Every year since 1990, People magazine has published their list of the most beautiful people in America—and I'm not talking, like, that fake "inner beauty" crap that people always talk about when they're trying to sound deep—this list is for actual good-looking people. Throughout its history, you got names like Angelina Jolie, Cindy Crawford, Mel Gibson. But 1998 was a particularly noteworthy year—you got a lot of heavy hitters in 1998: Cameron Diaz, Halle Berry, Leonardo DiCaprio.
Well, what if People magazine's most beautiful person in America that year was actually Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf from the Howard Stern show? It's more likely than you think.
For today's episode, let's take a look at how Howard Stern fans made Hank the most beautiful man in America.
On Tuesday, April 28th of 1998, Howard Stern received a call on the air from a person named Jeff. Jeff called to inform Howard of the goings on of the alt.fan Howard Stern newsgroup. They had recently become interested in People magazine. You see, for the third year in a row, People magazine was currently running an online poll for their most beautiful person in America, and this time, you were allowed to put write-in candidates. Even back then, an online poll allowing write-in candidates made it such an obvious target. So, Howard Stern's online fan community decided they were going to usurp the poll for their own amusement. To do that, they would nominate a frequent guest of the show.
Robin Quivers: Who'd you vote for?
Howard Stern: All right, here's the deal. All fans are getting together and voting for, and this is how you write it in, Hank the angry dwarf—Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf.
RQ: Oh, dear.
The name Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf basically already tells you everything you need to know about him.
His real name is Henry Nasiff Jr. He became part of the show after traveling to New York from Boston for a night out partying in 1996.
According to Howard Stern's producer, Gary Dell'Abate—better known as Baba Booey—he spotted a visibly drunk Hank standing outside of Howard's studio at 5:30 AM holding a bottle of vodka while wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a lei around his neck. Hank said that he wanted to meet Howard Stern, and there was really nobody that could better suit the vibe of the show at the time. As Gary put it, it was like a gift fell out of the sky. So they brought him on the air as Hank had hoped that they would. And it was immediately clear that he was a perfect fit for the show. And from that point on, he would go to make regular appearances on it. Of course, Hank, being afflicted with dwarfism and not exactly prioritizing his appearance, was a far cry from what People magazine wanted for their most Beautiful Person in America poll, which, of course, made him the perfect person to use to subvert the poll.
When Jeff called in, Howard replied that he was actually aware of the poll and voted the night before.
Howard Stern: Hank is now fifth in the voting.
Robin Quivers: Oh, my goodness.
HS: Last night, he was at number 16. He was ahead of, uh, who were some of the people he's ahead of?
Jeff: Howard. Now, he's fighting with Kate Winslet.
HS: Yeah.
Of course, Titanic had come out a few months prior, and either Kate [Winslet] or [Leonardo] DiCaprio were favored to win the whole thing.
So Howard encourages listeners who hadn't already voted to go vote for Hank. Amusingly, him and Jeff seem to think that the poll is case sensitive, yet while emphasizing that you have to type it exactly so it gets counted. He says it, like, three different ways. Howard alternates between saying "You have to put 'Hank the Dwarf,' you have to put 'Hank the Angry Dwarf,' you have to put 'Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf'."
They were also certain that you could only vote once—although people obviously found ways around that. According to Patrizia DiLucchio—who had worked for people online at the time—that year they had taken extra steps to keep people from messing with the poll, as the year prior, it had been taken over by bots from Hercules and Xena fans. But this didn't stop several different factions from invading the poll this year like a bunch of gangs from The Warriors.
Other people showing up on this poll included names like the "Nature Boy" Ric Flair, and John Linnell from the band They Might Be Giants.
John Linnell would actually write an article for the New York Times in which he expressed his disbelief and suggests that perhaps a hacker was involved. A user of the They Might Be Giants subreddit, CreepleTeeple, recalls some of the events of that week.
...we were in fact some of the "hackers" he suspected! My friends and I rigged up the computer lab at Penn State, and we each voted on different computers and rotated around. It was quite the caper!
John Linnell would finish in ninth place, finishing ahead of Sarah Michelle Gellar, but behind Madonna.
Patrizia would recall that at some point, 50 votes a minute were coming in for Hank—and despite Howard trying to prevent this from happening, she noted that they would come in in various permutations of punctuation and spelling.
Eventually, they would just add a Hank button to try and neaten this up a bit. When everything was said and done, Hank would come in in first place with 230,000 votes. This was a huge lead ahead of the second place runner up: the "Nature Boy" Ric Flair.
Many inside the company were not thrilled that this had happened. In coverage by the New York Times, executive editor Susan Toepfer said to them:
Frankly, I think it's stupid.
But their director of new media, Dan Okrent, had a different view:
Somebody asked me 'What are we going to do about this?' Mr. O'krein said. And I said, 'We are going to stand here and be bemused.' This is a big open forum. It's not intermediated by those of us who 'control the media.'
