CLARENCE PAGE: There were many dubious achievements in 2021

What a year for dubious achievements. It started off with a few thousand sore-loser Donald Trump supporters storming the Capitol and appears to be ending with me trying to figure out Melania Trump’s announcement that she is launching her own NFT platform — and that its first offering is a digital painting of herself.

What is an NFT?

It means nonfungible token, a form of cryptocurrency that transforms digital works of art and other collectibles into verifiable assets that can be traded on the blockchain. Beyond that, you’ll have to ask someone wealthier than I to explain it.

I have a big enough challenge judging my annual list of Dubious Achievement Awards, picking up the fragments of a grand tradition unfortunately abandoned by Esquire magazine.

I know I’m not all that funny, but, hey, somebody’s got to do it after a year so abundant with nominees.

Drumroll, please.

Proud girl

Top honors — or bottom, depending on your perspective — go to Jenna Ryan, the Texas real estate agent who was arrested in the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” insurrection at the Capitol.

“Definitely not going to jail. Sorry,” she famously tweeted in March. “I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I’m not going to jail.”

Judges, wholly consisting of me, gave her the edge with that self-glorifying tweet. So did U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who didn’t buy her excuse that she was somehow innocently caught up in the excitement.

“When you chose to leave your hotel room and march down to the Capitol, I think you knew this was no ordinary protest,” Cooper said. “You knew this because you were watching Fox News in real time.”

Next case …

Fresh breath, dirty lungs?

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin arched more than a few eyebrows by suggesting during a virtual town hall event that Listerine might help as a good early treatment for COVID-19.

Despite more than 200 million people being fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Johnson said there weren’t enough clinical studies to justify pushing the vaccine to people outside high-risk groups. Of course, experts say there have been no clinical studies that show how well gargling Listerine would stop COVID-19 either, but I’m sure it will leave you with fresher breath.

Weaker than Listerine

Speaking of the pandemic, rapper Nicki Minaj told her millions of Twitter followers in September that she wanted more “research” before getting vaccinated, arguing that, “My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it and became impotent. His testicles became swollen.”

“Yikes,” said I, which also turns out to be the title of a Minaj single. Trinidad authorities sprang into action, debunked the claim, and Dr. Anthony Fauci himself scolded her for the false information. My attempts to reach her cousin in Trinidad were not successful.

Honorable mention

In contrast to the overly worried Ms. Minaj, honorable mention goes to rap legend Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels of the hip-hop group Run-D.M.C., among many others who have stepped up to educate the public, particularly in Black and Brown communities, about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. (Hey, Run-D.M.C., give Nicki a call, please?)

Person of the Year

Speaking again of the pandemic, my award for “Person of the Year” goes to the wonderfully generous Dolly Parton, whose $1 million donation to Vanderbilt University Medical Center helped Moderna develop the early stages of its coronavirus vaccine.

It also inspired Miss Dolly to satirize her hit song “Jolene” into a new one titled “Vaccine,” which I expect now will be stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

The ‘Nobody Believes Me’ award

Who else?

Let’s give former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett his due for staging a ridiculously fake “hate crime” attack in Chicago that managed to debase real hate crime victims, waste a fortune of the financially struggling city’s police funding and leave State’s Attorney Kim Foxx with a lot of explaining to do for dropping the charges — which were then taken up by a special prosecutor.

Special mention

It has been a delight to watch conservative commentators fall over themselves to lionize comedian Dave Chappelle as a martyr to “cancel culture” because of the backlash over his mocking views of transgender people in his “The Closer” monologue, which isn’t even close to his best work.

He isn’t canceled, as a New York Times headline put it. “He just likes to talk about it.” That’s OK, Dave, just keep rollin’ in that dough.

And Happy New Year to all.

Contact Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.