The 2006 Bum Steer Awards
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I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE-TRASH CHRISTMAS
Jennifer Scott, the parent of a third-grader, complained to school officials about the inclusion of the song “Leroy, the Redneck Reindeer” in the Onalaska Elementary School’s Christmas pageant.
ASK NOT TO WHOM THE TOLLS BILL
Evangelina Gonzalez, of Dallas, was arrested for passing through area tollbooths 2,953 times without paying, running up a total bill, including administrative fees, of $76,039.
TYPICAL SUV OWNER: ALL THAT ROOM AND ONLY ONE CORPSE
Unable to afford a funeral, Brenda Pitts Bennett, of Royse City, kept the embalmed body of her ex-husband in an SUV parked in her driveway for two days.
DON’T ASK. DON’T TELL
In Galveston to tout his plan to reform Social Security, President Bush asked the crowd whether the city still celebrated Splash Day, a festival that decades ago marked the beginning of the tourist season but now is an unofficial gay and lesbian beach party.
AND AS I SHOUTED, “YES! YES! YES!” I COULDN’T HELP BUT THINK ABOUT HOW JOHNNY HAD HIT SUZY DURING RECESS
An elementary-school teacher in Mansfield resigned after school officials discovered that she’d used a school computer to log on to her blog, which detailed her sexual exploits and contained disparaging comments about her students.
YOU MAY BE DESPERATE, EVA, BUT HE’S NOT
Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria, a Corpus Christi native, apologized to Jennifer Aniston after she was photographed wearing a T-shirt that read, “I’ll have your baby, Brad.”
HE STILL COULDN’T CARRY ILLINOIS
On their 2004 income tax return, President and Mrs. Bush listed a Chicago post office box as their home address.
YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN STUPID, PART 848
Anthony Taylor was trying to beat a man who had been robbed by his accomplice when the victim fled in his car. Taylor chased him into the parking lot of an Arlington Police Department substation and on into the lobby, where he was promptly arrested.
WHAT DUMBDSSES
State senator Jeff Wentworth and state representative Ruth McClendon, both of San Antonio, successfully sponsored a bill that changed the title of the assistant secretary of state to deputy secretary of state because of concerns that the acronym for the assistant secretary of state might offend people.
WE’VE GOT SPIRIT, YES WE DOO-DOO!
Four Keller High School cheerleaders were expelled from a University of Texas at Arlington cheerleading camp for “serious misconduct” when, after cheerleaders from Fossil Ridge High sent them a pizza as a gesture of goodwill, the Keller squad put human excrement on it and claimed their rivals had put it there.
THE KELLER HIGH SCHOOL CHEERLEADERS ARE LAWYERING UP
Officials in Bayreuth, Germany, have been unable to discover who is responsible for adorning several thousand piles of dog excrement with little flags featuring a portrait of President Bush.
IT GOES BETTER WITH PIZZA
Dallas cabdriver Behrouz Nahidmobarekeh was arrested after he was seen on a security videotape sprinkling what turned out to be dried fecal matter on pastries at a Fiesta grocery.
THE SECRET WORD IS “VALERIE PLAME”
When theater students at El Camino Real High School, in Woodland Hills, California, tried to publicize a satirical play with posters depicting President Bush with a Groucho Marx–style mustache and a cigar, Principal Kenneth Lee ordered the posters reprinted, on the grounds that they promoted smoking.
IF IT WERE TIVO, TEXAS, THEY COULD GO BACK IN TIME AND PAUSE BEFORE MAKING SUCH A STUPID DECISION
In a deal with Dish Network, a satellite television broadcaster, the town of Clark, near Fort Worth, officially changed its name to Dish, Texas, enabling its residents to receive equipment and basic programming free for ten years.
HE’LL HAVE A BIG BEEF, WITH A SIDE OF NEPOTISM
State representative René Oliveira, of Brownsville, added a provision to eminent domain legislation that prevented the University of Texas from condemning Player’s, a restaurant co-owned by his cousin, to clear the way for construction of a hotel and parking garage complex.
LEAVE JERRY JONES OUT OF IT
Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs told the crowd at a fan appreciation event, “I know we don’t have any Dallas people here. They are the ugliest people in the world.”
EXCEPT THE STATUE DIDN’T DUCK OUT ON CLOSE VOTES
The Texas Juneteenth Cultural and Historical Emancipation Commission declined to install a statue, called The Lawmaker, that had been planned for the Capitol grounds after complaints that it was too large and its likeness bore too close a resemblance to that of the commission’s chairman, state representative Al Edwards, of Houston.
WHAT THINKING?
