15 Accolades and Honors Bestowed on Tremendous Pieces of Shit

Across his career, Bill Cosby received a colossal 72 honorary degrees. Sixty-two of them have since been rescinded, meaning he still has 10 more of them than most. He also still has the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is irrevocable. 

British colonialism is prick-laden, but Cecil Rhodes was a true cock — he systematically stole resources from African people and set up ongoing institutions to keep doing so. Rhodesia was named after him, and there are statues of the fucker everywhere.

British TV presenter Jimmy Savile was as rotten a villain as it comes, a serial abuser who was somehow able to boast about his misdeeds. He died a knight, although it’s not on his gravestone (as that was smashed).

A shitload of North American species are named after real turds, immortalizing them. The Scott’s oriole, for instance, is named after military commander Winfield Scott, who coordinated the forced removal of countless Native Americans from their land in the 1800s.

Similarly, McCown’s longspur, another bird, was until very recently named after Confederate General John P. McCown, a drunkard and shithead. It was successfully renamed the thick-billed longspur, allowing McCown the obscurity he deserves. 

A lot of university buildings have been named after bastards. One example: Duke’s Carr Building, renamed the Classroom Building in 2018 to sever ties with its original namesake, KKK member, lifelong white supremacist and worthless simpleton Julian Carr. 

In 2012, film producer Harvey Weinstein was made a knight of the French Legion of Honor, a rare accolade for a foreigner. He was stripped of it in 2017 when it was revealed just how much of a serial rapist he was. 

There are worse Lords, but few as dislikable as Lord Jeffrey Archer, a U.K. MP awarded the honor before fully revealing how slimy a liar he is. Perjury, shoplifting, bullshitting about charitable donations and allegedly worse crimes. What a shit! 

It’s played as a joke in the movie, but Forrest Gump does mean a lot more people know the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest, first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, than ever should. 

Unbelievably, the key to the city of Detroit was once awarded to Saddam Hussein, in recognition of his donations to a church there. The reverend later said, “He was very kind. Lately, what’s happened, I don’t know. Money and power changed the person.” 

The Sackler family kickstarted the opioid epidemic eating America from the inside. They’re evil. But damn, there’s a lot of museums and galleries with their names on them — if you didn’t know they were pure scum they’d seem pretty great.

Melvil Dewey (of Dewey Decimal System fame) was a big ol’ turd, a creepy handsy bastard who was openly racist and anti-Semitic. Every time you look for a book about butts in the library you’re using this dick’s system. 

Can you separate the art from the artist? The people who have awarded Roman Polanski, who raped a child and has never even claimed he didn’t, Oscars, BAFTAs, the Palme D’Or and various lifetime achievement accolades clearly fucking can’t. 

Henry Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for a ceasefire in Vietnam that nobody, literally nobody, believed would last. And it didn’t — the war continued for two more years. Kissinger at least seemed slightly embarrassed to have received it.

Captain James Cook undeniably achieved a huge amount, but was also a complete bastard, looting, pillaging and murdering endless indigenous people. He has towns, mountains, islands and even a moon crater named after him, and statues everywhere.