Then again, after the debacles of Yassir Arafat and Al Gore getting this increasingly-meaningless award, maybe this isn't a joke after all. You've got to be kidding me! The man whom even "Saturday Night Live" lampooned as having accomplished "nada" gets the Nobel Peace Prize? Now if there were a Nobel Prize for Narcissistic Yet Naive But Impressive Oratory, maybe.
So, kids, if you want a prize of your own, you now have yet another strategy for getting it, aside from such tactics as "killing people and then stopping for a while, making speeches, and then going back to killing people" (Arafat) or "making a lot of hypocritical noise about the earth and showing a boring PowerPoint presentation full of polar bears and scary charts" (Gore). Now you can "do nothing real but yap a lot about yourself while sounding and looking good doing so" (Obama). Talk about declining standards! By this measure, poor Mother Teresa got her prize the hard way by "working tirelessly in miserable conditions for most of her life in the attempt to improve the lives of the most destitute, sick, and unwanted of India's poor." What a sap!
No, wait, wait . . . Well, actually, maybe this latest round of awards is an actual improvement. The Nobel Peace Prize has gone to a whole cartload of self-aggrandizing attention hounds like unrepentant terrorists (Arafat), fearmongering propagandists (Gore), and flat-out idiots and dismal failures (Jimmy Carter). Why the heck NOT give it to a smooth-talking, telegenic politician who hasn't a clue about actual statecraft? At least this one's pretty as he goes about chasing the spotlight. But we'll see, won't we, how much "peace" is actually in the offing if Iran gets the bomb on Obama's watch.
Pffffffft.
UPDATE 1: Heh! Oh, and lots of links at Insta-Prof. This whole thing sounds like a silly fake news piece by the Onion, does it? "Man Wins Prize For Not Doing Anything." I like this curtly contemptuous British opinion: "absurd."
UPDATE 2: Law prof Ann Althouse wonders sarcastically why Obama didn't win the Nobel Prize for Literature too.
UPDATE 3: A thought -- The Nobel Peace Prize has been given to a president who in this year alone has de-prioritized human rights and the plight of dissidents in unfree regimes, and I am thinking specifically of dissidents in China and Iran. Then a few days ago, Obama cold-shouldered the Dalai Lama in what looked like an effort to please Beijing. Then there was that talk about making some kind of separate peace with the Taliban. (Yes, this Taliban.) I'm just sayin'.
UPDATE 4: Wait! Am I a raaaaaaaaaaaacist for thinking this is all absurd? Probably.
UPDATE 5: Reactions are pouring in. Take a look at this from an Obama supporter at the Huffington Post, even: "The time has not yet arrived and circumstances have not yet evolved where Barack Obama is anywhere near the point where he has earned this prize." Or here.
UPDATE 6: Pursuit of Serenity sends this news link: "Taliban condemn Obama as Nobel Prize winner." In the article, a Taliban spokesman whines that Obama's taken no steps toward peace in Afghanistan. Is this real life, or is this the Onion? I can't make this stuff up if I tried! We are living in a world of total madness, and preposterous Nobel farce is beneath the contempt of decent people. I'll also use one of my favorite Britishisms: it's "nonsense on stilts."
UPDATE 7: Let the jokes begin! And let 'em go on. And on.
UPDATE 8: DNC hits bottom, gets out shovel and digs. As I said, beneath contempt.
UPDATE 9: Satirist-parodist-humorist extraordinaire Iowahawk takes aim at this Moral Vanity-a-Palooza with predictably hilarious results.
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