2022 Man of the Year: Dane Cook

2006 was a great year.

Dubya was in the White House. We sent Saddam to hell with a fancy new necktie. And Time named Dane Cook one of its 100 Most Influential People.

Unfortunately, nearly everything from that annus mirabilis has since been flipped on its head. We have Biden fumbling around the Oval, radical Islamic terrorism on the rise, and the bro king of comedy is under attack.

His crime? In a word, love.

You see, at some time in his forties the beloved performer of “Peanut Butter Smack” and other timeless bits met a girl, Kelsi Taylor, a few weeks before her 18th birthday. The two did not start dating until after that, but the morality police handed down their sentence nonetheless.

In 2018, The Daily Beast accused Cook of “grooming” Taylor and solemnly concluded that “while it’s quite possible that Cook and Taylor do have a genuinely healthy, balanced relationship, reading Cook’s behavior as anything less than creepy is difficult, to say the least.”

Well, five years later, Cook and Taylor’s relationship sure seems healthy and balanced. In August, the 50-year-old comedian dropped on one knee and made things official with the 23-year-old.

“I was asking my best friend, the woman who I’ve shared some of the greatest times of my life with, to marry me so we can start the next chapter of our lives together,” Cook said.

The Daily Beast, a disgusting publication, covered the engagement as something that’s “creeping people out.” The beastly reporters compared Cook to other male celebrities who dated much-younger women, including Elvis Presley and Kathy Hochul megadonor Jerry Seinfeld, who dated a 17-year old when he was 38.

Of course, they could have just as easily referenced that known-murderer Alec Baldwin and his wife, Hilaria, have the exact same age gap as Cook and Taylor. They might have noted that radical environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio was linked to a 19-year-old model when he was 43. Or that the liberal billionaire George Soros dated—and abused—a Brazilian soap opera star 50 years his junior when she was in her twenties.

It makes sense that the Daily Beast didn’t mention Soros, since criticizing him is tantamount to anti-Semitism. But what could possibly cause dedicated journalists to leave out the remaining important context?

It probably has nothing to do with the fact that Baldwin makes fun of Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live and once spent 28 days as an MSNBC host. Nor are they giving DiCaprio special treatment because he’s a climate change scold who starred in an interminable movie about why Republicans are evil.

They probably just forgot.

But we digress. What matters is this: in the face of this outrage, Dane Cook merely laughed off the haters and pulled out a ring.

We wish the happy couple a long and happy marriage. We congratulate the soon-to-be Mrs. Cook for bringing our favorite comedian from #MeToo to “I do.” And we are proud to name Mr. Cook a Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year.

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