The only thing worse than 2014 was 2015, a 365-day active shooter situation interrupted only by the rise of a new American fascist movement. But underneath the mud and poop were these individuals who reminded us that there’s still hope for the world. Among them, a college girl in a toy jeep, an undaunted journalist, and a hot dog salesmen. Here’s who inspired us this year.

Liz Wasden, BuzzFeed V.P. of Communications

Part of my job here at Gawker involves writing about the website BuzzFeed, so I am fairly familiar, for better or worse, with its public relations apparatus. Last year, it was pretty difficult to get comment from the company on any story that did not involve a new investment round, a prestige editorial hire, or a controversy or conflict it had not already acknowledged. In December 2014, however, BuzzFeed hired a new V.P. of communications, Liz Wasden, who is my Gawker Hero of 2015 for being one of the most useful and patient spokespeople I have ever dealt with. By this I do not mean to suggest that Wasden has simply made my job easier. It’s to point out that she’s made my reporting better. And while it’s not for me to say, I would think her commitment to transparency and accountability has bettered BuzzFeed too, for its employees and readers alike.

- Keenan Trotter

Sister Solove aka cable news’ “Angry Black Woman”

[There was a video here]

In the days after the Charleston massacre, the local reporting of cable news understandably focused on the ensuing sadness. At least one woman was too pissed off to have time for that. Sister Solove appeared repeatedly on cable news broadcasts—silently holding a sign that said “ANGRY Black Woman” on Fox, interrupting Don Lemon on CNN to call him an “Uncle Tom.” She was a jolt of reality, a needed voice of rage. While I did not agree with everything she said (to Breitbart, she seemed excited over the inevitability of a race war, and her now-deleted Facebook exposed her right-wing, anti-gay rhetoric), the moment demanded a clear voice of anger. Solove’s impressive trick subverted the conventions of the medium she was harnessing—unsatisfied with the politeness of cable news, she unleashed genuine sentiment by way of making good TV. This is how you agitated in 2015. “Black folks, get off your knees,” Solove said on CNN. “And stop praying.” Widen the scope of her words, look at the ridiculous call for prayers in the wake of San Bernardino, and the ensuing backlash, and Sister Solove’s sentiment was clearly ahead of its time.

- Rich Juzwiak

Daniel Soares, grade-hacking mastermind

In October, on Long Island, three students at Commack High School were arrested and accused of having broken into the school’s computer system over the summer to change grades and alter class schedules. Investigators described one student in particular, Daniel Soares, as the “mastermind,” or “ringleader.” At some point, they said, Soares snuck into the school after hours and installed a key logger on a teacher’s computer, acquiring login credentials and passwords, with which he allegedly proceeded to change at least one of his own grades (from a 94 to 100), two of his friends’ grades, and about 300 students’ schedules.

Soares was 16 at the time of the alleged incident; he ran away from home for about a week in September, after police executed a search warrant a few days after his 17th birthday. He was arraigned on charges for burglary, computer tampering, and identity theft and faces 11 years if convicted. His accomplices, Alex Mosquera and Erick Vaysman, both 17, were charged with criminal solicitation. They face four years if convicted.

Considering the fact that what the Commack Three are accused of is both a hilarious and non-violent crime, these sentencing guidelines are patently absurd. We urge the judge to use his or her discretion to set a lower sentence, should they be found guilty or take a plea deal. Also, should that unfortunate circumstance come to pass—breaking the law is bad! don’t do it!—we cannot help but admire these teens for their audacity, bravery, and (alleged) complete disregard for the rules of both academia and the state of New York. We should all be so shit-headed and bold.

- Brendan O’Connor

The $30 NYC hot dog man

Life is hard. Wages have been stagnating for decades. It is almost impossible for the working class to get ahead just through “hard work.” In order to really make it in America, you have to be smart. You have to have an agile mind. You have be willing to do what needs to be done. Nowhere is this more true than in New York City, the Rotten Apple, where eight million crabs vie to pull each other down into the pot. As corrupt 19th century machine politician George W. Plunkitt memorably described his successful career in graft, “I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em.”

