If you are reading this now, congratulations! You survived the year 2020. And that was no small feat considering all of what we had to face: a global pandemic, the most critical of presidential races, a ‘turning point’ in the fight against systemic racism, and so much more. This year, a lot happened that challenged our ability to wake up everyday and keep on pushing. So, before reading further, take a minute to congratulate yourself, get a box of tissues, and get comfortable because recapping the last twelve months will be one hell of a ride!
But before we start, here’s a quick video that sums up the year perfectly:
Mass Shootings: 615 | Celebrity Deaths: 283
January
We started this year with what we’ve all been waiting for since January 20, 2017: Trump’s impeachment hearing. And let me tell you, the memes were glorious! For the sake of brevity, I’m gonna skip the monthly memes. Maybe this is a mistake… idk
Also in January, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decided to quit the royal family. I didn’t even know that was a thing but okay.
Influenza was especially deadly this season. An alarming number of hospitalizations and deaths were reported. Particularly alarming were the number of younger people who lost their lives to it this season. But whispering in the background were reports of some novel coronavirus that was spreading in China. We had our own shit to worry about so we figured they’d be able to handle it.
But probably the most tragic thing to happen this month were the sudden deaths of Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna on January 26th. I normally don’t feature deaths here, but this one hit us all very, very hard. They died as a result of a helicopter crash over Calabasas, California while on their way to a basketball tournament where Gianna was supposed to play.
Mass shootings: 28 | Celebrity Deaths: 17
Notable Deaths:
Kobe Bryant, 41 
Gianna Bryant, 13 Basketball player, Kobe’s daughter 
Payton Chester, 13 Basketball player, died with Kobe and Gianna 
Alyssa Altobelli, 14 Basketball player, died with Kobe and Gianna 
Sarah Chester, 41 Mom to Payton, died with Kobe and Gianna 
Keri Altobelli, 46 Mom to Alyssa, died with Kobe and Gianna 
John Altobelli, 56 Father of Alyssa, died with Kobe and Gianna 
Christina Mauser, 38 Coach, died with Kobe and Gianna 
Ara Zobayan, 50 Pilot, died with Kobe and Gianna
February
Well we spent three years waiting for a Trump impeachment only for this shit to end with donuts. It is important for me to note that it wasn’t at all because he wasn’t guilty. They just couldn’t prove that shit and also, his cronies had the final say. Every single Democratic senator voted FOR impeachment and every single Republican voted against it… except Mitt Romney so shoutout to him (yes, the bar really is pretty low)!
So… we also learned this month that, sadly, Shannon Dougherty has stage 4 breast cancer and, not so sadly, Rush Limbaugh has advanced lung cancer.
Harvey Weinstein’s nasty ass was convicted for rape and sexual abuse so the ashies had to scramble to find a new way to defend Pill Cosby. I’m not sure what they settled on and don’t even care.
The novel coronavirus officially made its way to the states as some cases started to crop up on the west coast. Fret not though, President Trump says it’s no big deal…
Mass shootings: 28 | Celebrity Deaths: 19
Notable Deaths:
Kirk Douglas, 103 Actor, father of Michael Douglas 
Ja’Net DuBois, 74 Actress, Wilona from Good Times 
Katherine Johnson, 101 Mathematician for NASA (Hidden Figures)
March
Tom Hanks and his wife test positive for coronavirus (officially named COVID-19). This shit is KICKING OUR ASSES! It has officially been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. People all over the world go into lockdown to try to control the spread of this deadly disease. Because we have nothing else to do, the app TikTok blows up in popularity.
Harvey Weinstein is sentenced to 23 years in prison. Good.
Mass shootings: 26 | Celebrity Deaths: 24
Notable Deaths:
James Lipton, 93 Inside the Actors Studio 
Bill Withers, 81 R&B singer “Lovely Day” 
Kenny Rogers, 81 Country music singer
April
COVID still got the whole country on lockdown, people are dropping like flies, and the economy is the worst it’s ever been. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential race leaving Joe Biden as the last standing democratic candidate, which I knew would happen on 11/9/2016. Bernie Bros are MAD mad too but that’s another conversation.
Kim Jong Un mysteriously disappears and everyone speculates that he might be dead after a botched surgery. But who ever really knows with North Korea?
