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Victor Dwyer: Long time no pop talk, so I'll get right to the point: I nominate 2008 as the year politics and pop culture found each other. Yes, it was partly an Obamaphenom, with all of Hollywood (except for Kelsey Grammer) throwing its glitter behind Barack, and YouTube's coolest videos being will.i.am's Yes We Can, Obama Girl's I Got a Crush on Obama, and the thinly disguised Obama vote enforcer Don't Vote. But Barack's would-be nemeses also blurred the lines nicely – John McCain aptly dissing Obama as a Paris Hilton clone, and Sarah Palin introducing Valentino to the red-state masses.

Pop culture, meanwhile, milked politics for all it was worth, with Hilton taping a clever riposte to McCain's bitchy diss, the ladies on The View vetting statesmen-in-waiting, People and Us plastering political families on every second cover, Tina Fey strutting sublime Palin knock-offs, and Frost/Nixon capping off the year with a whack of Golden Globe nods.

Even Canadian politics, where the funding of culture arguably cost the Conservatives a majority, betrayed a hint of glam. Sitting on a Via train during our constitutional crisis a few weeks back, the woman across from me looked up from a celebrity fashion magazine story called Who Has the Smoothest Face in Hollywood? to say to her seatmate, “Not a one of these gals has anything on Michaëlle Jean.” Maybe I can't see Russia from my house, but I think I see a trend here somewhere.

Elizabeth Renzetti: You see clearly as always, oh prophet of pop. Politics on every corner, reflections of the wars everywhere, a scary abyss ahead.

Victor: Now that you mention it, the Hannah Montana movie is coming next April.

Elizabeth: I think I see where your seatmates were going. For me, the last year was, metaphorically, about foreheads: Nicole Kidman's shiny titanium brow versus Kristin Scott Thomas's magnificently furrowed forehead, which is so moving (in every sense) in I've Loved You So Long. I think the marble countertops of the past decade have given way to the scratched but comforting Formica of the future. Even Twiggy is on British TV telling us to get out our sewing machines and “make do and mend.”

Johanna Schneller: And don't forget the very nexus of pop culture, politics and foreheads: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. This was the year where so-called real news became mostly fake – CNN's U.S. election-night holograms! Fox news pundits insisting Obama is a Muslim with terrorists for BFFs! – and fake news cemented its position as the truthiest place to go for information. Stewart and Colbert had the time of their lives this fall, because their frat-boy brilliance was the most fair and balanced stuff around.

Two highlights: their re-creation for Entertainment Weekly of The New Yorker cover of a robed Obama fist-bumping with his Afro'd wife (Colbert as Michelle); and the way they teared up announcing Obama's win. They lost their cool for all of us, and it was great.

Elizabeth: Cool is so 2007. I admitted to bawling when I saw the “Wassup” boys' ad for Obama, their dejection after years of war and natural disaster turning ever so gingerly to hope at the prospect of change. And I sobbed buckets when Meryl Streep led the chorus of Greek housewives singing Dancing Queen. (Mamma Mia!'s the top-grossing movie ever in Britain, by the way.) Maybe someone should turn off my estrogen drip. Or maybe it's just that irony, which has been declared dead more times than General Franco, really did get sent off a floe this year and went smirking into the sunset. We're relying on you for some tough talk, Victor.

Victor: If you're looking for butch, turn to Sharon Stone. Remember how she got all finger-waggy (her version of political) at Cannes, blaming a killer pre-Olympics earthquake on China's bad karma over Tibet? Only Cate Blanchett managed to tick off a Communist Party as much, for what the Russian Communist party called the “ideological sabotage” of playing a Cold War robokiller in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But who needs tough talk when we've got our own Avril Lavigne turning pink split ends and a pound of kohl into a battle cry of “too sexy” by the Malaysians during her Too Damn Sexy Tour (okay, maybe the tour's name had something to do with it too). Am I backing myself into arguing that pop culture would be well-advised to stay away from politics after all? Why are the words “Oliver Stone” and “hagiography” circling my psyche like a world economy circling the drain?

