The 2007 Turkey Awards

An annual tradition for over a decade! This is my list of ridiculous people from 2007 (so far). Pass me one of those rolls, please:

• The Greasy Gravy Award for oily publicity that makes the main dish inedible goes to Judith Regan (again) and HarperCollins. OK, I take it back. Sauron Murdoch didn't show better ethical sense than his employees... whether or not you believe a damned thing anyone is saying about the wrongful-termination suit Regan filed against HarperCollins. The ethics are so murky that I rushed to judgment. Sort of like Fox News does every day.
• The Red-Tide Oyster Stuffing Award for carelessly poisoning an otherwise tasty dish goes to the Democratic candidates for President. I should be happy that George III will be leaving. But one of these yobs is the likely successor?
• The Broken Wishbone Award for shattering dreams goes to George III for his pardon of 'Scooter' Libby. I had this dream that the law applies to everyone.
• The Golden Gristle Award for assertions far too difficult to digest (and usually stuck in one's teeth) goes to the Discovery Institute for its continued assertions that:
  • Inscrutable Intelligent design is not merely "creationism" dressed up to evade Edwards;
  • ID is scientific in its basis;
  • ID need not satisfy the same burden of proof that evolutionary theory must satisfy; and
  • "cdesign proponentsists" is not a transitional fossil in the evolution of ID.

  Yes, as a matter of fact I am hostile to teaching bad dogma and mythology as science to students who do not have the knowledge or experience to know better. Did you really have to ask?

• The Crabapple Pie Award for marketing something sour as something sweet goes to sales-and-marketing dorks everywhere — especially those who try to sell things without first-hand knowledge of their value.
• The Brussels Sprout Award for stinky, slimy, overcooked, gentrified little cabbages goes to the Dishon. Lamar Smith (R-TX) for attempting to introduce the Tsarist secret police to the 'net. Of course, that's only one example of why he qualifies as a "ridiculous person."
• The Dried-Out Breastmeat Award for overcooking the books goes to Michael Cieply for this astoundingly ignorant piece on the WGA strike, which manages to avoid asking two critical questions. First, if the pie is so small, why do film-business and TV-business executives make so much money? The best estimates available indicate that the top seven studio heads alone made more last year in bonuses (not salary) than the total that would have been paid to WGA members under the formula proposed in July. Second, there's the question of why stars demand gross participation deals in the first place. Perhaps it's because crooked accounting means there will be no "profits" to split. Perhaps Cieply's past as a producer at Sony harmed his objectivity...
• The Rancid Drumstick Award for something that should be edible, but isn't, goes to the World Anti-Doping Agency for pretending that it accords athletes with something resembling due process. I'm not thoroughly convinced either way in the Greg Landis matter... and that should have been enough to return a finding of "not proven."