After Donald Trump exhorted a contestant on the reality show The Apprentice to be as aggressive as he himself had been in a dispute with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Cuban replied, “He needs to step away from the Cialis. Those four-hour erections have started to have an impact on his thinking.”
EVEN WORSE, THE CADDIES WERE HOLDING THEIR SHAFTS
Homeowners who live along the LakeRidge Country Club golf course, in Lubbock, complained to course managers that golfers were urinating on their lawns, even though club restrooms were nearby.
SOMEBODY SUCKS, BUT NOT BLOOD, AND IT AIN’T THE KID
After a fourteen-year-old aspiring Eagle Scout placed three bat houses in a Dallas park with the permission of the city’s parks department, city council member Mitchell Rasansky appeared at city hall wearing plastic fangs and publicly mocked the boy as “Count Dracula.”
BUENAS NOCHES, LAST SHRED OF RESPECTABILITY
Believing the microphone and camera were no longer on following an interview, Governor Rick Perry signed off by saying to the departing reporter, “Adiós, mofo.”
BUT IT’S A MEDICINAL PALM TREE
Lost Highway Records provided Wal-Mart stores with an alternate CD cover, featuring palm trees, of Willie Nelson’s reggae-inflected Countryman instead of the cover offered at most other retail outlets, which featured marijuana leaves.
TOM’S LEARNING THE WORDS TO “JAILHOUSE ROCK”
Tom DeLay posed with an Elvis impersonator at a sock hop at the Sugar Land Community Center.
WANTED: WHITE KIDS WHO CAN TACKLE VERY, VERY WELL
After a 48–10 loss to Texas Christian University, Air Force Academy football coach Fisher DeBerry complained that TCU had more “Afro-American kids [who] can run very, very well.”
TRY LOOKING UNDER “PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF AUSTIN”
In a ranking of the most liberal U.S. cities, the Bay Area Center for Voting Research, in Berkeley, California, put Austin in ninety-second place.
HE VERIFIED THAT THE MONEY WOULD LOOK BETTER IN HIS WALLET
Donald Stokes Jr., a “verifier” at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Fort Worth, one of two facilities in the country that print paper money, was arrested for stealing around $30,000 in sheets of $20 bills over the course of several years.
WHAT IF WE JUST NAME THE LEFT LANE AFTER HIM? Republican state senators Steve Ogden, of Bryan, and Jeff Wentworth, of San Antonio, opposed plans to name a stretch of Texas Highway 130 in their districts after Willie Nelson, citing the singer’s history of smoking marijuana and supporting Democrats.
PARDON US. THAT SHOULD READ, “SMART BLACK GIRL”
The caption for a photo of National Honor Society members in the Waxahachie High School yearbook identified an African American student as “Black Girl.”
A CATEGORY-5 WINDBAG
Minister Dwight McKissic, of the Cornerstone Baptist Church, in Arlington, suggested that Hurricane Katrina was God’s way of ridding the country of homosexuality and other “sins.”
AND A STRONG CATEGORY 4
Following the evacuation of New Orleans residents to Houston’s Astrodome in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, former first lady Barbara Bush said, “What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. So many people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged, so this is working very well for them.”
THE SUSPECT MAY BE ARMED AND IS CONSIDERED SLEAZY
On an episode of the NBC police drama Law & Order: Criminal Intent, a police detective searching for the killer of an appellate judge and another judge’s family mused, “Maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt.”
ONE NINNY, UNDER BUSH
Speaking to an Egyptian opposition leader, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes defended frequent references to God in the president’s speeches by wrongly claiming that the U.S. Constitution includes the phrase “one nation, under God.”
A FEW DROPS ON THE BACK OF HIS NECK KEEPS REFEREES AT BAY FOR A WHOLE GAME
Texas Tech basketball coach Bobby Knight appeared on Lubbock television to endorse Sergeant’s anti-flea pet products.
AND WE THOUGHT IT WAS ALL TOM CRADDICK’S FAULT
The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—a leading proponent of Vedic architecture, which promotes the idea that a building’s physical orientation affects the performance of the people who use it—warned government leaders that a government building with an entrance facing to the south would “promote disorderly thinking, conflict, negativity, and widespread problems.” The entrance to the Texas capitol faces south.
AND THEN HE EXITED THE HEARING ROOM TO THE SOUTH
Testifying before the Texas Senate Education Committee, Bill Grusendorf, the executive director of the Texas Association of Rural Schools and the uncle of state representative Kent Grusendorf, the author of the House education bill, said, “If you’ll quit listening to my nephew, we may eventually get a good bill out of the Senate.”
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