Readers pick their nominees to ride 'Starship Trump'

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In Friday's edition of The Salt Lake Tribune, The Cricket made a modest proposal to take advantage of this week's imminent "Maya Apocalypse" — and the hysteria surrounding the pseudo-event — to convince some of our society's less-bright bulbs to hop on a spaceship and leave the planet behind for the rest of us.

The Cricket further suggested a list of candidates to hop onto "Starship Trump" (named in honor of, it is hoped, the ship's first occupant) — and asked for readers to add their nominees to the list, either through email or by commenting on the Tribune website. (This second venue, naturally, devolved into arguments over politics — and parsing whether the Maya ever predicted the apocalypse or not).

Here are some of the people readers have proposed:

• Orrin Hatch

• Bill Maher

• Gayle Ruzicka

• The Kardashians

• "the people responsible for those gross anti-smoking commercials."

• "the people responsible for those long, heart-wrenching 'save homeless pets' ads — including Sarah MacLachlan.

• TSA agents

• All TV weathermen

• Gary Herbert

• Salt Lake City's city council

• Harry Reid

• Ted Nugent

• Rev. Al Sharpton

• Hank Williams Jr.

• Rev. Jesse Jackson

• John Boehner

• Nancy Pelosi

• Toby Keith

• ACLU lawyers

• Ann Coulter

• Rush Limbaugh

• Chris Matthews of MSNBC

• Bill O'Reilly

• John Edwards

• "people who still blame Bush for all their problems"

• Tribune writers