nancynall.com » He won what?
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He won what?

As sleepy as I am in the morn­ing, there aren’t many reports com­ing out of the radio that make me stop what I’m doing and turn up the vol­ume, con­vinced I’m expe­ri­enc­ing audio hal­lu­ci­na­tions. Today was dif­fer­ent.

I gather this was the reac­tion in Oslo, too, where the assem­bled reporters were said to “gasp.” I’ll say. Talk about a story that writes itself:

The committee’s choice of Obama from among 205 nom­i­nees appears in part to be a con­tin­ued rebuke to the Bush administration’s go-it-alone approach to world bod­ies and alliances, includ­ing its deci­sion to go to war in Iraq with­out U.N. approval.

No! Really?

It’s hard to know what to think. You don’t ask for a Nobel for your­self, and the Wash­Post story points out the dead­line for nom­i­na­tions was Feb­ru­ary 1, not even two weeks after he took office. On the other hand, the Cairo speech was extra­or­di­nary, and just as nec­es­sary. I won’t say this was the right thing to do, but it’s at least some­what defen­si­ble. Besides, it’s the Nobel committee’s award, not ours. They can give it to any­one they want.

That said, I look for­ward to Feb­ru­ary, when Barack Obama will be given an Acad­emy Award for life­time achieve­ment.

And if Lim­baugh, Beck et al stroke out over this, I say we put him on Mount Rush­more.

Let’s look else­where for com­men­tary. Ah, Twit­ter. Trend­ing topic: Noble Peace Prize. Com­edy gold: RT: @tienmao: When awoken shortly before 6 a.m. with the news that he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama responded, “What? Shut the fuck up.”

That’s appro­pri­ate. The blow­back from this could poten­tially be a bitch.

Is there any­thing else to dis­cuss? Dis­cuss!

I’m off to do the cross­word and make it to my Fri­day morn­ing meet­ing. Chilly, dreary rain today, so I won’t be get­ting there on the bike. Maybe the pres­i­dent will look in my direc­tion and blow a gen­tle puff from his cheeks, part­ing the clouds and mak­ing the sun shine upon the land.

See you Mon­day.

Posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 8:49 am in Current events. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


77 responses to
“He won what?”

  1. coozledad said on October 9th, 2009 at 9:03 am

    Woot!!!

  2. moe99 said on October 9th, 2009 at 9:11 am

    cross­posted over at Bal­loon juice, but take a look at the Wa Po graph on whether Obama deserves it.

    http://​views​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​p​o​s​t​-​u​s​e​r​-​p​o​l​l​s​/​2​0​0​9​/​1​0​/​o​b​a​m​a​s​-​n​o​b​e​l​-​p​r​i​z​e​.​h​t​m​l​?​h​p​i​d​=​t​opnews

    These guys could not graph their way out of a paper bag. But, of course, they prob­a­bly meant the 50% who voted for Obama to look more like 25% con­trasted with those 50% who say Obama did not deserve the award.

    Oh where is the Post ombuds­men to wring his/her white gloves now?

  3. Jason T. said on October 9th, 2009 at 9:22 am

    I share Tom Lehrer’s feel­ing that satire died when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

    The fact that Yas­sir Arafat also has one leads me to believe that Nobel Peace Prizes ain’t what they used to be.

    Still, I agree with you, Nance … if this makes Sean Hannity’s under­pants get into a bunch, it’s hard to see a down­side.

  4. coozledad said on October 9th, 2009 at 9:23 am

    From the No Shit, Sher­lock depart­ment: K-Lo wails, “Bibi Netanyahu will never get a Nobel prize!”
    Let the Tal­iban and the wingers hold hands and have a good cry.

  5. Peter said on October 9th, 2009 at 9:24 am

    I have to get on my soap­box on this one. I mean seri­ously, WTF? Was it his olmypic pitch that put him over the top? Is it sim­i­lar to a first round draft pick – give the award out based on poten­tial?

