Unwinding from a very busy day, the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage and Yours Truly, were trying to find something to watch on TV. Have you ever noticed when you do have some time and want to watch a little TV all they have are reruns? However, this night was a little different. The only thing showing were award programs.

It seems everybody has some kind of award program for everything and everybody.

Sighing deeply my wife said, "There's never anything good to watch on TV anymore. Just these award programs."

I sympathized with her, but what could I do?

"I think," she said, "there ought to be some kind of Knucklehead award for all those knuckleheads out there."

We laughed together. But when the laughter subsided, I got to thinking. Maybe there should be a National Knucklehead Award program. After all, there are award programs for everything else and there are no shortages of knuckleheads in our country.

Right off the bat, several categories came to mind.

The first category of Knuckleheads would have to be those national news reporters. After all, they put a lot of energy into becoming knuckleheads.

For example. During the last hurricane in Texas one TV news reporter did his entire two-hour program standing waist deep in water. Where are those alligators when you really need them? What kind of person stands waist deep in water while it is still raining and the hurricane is in full force? I'll tell you what kind of person, a knucklehead. Plain and simple anybody who does not know enough to come in out of the rain when it is raining has to be a knucklehead.

Of course, there was a moment of comic relief, when one of the national TV reporters (who shall remain nameless) was standing in the ocean while the hurricane was raging all around and in a moment, the wind blew this reporter into the water. Do not tell me Mother Nature does not have a sense of humor. I wonder if this reporter has ever found Al Capone’s treasure?

The second category of Knucklehead Awards would have to go to all those politicians. After all, none knows how to make money or manage money but they all know how to spend money as long as it is other people's money. They all have one solution template for every problem in the world. That is money. The rest of us know that "Love makes the world go round," but politicians sing a different song. According to them, "Money makes the world go round." They sing it in two-party harmony.

All of them are for "change," which means they will leave a little bit of change in everybody's pocket so that nobody knows the dollars have disappeared... into the politician’s pockets.

I was thinking of a plan to solve the problem at Washington DC. My idea was to surround Washington and shoot everything that moves. The flaw in this plan is that 97% of the politicians would still be standing because most have not moved in decades.

Of course, it is not entirely their fault. In order to be elected today politicians need to use up every bit of brainpower they might have. Once elected, there is nothing left upstairs, if you know what I mean? The only thing they have left from the neck up is a greasy smile that will not come off no matter how many times you might slap them.

I had to think a long time about the third category of Knuckleheads. Then I read a newspaper article, the gist of which was, God is using our financial crisis to judge America's sins.

Therefore, the third category of Knucklehead Awards goes to American preachers. Not all preachers, mind you, just those ones who work hard at becoming a Knucklehead. The reason those preachers spend up to eight years in college and seminary is it takes that long to reach the level of imbecility they all strive for.

Every time something happens in this country, some preacher sees it as an opportunity to flaunt his stupidity. Anybody who has ever read his or her Bible knows that God is not judging the nations of the world now. There will come a time when he will, but that time has yet to come. For someone to say that God is judging America for her sins implies that every American is a Christian. To believe that, a person has to have had his head in a burlap sack for the last ten years.

The current financial crisis in our country is a result of reaping what we have sown. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." (Galatians 6:7-8 KJV). 

As for judgment on this nation, has this preacher never read what the Bible says? "For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" (1 Peter 4:17-18 KJV).

As it stands, there is a three-way tie for the Annual Knucklehead Award.