accepting a proposal from Davidson’s big-toe lookin’ face, and another one to Pete for losing Ariana, my one true love since 2015.
- Teresa Klein, AKA “Cornerstone Caroline”
Credit: Longroom
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve likely seen Teresa Klein’s name, or her supervillain alter-ego “Cornerstone Caroline” appear in the news recently. Klein, a white woman, has come under fire recently for calling 911 (although it has later been found that the NYPD has no record of this call) on Jeremiah Harvey, a black 9-year old, for sexual harassment. Or as she put it on the call, “The son grabbed my ass”. Weighty accusations. Ones that would drive young Jeremiah and his sister to tears in a New York deli. Ones that evoke scarily similar comparisons to the Emmett Till case, only 63 years after. Except later, in a video captured by surveillance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7goQ7r_xRQ), Klein and the rest of the internet saw that it was merely his backpack brushing against her as he turned to speak to someone. However, even if Harvey was responsible for such a heinous act, it’d still probably be the most action Klein’s gotten. She is simply the latest of a recent string of white people arbitrarily calling the police on black people for selling water, mowing lawns, sitting in a Starbucks, etc. I’m always hesitant to immediately label someone as a racist for being stupid, but it doesn’t look too good for Klein right now. It’s easy to give these people catchy little names like “Cornerstone Caroline”, “Permit Patty”, etc., but we can’t let the memes keep us from recognizing these smaller symptoms of a wider disease plaguing America. A triple L to Klein for wasting 911 call-responder time (allegedly), breaking a child’s heart, and contributing to the already pronounced tensions between white and black people.
1. Saudi Arabia
Credit: The National
Wait. What? “Isn’t this cheating?”, you ask. Saudi Arabia’s like a whole country? Well guess what. This is my damn article, so take a chill pill and prepare yourself. This is a multi-stage, large-scale L, rife with political intrigue and tragedy. On October 2nd, Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. He never left. An outspoken critic of the Saudi Arabian regime (which we all know has plenty of its own issues, like slavery, beheadings, human rights violations, the list goes on forever), Khashoggi was a journalist and longtime advisor to the monarchy before self-exiling himself to avoid arrest. Essentially, there are two stories explicating what happened to him. The Saudi Arabian version (released weeks after his disappearance) was that a “rogue operation” led to him “accidentally” being killed in a chokehold (Aw shucks!) as Saudi operatives tried to convince him to return home. Hmm. Just a lil’ sus. The other version, claimed by the Turkish government, is that Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered within the consulate via a pre-concocted plan, reinforcing this supposition with an assortment of evidence like the arrival of three teams of Saudi operatives and deactivated cameras in the consulate lobby. Even though there is no airtight narrative for what happened, either way Saudi Arabia has already lost much, with even Trump denouncing them and companies like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs pulling out of their investment conference. With a record like Saudi Arabia’s of human rights violations and sketchy business, this comes once again as another blow to their efforts to fix PR and convince everyone else that they are ready to catch up to the rest of the world. Saudi Arabia takes this L for covering up the death of an good man (regardless of which version is true), obscuring the truth, and seriously burning some important relationships.
That’s all for this edition of the L Standings, my name’s Patrick Duong, I’ll see you in two weeks.
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