    I mean, c’mon, Jimmy Carter’s been work­ing on get­ting one for almost thirty freak­ing years – sure, some­times he’s seems des­per­ate for it, but can ANYONE say that Obama deserves it more than Jimmy C? Cripes, Bill Clin­ton has done more to deserve the award – notice I’m up to two and I even haven’t gone past US Pres­i­dents!

  6. Jolene said on October 9th, 2009 at 9:34 am

    Peter: Jimmy Carter won the priae in 2006.

  7. Peter said on October 9th, 2009 at 9:59 am

    Jolene, I really need to read more. Thanks for the obvi­ous cor­rec­tion.

  8. brian stouder said on October 9th, 2009 at 10:11 am

    Say – if you missed it the other day, Jolene posted this very cool link to a Wash­ing­ton Post pun­dit con­test:

    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​s​r​v​/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​s​/​p​u​n​d​i​t​-​c​o​n​t​e​s​t​/​i​n​d​e​x.html

    and the Nobel folks have shov­eled loads of fod­der our way way… so it’s time to jump in there!

    the funny thing is, the con­test has a 400 word limit, and when you write your sub­mis­sion into the box, there’s a count­down that shows how many words you have left; and after you hit zero, you get bonged!

  9. Deborah said on October 9th, 2009 at 10:18 am

    I went to the Nobel museum in Stock­holm this sum­mer. It was inter­est­ing. Lots of exhibits about cur­rent top­ics. The main exhibit was about cen­sor­ship around the world. The museum was packed with peo­ple and the vis­i­tors seemed to be spend­ing a lot of time watch­ing and read­ing the infor­ma­tion that was dis­played. I went because I’m work­ing on an exhibit space in Des Moines about Nor­man Bor­laug (who died a few weeks ago). He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work in agri­cul­ture. Ear­lier in the year I was in cor­re­spon­dence with some Nobel peo­ple in Oslo to get thier per­mis­sion because we wanted to repro­duce Borlaug’s Nobel medal at a larger scale in one of the exhibits. They were very con­cerned that it could be badly done and den­i­grate the award. We had to send pho­tos of it dur­ing fab­ri­ca­tion and com­ple­tion so they could be assured that it would be accu­rate and well crafted. It was cast in bronze by a foundry in Cincin­nati. I was impressed that the Nobel peo­ple would be that con­cerned about it.

  10. John said on October 9th, 2009 at 10:19 am

    Brian, after you get bonged, does Jaye P. Mor­gan appear?

  11. brian stouder said on October 9th, 2009 at 10:23 am

    I always liked her! and Gene, Gene, the danc­ing machine! The Unknown Comic was OK, too….who knew just how ahead of his time Chucky’s proto-American Idol show was, eh?

  12. ac jones said on October 9th, 2009 at 10:24 am

  13. Lex said on October 9th, 2009 at 10:47 am

    I heard this when the radio woke me up this morn­ing and imme­di­ately thought The Onion had branched out into radio.

    By any seri­ous stan­dard, does he deserve it? Of course not. But I’m with Nance/Jason: If it makes the Limbaugh/Hannity/Coulter/Malkin Axis of Stoopid’s head explode, I say we do it twice.

  14. Holly said on October 9th, 2009 at 11:03 am

    It would make my day to see Coul­ters head explode.

  15. MarkH said on October 9th, 2009 at 11:05 am

    “An unde­served Nobel Peace Prize in the name of bash­ing those we hate is no vice”??? Or some such thing, peo­ple? Sheesh….

    On the other hand, what Jason T. said. BTW, Carter won in 2002, to pick a nit.

  16. Hexdecimal said on October 9th, 2009 at 11:13 am

    There’s a Wiki already….

    http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​2​0​0​9​_​N​o​b​e​l​_​P​e​a​c​e​_Prize

  17. adrianne said on October 9th, 2009 at 11:17 am

    please, please, please, let the early-morning news from oslo induce the long-overdue heart attack for beck, lim­baugh and other over­weight white guys with sub­stance abuse prob­lems root­ing for obama’s down­fall.

    please?

