A cartoon in a recent New Yorker depicts a bearded figure scowling at planet Earth from outer space. “And this time — no ark,” he says.

A review of the brutes and scoundrels who’ve strutted on the world’s stage this last year tempts one to sympathize with the cartoon Creator.

Begin with the Green River Killer, who couldn’t remember the faces of all the women he’d killed. His technique was choking, “And I was pretty good at it,” he said — a paragon of professionalism.

Then there was the German entrepreneur who advertised on the Internet seeking volunteers for “slaughter and consumption” — and got more than 400 responses. The lucky winner showed up, disrobed and said, “I hope you’ll find me tasty.” The murderer wanted to have someone become “a part of me.” His victim, he said, “enjoyed the dying.”

Don’t forget the father who smothered his child because she was acting “fussy,” the sniper who laughed when recounting the people he’d shot, the thug who said, “I popped them,” as if killing an elderly couple was a kind of arcade sport. Finally, a moment’s reflection on all the delusional martyrs who’ve blown themselves and innocent others up, evoking one of the many names of God.

Somehow, it wouldn’t seem so bad if we weren’t also guilty of such abysmal taste. The televised wedding of Bachelorette Trista and Ryan comes to mind. The groom shed tears because his buddies got turned off when the strippers showed up at his bachelor party. Meanwhile his lovely bride was “lapping up shots off guys’ navels and playing with underpants.” Ryan and Trista pocketed a fortune for playing along with their “fairy tale wedding.” The pitiful thing is that millions of suckers tuned in. (Yes, including me.)

Let’s ponder the Bratz dolls, which have replaced Barbie as objects of veneration by America’s 8-year-olds. These cute playthings feature “exploded hair, inflated lips, tiny wife-beater shirts, platform boots.” Their “faintly glazed expressions,” suggest that they’re spaced out on drugs. They look as if they’d be at home “on any street corner where prostitutes ply their trade.”

Maybe I need to “lighten up.” Why worry about little girls when their mothers are getting their toes surgically shortened so that they can wear stiletto shoes without searing pain. (Cost of improving “toe cleavage?” One toe: $2,500.) How long before amputation is recommended as the way to a slender figure?

The ghastly face of Michael Jackson looks out at us from newspapers and magazines. He’s what passes for a “cultural icon” these days, this walking cadaver whose closets are filled with toys, who utters lofty sentiments about sharing his bed with little boys. And he reminds us that human beings are capable of anything. There’s no role so degrading that someone can’t be found to embrace it — with genuine verve, with pride, with glee.

The evidence proves that our species is cursed. Nevertheless, there are those who persist in believing that we’re by nature good. A recent study of capuchin monkey was seized on by apologists for humanity as evidence that we have an innate sense of “fairness.”

In this study, when one of the monkeys got a grape for dinner instead of the usual cucumber slice, the other monkeys went on strike. If the monkeys had an innate sense of fairness, my wife pointed out, the one who got the grape would have shared it with the others. The monkeys who suddenly found their cucumber rations contemptible were only behaving the way human beings do when a neighbor shows up with a new a BMW, a hot tub, a high definition TV. Greed and envy are sufficient to explain most behaviors of monkeys and men.

It seems a stretch to say that they were after justice. It was the grape they craved. If they’d been out of their cages in a state of nature, there would have been a brawl and the strongest monkey would have seized the prize.

Still, the study is full of lessons and one of them is even utopia is not good enough. The monkeys had it pretty good. Room and board, a life of leisure. But all it took to make them miserable was one of them getting a grape.

Not to disparage the monkeys. A friend of mine, asked in a job interview what he wanted to be, answered, without hesitation, “A gorilla.” I need not add that he didn’t get the job. But I understand his point. Becoming a gorilla would have been a promotion.

The other day, I found myself driving behind a van with a bumper sticker that read, “Never forget the power of a few committed citizens to change the world.” And I thought: Here they come again. They’re the ones who wind up with the dachas and the Mercedes, who move into the toppled king’s palace, make the rules, tell the rest of us what’s “just” and “fair” and what we ought to think and do. Spare us the grand schemes of these reformers and idealists. Let them mind their own business and leave the rest of us alone.

‘Tis the season for misanthropy. No ark. Varlets, blackguards, quacks, busybodies, con persons, traitors, assassins, hypocrites. There’s much to complain about when it comes to human beings.

But who else can we pin our hopes on? Who else can we love?

— George Gurley, who lives in rural Baldwin, writes a regular column for the Journal-World.