Johanna: I think what started in politics has spread o'er the land: People are hungry for some sincerity. We want things that are real, we want to be told the truth instead of spun. Especially now that our RRSPs are worth nothing, we want something to believe in. We experienced genuine shock and horror over Heath Ledger's death. We were willing to forgive James Frey for fibbing about A Million Little Pieces, enough to make his latest book, Bright Shiny Morning – now there's a title that's on trend – into a bestseller. We want Lindsay Lohan to stop acting like a stripper and start acting like the talented actress we had hoped she'd be. And we want Amy Winehouse to get well.

We even rooted for David Cook, the American Idol winner, because we were willing to believe he has an authentically sensitive soul.

Elizabeth: The same thing happened here with John Sergeant, the elderly political reporter who danced like a turkey being electrocuted but won British hearts on Strictly Come Dancing. He was set to win the popular vote until he bowed out, saying “the joke had gone too far.” I didn't know jokes could go too far in Britain – but how else to explain Russell Brand?

Victor: Lying on the beach with my iPod last summer and hearing Brand get caught, by Jian Ghomeshi, ever-so-quietly urinating during a CBC radio interview, was a 2008 pop-culture highlight for me.

Johanna: Why am I not surprised? Speaking of those in need of redemption, who wasn't delighted that Robert Downey Jr. made such a thrilling comeback in Iron Man, that Britney Spears at last seemed to remember how to dance in time and speak in full sentences (and launch a No. 1 album), and that Mickey Rourke is doing so well with The Wrestler?

Victor: Mickey is the reason I myself am pro-rogue.

Elizabeth: Or should that be pro-Rogaine? What's with the mane? And his poor, sad face – I'm just going to lie back and think of Motorcycle Boy [in Rumble Fish]. Clearly Mickey didn't hear that one of last year's buzzwords was “undo-plasty.”

Johanna: Now all we need is for Madonna to come back to New York and stop speaking in that pseudo-British accent – though we'll expect her to 'fess up about her $30,000 facelift, her affair with A-Rod and her $95-million divorce settlement.

Victor: I hereby admit I read Christopher Ciccone's mean memoir about his cartilagey sister, though I was drunk the entire two hours. He got more than one thing wrong, by the way, including the year of her birth and the name of her Sticky & Sweet tour. As Clint Eastwood said to Spike Lee, when Lee blasted him this year for not including black soldiers in his two Iwo Jima films: “Go back and study your history and stop mouthing off!”

Elizabeth: Take Madonna – please. She can float back home to New York on a sea of Kabbalah water, riding a raft made of organic nori, using Gwyneth Paltrow as a paddle. What I want to know: Will a kinder 2009 bring kinder divorces? We need them after this year: Guy allegedly comparing sex with Madge to “cuddling a piece of gristle,” and of course Heather Mills drenching Paul McCartney's divorce lawyer with water after being proved, in court, to be a conniving, money-hungry, not-very-bright operator. Lady Mucca indeed.

Victor: I love how Madonna used the stage of her world tour to slam Guy for being “emotionally retarded.” How emotionally advanced of her. But John Cleese had my fave divorce quote of the year, about his $150,000-a-month alimony agreement: “It's going to be very, very expensive, but it will be worth every penny.” Go, John!

Johanna: Honestly (because I'm so sincere this year), I feel sad for anyone whose marriage falls apart, especially if there are kids involved – but isn't it fascinating to see just how much money these people have? That Richie had $35-million, while Madonna is worth half a billion? It makes me realize I have no idea what anything is worth.

Elizabeth: And let's not forget that the debt clock in Times Square ran out of zeros. Maybe it can borrow a couple from Twilight.