The average man must hustle to live. We celebrate this in movies, and in myths, and in pop culture. And today, we are officially celebrating it by naming Ahmed Mohammed, the New York City hot dog vendor who was caught selling tourists $30 hot dogs, a Gawker Hero of 2015. A great deal of our city’s economy is based on ripping off tourists. Usually, the proceeds of these ripoffs go to real estate magnates, and business owners, and the wealthy and connected types who control the various legal rackets that infest Midtown. But Mr. Mohammed, using sheer pluck, was able to capture a small piece of this business for himself.

Without being ripped off, tourists would never get a sense of what the “real” New York City is all about. We applaud Mr. Mohammed for proving that the working man has a role to play in the classic American practice of extracting money from a sucker’s pocket.

- Hamilton Nolan

Bree Newsome, Confederate flagpole climber

Twenty-three days after Dylann Roof walked into Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and ended the lives of nine of its black congregants, a South Carolina Highway Patrol honor guard solemnly lowered the Confederate Battle Flag flying on the grounds of the state house in Columbia. For decades, the emblem of white supremacy and armed insurrection against the government had flown over the state’s capital, and the July 10 ceremony marked the tradition’s official end.

History will remember the flag’s retirement differently. Just 10 days after the nightmare in Charleston, an activist named Bree Newsome scaled the state house flag pole, against the shouts of a group of police officers below her, and unapologetically pulled the banner from its hooks. “I come against you in the name of God,” Newsome declared. “This flag comes down today.” She was arrested immediately upon her return to the soil, and the flag was restored to its place 45 minutes later, where it remained for two weeks.

After the Charleston killings, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn urged Americans not to associate all of of the state with Dylann Roof’s hatred and violence. That’s a valid point, of course, especially in the case of Clyburn, who is black, and who fought both to remove the flag and to close the loophole that allowed Roof to purchase his weapon. But the killer can’t rightfully be considered an aberration, either, not in a state where white cops unload multiple bullets into the backs of fleeing black men, in a country where different versions of the same tragedy play out with dismal regularity.

Governor Nikki Haley assured voters that the battle flag would be retired “with dignity” when she signed the bill that ordered its removal from the state house grounds and placement in a nearby museum. The dignity was undesevered. America will not be led out of darkness by offcers in white gloves who respectfully furl the emblems of its worst chapter and lay them softly into display cases. It will be led by women like Bree Newsome, who, when faced with great evil, decide to take it down themselves.

- Andy Cush

Asif, slayer of proudies

Back in September, two best friends in Pakistan—Asif and Mudasir—had a falling out. The exact details of the rift are, for the most part, vague. But what we do know is that Asif left his friendship with Mudasir “because of his attitude and arrogance” and made a new best friend, Salman. To put it simply, Mudasir was an insufferable proudy and Asif had no place in his life for that kind of bullshit. None of this would have been notable by any means on its own—friendships both fail and form anew everyday. What made the difference here, though, was the image Asif created to capture the split above.

The internet went wild—I, personally, went wild. There was intrigue, a potential (?) backstabbing, neon word art—everything you could possibly want in an internet phenomenon. It was perfect in every possible way.

But then, exactly a month to the day later, this happened:

The previously scorned Mudasir was back in the fold, and even Salman, despite being labeled a home-wrecker by the many virtual rubberneckers, got to stay. Asif taught us all that fame and fortune are poor substitutes to the love and companionship that only a true, lasting friendship can provide. When reached by Facebook to comment on his newfound status as a Gawker Hero, Asif had this to say:

Firstly we are happy that our friendship regained and now we are living together happily......

Ups and down are the essential part of life so we should compromise with every turn of life as virtue.......

And i am so happy to know that you made me hero of Gawker`s of 2015.....it’s a big honour for me......

Thank you very much…


No, Asif. The honor is all mine.

