Fun fact: I hate politics. The whole thing. I sometimes pay attention to it because there are a few current political issues I actually care about and it seems responsible to keep up on them. But if I spend too much time thinking about politics or watching pundits on TV, I grow disgusted. It seems almost certain to me that the large majority of politicians are spineless dirtbags, that our political system is structured to reward spineless dirtbags, and that it is enormously difficult to succeed in politics if you are anything but a spineless dirtbag.

You can say plenty about New York gubernatorial candidate and founder of the Rent is 2 Damn High party Jimmy McMillan, but he’s definitely not spineless and he might very well not be a dirtbag. He’s a guy who believes — accurately — that the rent is too damn high, and who set out to change that. That’s admirable, I think.

But that’s not what places him among the Top 10 Things of 2010. There will be no other well-meaning but ultimately doomed political candidates on the list, and lord knows there are plenty of them to choose from.

Jimmy McMillan is honored here for the gusto he brought to his obviously ill-fated candidacy. First and foremost, the amazing Civil War-era facial hair. The rhyming. Referring to himself as a karate expert. The black gloves. The too-good-to-be-true web site.

McMillan provided us the slim hope that politics might be anything but impossibly boring, bureaucratic and soul-crushing. He somehow made a gubernatorial debate one of the most entertaining televised events of the year.

And, perhaps more than that, he gave us hope. Not hope that someone like him could ever get elected governor, because that’s patently absurd. No, Jimmy McMillan gave us hope that someone like me or you or the craziest person you know might somehow get enough signatures to get our own place on stage at a New York state gubernatorial election, where we can proudly wear ridiculous facial hair and broadcast our karate expertise to the world.

Full disclosure: I voted for Jimmy McMillan. I did it partly because I vote for third-party candidates whenever I can justify it, but mostly because I knew if he got enough votes, the Rent is 2 Damn High Party would be guaranteed a place on New York state ballots for the next four years. And I would like to someday run for president on the Rent is 2 Damn High ticket.

Sadly, McMillan fell short of the 50,000-vote threshold. Doesn’t make him any less awesome, though. And he’ll bounce back. He is, after all, a karate expert.