Friday, October 09, 2009

Onion World

This morning I opened up my web browser, cruised to one of my favorite blogs, and saw... "President Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize". I laughed. "There they go, posting links to articles at The Onion again!" Because after all, why in the world would President Obama get a Nobel Peace Prize? It isn't as if peace has suddenly broken out on his watch, after all. We're still in Iraq, and still in Afghanistan, and he hasn't brokered a peace deal between two seemingly-intractable enemies like Carter did with Egypt and Israel. So there was no reason in the universe why I would go to a web site today and see "President Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize", it had to be a joke.

Except, of course, it wasn't.

So I can understand why people would be surprised, and maybe a bit dubious. I mean, this was so unexpected -- and probably undeserved -- that any rational human being's first reaction to being told the news should have been "No! Are you reading the Ironic Times again, and the next paragraph is about how he's brought peace to Iraq and Afghanistan?" The reaction of the right-wing blogosphere, on the other hand, has been utterly atrocious. Whether you agree with the Nobel committee's choice or not, it is a great honor for the President and for the nation that he is President of. The only reasonable negative reaction even if you disagree with Obama's policies, is polite acknowledgement and then STFU. Instead, they keep nattering on and on and on and on about how this is bad for Obama, puts pressure on him, yada yada yada. What a buncha baloney, there's only one group putting pressure on Obama right now, and that's the Democratic base that wants him to act like a Democrat rather than like a Republican Lite. What, you think he got up in front of the nation and did that speech about health care because of Republican pressure? Oh STFU, it was because the Democratic base was rebelling and driving his positives down into the toilet. It's not the Republicans that Obama is whacking with a baseball bat to try to get them in line. It is the Democratic base. The Nobel is irrelevant to that. It might give the Democratic base some level of encouragement, but in the end, Nobel prizes don't vote.

In the meantime, at the moment I feel like I'm living within an Onion article. But a good one, not one like this one. Hopefully the feeling will stay for a while...

-- Badtux the Quietly Acknowledging Penguin

9 comments:

  1. Maybe it was just because he hasn't started any 'new' wars , yet ?
    w3ski

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  2. Nothing surprises me anymore.

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  3. Oh, that's so funny. I too thought it was an Onion article. Then I realized it was Jeff Fecke at Alas, who can be wonderfully sardonic, but doesn't write for the Onion.

    Word verification: "existhe." An existentialist version of absinthe?

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  4. Hi Badtux,
    That Onion article is classic! I disagree on the STFU directive. The noise of the world is loud, especially when everyone is screaming from their hilltops, but how about if each mind quietly asks and answers in turn? Are we then permitted to notice the absurdity?

    Dave

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  5. I certainly don't think Obama's done nearly enough to warrant a Nobel Prize, but I'm enjoying this for the sheer comedic value of watching the tightie righties' heads explode. To any rightie who may be incensed and reading this: now you know how WE felt when Kissinger won it. (Or when DubYa handed out Medals of Freedom to one bloodthirsty neocon after another.)

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  6. I'm proud to say I learned of this while watching al-Jazeera in a hotel room in New Zealand. (Went over there for a quick trip so I could see En Zed before we left this hemisphere.) There's a message in how/where I learned of it, although I can't figure out what that is...

    I reckon it was like a gigantic "Fuck You!" from the Nobel Committee to George Fucking Bush. "First we gave the Peace Prize to Al Gore, who shoulda been president instead of you, ya little bastard, and now we're giving it to the guy who replaced you, even though he hasn't done anything to deserve it. Next year, we're creating the 'Nobel Giant Fucking Arsehole Prize' and awarding you with it. In fact, we're going to give it to you for five years running."

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  7. I think Bukko nailed it.

    Cheers!
    JzB the not-a-carpenter rombonist

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  8. Well, I learned something about the Nobel Peace Prize during this. It can be awarded to encourage peaceful diplomacy. Hmmm. Never knew that.

    I love Bukko's comment.

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  9. Bukko sums it up perfectly.

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