  18. brian stouder said on October 9th, 2009 at 11:34 am

    and we have the open­ing bid in the head-exploding con­test:

    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​3​3​2​4​0​8​0​7​/​n​s​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​-​c​a​p​i​t​o​l​_hill/

    Steele, who took over the reins of the party ear­lier this year, said he thought it was “unfor­tu­nate that the president’s star power has out­shined tire­less advo­cates who have made real achieve­ments work­ing towards peace and human rights.”

    trans­la­tion: I HATE that guy!

  19. Jolene said on October 9th, 2009 at 11:54 am

    MarkH, thanks for the cor­rec­tion re Carter’s prize. Came back to the site to cor­rect myself, but you were quicker On the draw.

    Best line I’ve heard so far is from Ezra Klein on the WaPo web site: If you think the right-wingers are mad about Obama win­ning the Nobel Prize, wait until he donates his win­nings to ACORN.

  20. Sue said on October 9th, 2009 at 12:10 pm

    Good post title from First Draft: “Well, There’ll Be No Liv­ing With Him Now”, along with this imag­ined con­ver­sa­tion, from the com­ment sec­tion:

    ‘BHO: hey baby, come give some sugar to your nobel lau­re­ate pres­i­dent hus­band! /holds out arms with smug look on face/
    MO: well, don’t go think­ing you can leave your under­wear on the floor and the toi­let seat up just because of it. /crosses attrac­tively mus­cled arms and makes That Face/’

    You know, I can totally see that hap­pen­ing.

  21. Jim Wetzel said on October 9th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    Myself, I enjoyed IOZ’s take on Prizewin­ning Pres. O-bomb-a:

    Giv­ing a “peace prize” to a sit­ting head of state is in any case faintly absurd, like giv­ing a Gru­ber Prize to Roman Polan­ski, but giv­ing it to a sit­ting Amer­i­can head of state while his coun­try is engaged in two major con­flicts result­ing from its occu­pa­tion of sup­pos­edly sov­er­eign for­eign coun­tries because of “his extra­or­di­nary efforts to strengthen inter­na­tional diplo­macy and coop­er­a­tion between peo­ple” is like giv­ing me the Nobel Prize in Med­i­cine because I promise all my bare­back part­ners that I am going to cure AIDS. Well, it’s fine then! The White House reports that The Obama is hum­bled by the news.

  22. Danny said on October 9th, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    Attrac­tively mus­cled arms? Hmmph…

    I heard about this cap­tion for a pic­ture of BO, Carla Bruni and MO stand­ing together: The Rookie, the Cookie and the Wookie. Not extremely accu­rate, but pretty funny.

    And as a rule, I never make fun of peo­ples’ looks (includ­ing those who were the sub­ject of yesterday’s thread), but with all of the folks who have been slob­ber­ing for months now over MO’s sup­posed good looks, geesh! Get some per­spec­tive or get a room… She ain’t all that.

  23. crinoidgirl said on October 9th, 2009 at 12:52 pm

    Brief derail­ment to thank Jeff Bor­den for his words of advice to me a cou­ple of days ago.

    Carry on.

  24. nancy said on October 9th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    I don’t see Michelle Obama as a Wookie, and Googling, I see that cap­tion appeared at Free Repub­lic. Oh. You don’t have to find her sex­u­ally appeal­ing to admit she’s a styl­ish woman who rocks what she has pretty damn hard. Plus, like the Peace Prize, she makes peo­ple who oppose her say funny things. The faint­ing couch over at the Cor­ner was in non-stop use over her going sleeve­less dur­ing the cam­paign. I had no idea there were so many rules about arms.

  25. Sue said on October 9th, 2009 at 1:00 pm

    Danny, may I direct you to a com­ment by Brian Stouder from a cou­ple of days ago:
    ‘I think women with poise and vigor have an irre­press­ible beauty all their own; very much more than they real­ize.’
    and Jeff Borden’s reply:
    ‘Brian, agreed 100%.’
    I have nei­ther poise nor vigor, and this allows me to give you a rude but good-natured razzberry, since flip­ping you the bird (also good-naturedly) would show my flabby upper arms.

