Cantankerously Yours

Fourth Annual Scroogie Awards

By Wendell Abern

Dear Holiday Revelers,

I inaugurated these awards in 2006, as an homage to my idol and favorite role model, Ebeneezer Scrooge. 

I award Scroogies only to those who have proved irrevocably how worthy they are through acts of inconsiderateness, boorishness, stupidity, arrogance, or any other trait that just plain rankles me and deserves my curmudgeonly wrath.

This is my favorite column to write each year, because I don’t feel constrained to be at my funniest – just my nastiest. 

And annually, I encounter the same major problem:  hundreds of candidates, too little space to mention them all.  This year, as always, I crown at least one previous winner who continues to outdistance others in a specific category.

          “The Phantom” Scroogie.

          The inspiration for this new category – created to honor all those people who are allegedly reachable by phone but never deign to answer when called – is the operator at the Ft. Lauderdale Veteran’s Administration.  After considerable deliberation, I proclaim her this year’s champion.

          To substantiate her credentials, I submit the following.  I have called the VA every day this week.  The recorded menu ends with, “If you’d like to speak to the operator, press ‘0.’”  On Monday, I let the phone ring 17 times; on Tuesday, 14 times; yesterday, 22 times; today, 18 times.  An operator never answered.  Never. 

She is an absolute phantom, and a role model to all who aspire to greatness in this category.  I consider it an honor that my tax dollars help pay the salary for this exemplary candidate.

Close second:  the entire medical staff at the world-famous clinic that houses most of my doctors.  While many of the nurses and coordinators at the clinic deserve the “phantom” mantle, I had to relegate the collective group to second place because a few slipshod candidates made the egregious error of answering the phone.

          Misnamed Scroogie.

          Every Emergency Room in the country.

          Emergency rooms handle people who come in with high fevers, broken legs and bleeding wounds, and are then told to sit down and wait for nine hours.

          I had never realized how badly named these departments were until last month, when talking to a friend who said he was running a temperature

of almost 103.

          I said, “What!  You’ve got to get to an emergency room!  Now!  I’ll drive you!”

He said, “What!  An emergency room?  Are you crazy?  That’s the last place I’d go!”

          I mentioned this remark, which I considered absurd, to a few friends.  And they agreed with him!   

Now I admit to being crankier than most people, but it seems to me there is something drastically wrong with our health system when the last place anyone wants to go with an emergency is an emergency room.

Emergency room.  Clearly a misnomer.

These departments should be re-named, “Waiting Rooms.”

          Close second:  The United Nations.  Given the number of armed conflicts, outright wars, genocides and ethnic cleansings that have occurred since the UN’s birth in 1946, this impotent organization should be re-named, “The Divided Nations.”

          Boorishness Scroogie:  Super market shoppers who send cashiers to get their cigarettes.

          These inconsiderate clods don’t want to wait in line at customer service to get their cigarettes, so they make the rest of wait in line while checking out.

          Close second:  inept super market managers who do nothing about it.

Incredible Chudspah Scroogie:  Lisa Jackson.

(The classic Talmudic definition of chudspah:  a young man kills his mother and father, then throws himself at the mercy of the court on the grounds he is an orphan.)

This marks the third year in a row that Ms. Jackson has walked off with this award, and rightfully so.  There is still no one in her league.

In 2008, she wrote a nail-biting thriller called, “Left to Die.”  But instead of concluding her book, she informs you that if you want to know what happens, buy her next book, coming out the following year. 

For sheer chudspah, untouchable.

Close second:  no one.

The “Adult Babies” Scroogie.

          Another new category.  This one goes to every major league baseball player.

          Baseball players look like adults.  They dress like adults.  They have all reached an adult age of older than eighteen years.

          In truth, they are babies.  Two-year olds wearing uniforms of twenty-two year olds.

          These whining millionaires last went on strike in 1984, when their annual salary was $1.1 million.  Their mantra at that time, drilled into them

by their spellbinding union head, the Rasputinesque Donald Fehr, was, “This isn’t about money!”

          The infants threatened to strike again — “Not about money!” —  a few years ago, but a few bribes prevented it.

          Today, the average salary for major league baseball players is $3.3

million.  In addition, they receive a daily allowance for meals, sleep in the best hotels and fly on chartered jets.

          And that’s for doing the all-important task of playing a game.

          Yet, because babies are so easily manipulated, the current Fehr clone can easily convince them to start blubbering whenever anyone suggests salary limits.  After all, how difficult is it to convince a child that “salary cap” isn’t about money, but refers to a new kind of headware to match uniforms,  

          Distant second:  Major league football, basketball and hockey players.  

However, football players and/or basketball players may win this Scoogie next year.  Right now, football players face a lockout by owners who are banding together in the face of franchises that are losing money.

And basketball players already operate under salary caps.

Why shouldn’t these players start acting like two-year olds also?  After all, some of them are making only a half-million dollars a year.

For playing a game.

Meanwhile, the owners might even challenge perennial chudspah-winner Lisa Jackson next year if they muster up the gall to tell the players, “This isn’t about money!”

                                                *        *        *

Those are my Scroogie winners for 2010. 

I will no doubt create some new categories for next year.  And find new deserving winners.   I will also spend a good deal of time searching avidly for a successor to Lisa Jackson.  If she wins twice more, I intend to retire the Chudspah Scroogie.

          Cantankerously Yours,

          Wendell Abern

Wendell Abern can be reached at dendyabern@comcast.net.