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Top 10 Losers of 2006, From The Comedy Wire International Radio Service


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Dallas, TX - January 1, 2007 - Every New Year brings a bonanza of losers for self-proclaimed “loserologist” Pat Reeder to weed through, but even he admits that 2007 truly brought a bumper crop.

Since 1992, Reeder and wife/writing partner Laura Ainsworth have written The Comedy Wire syndicated humor service, used by radio DJs and talk show hosts worldwide. They scour the news daily for stories of hilariously humiliating screw-ups to write jokes about. With their prior experience in corporate training, they realized that most of these missteps could fit into one or more categories of nine basic, easily avoidable mistakes, such as “Lose Sight of Your Goal” or “Don’t Communicate Clearly.” They codified these mistakes in their “reverse self-help” book, “Nine Hallmarks of Highly Incompetent Losers,” available through their website at www.comedy-wire.com. Reeder also does a humorous-but-stealthily informative speech for corporate and civic groups on how to avoid loser booby traps, and each year, the Comedy Wire releases its annual list of the “Top Ten Losers of the Year.”

Unlike most media outlets, the Comedy Wire waits until January 1 to release its Loser List, because, as Reeder notes, “It’s never too late to come from behind and rope a coveted spot, as our #1 honoree proves. Also, we have to wait to see who escapes the list. As of midnight on New Year’s Eve, Duke lacrosse team prosecutor Mike Nifong still had a job. But we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on him in 2007.”

As an especially divisive election year, 2006 brought so many losers that narrowing it down to 10 was a difficult task. Reeder said, “Saddam Hussein lost his life, reporters lost their heads over John Mark Karr, several major celebrities lost their marbles, and Britney Spears lost both her parasitical husband and her panties. So many conservatives lost in so many creative ways, from Tom Delay to the Rev. Ted Haggard, that we would have had to expand the list well beyond ten if we hadn’t lumped them all together. The only solace I can offer our honorees is that loserdom tends to be cyclical. For instance, this year, the Democrats won by convincing voters to let them have a crack at solving America’s intractable problems; so in the next election year, it may be the Democrats who are losers and the Republicans who are winners again. In America, anyone can make a comeback.”

He added, “But if I were Kevin Federline, I wouldn’t hold my breath.”


AND THE COMEDY WIRE’S TOP 10 LOSERS OF 2006 ARE...

#10 UNWILLING INTERNET CELEBRITIES - Thanks to YouTube, Google, etc., the fabled “permanent record” that kids have been threatened with for generations finally became a reality. If you ever made a boorish resume tape or a bad audition video or drunkenly posed topless while kissing a fellow Miss USA contestant, it will now haunt you forever. Special kudos to the youngsters who personified Loser Hallmark #6: “Call Undue Attention to Yourself” by posting their own embarrassing photos on MySpace, then exclaiming in horror, “I never realized strangers would SEE this!”

#9 JUDITH REGAN - Having become famous by convincing controversial celebrities to write books, the now-unemployed maverick editor pushed the concept a bit too far by signing O.J. Simpson to write “If I Did It,” a book that could have been more accurately titled “’Hypothetical’ Murder for Dummies.”

#8 MEL GIBSON - No need to rehash Mel’s year of living dangerously, except to note that he was the 2006 poster boy for our Loser Hallmark #5: “Work While Drunk or High.” The damage was offset slightly by the #1 opening for “Apocalypto” and the most flattering celebrity mugshot ever.

#7 TACO BELL - Who would’ve imagined that the fear of diarrhea would deter Taco Bell customers?

#6 MICHAEL RICHARDS - The former “Seinfeld” star exemplifies Loser Hallmark #1: “Never plan ahead.” Moral for aspiring comics: Never go on onstage at a comedy club without: (A.) preparing good material; (B.) taking into account that someone might be filming you; or (C.) bracing for the inevitable hecklers by stockpiling some zingers that were not cribbed from George Lincoln Rockwell.

#5 THE YEAR’S DUMBEST CRIMINAL - Always hotly competitive, even without Mel Gibson. We passed over an Illinois hooker who solicited a uniformed policeman, a prisoner who sent anthrax threats to the FBI signed with his real name and inmate number, a Kentucky robber who demanded that a pizza restaurant open the cash register as he pointed at their fax machine, and an Oregon drunk driver who tried to escape by throwing both his prosthetic legs at the cop. Beating them all out: three Norwegian men who sampled their huge stockpile of illegal drugs, hallucinated that little white men were coming out of the fjords to get them, and called the police to come save them.

#4 THE REPUBLICANS - From the President on down, 2006 was a disastrous time for the GOP, who buzzed through all our Loser Hallmarks and started inventing new ones, such as “Don’t promise to cut the budget, then spend $200 million on a bridge to nowhere.” You know your party is in trouble if the best publicity you get all year comes when the Vice President shoots someone in the face. Then again, he did shoot a lawyer.

#3 MARK FOLEY - He could easily be lumped in with all the other Republicans, but we can’t resist citing his special contribution to Loser Hallmark #9: “Bend Over Too Far Backwards.” We mean, of course, in his attempts to seem cool to teenage underlings. Besides, we assume he would want his own page.

#2 KEVIN FEDERLINE - Our Loser Hallmark #8 is “Claim Talents You Don’t Really Have.” Need we say more?

#1 SADDAM HUSSEIN - One last posthumous honor for the ultimate victim of Loser Hallmark #7: “Lose your cool.” Saddam taught us all two very valuable lessons: Don’t commit mass murder, and don’t yell insults at your judge when you’re on trial in the Middle East. Bonus Loser Points: His hanging was taped on a cell phone and will now be on the Internet forever.





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