- Ashley Feinberg

JLENS, the runaway blimp

“A blimp isn’t a person,” says the fool. “There’s nothing heroic about an inanimate object,” bleats the coward. Sure: the JLENS blimp isn’t a human, nor is it even technically a blimp (it’s an “aerostat.”) But anyone who thought you couldn’t find heroic behavior in a floating sensor array the size of a football field was proven wrong and ignorant this year by Raytheon’s Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System.

The history of manmade weapons is rife with fraud and foolishness—show me the first ape-man to wield a coconut against a foe, and I’ll show you a ape-man who worked for Raytheon and tried to sell a Joint Tree-Based Bludgeoning Sphere Vector that didn’t actually do anything and cost millions of cro-mag bucks. The JLENS was only the latest and greatest inductee to the Pentagon’s Expensive Bad Idea Hall of Fame: an enormous goofy fucking floating structure that did absolutely dick and cost billions of taxpayer dollars (read this tremendous LA Times investigation for the whole sad story).

Broken, overpriced weapons facilitated by cronyism and greed are the norm. But this time, the broken, overpriced weapon literally ripped free from its tethers and dragged half a mile of gnarled steel cable as it fled up the eastern seaboard, cutting a swath of destruction through Maryland and Pennsylvania. Though this will do nothing to stop the next big wasteful defense boondoggle, the Runaway Blimp was an embarrassment for the Pentagon and Raytheon both, and that’s better than nothing.

- Sam Biddle

Tara Monroe, Barbie Jeep DWI girl

In September, as our nation’s undergrads poured into universities across the country to commence their varied academic pursuits, one Texas State engineering student rose above the rest to solve a problem. Tara Monroe’s conundrum: She got a DWI and lost her license. Her solution: Barbie Jeep.

Very creative. That’s not all Tara accomplished this year, either—she also turned 21.

So cheers to you, our hero, DWI Barbie Jeep Girl! Please drink responsibly. Beep beep.

- Allie Jones

Brandon Smith, FOIA fighter

Rahm Emanuel thought he was going to get away with it. Through his mayoral reelection race in the winter and its subsequent runoff in the spring, he had been able to hide a dashcam video that showed Jason Van Dyke, a cop in the Chicago Police Department, shooting and killing Laquan McDonald, a teenager carrying a small knife who was drifting away from Van Dyke and other officers as he skipped down a city street in December 2014. When, a week after Emanuel won that runoff in April, the city agreed to pay McDonald’s family $5 million, it made sure the money came with the stipulation that the video of his death not be released. It’s hard to picture Emanuel, his cohorts or underlings feeling like their agreement was threatened by a lawsuit filed later that August. As was noted by Bernard Harcourt—a professor who argued in the New York Times that the city sought to cover up McDonald’s death—Chicago officials had already rejected 14 Freedom of Information Act requests for the video. What good what a lawsuit do, especially one filed not by a wealthy or powerful prestige publication but by Brandon Smith, a freelance journalist.

It would turn out that Smith made a good David, even if Goliath never even saw him until it was too late. A week before Thanksgiving, a local judge ruled in Smith’s favor and ordered the city to release the video of McDonald’s killing. What followed was—is—the unravelling of a carefully orchestrated political career and a tyrannical police department, all driven by the exasperated rage of a community uniquely betrayed by the institutions of democracy that are supposed to protect us all. Emanuel’s comeuppance, the Department of Justice’s forthcoming investigation into the Chicago Police Department, even Van Dyke’s very indictment on murder charges: it’s likely that none of these shreds of justice could be grasped at were it not for Smith’s lawsuit. Rahm Emanuel wanted Laquan McDonald’s death to go quietly, but it’s all very loud now—louder, certainly, than he ever imagined.

- Jordan Sargent

Johari Idusuyi, the woman reading during a Trump rally

It is my fervent hope that one day supporters of Donald Trump might look back on this election and wonder, “What the hell was I thinking.” Out of all of his self-proclaimed “thousands and thousands” crowding in to see him however, there’s one woman who can be forever confident in her decision: Johari Idusuyi—the woman who chose to read “Citizen: An American Lyric” instead of listening to Trump.

