Life's Late-Night Nobel Comics

Those too mesmerized by baseball playoffs to watch Letterman, Conan et al last night did not miss much. All day long politicians had been doing stand-ups about Obama's Nobel Prize.

The President himself led off his Rose Garden turn with "Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning. After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, 'Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday!' And then Sasha added, 'Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up.' So it's good to have kids to keep things in perspective."

Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele came back to crack, "President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action” as Rush Limbaugh chimed in, "“Can you imagine, folks, how big Obama’s head is today? I think it’s getting so big that his ears actually fit.”

Poor taste was bipartisan as a State Department spokesman got off a one-liner about George W. Bush, "From our standpoint, you know, we think that this gives us a sense of momentum when the United States has accolades tossed its way, rather than shoes."

Last year's short-term Republican star Mike Huckabee tried for dry humor:

"There will be an outcry from those on the right who will say that Obama's nomination, made two weeks into his Presidency, is impossible to justify but I think such an outcry will sound like right-wing whining. The better response is simply to allow those on the left to explain what he did in his first two weeks as President that merited such recognition."

William Kristol announced that the Weekly Standard would skip its usual "Parody Page" to publish news of Obama's prize, which was more ridiculous than anything his editors could make up.

In his cogent parsing of Obama's response, James Fallows alludes to a fellow former Jimmy Carter speechwriter's attempt at a Letterman Top Ten of Fox News' responses to the award, including "Besides, who cares what a bunch of geeks in Oslo think? The International Olympic Committee speaks for the whole world."

Old-time comic Jimmy Durante used to complain, "Everybody wants to get into da act!" Even former President of Poland Lech Waleska, who won the Nobel in 1983, came out of the wings to say, "“Who, Obama? So fast? Too fast--he hasn’t had the time to do anything yet.”

That wasn't as witty as some, but then again we all know about Polish jokes. Maybe something was lost in the translation.

A Nobel Rebuke for Americans

The Nobel Peace Prize for Barack Obama comes as a stunning reminder for those who elected him less than a year ago of what they expected when they put him in the White House. As the President faces another embattled day of economic and foreign policy conflict, amid falling approval ratings, a voice of universal moral authority can be heard as a rebuke to Americans who are forgetting what he represents.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the Nobel committee says.

"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

The uproar on the domestic Right will no doubt set new records in volume and vitriol, but for those who still believe that American goodness and hope can survive in a darkening world, it is a moment to savor and remember.

Is This a Great Country or What?

In Washington, our Congress has settled in to business as usual now that the Surge is going so well. Democrats are overjoyed at news of Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize, while Republicans are fresh from the triumph of sliming a brain-injured 12-year-old boy to make sure he and others like him don’t rip us off by getting health care insurance.

In Iraq today, other people acting in my name and yours killed six women and nine children during an air and ground attack on senior Al Qaeda leaders. We issued a statement of regret that “civilians are hurt or killed while Coalition forces search to rid Iraq of terrorism."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, AP reports, “has recently confronted top American commander Gen. David Petraeus about what he sees as overly aggressive U.S. tactics that harm innocent civilians, according to Iraqi officials.”

Last Friday, a pre-dawn U.S. raid on Khalis, a Shiite city north of Baghdad, killed 25 people when troops called in air strikes while hunting suspected smugglers of arms from Iran to Baghdad. Village leaders said the victims included civilians, but the military insisted the 25 killed were militants.

Meanwhile, Shiites and Sunnis are reported to be making no progress toward national reconciliation. But the Surge is working just fine, isn’t it?

We can all go on getting Halloween costumes for the kids and maybe driving somewhere for a little leaf-peeping.

Nobel War Prize for Cheney

Rumors that the former Vice-President may get a Nobel Peace Prize prompt the thought that, in all fairness, his successor should be awarded the Nobel War Prize.

As much as Gore has fought to avert global warming, Dick Cheney has done to fight everybody. Just as his predecessor has had to deal with critics who question his judgment, so has Cheney been forced to counter skeptics who doubt his sanity over a war against Iran, some of them reportedly members of the Bush cabinet such as the Secretaries of State and Defense.

It would set a poor example to the rest of the world if our former #2 man was honored for being a wimp, while the incumbent is left to snarl unseen and unappreciated.

Fair is fair.