Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Plead your case in the comments. We promise to read, absorb, and contemplate your wishes. And if we make the wrong call, blame Pastafarian. (Sucks to be the new guy, huh?)

Congratulations to the North Carolina Tarheels People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals! PETA has won the inaugural Deceiver Madness championship, outlasting 64 other famous hypocrites.

Take a bow, you nutty puppy-killing frauds! You earned it.

Al Gore could only close the gap to 6 points, despite some aggressive voting from the pockets of the coal and natural gas industries. But hey, second place isn’t so bad. Gore has got to be used to that by now.

The Deceiver Madness trophy will be awarded later this week in Hollywood, but we have some additional hardware to hand out too.

Our grand prize tonight goes to the reader who made the guessed closest to the final score of tonight’s NCAA basketball championship game (the final was 89-72), and placed a Deceiver Madness vote for PETA (the eventual tourney winner).

We had three guesses that were remarkably close, so we’re awarding Deceiver t-shirts as consolation prizes to the two runners-up. They were “fallingstar” with a guess of 89-68, and “LurkingWoman” with a guess of 87-72.

But the big winner was Deceiver reader “Crow Jane,” whose prediction of 88-72 was just one free-throw away from being perfect. She will be receiving the PETA-themed prize showcase containing:

1. A $50 gift card to Omaha Steaks;
2. A $50 McDonald’s “Arch Card”;
3. A teddy bear made from genuine mink fur;
4. A baseball cap crafted from top-grain leather;
5. A one-year subscription to Field & Stream magazine (with complimentary fishing tackle bag); and
6. A “summer sausage and cheese gift box” from Hickory Farms.

Thanks for making Deceiver Madness a barrel of laughs to put on. Vegas oddsmakers are already predicting a rout by the Octomom for 2010, so start working on your brackets. It’s never too early.

It’s PETA -vs- Al Gore for all the (phony) marbles!

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Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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Winners of Week Four prizes are after the jump.

After you vote, leave a comment below (following the instructions described here) to be eligible to win the Grand Prize (also described here).

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This is it, Deceiver fans! Countless thousands of you have voted (i.e., we haven’t counted, but it’s tons). And it’s come down to the battle of two Titans of deception.

Al Gore and PETA. The inconvenient, profiteering megawatt-waster against the animal-rights puppy killers.

I don’t even know how I’m going to vote on this one.

This poll will be open until Monday night’s NCAA Final Four Championship Game tipoff. (That’s 92 hours of voting). The Deceiver Madness winner will be announced on Tuesday morning, when there will be a trophy presentation in Hollywood by our own “Holly Won’t.” (Yes, Holly. You’re going.)

And now for the Week Four prizes:

The $50 eBay and Barnes & Noble gift cards are headed to enrich the “Pastafarian.” The $50 Bed Bath & Beyond gift card will buy new sheets for “Trina,” who we’re quite sure could use them. The political mini-library of instant classics by Obama, Krugman, Levin, & Coulter will soon be gathering dust wherever “Meg B.” lives. And the last Booby Prize of the tourney — his & hers Deceiver underwear — is guaranteed to embarrass “angry army wife.”

Drop us a line if you think you’re a winner. We promise not to laugh if you’re wrong.

We’ve put off telling you what the Grand Prize is up to now because — well, we didn’t know ourselves. You see, my co-bloggers and I wanted to customize the prize so it would be something guaranteed to piss off the celebrity who’s crowned Deceiver of the Year. Insult to injury, salt in the wounds, yadda-yadda-yadda.

And until a few hours ago, we weren’t sure who the last two contenders would be. But now it’s settled.

So here’s the deal. One lucky winner will take home a prize package tailored to push the buttons of either Al Gore or PETA. We won’t even know which prizes will be awarded until after the contest is over. Sorta like the Showcase Showdown on the Price is Right. God, I love that show …

Anyway, after the jump you’ll find the two “Showcase” collections. Only one will be awarded.

How do you win? Simple.

Leave a comment in the final-poll blog post telling us (a) who you voted for and why, and (b) your prediction for the final score of Monday night’s NCAA basketball championship game. Not the winner. Just the score.

