Your Asshat of the Week: Pres. Obama and the DOJ

In what has to be the closest race ever for Asshat of the Week, President Barack Obama and his DOMA-defending DOJ eked out a narrow victory over Gene Simmons of KISS. (Okay, admittedly, we've only been doing this asshat poll thingy for three weeks, but still, the vote was damn close!)

For all the details on how our wildly popular President, a self-proclaimed "fierce advocate for gay rights," managed to garner the crown, read on!

Why he won: Gene Simmons seemed to be a lock for this week's crown after his pissy Adam Lambert comments. But then last Friday the Department of Justice filed a reply brief in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of DOMA. That in itself wasn't very surprising, but where the DOJ brief might have weakly defended the suit on procedural grounds, instead the government's reply went virulently anti-gay. If the factually incorrect arguments the DOJ put forth are accepted by the court hearing the case, it could very likely damage future attempts to secure gay rights.

Some AfterEltonites were appalled that President Obama would even be a candidate for Asshat of the Week so soon into his tenure as Commander-in-Chief. After all, it's not as if he wrote the brief himself, and his administration has a lot on its plate right now. Last week's repugnant court filing might merely have been a gaffe, since Obama did say during the campaign that he would work for the repeal of DOMA.

But other readers pointed out the President's so-far truly disappointing record when it comes to GLBT issues and decided it was time to hold his feet to the fire a bit by calling him out as an asshat.

Of course, we hold out hope our new President will redeem himself down the line, but for now he is our Asshat of the Week. Hail to the Chief! 

The most common write-in candidate this week was Perez Hilton.

We'll be back with another Smackdown on Wednesday, when your votes will determine which blowhard, homophobe, harridan and/or self-righteous harpie will inherit the Asshat crown next week. Feel like nominating anyone? Please share in the comments!