Mass shootings: 26 |Celebrity Deaths: 28, 9 were COVID-19 related
Notable Deaths:
Ashley “Minnie” Ross, 36 Reality TV Star, Little Women: Atlanta 
Brian Dennehy, 81 Actor, Cocoon, First Blood, etc 
Sam Lloyd, 56 Actor, Scrubs
May
We found out that Ahmaud Arbery was murdered by some random ass white men while he was jogging through his own goddamn neighborhood. This happened way back in February but we just found out because a) the police didn’t bother to arrest these murderous assholes and b) one of the dumbasses basically snitched by uploading the video he recorded of the shooting. So, we had to wait for that shit to go viral before they decided to actually arrest the racist shitbags.
To pile on the racist fuckshit, another innocent black man, George Floyd, was murdered by the Minneapolis police department. Officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds while he was pinned to the ground. He was being arrested for using a counterfeit bill, which later turned out to be some bullshit.
The breaking point was us finally hearing about another innocent black person murdered by police. This time, it was a woman, Breonna Taylor. These three deaths finally pissed off America beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. There were nationwide protests, riots, and a whole bunch of white people finally listening… for now. In some states and cities, decisions were made to defund their police departments and in others, reform laws were passed. All of these changes were a direct result of all of these protests.
On the Coronavirus front, some states started lifting stay at home orders and the Coronavirus Task Force began winding down. Naturally, this happened WAY TOO FUCKING SOON!
Mass shootings: 58 | Celebrity Deaths: 20, 3 were COVID-19 related
Notable Deaths:
George Floyd, 46 
Betty Wright, 66 R&B Singer “Tonight is the Night” 
Little Richard, 87 R&B, Rock & Roll singer 
Roy Horn, 75 1/2 of the Vegas act Siegfried & Roy 
Fred Willard, 86 Actor, comedian, Modern Family, et al. 
Andre Harrell, 59 Music executive, Uptown Records
June
Herman Cain’s dumb, dusty ass caught the Rona at a Trump rally and has been hospitalized. Who could’ve predicted that one?
As the northeast gains some control on the COVID-19 front, cases begin to surge in Florida and Texas – two states with Trumpy ass Republican governors… we’ll see how it goes!
Minneapolis votes to defund their police department and replace it with a community-led model. This is a step more cities should take, honestly! But, until then, we’ll all be watching Minneapolis to see how it goes.
Speaking of police, a bunch of members of the Atlanta Police Department decided to resign because of the protests. So the city was left largely unprotected because of white boy tantrums.
Mass shootings: 91 | Celebrity Deaths: 19, 2 were COVID-19 related
Notable Deaths:
Bonnie Pointer, 69 R&B Singer, The Pointer Sisters 
Carl Reiner, 98 Creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show 
Jas Waters, 39 Writer, This Is Us
July
With COVID-19 cases spiking in 40 states, Trump’s dumb ass thinks it’s actually a good thing to move to withdraw from the World Health Organization… what? He’s looking to blame everyone to blame for this shit besides himself. America is officially the Florida of the world.
Also, Herman Cain died from COVID and nobody even cared.
Mass shootings: 87 | Celebrity Deaths: 25, 3 were COVID-19 related
Notable Deaths:
John Lewis, 80 Congressman, Civil Rights Activist 
Regis Philbin, 88 Talk Show Host, Live With Regis 
Herman Cain, 74 Businessman, Republican idiot
August
Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion dropped a song called WAP (Wet Ass Pussy) and all the dusties suddenly became Puritans. It was definitely a fun time on Tiktok with all of the challenges though.
As we gear up to enter this voting season in full COVID swing, many states allow citizens to apply for absentee ballot applications citing the pandemic as a reason. But of course, in full Trump fashion, he starts stoking fears about the USPS to deter people from sending in mail-in ballots. We know now, that it’s all part of his evil plan to challenge the election results in the event of his loss. But more on this later.
Steve Bannon was arrested in, of all states, Connecticut (Eww! Why was he here?). He was behind the whole Gofundme campaign to build the wall that Mexico was supposed to be paying for and, of course, he got caught skimming money off the top.
Mass shootings: 78 | Celebrity Deaths: 32, 3 were COVID-19 related
Notable Deaths:
Chadwick Boseman, 43 Actor, Black Panther 
Chi Chi DeVayne, 34 Drag Queen, RuPaul’s Drag Race 
Robert Trump, 71 Business Exec, Donald’s brother
September
California was on fire this month, which, I guess is something they’re partially used to. But at least one of the fires was started by some asshole’s gender reveal party. Can we leave those in 2020 now?
Trump spend much of the early COVID months downplaying it to the American public because he thought it was better to not create panic is a dusty ass nigga! Well, as per usual, his words have come back to bite him in the ass. A recording surfaced of him saying how deadly the virus is way back in early February, right before he spent weeks downplaying it. If I had a dollar for the number of times this man committed an act of malfeasance during his time in office, I’d be BALLIN!