  26. coozledad said on October 9th, 2009 at 1:01 pm

    The Nobel is pretty much a nod from the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity rec­og­niz­ing the dif­fi­culty of being a suc­cess­ful politi­cian and a pub­lic intel­lec­tual simul­ta­ne­ously, and not­ing, as well a step toward polit­i­cal matu­rity for the nation. Wole Soyinka says it bet­ter:
    “Obama sim­ply asked ques­tions that oth­ers pre­ferred to brush aside. His rumi­na­tions on race issues are an end­less rev­e­la­tion. Some­times they read as though he has inter­nal­ized his legal training-a flurry of Obama vs. Obama encoun­ters, cross exam­i­na­tions, one Obama appear­ing for the plain­tiffs and yet another for the defendants.Bringing this habit of mind to issues has left com­men­ta­tors in no doubt, that in Obama, the White House is restored, after a near decade long hia­tus, to a ‘think­ing’ pres­i­dent.”
    John Bolton says Obama should refuse the award, and that’s no sur­prise, given the con­tempt the right has for the peo­ple of this country.I remem­ber when mil­lions of peo­ple turned out on the streets to protest Bush’s war of oppor­tu­nity, the chan­de­lier jockey just dropped his pants and mooned every­body. All that mil­i­tary hard­ware was his, and he was gonna fuck some shit up. The DC Pun­dit corps responded pretty much the way David Ger­gen did, which was to drop to its knees and com­mence toss­ing his salad. Heady days those, when we all got to taste Bush’s farts vic­ar­i­ously via every­one from Gor­don Liddy to David Gre­gory. Well they all just got another slap in the face. Idiots.

  27. Jolene said on October 9th, 2009 at 1:01 pm

    Jeff Gold­berg’ reac­tion: Obama would likely rather have got­ten the Olympics.

    How­ever odd this award is, Obama hit exactly the right note in his remarks this AM.

  28. Danny said on October 9th, 2009 at 1:06 pm

    Yeah, Nance, I remem­ber now that the per­son who told me about the cap­tion men­tioned the Free Repub­lic. Never been to the site myself.

    Lis­ten, I too am pretty tired of the con­stant rain of naysay­ing bull com­ing from those who oppose Pres­i­dent Obama. I’m just say­ing that I’ve also had enough of the breathy com­par­isons to Camelot and the ubiq­ui­tous, gush­ing beauty and style ref­er­ences to Michelle.

  29. Danny said on October 9th, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    Sue, what do Brian’s and Jeff’s com­ments have to do with any­thing? My dad could beat both of their dads up. QED

  30. Sue said on October 9th, 2009 at 1:18 pm

    OMG, break­ing news:
    http://​open​.salon​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​c​o​n​_​c​h​a​p​m​a​n​/​2​0​0​9​/​1​0​/​0​9​/​n​h​l​_​a​w​a​r​d​s​_​l​a​d​y​_​b​y​n​g​_​t​r​o​p​h​y​_​t​o​_​obama/

  31. Joe Kobiela said on October 9th, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    Nancy,
    We have waited all week. How did the chap­er­on­ing of the dance go????
    Pilot Joe

  32. nancy said on October 9th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    Joe, it went great. Because my Mon­days are so busy now, I’m always look­ing for some­thing I can write on Sun­day and get a jump on things. I’ll save the full report for then.

  33. mark said on October 9th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

    Sure, I’ll weigh in on the Nobel award thing:

    1. Nancy already caught the bot­tom line- it’s the Nobel Committe’s award to give so what I think doesn’t mat­ter.

    2. Those who think this is giv­ing the Beck, Lim­baugh crowd indi­ges­tion are, I think, wrong. I think they are down­right glee­ful because this plays right into the stereo­type they are build­ing against Obama and becomes just another bit to use in their schtick. I mean they will play this for­ever. Next month, when we try to blow up some bad guys in Pak­istan, the report will be” Local author­i­ties claim 11 women and chil­dren died in the drone-missile attack, autho­rized by Nobel peace prize recip­i­ent Pres­i­dent Obama, after intel­li­gence con­firmed a meet­ing of high-value tar­gets in the moun­tain­ous region of Pak­istan.”

