Sure, if you're planning on just doing the calculation once (e.g. for data that's not changing every week) you may be better off doing Joe's method:
Select by Attribute, where field = "Lake" OR field = 'Right of Way' ...
then running a simple calculate field to set all selected records to 'exclude'.
or if you plan to run it regularly you may want to use a field calculation from the outset:
def categorize_stuff(my_field):
if my_field in ('Lake', 'Right of Way', 'Shark_Infested_Custard'):
return 'exclude'
else:
return None
You would probably throw in some logic to exclude already calculated records (for when you next run it) and also some spell checking (remove case sensitivity etc.)