by Nathan Wada

Created on: December 17, 2008

Help Wanted: Megalomaniacal autocrat to spearhead campaign of epic tyranny. Ideal candidates will possess myopic and bellicose political and personal ideologies and demonstrate a formidable paucity of self-esteem. No liberals need apply.

Dear Comrade,

We regret to inform you that your application for this position has been suspended. We encourage you to take great pride in passing the job knowledge and personal philosophy sections, and for making it so far in what is one of the most highly competitive professions extant.

Per our tradition, we offer the top finalists detailed feedback in order to accomplish the dual roles of elucidating and encouraging them to persist in the glorious venture to one day become scumbags par excellence.

After thoroughly vetting your application, we offer you the following feedback that, if taken to heart, will greatly enhance your chances of gaining acceptance with your next attempt:

I. Jettison Everyone and Everything You Care About
In order to develop the unmitigated worthlessness necessary to perform this job with the requisite aplomb, the ideal candidate will divorce himself from any entity that could lend any salient meaning or love to his life. Epic levels of smallness, social ineptitude, and an absolute lack of any conceivable raison d'etre are merely prerequisite to the adroit dictator's portfolio.

II. Stay Relevant
This is not the Junior Varsity. Legendary school-yard bullies don't even get short-listed. Don't waste our time with your magnifying glass-scorched ant body count or the quantity or aesthetic merits of your administered wedgies. Think scale here; think Homeric.

III. Be Creative
Tyrants who dictate history have orchestrated seminal events. Our organization has little need for the derivative initiatives of imagination-deprived copycats. We're looking for originality, artistic merit, and that you have the potential to not be limited to merely subjugating your geographical neighbors.

IV. Show Us the Pilot
The dictators whom we liked - those who have become household names - have all been parodied in every conceivable genre. Stalin was Orwell's Napoleon The Pig, Kim Jong-Il sang a solo in a Hollywood animated film, Hitler has been ubiquitous, Idi got his portrayal an Oscar. Show us you're cross-marketable.

V. Demagogues, Sophists, and Shysters, Lend Me Your Ears.
This last point is the most important; upon its dexterous achievement hinges any candidate's entire application. To wit, you have to sell your insanity to the masses. Your illogical syllogisms, blatant deviations from common sense, and patently obvious and egregious personal flaws all have to make it past Everyone. You have to catch them all sleeping: the hordes, the bourgeoisie, the media, the government watchdogs, the Coalition of the Willing; Everyone.

We hope that you have found our feedback informative and more importantly are renewed in your ambition and determination to make an inestimable amount of people's lives drastically worse because you exist. Per our previous mention, we already consider you a surpassingly hideous biological specimen, but with the right attitude and effort, we have every confidence that you can one day be the sort of unparalleled assemblage of toxic refuse qualified to do this job.

Best of luck, our Comrade, on your quest for consummate worthlessness.

Best Regards,

Scumbags International, Inc. & Subsidiaries

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