TIME magazine’s Person of the Year was the protestor.
Governments in Egypt and Tunisia were ousted by people fed up with the status quo of the few rich ruling of the many poor. The western media attempted to portray this change as the seeds of democracy, but were surprised by faceless protestors in America assailing Wall Street and Congress as enemies of the state. Police trained for terrorism by Homeland Security attacked peaceful demonstrations with heavy-handed force and the poster boy for these men in blue was NYPD police lieutenant Joseph Bologna for his pepper-spraying women and punching out anyone in his way.
The officer in question has a well-earned reputation for brutality dating back the the GOP convention in 2004 and protests against Iraq War.
Bologna was disciplined with the loss of ten vacation days and a transfer to his home borough of Staten Island. He has refused to apologize for the pepper-spraying and said that given the chance he “would do things the same way.”
For that alone Joseph Bologna is Asshole of 2011.
He had a lot of competition and I was one of them.