Victor: Kristen Stewart as an innocent among the vampires: Jodie Foster should have just locked the door on that Panic Room with little Kristen in it back in 2002. But back for a moment to kick-ass fracases: My favourite non-divorce-related ones of 2008 were (a) the Hindu leaders whose worldwide boycott hopefully saved legions of their followers the price of a ticket to Mike Myers's asinine new-age Maple-Leafs schmozzle The Love Guru; (b) Christian Bale's alleged assault (charges eventually dropped) on his own mom; and (c) Paul Anka's forehead and the piece of ice sent hurling at it, which led to the temporary arrest of his wife.

Johanna: Another celebrity forehead heard from.

Elizabeth: My personal favourite cage match – also from the Oedipus Wrecks 2008 World Tour – was between French novelist Michel Houellebecq and his mom, Lucie Ceccaldi. First, he slags her in a novel, then she calls him a liar and parasite and threatens to knock his teeth out, and he responds, magnificently, by saying his “old slut of a mother” wasn't capable of any insights. I'm glad I'm not going to Christmas at the Houellebecqs', although there's probably capon on the menu.

Victor: Can we please take a civilized moment to honour pop figures who rose above in 2008? I'm thinking, foremost, of Celine Dion being awarded France's Légion d'honneur by Nicolas Sarkozy (whose supermodel wife, Carla Bruni, kicked off the year of politics going glam). Dylan getting a Pulitzer for his impact on music and culture. And I think we can all agree the reviews pretty much guarantee a Tony to Katie Holmes for her Arthur Miller turn in All My Sons. In deference to you two cheering on sincerity and burying irony, I'll linger only glancingly on Celine also being cited by Total Guitar magazine for an “offence against music” for her cover version of AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long. And I'll gloss right over Lindsay Lohan's armload of Razzies for I Know Who Killed Me, as well as her appearance on Mr. Blackwell's final worst-dressed list (may he reprove in peace), just behind Vicki Beckham (“one skinny-mini monstrosity after another”) and Amy (“50s car-hop horror!”) Winehouse. I vote fashion-forward Sean Avery the new Blackwell.

Johanna: Victor, you are breathtaking, how do you hold all that in your head and not explode?

Victor: I use the same meds that got Heather Locklear to drive back and forth over her sunglasses in September until a bystander called the cops.

Johanna: I'd like to give a shout-out to French films this year. Normally, I'm puzzled by much French fare – wait, you've fallen in love, you realize you're perfect for one another, so therefore you must part now, before the pain? Huh? But this year: Wow! Kristen Scott Thomas gives the performance of the year in I've Loved You So Long. Catherine Deneuve redefines matriarchy in A Christmas Tale. Tell No One redefines the intelligent thriller. And now The Class, about a year in the life of a French teacher in a Paris suburb chockablock with immigrants, which won this year's Palme d'or – mon dieu!

Elizabeth: One of my year's highlights was seeing Kenneth Branagh become the world-weary Swedish detective in the BBC series Wallander (slated to run on CBC, so keep your eyes peeled). At one point, he crumples in a great, snotty fit of tears. Branagh also gave my favourite stage performance this year, in Chekhov's Ivanov. I've now officially forgiven him for Frankenstein, if not for Sleuth.

Johanna: And one last, most honourable mention, totally in keeping with our nexus of politics, pop and sincerity: Milk. The relevance, given California's passing of Proposition 8. The stunning performance by Sean Penn. The power of inspiration, when a community comes together to make life better on Earth. As Milk says, “You gotta give them hope.”

Victor: Both you gals should be politicians. You'd certainly be better ones than Oprah, Obama's original celebrity publicist, a billionairess who doled out lumps of Eckhart Tolle coal on her Favorite Things show last month, advising her recession-socked audience: “This is not the time to be introducing you to a lot of things that cost money.” It was a line that surely inspired Jim Flaherty's economic update the very next day. If only Tyra Banks and Ellen DeGeneres had taken the opportunity to form a coalition against her, Oprah might be handing out free cars, fridges and video cams come January.