Example:

I voted for Al Gore because any complete butt-head who spends his days and nights looking for ManBearPig probably can’t be honest about anything. The final score on Monday night will be 66 to 58.

The closest guess on the basketball score (only among those who said they voted for the eventual Deceiver Madness winner) will win the corresponding prize. And yes, that means that if you guessed the basketball score right on the nose but voted for the Deceiver Madness loser, you’re out of luck. (Life’s unfair sometimes. Just ask Rumer “Potatohead” Willis.) A coin-flip, or a series of coin-flips, will break any ties.

Entries are limited to one per person, and you must give us a working e-mail address with your comment in order to be eligible. No exceptions.

So, without further ado …

If PETA is crowned Deceiver of the Year, we will award the following prize package:

1. A $50 gift card to Omaha Steaks;
2. A $50 McDonald’s “Arch Card”;
3. A teddy bear made from genuine mink fur;
4. A baseball cap crafted from top-grain leather;
5. A one-year subscription to Field & Stream magazine (with complimentary fishing tackle bag); and
6. A “summer sausage and cheese gift box” from Hickory Farms.

If Al Gore wins Deceiver Madness, we will award this prize package instead:

1. A $100 gift certificate for Southwest Airlines, that notorious burner of jet fuel;
2. An 8-pack of 100-watt light bulbs — the horribly inefficient incandescent kind;
3. A lump of genuine anthracite coal, mined near Scranton, Pennsylvania;
4. A shirt from the T-Shirt Hell website that reads “Al Gore didn’t invent the Internet, but he did make up global warming”;
5. A copy of Michael Crichton’s 2004 techno-thriller novel State of Fear; and
6. A copy of the book The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud — And those who are too fearful to do so.

Are you excited yet?

Can you believe that it’s come down to this?

Now that you’ve chosen your Phony Four, I can tell you a little secret. I was only 1-for-4 in predicting the bracket champions before this tourney started. My personal “phony four” picks were PETA, Tom Cruise, John Edwards, and Jeremy Piven.

Shows you how much I know. But these are your remaining contenders, folks. Two #1 seeds survived, along with Gwyneth GOOPy-goop and His Douchiness the Queen of Hilton.

So now you have your marching orders. For the first time, we’ll be pitting a starlet against a politician and an activist group against a total douchebag. Worlds are about to collide, and when the dust settles next Monday night, we’ll have our Deceiver Madness champion!

Your four survivors, and a recap of their “Road to the Phony Four” résumés:

• Gwyneth Paltrow: [Round 1] [Round 2] [Snark Sixteen] [Artificial Eight]
• Al Gore: [Round 1] [Round 2] [Snark Sixteen] [Artificial Eight]
• PETA: [Round 1] [Round 2] [Snark Sixteen] [Artificial Eight]
• Perez Hilton: [Round 1] [Round 2] [Snark Sixteen] [Artificial Eight]

Vote early, don’t vote often (sorry…), and don’t forget to leave a comment for a prize entry!

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Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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These polls will be open until tomorrow when the clock strikes 8pm in Hollywood (that’s more than 36 hours of voting). Updated Brackets will be posted by Friday morning.

The final “Deceiver of the Year” poll will open on Friday, with results determined on until the evening of April 6 when the NCAA basketball championship game tips off. The final winner will be announced the following morning with a trophy presentation in Hollywood — which we fully expect the Hypocrite of the Year to attend, dammit!

If you want a replay of this weekend’s amazing NCAA action, you’ve come to the wrong place. (ESPN is that-a-way…). But if you need your bracket fix between now and next Saturday, well… we’re suddenly the only show in town, now aren’t we?

(Mwah-ha-HA-ha-ha-ha-ha….!)

As always, you pick the winners. And this is the big-time. These Regional Final skirmishes will send half the contestants packing, and the other half to the “Phony Four.”

You know you’ve been waiting for this moment — you and about 20,000 of your closest friends. So now it’s time to step up, fire a long jumper, and elevate your game.

Or you could just dispense with the hoops metaphors, and vote for the famous phonies who turned out to be the biggest hypocrites in their entire brackets.

Yeah, that’s it. Do that instead of the weak-ass basketball stuff. Go ahead.

