Not content only to honor those who have valiantly defended the teaching of evolution in the public schools with its annual Friend of Darwin award, NCSE is introducing a new award: the UpChucky, bestowed on the most noisome creationist of the year. "It's a spoof award, of course," explained NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott, "but even so there's a lot of competition out there, unfortunately."

The nominees for 2009, as announced in a press release issued on March 3, 2010, were: Don McLeroy, the former chair of the Texas state board of education, for his longstanding efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution in the Lone Star state; Ray Comfort of Living Waters Ministries, for his distribution of copies of the Origin disfigured with his own creationist introduction; Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute, for his logorrheic zeal in reciting the "intelligent design" talking points du jour , and Al Jazeera, for its wildly misleading coverage of Ardipithecus ramidus .

And the winner is ... Don McLeroy. "Perhaps the honor of receiving the first annual UpChucky award will compensate for his loss at the polls," joked NCSE's Scott, who noted that in the March 2, 2010, primary election, McLeroy narrowly lost his bid for his party's nomination for the District 9 seat, to which he was first elected in 1998. "I'd like to think that we won't have to give a future UpChucky to any of his colleagues, though."