The 6th Annual Bad Penny Awards

In which we look back at 2014—and weep

“A bad penny always returns”
—Grandma Sylvia

Every year, I think it can’t get worse. 

Every year, it gets worse. 

Every year, the bad pennies return. And return. And return. 

And often they do because we elect them, we want them to return—sometimes choosing them over dead guys or nobody at all. Jim Bridenstine makes us miss John Sullivan, Mary Fallin makes us miss Brad Henry, and Markwayne Mullin makes us miss Dan Boren. 

Okay, that last one’s close. 

Not one single new Democrat was elected to statewide office. There are only eight—EIGHT—Democrats in the Oklahoma Senate. Think about that: the members of the minority political party in Oklahoma can all fit in a Chrysler Town and Country.

2014. It. Can’t. End. Fast. Enough. 

In Tulsa, however, things are—well—they’re not awful.

The Gathering Place, the most impressive privately-funded park (55 acres worth) in America (I’m not above pimping my hometown) is set to open in 2017—without a sidewalk. You didn’t really expect Mayor Bartlett’s rich friends to trifle with the likes of you and your unwashed brood walking by their estates every day eating corn dogs and carrying canvas bags, did you?  Still, Tulsa is filled with QuikTrips, and music from grizzled old guys who sing like angels, and ONEOK Field, where you can watch the Drillers and a revolving truck on the roof of a building and marvel at the people who dress up like appliances and stumble around the diamond for sweetly insane promotions. 

And ain’t that America?

In Tulsa, there will always be plenty of parking; and as long as George Kaiser doesn’t move to Carmel or Key West or South Hampton, we should be good for another year.

Should.

Here, then, for your dining and dancing pleasure—or if you just want to sit at the bar and enjoy a nice glass of Oklahoma red—are your 6th Annual Bad Penny Awards. 

The envelope, please.

The KJV/Stanley Tools Award
Winner: Mitchell Dewayne Hummingbird

Hummingbird hit a man with a bible and a hammer at a Tahlequah trailer park and then explained to police he was just doing “the Lord’s work.” Of course, that’s what he said after cops used a stun gun on him four times and took him to the hoosegow.

The Paper, Plastic or Duplicity Award
Winner: Tulsa Authority for the Recovery of Energy

After about a year of lying about what it was doing with green waste, TARE scrapped the program entirely, because, well, it doesn’t work, has never worked, and, frankly, it was tired of bothering with it and will now just burn the stuff. Yes, even though we can create NSA drones that can read the calorie count off a box of Honey Nut Cheerios, TARE can’t figure out how to get twigs out of a plastic bag without gumming up the mulching machines.

Satan-loving, Obama-hating Urinary Civil Disobedience Award
Winner: Michael Reed

Reed, the man who urinated on and then drove his car over the Ten Commandments monument at the state Capitol, at first blamed President Obama and then said Satan made him do it.

Dude, how many times do we have to tell you? The president and Satan are the same guy.

I hate Yentl More Than You Hate Yentl Award
Winner: Senator Jim Inhofe

The Mountain Man, fresh off his 40-point election win, recently reiterated to Mother Jones magazine that, yes, global warming is a carefully hatched “hoax” (which, somehow, every living scientist in the universe seems to be cashing in on) and that “Hollywood liberals and extreme environmentalists,” like “Barbra Streisand,” are helping to fund the ruse. Streisand called Inhofe “dangerous” and wondered how a man like that could be elected to the senate.

Best Outrage By Ironically Clueless Self-aggrandizing Ex-state Trooper Award
Winner: Rep. Mike Christian

Yes, Mike Christian—CHRISTIAN. He said about the botched execution of Gary Lockett last April, specifically, and capital punishment, generally: “I realize this may sound harsh, but as father and former lawman, I really don’t care if it’s by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to lions.”

Harsh? Who would say such a thing, Nero? And, really, lawman? What is this, the 19th Century?

Oncologist of the Year Award
Winner: State Representative John Bennett, who said, “First off, I never said Muslims were a cancer, I said Islam ... I would even submit to you that Islam is not even a religion. It’s a social political system that uses a deity to advance its agenda of global conquest. That’s exactly what ISIS is doing now, and people that follow Islam are and will do the same thing.” 

And with that statement, Bennett has made it to the Final Four. He’ll face minister Louis Farrakhan, who said “The Jewish people have mastered the civilization now, but they’ve mastered it in evil” in one semi-final. In the other, Pastor John Hagee, who said, “Hitler is a spiritual leader in the Catholic Church,” will face unseeded ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, who said, “If you can kill a disbelieving American or European … kill him in any manner or way however it may be.”

2015 Predictions

• Attorney General Scott Pruitt announces fracking is safe, resigns his position and takes a job as chief corporate counsel for Devon Energy.
• The Mustang School District, having previously adopted textbooks developed by the Green family of Hobby Lobby, tweaks the curriculum when standardized tests reveal its students, although right with the Lord, are woefully unprepared for just about everything other than Sunday School.

Kevin Durant leaves the OKC Thunder. Team announces “Bring a Canned Good/Get in Free” promotion.

Who said it?

“There are homosexuals who take the view: what I do is my business, a purely private matter. However, all things which take place in the sexual sphere are not the private affair of the individual, but signify the life and death of the nation.”
a. SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler  
​b. District 84 Representative Sally Kern

“And I thought I would just share with you what science says today about silicone breast implants. If you have them, you’re healthier than if you don’t. In fact, there’s no science that shows that silicone breast implants are detrimental and, in fact, they make you healthier.”
a. Kim Kardashian 
b. Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn

“I guess the lesson learned here is that it doesn’t matter where everyone is from as long as we’re all the same religion.”
a. Family Guy’s Peter Griffin
b. District 80 Representative Mike Ritze 

Answers: a, b, a