Keller @ Large: 2017 National Turkeys Of The Year
BOSTON (CBS) - Thanksgiving is at hand, and you know what that means - time for our annual lists of the biggest turkeys on the national and local scenes. (Added bonus: this year we're adding a list of major pop-culture/sports turkeys.)
Confronted with such a cornucopia of delicious options, it's best to eat slowly. So we'll start the season off with the national turkeys who stood out for their foolishness, ineptitude and/or failure:
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer
"These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong," Spicer bellowed in his very first appearance in the White House briefing room. But it turned out the only thing shameful and wrong was Spicer's credibility-shredding effort to claim that the Trump inaugural had drawn "the largest audience to witness an inauguration ever."
Perhaps this is to his ultimate credit, but Spicer proved unable to lie convincingly, and things went downhill from there. His comical bluster won Melissa McCarthy an Emmy for her uncanny Spicer impersonation on "Saturday Night Live." And his game-but-lame effort at self-parody at the Emmy Awards apparently failed to jump-start his flagging post-White House career.
Hillary Clinton
The stunning election loss was hard on the former Secretary of State, we get that. And she has every right to tell her story and remain a public figure.
But her subsequent book about the campaign, remarkably free of self-awareness and mea culpas, did nothing to restore her image or repair the damage her campaign incompetence caused. And given her enduring status as one of America's most polarizing figures, her continued high profile has left many Democrats wondering - how can we miss you if you won't go away?
President Trump's Lester Holt Interview
The ink was barely dry on the carefully-constructed White House spin on the firing of FBI Director James Comey when the president sat down with NBC's Holt and blew it up. "Oh, I was gonna fire him regardless of recommendations," said Trump, who admitted he canned Comey because he didn't like the way he was handling the Russia collusion investigation, a move that directly led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and which may wind up being a key piece of evidence of obstruction of justice.
President Trump has plenty of enemies, but his worst enemy is himself. Perhaps he just got tired of so much winning.
Facebook Guru Mark Zuckerberg
"The challenge for our generation is to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose," said Zuckerberg at the Harvard Commencement last spring, when he was still viewed as a visionary. Since then, we've learned that Zuckerberg's negligent oversight of his lucrative company opened the door to the poisoning of our political discourse.
Zuckerberg continues to be generous with his philanthropy. But his business practices paint a different picture - of just another greedy, pretentious corporate turkey.