This Year's Scroogies Nominations

The holidays now have us surrounded and it is clearly time to just give up and get our Christmas on. So what is the best way to promote the spirit of the season? By pointing out and judging those who aren’t. Kind of a “What would Santa do” approach.

So first of all, let’s take a look at Scrooge’s own industry; banking. The FDIC [Federal District In Charge of banks (kind of)] has recently finished a study in which they found that banks are targeting the young and the poor (i.e. college students). According to USA Today, “Large banks are more likely to process transactions from largest to smallest dollar amount, often triggering more fees.” The banks made nearly $17.5 billion in overdraft related fees last year. Do you know how many turkeys that could buy for Tiny Tim? Seven, probably.

But large faceless financial corporations are the only ones drinking spoiled eggnog this year. Large websites are getting a little cranky as well. Facebook recently deleted Lindsey Lohan’s account because they thought she was a fake. Fortunately Lindsey still had her Myspace to fall back on. But this brings some interesting existential questions. Just who is Facebook to decide who the REAL Lindsey is? Am I the real Lindsey Lohan? And can I be friends with Lindsey? And most importantly, does anyone other than indie bands still really use Myspace?

But worst of all would be a federal judge who recently said that releasing thousands of California prisoners may be the only way to alleviate the overcrowding which according to the inmates lawyer (Lex Luther), leads to “medical neglect and malfeasance.” What has happened to our penal system that our prisoners are suffering from malfeasance? What is malfeasance? Obviously we need to act quickly before this judge releases an army of super villains, apparently infected with malfeasance, into the population of California. And if we’ve learned anything from Batman, this can only mean trouble.

Fortunately not everyone has given up on the Christmas spirit. My neighbor recently installed a Christmas display so tacky it could be considered vandalism and when he asked me if I liked it, I heard little Cindy Lou Who’s voice inside me and I said, “Yes, it looks wonderful. I especially like the moving reindeer that has almost all of lights working.”

So if there is a lesson that we take away from all this, it would be that we should never judge someone based on their Facebook profile. And while maybe sending thousands of criminals home early for Christmas might seem like a good idea it almost always leads to a Legion of Super-Villains. Somebody should make that into a Christmas claymation special. But most of all we’ve learned that we should get our flu shots and wash our hands. Apparently malfeasance is really going around this year.


If you have anyone that you would like to nominate for the Scroogies this year, feel free to post your nomination and reason why in the comments suggestion below.