2012: JibJab checks in

LAST YEAR, in a Facebook page comment on JibJab’s Year in Review 2011, and a reaction to the video as being not up to JibJab’s riotous standards, one Michael Kinney of St. Petersburg, Fla., came to their defense. He observed: “It was a tough year to be funny!”

He could say the same thing for 2012. With a mood of doom and gloom that’s permeated the whole year, and with concerns over the national economy already threatening to put a nasty mark on 2013, this year hasn’t been a crystal stair for anyone.

The folks at the Venice, California-based digital entertainment studio have done their best to break down the highs and lows of a busy, fractious year, in two minutes giving us a funny snapshot of most of the stories that mattered in 2012.

There’s the election, of course — maybe the high point of the year for anyone seeking uplift; there’s something deeply satisfying seeing President Obama and Vice President Biden literally kicking Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan in the ass — even if they’re doing it in animated form.

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To the tune of “Down by the Riverside,” JibJab lays it all out, from David Petraeus’ extracurriculars to Rush Limbaugh’s rant against Susan Fluke, from the unrest in Libya to the social media power of “gangnam style” — and all of it against the backdrop of the doomsday prophecy attributed to the Mayans, the one that said everything, and I mean everything, was supposed to end on Dec. 21.

There were other things that no one saw coming; the latest JibJab yearender completely overlooked the “47 percent” meme, the immigration debate, the toppling of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, the rise of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Keith Olbermann’s latest undignified TV signoff.



And there were national matters that would have been impossible to make light of in any way. The Trayvon Martin case. The Jordan Davis case. Aurora. Oak Creek. Portland. Newtown. All contributing to a pall of sadness that hung over Christmas like the frigid air that’s blanketing much of the country right now. The kind of things that felt like the end of the world.

Happily, that end-of-days prophecy was wrong, and good thing it was. Now we can look forward to JibJab’s next retrospective, and the events that’ll make it possible, a year from now.

Here’s hoping we’ll all be here then. Me? I feel fine.

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Image credits: All images from JibJab Year in Review 2012: © 2012 JibJabMedia.