How Mel, Michael and company made it the 'Year of the Mouth'

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 12/27/6 | Steven Winn

[SmithL]

Who would have known, when Oprah Winfrey gave author James Frey his nationally televised tongue-lashing last January for all that made-up stuff in his memoir "A Million Little Pieces," that the "Year of the Mouth" was just warming up?

A lot of the things that came out of people's traps in 2006 were pretty stupid and embarrassing -- not that that made this year stand out from any other in human history. The difference now is our ability to hear and often see it all, every last moronic syllable and telling inflection. For that we can thank, or bemoan, the instant global amplifier effect of the Internet.

When Mel Gibson went off on his Malibu roadside rant about Jews in July, it was a Web site, TMZ.com, that got hold of the police report and flung it around the planet. "Seinfeld" alum Michael Richards took a similar body blow to his reputation when his repeated use of the n-word at a Los Angeles comedy club in November became the slur seen and heard 'round the world, courtesy of YouTube. The defeat of Virginia Sen. George Allen in the 2006 mid-term elections (he lost to Democrat James Webb) was widely attributed to his YouTubed gaffe of calling a young Webb volunteer "Macaca" at an Allen campaign event. The volunteer was of Indian descent. Allen's re-election bid was doomed the moment the videotaped blunder came out of his mouth.

There was plenty more to hear and see and mull this year, from John Kerry's blown punch line about Bush and the Iraq war to the leaked Mark Foley e-mails to Senate page boys to the Donald Trump-Rosie O'Donnell sparring match about Miss USA and the Donald's hair and Rosie's performance on "The View." And so on.