    3. I actu­ally feel a lit­tle sorry for Obama. He’s try­ing to shake the slowly devel­op­ing “empty suit” crit­i­cism, and he gets the “most likely to be over-estimated” award.

    4. Bill Clin­ton should be pissed. The guy has done a lot post-presidency.

  34. Danny said on October 9th, 2009 at 2:13 pm

    4. Bill Clin­ton should be pissed. The guy has done a lot post-presidency.

    Yeah, he has really touched a lot of peo­ple…

  35. moe99 said on October 9th, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    Rather, mark, I think the peo­ple of this coun­try, first see­ing the glee when Chicago lost the Olympic bid, and now the brick­bats thrown when Obama received the Nobel Peace prize, will become more dis­gusted with the right wing. Oh, there will always be that 27% of true believ­ers, but I hope the rest of the coun­try is innoc­u­lated against this stuff.

  36. mark said on October 9th, 2009 at 2:24 pm

    Well moe, that’s a pos­si­bil­ity. The other pos­si­bilty is that “the rest of the coun­try” is get­ting a lit­tle tired of the “cit­i­zen of the world”, “US is just one among many”, stuff. Per­son­ally, I’d like a lit­tle more empha­sis on keep­ing us the strongest, wealth­i­est, most free coun­try on the face of the planet. Even if that doesn’t play well on the Left Bank.

    Time will tell.

  37. brian stouder said on October 9th, 2009 at 2:27 pm

    Those who think this is giv­ing the Beck, Lim­baugh crowd indi­ges­tion are, I think, wrong. I think they are down­right glee­ful because this plays right into the stereo­type they are build­ing against Obama

    Dunno; I broke the rule at lunchtime and tuned over to Uncle Rush, and he was on a riff about how “the whole world is laugh­ing” and “Obama is a laugh­ing stock”, etc.

    Except Uncle Rush wasn’t laugh­ing, and wasn’t full of mirth and glee. He sounded more than a lit­tle stressed, like the kid who sits at a table at the high school dance, and bit­terly cri­tiques the ‘unde­serv­ing’ Home­com­ing King

  38. Joe Kobiela said on October 9th, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    I think I would be a lit­tle more impressed if it wouldn’t have been voted on 11DAYS, after he took office. That’s like mak­ing some­one all pro after 1 play.
    Pilot Joe

  39. basset said on October 9th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

    I fol­lowed a Nobel win­ner around north­ern Michi­gan for a cou­ple of days back in about 1978… Mairead Cor­ri­gan, she won it for her work in north­ern Ire­land. The medal was about as big around as a good-sized coaster and appeared to be made of solid gold; she kept it wrapped in a hanky in the back pocket of her jeans and pulled it out often to show every­one, includ­ing sev­eral times on the fer­ry­boat over to Beaver Island. It’d been me, I would have kept the medal-showing on dry land.

  40. Jason T. said on October 9th, 2009 at 3:15 pm

    Mark:

    Being the biggest, tough­est guy on the block requires hav­ing a lit­tle bit of humil­ity once in a while. Oth­er­wise, you’re just a smart-ass jerk who pushes around peo­ple smaller than you.

    “Speak softly and carry a big stick” — remem­ber that? A quote from Repub­li­can Pres­i­dent Theodore Roo­sevelt, another win­ner of the Nobel Peace Prize, come to think of it.

    We have five per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and use 25 per­cent of its resources. You think that’s fair? You don’t think it breeds resent­ment?

    I wouldn’t trade my life in the United States for any other place, but from 2001-2008, we set a pretty lousy exam­ple for the rest of the world, and some course cor­rec­tion is in order.

