Colorado Personalities We Don’t Want to See in the New Year

To everything and everyone, there comes an ending. Here at the end of 2015, we’d like to offer up this handful of people for nomination to Colorado’s mutual “unfriend” list. It’s nothing personal (okay, in some cases, it totally is), but in the spirit of new beginnings and resolving to do better in the coming year, you folks on this list need to do better. Or, you know, at least to just shut up and go away.

Representative JoAnn Windholz
Wow, Adams County House District 30…that Representative you elected by only 106 votes back in 2014? JoAnn Windholz? Yeah, she’s a peach. Following November’s Planned Parenthood Shootings by Robert Dear (a piece of work in his own right, but he’s doing just fine pointing out the inherent stupidity, immorality, and just plain insanity of those that share his extremist views), Windholz put out a statement squarely blaming Planned Parenthood itself. “The true instigator of this violence and all violence at any Planned Parenthood facility,” Windholz wrote, “is Planned Parenthood itself.” Ah, blaming the victims: exactly the voice of reason we expect from our elected leadership during times of crisis, right? 

Harold Henthorn
The Harold Henthorn story — or rather, the mysteries surrounding the suspicious deaths of both his first and second wives — have been featured on 48 Hours, Dateline, and a multitude of other media outlets, including the cover of Westword. Henthorn told his story over and over again, finally to a jury of his peers who found him to be unbelievable. In September, he was convicted of first-degree murder of his late wife, Dr. Toni Henthorn, who died from a fall in Rocky Mountain National Park in 2012. Goodbye, Harold.

Anyone Who Makes it Tougher for the Homeless
The vast majority of Denver's police officers are vital men and women who provide amazing and selfless service to the city and its citizens — and put their lives on the line every day. But the DPD's recent pre-holiday roundup of what scant property the homeless might have accumulated certainly didn’t paint them in a very positive light. Colorado is a tough place to be on the streets for an extended period of time, so in 2016, maybe we can work on, say, solving the problem rather than punishing the folks involved. They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. How about this for another definition: Don’t take away someone’s blankets and weather-resistant tarps, and then shake your head when they fall prey to the elements during a cold snap. That’s not just bad policy and not just terrible public relations (though it is both). It's also just cruel.

Dick Monfort
Good ol’ Dick made our 2014 Hall of Shame last year, and 2015 has been no kinder to the Colorado Rockies owner — or should we say, Monfort has been no kinder to Colorado. The team still sucks, and this year, we lost Troy Tulowitzki to the Toronto Blue Jays, in return for veteran shortstop Jose Reyes and three pitching prospects (plus a couple of baseball cards and a bag full of magic beans). Monfort’s 2014 e-mail that mentioned that “maybe Denver [didn’t] deserve a franchise” keeps ringing in fans’ ears the more and more that it looks like we don’t, in fact, really have one. What we have instead is a poorly run ego trip masquerading as a baseball team. Denver and Colorado deserve better.

The EPA
We don’t want you to go away, EPA — we just want you to do your job. That job, by the way, is supposed to be all about protecting the environment (check out your acronym). It’s specifically not about creating disasters to the beautiful and vital waterways of Colorado…which is exactly what you did back in August, when three million gallons of waste were spilled into the Animas River, famously (and tragically) turning it orange. Sadly, even the fact that this is one of the Broncos’ colors doesn't make this okay — and still we don’t know how it’s getting cleaned up, or what the ramifications of the spill are or might be in the future.

Representative Patrick Neville
Colorado House District 45 is, unfortunately, represented by Patrick Neville, who in 2015 sponsored a mess of things all designed to restrict the rights of pretty much everyone except Patrick Neville. (Patrick isn’t alone in his radically conservative politicking: His father is Littleton’s just-as-extreme Senator Tim Neville.) In 2015, Neville the Younger sponsored several pieces of legislation designed to intimidate women, refuse to protect at-risk children, and victimize the LGBT community, and cynically capitalized on the Michelle Wilkins tragedy by attempting to back-door the so-called "Personhood" legislation so often rejected by the majority of Colorado voters. How does it feel to be on the wrong side of history there, Pat? I’m assuming it’s cold and dark and sort of frightening.

Jared Fogle
Welcome to colorful Colorado, Jared. You’ve probably had your last Subway six-inch for a while (insert your own joke here), but I guess that’s what happens when you’re outed as one of the worst pedophiliac scumbags ever to be featured in Super Bowl ads. Here’s hoping the worst thing that happens to you in Supermax is that you gain back all that weight you lost. Cheers, and good riddance.