To review the Round-1 tournament résumés of the survivors who have out-lasted 57 of their fellow famous folks, just click on ‘em. (If you’re clicking on Perez Hilton, however, we recommend rubber gloves for your mouse hand.) Then vote for the bigger hypocrite in each matchup.

You might think Tom Cruise is a phony because he tried to steer 9/11 charity money into a Scientology front group. Or because he threatened to sue “Dr. Drew” Pinsky over comments about his father, which didn’t sound all that bad after you read what Tommy Boy himself wrote about the old man. Or it could just be the whole closeted gay thing. (Katie Holmes’s dad is a divorce lawyer. Don’t tell me she doesn’t know what a “beard” is…)

And then there’s the GOOPstress. Don’t hate her because she’s an out-of-touch Hollywood celeb-u-tard who can’t seem to escape the orbit of her famous family. Hate her because of that PETA non-apology apology for wearing fur, which kida ignored all the snakeskin and alligator dripping off of her lithe frame. And for her phony claims of vegetarianism, which is kinda hard to pull off when your online newsletter is full of recommendations for turkey-burgers, black pepper chicken, anchovies, and steamed oysters.

Cruise cruised through the earlier rounds, plowing through Tara Reid, Katherine Heigl, and Paris Hilton just like a good heterosexual. And Gwyneth got here via her devastating defeats of Brad Pitt, Madonna, and Lindsay Lohan. But now it’s time for you to decide who moves on, and who moves out.

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Al Gore is … well, he’s Al Gore. That alone should be enough of a description. But let’s remember what got him here. The father of the global-warming movement can’t sem to keep a lid on his own greenhouse-gas transgressions. He left a fleet of limos running during one of hissave-the-planet speeches. He is the chairman of a company that makes gazillions off of selling “carbon offsets.” (Well, isn’t that convenient…) And just this weekend, he never managed to turn off the floodlights illuminating his trees during Earth Hour.

But Al won’t have an easy time getting to the Phony Four, because silky silkerson himself is standing in his way. This humble blog got its first mention in People because of my co-blogger Simon Scowl’s coverage of the emerging John Edwards scandals, back when The New York Times was still assigning crossword-puzzle editors to see if there was any “there” there. The one-act play of Edwards’ life goes something like this: Jimmy Carter’s teeth make a comeback, along with the Ken doll’s hair. Main character poetically insists that there are “two Americas.” He goes on to prove his point by sleeping with both of them. Only one of them is his dying wife. The dénouement is set in a maternity ward.

These two have left a political “who’s who” in their tournamnet wake. Gore crushed a Saudi king, the Chinese olympic committee, and Barack Obama to reach the Artificial Eight. And Edwards’ date with destiny was set up by victories over Larry “tap tap” Craig, Sarah Palin (you betcha!), and Prince Charles of England. It’s going to be hard to say goodbye to one of these contenders, but we only made one trophy.  so get cracking.

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Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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If anyone needs a reminder of why PETA is in the tournament, just remember that they kill oodles and kaboodles of furry things while whining when the rest of humanity does the same thing. Last week one of PETA’s harshest critics leaked the group’s 2008 “kill numbers,” and it’s not pretty. PETA has been slaughtering more than 95 percent of the pets they take in. Wth numbers like that, these clowns ought to be working for Orkin instead of claiming that they protect or save anything with four legs.

And how do you solve a problem like Heather Mills. She’s denied doing porn (even though the pictures are out there). She’s posed as a generous charity-giver (not true…). She’s even tried to burnish her image by announcing plans to help a Russian amputee get back on her –  er … well, you know what I mean. And now there are rumors circulating that the vegan avenger with the uneven gait is on the take from Burger King. Wow.

Could it be that the student has eclipsed the teacher? This one-two battle has analysts asking how on earth a whole church could be toppled by one of its disciples. Hey — anything can happen. Nobody expected Louisville to go away so quietly on Sunday night. So it’s just possible that PETA itself might scamper away whimpering like a badly neutered cat. It’s time for you to take sides. Go.

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Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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When we first sketched out the idea of having this tournament, having a bracket just for celebrity douchebags was my favorite thing about the whole enchilada. So excuse me if I have a tiny tear in my eye as this plays out.

