Your Obligatory Nobel Prize Discussion
Friday, October 09, 2009
Well this fucking sucks. I was all primed to kick off my tenure here at ATK with a delightfully irreverent piece about NASA’s moon bombing scheme complete with a photoshopped image of Charlton Heston kneeling before an exploded moon screaming “you maniacs! You blew it up!”, and then what happens? Thorbjorn Jagland and his fellow Norse lunatics in Oslow go and award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. Well, shit. You Maniacs! You blew it up! You blew up Rickey's post! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
And so I am now compelled to engage in the vacant beard stroking and quasi knowledgeable wankery that has become the hallmark trait of Around the Keg (by the way, thanks for having me guys!).
Now I live in an area about an hour north of NYC, and while you’d suspect that proximity to that bastion of liberal decadence would yield a more forwardthinking populace in my neck of the woods, this unfortunately is not the case. No less than ten times already today I’ve been subjected to the “what has he done to deserve this?” query about the Nobel Prize story. And my answer is this: when’s the last time you were elected to be the first black President of the Harvard Law review? (Hell, the only one of us who’s got a decent shot at it is Bob, and he’d still need a flux capacitor to pull it off).
They may claim otherwise, but the Norwegian Nobel Committee obviously isn’t awarding Obama the prize for his accomplishments as President. This has been coming for a year now. This award was already signed, sealed, and postmarked in November of 2008. Is the award premature? No, it’s overdue. What Obama’s Presidential victory symbolized to the U.S. and the world at large is too great to gloss over, even a year after the fact.
Yes, it’s a big splashy political statement, and as any naysayer will gleefully point out, it’s coming from an institution that awarded the same prize to Henry Kissinger, Yassir Arafat, and Jimmy Carter (oh how the right loves to demonize Jimmy Carter).
I, for one, welcome the conclusions of our Norwegian overlords and look forward to the shot in the arm this will hopefully provide the Obama Administration. And on one thing I think we can all agree: Michelle Obama will be receiving a deep dicking tonight. Discuss amongst yourselves.
