Eyes On The Prize

I was too stunned to react immediately to the Nobel Peace Prize award. Commenter OBH was more blase, because -- as I've observed before -- the Peace Prize is "now reserved for anti-American or anti-Western kooks." Even when the winners are Americans.

This was a vote to crawl into the dream of John Lennon's "Imagine." My favorite reaction came from one with whom I rarely agree -- liberal WaPo columnist Richard Cohen:

In a stunning announcement, Millard Fillmore Senior High School chose Shawn Rabinowitz, an incoming junior, as next year’s valedictorian. The award was made, the valedictorian committee announced from Norway of all places, on the basis of "Mr. Rabinowitz’s intention to ace every course and graduate number one in class." In a prepared statement, young Shawn called the unprecedented award, "f---ing awesome."

Surprisingly, ultra-radical WaPo cartoonist Tom Toles took the same view:


source: October 11th Washington Post

And the best satire was Ann Althouse's riddle.

But some are in love with the Obamessiah--Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland admitted the decision was designed to aid the President politically. And there's plainly something to the widely shared interpretation of the Nobel committee's decision as a vote for "preemptive peace" over George W. Bush's preemptive war. The difference, of course, is that Bush accomplished something, whereas inaction often is more deadly than war.

Still, none of that matters, given the Committee's embrace of the absurd. Call it a sub-prime or post-modern prize, as even Times columnist Maureen Dowd seemed to acknowledge. Or simply recognize -- as commenters OBH and suek suggest -- that liberals, the Vikings and the Euro-elites just hate Americanism.