Perez Hilton is (in a tie with Tom Cruise) the lowest-seeded Deceiver to advance this far. But we saw how that designation worked out for Arizona, didn’t we? So he’ll have to bring his “A” game if he really wants another reason to be famous. I think he could “pull it off.” That is what got him into the tournament, after all — soliciting masturbation videos from another blogger while skewering Hulk Hogan for committing more conventional sexual indiscretions. And complaining that said blogger invaded his privacy by going public about the whole thing. (Imagine that …) Then there was Perez’s crusade against “puppy mills,” despite buying his own dog from a breeder. And just last week he oh-so-maturely bitched about Rihanna’s Glock tattoo while happily marketing his own line of uzi t-shirts.

Tyra Banks, on the other hand, could slap Perez back to West Hollywood with a single shout of “fierce”! Tyra claims that she was put on this earth to raise young women’s collective self-esteem. Whic his kinda hard to reconcile with glamorizing prostitution. Or with her endless complaints that America’s Next Top Model contestants are (in the inimitable words of Holly Won’t) too fat/too thin/too drag-queeny/too short/too ethnic/not ethnic enough/too edgy/too commercial.

Mario “Perez Hilton” Lavanderia dispatched a Lohan (Michael), a Spears (Lynne), and a punchline (Dr. Phil) to reach this matchup. If only he had dispatched them to someplace without TV cameras. Meanwhile, Tyra Banks took care of another Lohan (Dina), Plus narcisist Donny Deutsch and the twin Godzillas of Heidi Montag & Spencer Pratt. And for this public service, we reward her with yet another battle. Who’d douchier than whom? Sorry: There’s no re-buy in this tournament, so Jeremy Piven is out for good. You’re stuck with these two.

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Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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These polls will be open until tomorrow when the clock strikes 6pm in Hollywood (that’s 36 hours of voting). Updated Brackets will be posted by Wednesday morning.

“Phony Four” polls will open on Wednesday morning, with results determined by Thursday night. Championship voting will  begin Friday morning and remain open until the evening of April 6 when the NCAA basketball championship game tips off. The final winner will be announced the following morning with a trophy presentation in Hollywood — which we fully expect the Hypocrite of the Year to attend, dammit!

REMINDER: We’re giving away more prizes this week. Leave a comment below (with a valid e-mail address) telling everyone how you voted and why, and you could win some cool stuff. And you can always click here for the most up-to-date brackets.

Prizes will be awarded by a random drawing of commenters on all Deceiver Madness polls held between March 30 and April 2. A special “grand prize” will be announced on April 3 for voters in the final championship poll.

Entries are limited to one per person, per blogpost that includes any polls. So you can enter a total of two times this week.

• 1st prize: a $50 eBay gift card and a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card
• 2nd prize: a $50 Bed Bath & Beyond gift card
• 3rd prize: Four political books guaranteed to fight it out in your head — titles by Barack Obama & Paul Krugman (on the Left), and Mark Levin & Ann Coulter (on the Right)
• Booby prize: His and Hers Deceiver.com underwear

Winners will be notified by e-mail and announced on this website. And the grand prize will be announced by Friday morning. Good luck to everyone!

]]> http://deceiver.com/2009/03/29/madness-4-prize-patrol/feed/ 6 http://deceiver.com/2009/03/27/sixteen-activists-douchebag-winners/ http://deceiver.com/2009/03/27/sixteen-activists-douchebag-winners/#comments Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:00:00 +0000 The Oversneer http://deceiver.com/?p=6942

Let’s get the Week Three prizes out of the way first.

We’ll be sending a $100 Best Buy gift card to “luscious_t.” The $50 ESPN Shop gift card goes to “Loop the Lup.” Two Deceiver.com t-shirts will be adorning “The Irish.” And the goofy gift bag of Scientology swag? Well, “invyzible” is stuck with the Booby Prize this week.

If you’re a winner, drop us an e-mail (tips@deceiver.com) and let us know where to send your loot.

If not, keep voting! New goodies arrive after the weekend. we promise.