Also this month, we learned a little bit about Trump’s taxes that he was so reluctant to release. He paid a whopping $750 in federal taxes in 2017. I just… I don’t even have anything clever to say here.
Mass shootings: 65 | Celebrity Deaths: 24, 2 were COVID-19 related
Notable Deaths:
Helen Reddy, 78 Activist, Singer, “I Am Woman” 
Jackie Stallone, 98 Astrologer, mother of Sylvester Stallone 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 87 Supreme Court Justice
October
Let the games begin! The moment we’ve all been waiting for all year has finally arrived: Trump and Melania tested positive for COVID-19. He has rapidly been designated as a superspreader as damn near his whole team, a few senators, and Chris Christie have caught the Rona. But that ain’t stop Trump from continuing to be reckless. He spent a few days in the hospital and went right back to holding huge, maskless rallies. Personally, I blame him for the onset of the second wave.
Some right wing militia assholes made a failed attempt to kidnap the governor of Michigan so they could take over the state. I guess Trump was too busy spreading the Rona all over and shoving in his new appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, to the Supreme Court to care.
Mitch McConnell may or may not have died weeks ago and has been replaced by a zombie of himself. His hands been fucked up and he refuses to explain why: Mitch McConnell’s mysterious zombie hands.
Then, of course, there was the fly that landed on Pence’s head during the Vice Presidential debate. That was no accident either! Flies love bullshit. Props to the Biden-Harris campaign for using that shit immediately to raise funds. They sold fly swatters and bobbleheads to commemorate the moment. Pettiness at its finest hour.
Mass shootings: 52 | Celebrity Deaths: 27, 1 was COVID-19 related
Notable Deaths:
Sean Connery, 90 Actor, the first James Bond 
Eddie Van Halen, Rock musician, songwriter, Van Halen 
James Redford, 58 Filmmaker, son of Robert Redford
November
Yeah we are fully hitting that second COVID wave. Unfortunately, it failed to take out Trump like we all wanted… but at least he infected his whole team and made himself look like the incompetent “leader” that he is. It’s not like that had any effect on his followers though.
Trump’s chief of staff and Ben Carson tested positive for COVID-19. Thankfully, we have an end in sight as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the election, hitting historic milestones! Now they just gotta pry that nigga out of there and disinfect the white house because ew!
Some of the best news to come out of 2020 was definitely the long awaited reconciliation between Will Smith and Janet Hubert. I’m not gonna even lie… my eyes got a little bit sweaty watching them finally have the conversation. If you haven’t watched it already, you can see this on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Reunion that aired on HBO Max.
Mass shootings: 47 | Celebrity Deaths: 21, 2 were COVID-19 related
Notable Deaths:
Alex Trebek Host, Jeopardy! 
Ben Watkins, 14 Chef, contestant on Master Chef Jr. 
Bobby Brown Jr, 28 Son of Bobby Brown
December
Somehow we ended up in a third wave of COVID but I’m not even sure we ever finished the second wave. Anyway, Rudy Giuliani and Ellen DeGeneres tested positive for COVID this month.
Trump has been refusing to concede as he’s been filing lawsuits and demanding recounts since the winners were declared. It’s actually really scary what he’s doing because he could easily be setting up a coup to steal the election and/or spark a second civil war. He actually got 17 states to help him with filing lawsuits to throw out absentee votes. If either of those things happen, I’m out.
In record time, Pfizer managed to get a safe, effective vaccine authorized for emergency use so the first rounds of doses have begun. Shortly after that, Moderna got their vaccine authorized as well. Now all we need is for people to stop listening to idiots and just gone and get vaccinated.
There was a suicide bombing in Nashville on Christmas day. News sources have all pretty much chalked it up to a mentally disturbed individual whose actions were shocking to the people who knew him. And before you ask, of course he was.
Mass shootings: 28 | Celebrity Deaths: 27, 6 were COVID-19 related
Notable Deaths:
Tommy Lister Jr., 62 Actor, Deebo from Friday 
Natalie, Desselle-Reid, 53 Actress, B.A.P.S. 
Pierre Cardin, 98 Fashion Designer
Conclusion
Holy cow! I thought last year was a wild ride but this year took the cake. Lots of people died from COVID – some actually had the virus, others sunk into depression and either killed themselves or suffered drug overdoses. It’s been a long, very sad year filled with anxiety and death.
But things are looking up. A new administration will take office and provide some clarity and order with regards to handling our most pressing matters. And COVID vaccines are coming!
Happy New Year!