Sigh… so much stupidity, so little time. This year’s field for the second Baka Awards (baka means “fool” in Japanese) was large, but I’ve found the cream of the crop of last year’s foibles and fumbles.
The “Foot-in-Mouth Disease” Award goes to Mel Lastman, mayor of Toronto, who may have single-handedly lost any chance his city had of hosting the 2008 Olympics by alienating the entire African continent. How does one offend an entire continent? Easy. You pass off some bigoted comment as a joke. This gold-medal moron thought he had made a funny when, before going to an international mayors conference in Mombasa, Kenya, he said, “Why the hell would I want to go to a place like Mombasa? I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me.” If you’re the gambling type, don’t bet on his winning re-election.
The “Al Capone’s Tomb” Award is awarded to the journalist or journalists who set our profession back through sheer carelessness. This year, Lisa Verch, you’re my winner. Last Halloween, KEZI ran a report on Wicca in the Oregon Youth Authority. Verch needed quotes from some real live Wiccans to round out the story (after six minutes of the anti-Wiccan viewpoint). So she found a couple who are both in prison for multiple homicide. Instead of talking with a high druid, she apparently was only able to locate two men convicted of ritualistic murder. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Verch, or her producer, decided it would be cute to put the men’s portraits in front of an upside-down pentagram graphic. It might have been salvageable. But Verch went that extra mile from poor judgment to out-and-out, over-the-top stupidity when she decided to subtitle the felons’ words in that “horror-show” font — you know, the one that makes the words look like they were written in blood. Lisa, might I suggest you take a remedial course in journalism ethics? For a couple of centuries?

The “And He Thinks He Has A Chance?” Award for Perseverance in The Face of Overwhelming Scorn has got to go to none other than Modesto, Calif., Democratic Rep. Gary Condit. Although he has not been linked by any means to the disappearance of Chandra Levy, an intern who allegedly had an affair with him, the Levy case has hung around him like an albatross. In the last few elections, Condit had been a lock with his district. Now, he may actually have to pony up a sizable $1,500 fee to enter the race after failing to scare up enough signatures to get on the ballot. Keep on truckin’ Gary, whatever your next job may be.
Finally, we have the “A Shot in the Dark” award, for best performance of partisan loyalty where it’s least needed. Attorney General John Ashcroft, is the proud (?) winner of this award for showing that even one of the worst tragedies in American history shouldn’t stop the handing of political favors to the National Rifle Association. Ashcroft, whose job, if I’m not mistaken, is to keep the American public safe, has decided that almost every record is fair game for anti-terrorist probes — except gun purchase records. OK, John-John, but surely you and Charleton Heston are aware that al-Qaida murderers also come with opposable thumbs?