The 2003 Media Awards
September 28, 2003. It's time again to award honorary and monetary prizes for best representatives of the media as well as for those people and events that serve the media.
The first 2003 Media Award is the Newsie. Last awarded in 2001, the Newsie was officially declared to be a tie among Osama bin Laden and the now deceased 9/11 hijackers, who lovingly provided the grateful American media with a plethora of news fodder that still shows no sign of abating—not to mention merchandising. The 2003 Newsie welcomes a new winner into the fold: Saddam Hussein. While half of 2003's Newsie still goes to Osama and the 9/11 hijackers, who provided the Bush administration with the convenient excuse to invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein richly deserves his share of the $500 award for providing a sufficiently malevolent and delightfully convenient target for American fears and hatred. Since, like his co-awardees, Mr. Hussein is unavailable to receive his award in person, it will meet the same fate as the 2003 award money: the committee of media representatives who selected the winners again plan to drink the awardees' winnings in a huge orgiastic beer-fest. Lookie, everybody—Saddam is buying rounds, and he didn't even know it!
The second award, the Rudee, is for America's rudest television. The 2003 award is too close to call. Candidates included intelligence-insulting reality shows like Joe Millionaire, the myriad incarnations of Survivor, or What Not to Wear as well as the redundancy of insultingly offensive commercials, like Tampax's latest gem in which girls passing tampons like notes in class are scolded by a male teacher: “I hope you brought enough for everyone.” Eww! (Arguably, with this coup, Tampax has surpassed even the ruggedly raw, crude offensiveness of its old commercial showing women at the 1969 Woodstock festival, including a nun waving a peace sign, with the caption “Tampax was here.” Genius! Kotex's cute little red bouncing period dot—the one that incites teenage girls to throw themselves at strangers—may be insulting and offensive, but it's almost out of its league when Tampax decides to take the stage and strut its stuff.) Unfortunately, there were so many worthy recipients of media's finest examples of just how stupid they think the American public is that the selection committee decided that it would be prohibitively expensive to distribute the prize money. Therefore, the 2003 Rudee prize money will be awarded to the selection committee to bolster the beer-fest fund. Woo-hoo!
This year, there's a new prize category in the 2003 media awards. New because there hasn't been need for it recently, the Smartee award flies in the face of the media's increasing attempts to restore traditional 1950s misogynist values by upending gender roles and flinging them on their collective ear. And the winner of the 2003 Smartee is ... Secret deodorant for their brilliant new commercial showing a gorgeous, beautifully dressed woman pulling over to change a flat tire for a babbling, helpless man. Because the Smartee award violates every cherished notion of the media's new goals under the Bush regime, the media representatives in the selection committee, eager not to bite the governmental hand that feeds them, dare not present the award or, indeed, acknowledge its existence. Therefore, the $500 Smartee prize money goes ... to the selection committee's beer-fest fund. Time to get busy pounding brewskis, guys—bottoms up!
Meanwhile, the cheap, injection-molded plastic awards—the Newsie's rolled-up newspaper with acrylic simulated doggie-drool, the Rudee's bird-flipping plastic model hand, and the Smartee's winking Einstein bust with oversized brain—will be placed on display with the 2001 media awards in the fluorescent-lighted display case in the basement, if anybody's interested.
