8th Annual Bad Penny Awards

​Genug

In Yiddish, it means Enough.

2016. The worst ever. 

(We say that every year, though, don’t we?)

Nevertheless, welcome to the 8th Annual Bad Penny Awards, so named, as Grandma Sylvia would attest, because the bad ones always return or, as is the case in Oklahoma, never leave and linger like fever blisters for the entire country to see.

Tulsa should secede from the state—or just midtown should.

State legislators this past year fought the wrong battles, sided with intolerance and insensitivity, promoted a state religion, cared more about hand guns than higher education, relished keeping poor people from healthcare, piled up debt and dysfunction, found new and ingenuous (and incompetent) ways to kill people, patronized teachers, fracked itself into becoming the most seismically active state in the Lower 48, and, worst of all, challenged Colorado’s pot laws.

Any wonder Durant left?

Genug!

Okay, you want a reason to smile? Sally Kearn was term-limited; our sunsets are still glorious; there’s always plenty of parking (even if MENSA members can’t figure out how to work the meters downtown); we’ll soon be able to get ice and corkscrews at liquor stores; the Dylan archives are here; George Kaiser, even though he’s an unappreciative old Jewish oil man (stay with me), still spends money gussying up the place; and Tulsa’s new mayor, the refreshing G.T. Bynum, hired a guy named Junk to be his deputy.

P.S. Ev’ry night my honey lamb and I watch the same lazy hawk making circles in the sky and think, “Can we please make Leon Russell’s ‘Home Sweet Oklahoma’ the state song?”

Let’s begin.

We're begging you ... knock it off with the noodle restaurants.
(Angela Evans begs to differ.)

Like having former Senator Tom Coburn guard the condom case at Planned Parenthood

​President-elect Trump (it still stings) named Oklahoma’s Attorney General Scott Pruitt the new EPA Director, an agency he’s presently suing. Pruitt will do for the environment what his boss did for monogamy. MAGA. 

While you’re peeing, remember, it’s not a choice, it’s a child

As part of a bill passed last year to make the state abortion-free (and return women to chattel), Oklahoma restaurants, beginning in 2018, will be required to post signs in women’s restrooms that promote, ahem, “life-affirming” choices.  It’s just one more way the GOP is getting government out of your lives and into your Fallopian tubes. (Why are the pro-life signs in just women’s bathrooms?)

Banned from the Vodka Gimlet, a proud man rebuilds

In addition to pleading no contest to a charge he failed to perform his official duties, former Tulsa Sheriff Stanley Glanz pled guilty to one misdemeanor count of using his county vehicle for personal use. Yes, forget his connection to Robert Bates and doling out assessor jobs to relatives and friends, it was taking his department-issued SUV to Costco that brought him down. He was sentenced to … well, we don’t really know. He got to keep his pension, his guns, got unsupervised probation, isn’t going to the hoosegow, but—maybe there’s a story here—he has to stay away from booze (“intoxicants” if you’re scoring at home).  As our favorite ADA Jack McCoy reminds us, “What laws for the rich and powerful?”

Except the word gun doesn’t appear in the Bible and the word God doesn’t appear in the Constitution

Don Spencer, president of the Oklahoma Second Amendment Association, who apparently was dropped on his head repeatedly as a lad, called gun ownership “a God-given right,” and said, “I’m still going to tell you gun rights are more important than education. Education is not a right. The word ‘education’ does not appear anywhere in the Constitution.” 

Okay, stop talking now.

Oklahoma’s Dance with Death

“How about Drano, Percocet, and a ball-peen hammer to the head?” 

You don’t leave CVS without making sure you have the right prescription, but back in 2015, Oklahoma officials received the wrong execution drugs and nobody realized it until the convicted killer, Richard Glossip, had already finished his last meal. While that would prove embarrassing to most, here in Oklahoma, we took it as challenge, so legislators proposed and (voters approved) State Question 776, which allows officials to execute convicted murderers however they wish unless and until SCOTUS rules those methods unconstitutional. What could possibly go wrong there?

Shit happens

A Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled the 2014 Oklahoma execution of Clayton Lockett was not cruel and inhumane, citing a Supreme Court decision that, “some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution — no matter how humane,” even though, according to prison reports, one of Lockett’s veins “blew out” when the IV line in his groin exploded and toxins almost enough to kill him traversed through his body for thirty minutes before he, writhing in pain, had a heart attack. 

That circuit court in Denver is one tough sumbitch to offend.