And now for the moment the rest of you have been waiting for… We had zero (count ‘em!) zero upsets in these two Snark Sixteen matchups, folks. These were solid wins — no squeakers — and it makes me wonder if the world will come to a premature end in a massive ball of fire during the next round. Unstoppable forces, immovable objects, and all that…

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One of these two powerhouses will be your Activist representative in the Phony Four. They’re both congenitally full of it. They’re both more arrogant than Simon Cowell. And they both make stripping it all off a part of their “charm.”

Can you pick a favorite? Me neither. It’s like having to choose between Wal-Mart and K-Mart. Luckily, we can judge them from a distance, right?

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And in what has trned out to be the most surprising bracket of all, Perez Hilton and Tyra Banks are your two remaining Douchebags.

Not Jeremy Piven. Not the Montag-Pratt connection. Not even Martha Stewart. (I thought she had an outside shot on the strength of the horrible chicken-baking incident.)

Nope. It’s these two.The jerk-wad and ol’ poopypants.

But you picked ‘em. And one of these douchetastic celebrities will face the PETA-pegleg winner. So think ahead as you vote next week, people.

I feel so dirty.

Poll results and updated brackets areafter the jump.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

At this moment, I just have to vent a little because my personal Deceiver Madness bracket is busted. Jeremy Piven was my “sure thing.” I feel a little like a Kentucky fan after the Christian Laettner shot for Duke in ‘92.

It’s hard to root for Dr. Phil now. So even though it’s Perez Hilton who could bring him down, I’m rooting for the twisted queen to kick Dr. Douchebag’s smug teeth in.

Sorry about that. I lost composure, just for a moment. I’ll try not to let it happen again. After all, would Perez or Dr. Phil stand a chance in the “Artificial Eight” round against Tyra Banks? Or Speidi? Those idiots define “Deceiver.” Heck, they probably have the pink Deceiver logo tattooed on their butt cheeks by now. (The rumors that I drew a sketch for the tattoo artist are completely false. As far as you know.)

One thing is certain: By the time one of these celebrity hypocrites makes it to the Final Phony Four, there’s going to be some blood on the mousepad.

To review the tournament résumés of these complete and utter douchebags, just click on their pictures:

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I’m starting to think we should have let “at-large douchebags” into all four brackets. It might have been more fun. But only one of these yutzes will advance to the Phony Four.

Vote early. Tell your friends and neighbors. Start posting antagonizing comments on Perez’s blog. We sure as hell give away better prizes than he does.

These polls will be open for 48 hours, and updated Brackets will be posted on Wednesday.

REMINDER about those prizes: Leave a comment below (with a valid e-mail address) telling everyone how you voted and why. You could win some cool stuff! And you can always click here for the most up-to-date brackets.

Ho hum … another perfectly predictable textbook clash of the top four seeds. No Arizona Wildcats to muck with the natural order of things. Borrrrrrr-innnnnng!

But come on! Did you really want the Snark Sixteen to exclude PETA and its massive dead-puppy parlor? Did anyone doubt that Heather “Hoppity” Mills or Pam “Fur, No! Leather, Yes!” Anderson would be here? And could we really have expected anything less from the sensitive social-marketing gurus who turned Dove soap into a laughingstock?

This is Deceiver Madness at its finest, folks. Phony public figures misrepresenting themselves as self-sacrificing activists are our bread and butter. I can’t imagine how you’re going to eliminate any of these professional pretenders from the competition. But only two of the four faux fanatics pictured below can advance to the Artificial Eight.

To review the tournament résumés of these plastic protesters, click on their photos:

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Can Pam Anderson and her closet full of dead cows put a dent in the animal-liberation mother ship? Or will PETA and its trail of dog and cat carcasses out-class its most recognizable fem-bot?

Could Dove’s 1/4-moisturizing-cream, 3/4-bullshiz formula set a new standard for subtle marketing deception? Or will Heather Mills fly off on her broom, summon Voldemort You-Know-Who to kick Unilever’s ass, and then claim that she’s a misunderstood kindly do-gooder?

Anything could happen.

These polls will be open for 48 hours, and updated Brackets will be posted on Wednesday.

REMINDER: We’re giving away more prizes this week. Leave a comment below (with a valid e-mail address) telling everyone how you voted and why, and you could win some cool stuff. And you can always click here for the most up-to-date brackets.