The top 10 silly, overhyped, non-news stories of 2011

To date, there are dozens of lists of the “Top Stories of 2011″, adding to the mental clutter in our heads. As a public service this year, the MullerOver staff spent the week debating the least important, most overhyped stories of 2011. In other words, the ones that you should feel free to delete from your mental hard drive.

10. Charlie Sheen. His career crashed and burned in a spectacular light show seen around the world. Next time, we should try timing these collapses better around July 4 so we can save money on expensive fireworks.

9. The Republican Primaries. There’s nothing that instills less confidence in a system than seeing a dozen presidential candidates placating four families in a corn field.  We’re pretty sure the only one who came out ahead from the laughable primary system is President Obama. And maybe Sarah Palin for side stepping the circus.

8. Debt Ceiling Stand-off. It was looming like an overly elaborate execution by a villain in a James Bond movie. Remember in the movie Grease when the two cars charged towards each other until one blinked? That’s happening way too often now between parties in Washington. And although metric tons of newsprint were wasted on the standoff, the net effect was nothing.

7. Casey Anthony. By many measures, the acquital of Casey Anthony is the top story of the year, which makes us yearn for the decorum of the first O.J. Simpson trial. However, the trial almost seemed worth it just to watch the smoke come out of Nancy Grace’s ears.

6. Twilight anything. For some reason that our editorial staff still doesn’t quite understand, middle aged women seem to really get into this whole Twilight Saga. No – like REALLY. There’s apparently a two teams called Jacob and another guy, and everyone is supposed to choose which team they want. Even those dressed up as Klingons at the Star Trek convention said they should tone it down a little.

5. Kim Kardashian. The listing of Kim K. was highly controversial in our editorial staff meeting. Not because she isn’t massively overhyped, but we were afraid of giving her ANY sort of additional exposure. Generally, there’s some sort of reason for someone to be famous. But – we’re frankly baffled on this one. If we all get 15 minutes of fame, she walked into some sort of time warp.

4. Oprah’s last show. Like Y2K, the world gathered around their TVs to see if the lack of Oprah would create such a void that the solar system would begin to collapse upon itself into infinite singularity, sucking everything along with it. Although afternoon TV still is mired in nothingness, the television world seemed to stand and the only thing that disappeared is Oprah’s clout.

3. iPhone 5. (Or 4s) Can marketers be charged with malpractice?  There was probably no bigger buzz in the tech world of a phone with a laser keyboard, or 4.3 inch screen.  Or one that makes coffee. It turns out that the iPhone 4S was a modest improvement over the “4″, but far from the Internet hype which promised a phone that could also fight fires and allow the user to fly.

2. Occupy Wall Street. After the successful protests in Egypt and Iran, there was a few sitting in their mother’s basement who longed for that sort of impact. But – they apparently had no real cause to get behind. Someone came up with the idea of a “leaderless movement” with no apparent purpose or goals. Never again will I question the need of a leader. The “protests” are floundering, frought with infighting, but giving reporters an incredibly easy job of pointing out their hypocrisy.

1. Will and Kate. Really.  This takes the cake in hype.  An attractive, but otherwise average couple in every way, decided to get married in a multi-million dollar blow-out.  No – not that Kardashian wedding -  the other one.  However, in a gesture of chivary, Prince William wore the most gaudy and ridiculous outfit imaginable to make the bride look even more stunning in comparison.