101 Dumbest Moments in Business

Ah, what a dumb year it was! Fortune chose the absolutely dumbest of the dumb that the gods of fate and humor delivered into our laps - and yours - this past year.

1 China:
That's the good news. The bad news is that 2008 is the Year of the Rat.
2 Eli Lilly:
Thank God. We've been so worried since Lucky dyed his hair jet black and started listening to the Smiths.
3 Leona Helmsley:
Don't laugh - if she were your master, you'd need a lifetime supply of Prozac too.
4 Merrill Lynch:
Mission accomplished!
5 Stanley O'Neal:
Payback is a bitch
6 Chuck Prince:
Not so flush
7 High-tech toilets:
Too bad nobody gave one of these to Chuck Prince
8 KFC/Taco Bell:
Ooh, gross!
9 French newspaper Le Monde:
Ooh-la-la, gross!
10 Electronic voting machines:
Election officials in Florida promptly order 5,000 units
11 Oil spills:
A touch of under-statement
12 Procter & Gamble:
Deep doo-doo
13 Disneyland:
It's a fat world, after all
14 Naked Sunday:
Getting buff
15 Bindeez:
But officer, it was the Toy of the Year!
16 Microsoft's PR firm:
And the Patricia Dunn Pretexting Award goes to ...
17 Cocaine energy drink:
Quite a blow
18 Royal Society for the Protection of Birds:
There will always be an England
19 New Jersey Superior Court:
What Lindsay Lohan will be driving in '08
20 O.J. Simpson:
Oh, that explains it
21 Cartoon Network:
Right back atcha ...
23 Don Imus:
Say what?
24 Chris Albrecht:
What happens in Vegas...
25 Adam "Pacman" Jones:
...doesn't always stay in Vegas
26 Isiah Thomas:
Guess she didn't want to play ball
27 Phil Spector:
But aren't mullets making a comeback?
28 Keith Richards:
I mean, since there wasn't any bloody ice on my bloody sidewalk ...
29 Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung:
Faux de Cologne
30 James Cayne:
Remarkably, he has yet to be weeded out
31 Bear Stearns analysts:
We'll say this for Mr. Cayne: He clearly shares his primo stuff with the research department.
32 Jay-Z:
Gimme some skin, dawg
33 Oral B:
And we just thought our wives were really into oral hygiene
34 Summit Products:
G-strings and sweaty bald men sold separately
35 Masterfoods:
Who knew "M&Ms" stood for Meatloaf & Mutton?
36 Best Buy:
Let the Best Buyer beware
37 Judge Roy Pearson:
... thus making our satisfaction complete
38 Google:
Are you a moron? Click here now!
39 Damien Hirst:
Oh, for the love of ... wait, you already said it yourself.
40 Comcast:
Oh, Manny, you're soooooo handy
41 National Amusements:
What could be worse than porn for impressionable young minds, you ask?
42 Pfizer:
They had such high hopes
43 The Toronto Blue Jays:
Child abuse: It's fan-tastic!
44 Bank of America:
Another subprime stunt
45 Serendipity 3:
We seriously mistrusted those sprinkles
46 Johnson & Johnson:
And if those guys in Rome don't stop using our logo, we'll nail them too
47 John Mackey:
He's also honest, humble, and nuttier than an organic fruitcake
48 The European Union:
They don't call it the European Union for nothing
49 German screw factory:
The red-light district in Amsterdam immediately closed
50 The Defense Department:
Makes you wonder what it would cost to ship a million German screws
51 Apple:
One, two, three, four, we'll sue you if you send us more
52 Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome:
And those Hindenburg gas grills are fantastic too
53 Japanese arm-wrestlers:
Get a grip, Tinkerbell
54 Research in Motion:
This is your brain on e-mail
55 Frank Gehry:
Who left R2D2 alone with the AutoCAD and peppermint schnapps?
56 Chrysler:
Which explains why Michael Vick bought himself a Nitro
57 Endemol Southern Star:
Cultural sensitivity? We don't need no stinkin' cultural sensitivity.
58 Taco Bell:
The cardboard shell and mysterious meatlike substance are intended as a lighthearted tribute to Mexico and its vibrant cultural heritage
59 Radiohead:
Can't wait for the follow-up album, In Debt
60 John Griffin:
Can't say he didn't warn you
61 Sony:
Hey! That was Howard Stringer's goat!
62 Nepal Airlines:
In related news, Sony plans to acquire Nepal Airlines
63 Sony:
That beheaded goat on the altar was really uncalled-for
64 Spain's National Institute of Statistics:
... thus putting the term "inflation" in a whole new light
65 Verizon Wireless:
Another PR department in the fetal position
66 Rhode Island Hospital:
It's not as if they're doing brain surgery or anything
67 McDonald's:
In fact, many of our employees go on to be McBrain Surgeons
68 Thomas the Tank Engine:
Sir Topham Hatt was very cross indeed
69 Exelon Nuclear:
Good job. You're fired.
70 Circuit City:
Good job. You're all fired.
71 TCF Bank:
Take Cash Freely? Totally Clueless Fiduciary? Two Crime Friday?
72 Paris Hilton:
Tort reform: That's hot
73 Easy-Bake Ovens:
Hilton quickly files suit against all 278 kids
74 Google:
Kidding. We kid. That's what friends do, right?
75 Mummified corpses:
The real estate market must be dead over there too
76 Jessica Simpson:
... and cardboard boxes ... and the color red ... and, come to think of it, Pizza Hut
77 Jackson Hewitt:
What, you never heard of a barber who makes house calls?
78 The Virginia Tourism Corp.:
Virginia is for bangers
79 Hugo Chávez:
Granted, I flunked econ ...
80 Juan Carlos:
... but I aced international diplomacy!
81 365 Main:
Fate's here to see you, and she brought her wire cutters
82 One Laptop Per Child:
On the bright side, they're learning a lot about anatomy
83 CIBC analyst Meredith Whitney:
Her husband, on the other hand, is more than a little freaked out by the downstream effects of the subprime crisis on the world's capital markets
84 Southwest Airlines:
Fly the not-so friendly skies
85 Singapore Airlines:
Fly the don't-get-too-friendly skies
86 Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal:
Fly the I'll-join-the-mile-high-club-if-I-damn-well-please skies
87 SkyWest Airlines:
Fly the smells-like-the-back-row-of-a-Greyhound skies
88 Doug Parker:
Fly the well-at-least-he-didn't-have-to-use-an-air-sickness-bag skies
89 British Airways:
Fly the petty skies
90 Southwest Airlines, Part 2:
Fly the didn't-you-learn-anything-from-the-Kyla-Ebbert-fiasco skies
91 Iberia Airlines:
Fly the someone-in-the-marketing-department-is-out-of-his-freakin'-mind skies
92 Jet Blue:
Fly the nope-we're-still-not-flying skies
93 British Airways Part 2:
Fly the oh-gross-oh-gross-oh-gross-get-it-away-from-me skies
94 World Toilet Association:
Funny, that's what Larry Craig calls stall No. 2 at the Minneapolis airport
95 Kitson boutique:
Hand wash with like colors in dishwater
96 WikiScanner:
All the vitriol that's fit to print
97 Blogger:
What comes up first when you Google "screwup"?
98 Intel:
Just pop in your Birth of a Nation DVD, and you're off and running ...
99 Century 21:
Her grandfather made a killing in the stock market back in '29
100 D.R. Horton:
Apparently he missed the memo from Bev
101 Maria Bartiromo:
What, no action figure?
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