The 2009 Shady Awards

I’ve decided that there aren’t enough annual awards given out to people who annoy us. Well, at least not enough for being annoying. In the spirit of the Ig Nobels and dozens of country music awards I am proud to present this year’s nominees for the first annual Shady awards.

The Schaude – The award for the most satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune (aka Schaudenfraude). The nominees are:

The Real Wives of New York City – A pack of See You Next Tuesdays who prove the theory that you can marry in twenty minutes what you couldn’t make in sixty lifetimes and turn out to be pleasantly miserable.

John Edwards – Also nominated in the following categories: Top Lawyer Jokes, Favorite Surprise Guest on Oprah, Penises to Watch in 2010.

California – How to turn the world’s eighth largest economy into Mozambique and still think you’re better than everyone else.

The Boston Bruins – Go Sox!

The Kaczynski – The award for the most entertaining fringe activist. The nominees are:

Paul Watson – When Greenpeace kicks you out for being too nutty the only thing left to do is get a TV show called Whale Wars. Captain laptop of the MV Steve Irwin is a curious cross between Quint from Jaws and Ghandi.

Octomom – Nadya Suleman doesn’t seem smart enough to be a big time activist but she’s crazier than an inbred squirrel and has been on TV a lot. For those who are cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs over ‘reproductive rights’ she’s a frog with too many tadpoles. For those lobotomized from excessive childbirth who think fourteen kids is a good start, she’s a martyr.

Fred Phelps – The founder of the ‘God Hates Fags’ and ‘Thank God for Dead Soldiers’ movements is a preacher from Kansas who believes that everything wrong with the world is due to homosexuality and that the US is being punished by God for being ‘a sodomite nation of flag-worshiping idolators’. All this doesn’t stop his daughter from being a frequent guest on the Howard Stern show.

John V. Walsh M.D. – For those of you in favor of spreading the love around this professor of Physiology at the UMass Medical School and frequent blogger is your man. He supports indicting George Bush and impeaching Barak Obama. The good doctor argues that ‘Emperor’ Barak has assumed the war criminal in-charge role from George and therefore deserves a ticket back to community organizing but not the prison sentence ‘W’ should get.

The Peroni – The award for championing an economic policy most likely to lead a country from a vibrant, pluralist growth machine to, well, Argentina. The nominees are:

Barak Obama – Like the head coach of a struggling football team, you have to blame the president whenever anything goes wrong with the country even if he inherited the problem. He’s only let off the hook if things improve while he’s in office (tick, tock, tick, tock).

The Republican Party – Nice comeback folks……Not.

Hugo Chavez – A Socialist Winston Churchill with a TV variety show jones or a Fidel Castro running on less than half a tank of talent? (Editor’s note: The Venezuelan economy was a basket case before Chavez. Now the basket is on fire.)

Paul Krugman – Nobel prize winning economist who wants to roll the dice and mortgage the country to maximize stimulus funds ASAP. What happens if we don’t immediately hit the trifecta?

The Shady – The award for providing half-ass information on a topic the person has no expertise in whatsoever. The nominees are:

Barney Frank – Economics and Finance

Barney Frank – Government Oversight

Barney Frank – Rhetoric

CNBC – Maybe 24 hours a day of gushing CEOs and Wall Street Analysts isn’t journalism (David Faber’s investigative series excluded).

For the two or three of you who regularly read this stuff you can cast your votes in the comments section or email them to Shadyeconomist@gmail.com. I’ll post the results whenever I get around to it.

Later