Patrizia was tasked with getting Hank for the website interview. They were, in fact, going to recognize Hank as the winner of the poll, which would entail putting up a page for him and doing an interview—and Patrizia was the one who would be tasked with getting the interview. After leaving a message with his parents, Hank would call back the next day.
'Does this mean that I'm going to be in the magazine?' he asked, his voice filled with shy yearning.
'I'm sorry, it doesn't,' I told him gently. 'But we are going to put up a Web page about you. I'd like to interview you for that.'
Now, a lot of people had been under the impression that the results of the poll would be published in the magazine. But, in fact, the magazine had already been ready to be published before the poll even ended. With, of course, Leo taking first place as expected.
People were not happy about this—when I say "people," I mean actual people, not the magazine People, although they weren't happy either. But still, they recognized that this was a compelling story, so they continued to pursue him for the interview. And Patrizia actually remembered her interactions with him quite fondly.
The sober Hank turned out to be a pretty good interview. He had a droll, deadpan sense of humor and the true performer's instinct for quick quips. 'And what color are your eyes?' I asked him.
'Well, I don't know what color you'd call them. Brown, maybe hazel. No, wait. Bloodshot. You'd better say bloodshot.'
'Do you think you're beautiful?'
'Are you fucking kidding me? I hate the way I look. I have a big head. I have long hair. I haven't washed my hair in a month. Beautiful? It's a fucking joke. But that's OK. I like jokes about fucking.'
Although Hank did not actually appear on the cover of People magazine, he would appear on the cover of the Boston Herald. In fact, as one of the largest early examples of a poll just getting completely usurped by people online, it was getting a ton of coverage.
SFGate, for example, wrote about the growing phenomenon of internet users hijacking online polls. And funny enough, despite him clearly wanting to have the magazine cover, on an episode of Howard Stern, following him winning the poll, it had been revealed that he'd been approached by the TV show Hard Copy. They wanted an interview to which Hank responded, "I want a million dollars."
Robin Quivers: He's been in papers. He was in the New York Times.
Howard Stern: Yeah, he's on the cover of the Boston Herald because Hank won an internet poll, 200,000 votes from our fans, voting him one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world on People magazine. He beat Leonardo DiCaprio by 17 times. So the TV show Hard Copy asked Hank the Dwarf for an interview. Hank started demanding a million dollars from Hard Copy. He goes, 'I want a million dollars.
RQ: He's up for sale.
HS: Yeah. He says, yeah, you give me a million dollars.
RQ: Why would somebody pay him a million dollars?
HS: Because he's loaded!
Howard and Robin explained that perhaps the appearance could open up paths for him to make more money in the future. But he didn't care. He wanted a million dollars. But, you know, who needs Hard Copy when literally the same month, you're on Monday Night Raw with The Oddities?
Despite asking for a million dollars from Hard Copy, though, apparently, he never asked Howard for a dime. In the interview with Patrizia, she asks:
'Does Howard pay you to appear on the show?'
'Pay me? No, I wouldn't want him to pay me. Why should he pay me? I get disability. Sometimes they slip me a little under the table. What do I need money for anyway? People fight to buy me drinks.'
So I guess Hank just didn't fucking like Hard Copy.
People magazine would later have Hank participate in a live online chat on AOL called The Winners Circle. AOL hadn't kept any transcript of the chat, so Patrizia just had to go off memory in the article.
But she recalled that he mostly just wanted to know about her underwear, and she actually tried to oblige him. Only, she noted that her actual underwear was kinda boring, so she just made stuff up by reading descriptions out of the Victoria's Secret catalog. She also remembered that he responded to a lot of the questions by either grunting or saying, "fuck you."
On September fourth of 2001, exactly a week before 9/11, Hank, the most beautiful person in America, would pass away. The drunkard thing, it wasn't just a gimmick. He had a legitimate alcohol dependence, and his attempts to sober up caused him to have seizures. He'd also have a lot of damage to his organs from it. And ultimately, he passed away in his sleep, not living to see how drastically the world would change just shortly after he died.
Perhaps it's fitting that he was one of the key figures in establishing one of the internet's most time honored traditions, a tradition that continues to this day, a bridge from the old world to the new world. The natural human urge to want to fuck with internet polls has had so many famous examples in the time since.
What is it about this impulse that's just so inescapable? I mean, on some level, it's always fun to be able to do something that they don't want you to do, especially in public and at such a large scale. But one person who was mentioned by the New York Times in the wake of Hank's victory had a bit of a loftier take.
The 'media' tells us what food to eat, what movies to see, what music to listen to, who to vote for politically and what people are attractive enough to have relationships with!'
Voting for 'Hank the Dwarf' is a reflection of how the people really feel about the media.
That's how Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf became the Most Beautiful Person in America.