Idusuyi, who was seated directly behind Trump, kept the book, which is about race, propped in front of her face for most of Trump’s speech.

“He talked about Starbucks and Merry Christmas and I was like, ‘OK?’ I was waiting for, you know, when is he going to talk about what really matters to me as a young adult, as a black woman,” she added. “What is he going to talk about that makes me want to vote for him? And it never got to that point.”

Amen.

- Gabrielle Bluestone

John Weaver, disastrous political strategist

In 2012, a wealthy former governor (and Mormon) ran for president as a Republican. He had a sterling political resume, and a credible claim to being able to appeal to voters in both parties. This was not Mitt Romney, but Jon Huntsman, Jr., the former governor of Utah. He was not the Republican nominee, in large part because of his chief campaign strategist: John Weaver.

Earlier this year, Jason Zengerle laid out Weaver’s history in a very enjoyable Politico Magazine feature. Weaver made his name running John McCain’s 2000 presidential bid. That was a campaign that won over far more journalists than voters (you may recall “the Straight Talk Express,” the bus on which McCain told racist jokes to adoring reporters), and it established the Weaver strategy: Run as a maverick outsider, and then lose. (McCain won the nomination in 2008, but Weaver lost a power struggle with another high-ranking strategist, and was out of that campaign by mid-2007.)

Weaver specializes in taking eminently electable Republicans, and making them completely toxic to voters in their own party. Take Huntsman: In many respects, he was more conservative—or at least more consistently conservative—than Mitt Romney. His tax plan was among the most conservative of any 2012 contender, and he wholeheartedly endorsed Paul Ryan’s famous austerity budgets. Instead of making the case for himself as a conservative who could beat Obama, Huntsman spent the entire GOP primary campaign attacking the Republican Party for being... too conservative. This is not exactly a great strategy for winning the nomination of the party of the conservative movement. (It tends to work well if a candidate wants to be invited onto the Sunday shows, though.)

And now Weaver is working for another Republican who looks, on paper, like a great candidate: Ohio governor John Kasich. Kasich, again, is running against his own party. Kasich, again, is losing. The Democratic Party in Kasich’s own state is baffled by his self-defeating approach:

Dav­id Pep­per, the chair­man of the Ohio Demo­crat­ic Party, said he’s con­foun­ded by Kasich’s pub­lic fo­cus on his dis­agree­ments with the GOP. “The tone is the tone but the real­ity is he’s been a real right-wing­er,” Pep­per said. “I don’t un­der­stand it. I can’t ex­plain it.”

The Weaver plan, apparently, is to bank everything on flinty New Hampshire Republicans flintily telling each other that, dadgummit, they may not agree with the man on everything, but he calls it like he sees it, and then pulling the lever for Kasich, as they did for John McCain in 2000, when he won an upset victory over the establishment favorite, George W. Bush. But that was 15 years ago. In 2012, Huntsman was beaten in New Hampshire by both the establishment candidate, Mitt Romney, and a more compelling upstart: Ron Paul. In New Hampshire today, Kasich, like most of the rest of the field, is currently polling in the single digits.

Meanwhile, Kasich’s approval rating in Ohio (an important state in political contests, last time I checked) is sky-high. He can credibly claim to be a true conservative on most of the issues that matter both to the plutocratic and evangelical wings of the conservative movement: He has done his best in Ohio to cripple both public sector unions and women’s reproductive health services. Despite that, he refuses to campaign as a conservative, instead actively insulting the people who will select the Republican nominee. This is the Weaver strategy in action.

The only thing worse than an extreme Republican is an “electable” one. It’s not unreasonable to imagine that Kasich, the very popular governor of a swing state, would run a formidable general election campaign. Thanks to the disastrous counsel of John Weaver, we likely won’t ever have to worry about the prospect of President Kasich.

In a sense, every strategist who fleeces a politician is a sort of hero. John Weaver is one of the finest fleecers of our time.

- Alex Pareene

Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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