Two who shouldn't be dead Terence Crutcher | Khalid Jabara

Endangered species list The black rhino, Hawaiian monk seal, African elephant, Oklahoma Democrat

6 The Number of Democratic State Senators in the Oklahoma Legislature

6 The Number of adults that can fit comfortably in a Dodge Durango

What you can do to help Now that both Joe Dorman and Dan Boren have decided not to seek the Democratic nomination for governor in 2018, state party officials will institute a draft to select a nominee, much like jury duty, where you’re picked and you can’t get out of it.

Jews, meanwhile, in the proclamation, were asked to apologize for killing Christ.

So Governor Mary Fallin thought it was a good idea to issue an “Oilfield Prayer Day.”

“Whereas Oklahoma is blessed with an abundance of oil and natural gas ... [and] Christians acknowledge such natural resources are created by God … Christians are invited to thank God for the blessings created by the oil and natural gas industry and to seek His wisdom and ask for protection.”

Because how else do you thank God who has everything? The problem was the governor’s proclamation excluded everyone who didn’t remind her of Harold Hamm. 

While the governor eventually rewrote the proclamation to include members of all faiths, God still hasn’t appreciably raised the benchmark for West Texas Intermediate, Brent Blend, or Dubai Crude. 

Thanks, Obama ??

Hunters were advised to stay away from lethargic rabbits in Oklahoma, as some were affected by tularemia.  

And we voted for Donald Trump by almost 2-1. 

Go figure. According to wallethub.com, Oklahoma ranked 44th in the nation in political engagement, meaning we form political alliances and opinions by relying on rudimentary and often incorrect beliefs. Like people in the other 63 states don’t.  

For the love of beachfront property in Poteau

In an interview with Morning Consult, Senator
Jim Inhofe said,  “I assumed like everybody else, way back when everyone was talking about
global warming and all that, I assumed that that was probably right, until I found out what it was going to cost.”

So, all this time, Oklahoma’s senior senator, the leading climate denier in America, a man who once threw a snowball inside on the senate floor to mock warming temperatures, was just pissed about the repair estimate. 

Which brings us to …

Our Overheard Moment/Conversation of the Year 

“I want a glacier to fall on Inhofe.”
“How exactly would that happen?”
“Well, he’d be up in Greenland, measuring glaciers to prove how they weren’t melting, when one would break up and conk him on the head.”
“Ahhh.”
“Ironic, huh?”
(Fist bump)

Overheard (Runner Up)

“Oklahoma is not a state. It’s a condition.”

Who said it?*

“He’s a racial healer.”
Bishop Desmond Tutu describing North Carolina Pastor William Barber OR Governor Mary Fallin discussing Trump

“Their goal is the destruction of Western civilization from within. This is a cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out.”
Representative John Bennett (R-Sallisaw) on Islam OR Joseph Goebbels (Nazi Minister of Propaganda) on Jews

“I love that smell of the emissions!”
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to a group of motorcyclists OR new EPA Director-designate Scott Pruitt at a Devon Energy meet-n-greet

* 1.) Mary Fallin; 2.) John Bennet; 3.) Sarah Palin

Al-Righty Then

Mayor G.T. Bynum on former Mayor Dewey Bartlett:
“Dewey and I both come from families that have been active in public service, yes. His dad and my grandfather were friends for years, so we have similar backgrounds … My biggest hurdle in running against him was that I grew up looking up to him.”

Former Mayor Dewey Bartlett on Mayor G.T. Bynum:
“I didn’t know him very well.”

2017 Predictions 

31st and Harvard will be ripped up again mostly because construction crews just feel like it.

City Councilman Blake Ewing is going to have a bad year.

President Trump, on a trip to the Oklahoma State Fair, is overheard telling Governor Fallin, “Oh, come on, get over the Interior Secretary thing already.” 

The Copper and Electrical Wire Casing Crime Syndicate that’s been disabling Tulsa’s highway lights turns out to be just one guy named Dwayne with bolt cutters in a late-model Toyota pick-up.

TIA’s new 180,000-square-foot parking deck expansion will add 500 new parking spaces at the airport—or about 500 more than Tulsa needs.

Senator Mike Ritze (R-Broken Arrow) erects ten separate monuments around the state capitol, each featuring one commandment, and tweets state ACLU head Ryan Kiesel, “Can’t get ‘em all, pal.”

2017. Even worse.

For more from Barry, read his interview with District 70 Representative Carol Bush.