  41. mark said on October 9th, 2009 at 3:16 pm

    Maybe the Nobel peo­ple should fol­low the lead of the NFL, and start giv­ing out giant, gaudy, jewel-encrusted rings instead of medals. They can be flaunted more incon­spic­u­ously.

    And Brian, I’ll defer to your greater exper­tise in deter­min­ing Limbaugh’s mood from the tenor of his rants. But it seems to me that what he sells (very suc­cess­fully) is out­rage at Obama and some other left­ies. Hav­ing the inven­tory replen­ished would be a good thing, and handy when you are shop­ping for pro sports teams.

  42. basset said on October 9th, 2009 at 3:24 pm

    >>start giv­ing out giant, gaudy, jewel-encrusted rings instead of medals

    they should do it like rodeo – giant, gaudy, jewel-encrusted belt buck­les.

    btw, rodeo groupies are some­times known as “buckle bun­nies”…

  43. Danny said on October 9th, 2009 at 3:28 pm

    As I said before about those who are crit­i­ciz­ing Pres­i­dent Obama for being post-American or for not being a pro­po­nent of the doc­trine of Amer­i­can Excep­tion­al­ism. So what?

    We should be hum­ble. Far more peo­ple in the world have far less and it ain’t because we’re so much more deserv­ing.

  44. adrianne said on October 9th, 2009 at 3:32 pm

    Karma, karma, karma – on the day Obama gets his Nobel Peace prize, Rush gets…to judge the 2010 Miss Amer­ica Pageant! ‘Nuff said.

  45. mark said on October 9th, 2009 at 3:37 pm

    Jason T.- I agree with your com­ments on how the “biggest, tough­est guy” ought to behave and I would prob­a­bly agree with much of your crit­i­cism of the Bush years. I still want us to be the biggest, tough­est guy on the block.

    The 5/25 thing always baf­fles me. What per­cent­age do you think is “fair?” To me, what you (or we) have is fair so long as we obtained it with­out force or fraud. And there will always be resent­ment by those who envy what oth­ers have.

    If Nancy’s blog becomes a huge finan­cial suc­cess because her writ­ing is inter­est­ing and well-done and she works hard at it, will you declare it unfair if her share of the bucks is grossly dis­propo­tion­ate to the per­cent­age obtained by the aver­age blog­ger? What would you be will­ing to do to take from her to make things fair? And if you do take from her to make things fair to oth­ers, is it pos­si­ble that she will be less inclined to work so hard?

    Edit- A “Nobel belt buckle” would be cool.

  46. brian stouder said on October 9th, 2009 at 3:42 pm

    To me, what you (or we) have is fair so long as we obtained it with­out force or fraud

    So when do we give Texas (etc) back?

  47. mark said on October 9th, 2009 at 3:56 pm

    brian-

    We can give Texas back, and con­sider repa­ra­tions for slav­ery, and a host of other things any­time we want to, I guess. Our past use of force or fraud doesn’t change the appro­pri­ate­ness of using force now to make peo­ple equal. What I’m sug­gest­ing is that sim­ply say­ing it’s “unfair” that some­body has more than some­body else doesn’t work. If it were pos­si­ble to some­how spread all wealth equally among all peo­ple every­where, 5 min­utes after we did so some­body like me would offer to flip a coin on a dou­ble or noth­ing bet, vio­lat­ing all that care­fully con­structed fair­ness.

    I don’t much care about pro­fes­sional sports, so the salaries are hard for me to jus­tify. But they get them through a series of vol­un­tary exchanges in which all par­ties seem to think they are get­ting fair value, so who am I to say they don’t deserve to make 50 times what a heart sur­geon makes or 5000 times what a school teacher makes.

  48. Danny said on October 9th, 2009 at 4:18 pm

    I was just in Texas this week. I don’t know if any­one would want it back.

  49. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9th, 2009 at 4:23 pm

    Deb­o­rah, a hat tip, and a deep bow to you for get­ting to help salute Nor­man Bor­laug. There’s an award we can all agree on.

    Still no com­ment from Bill Clin­ton . . . i hope the dosage on his bp meds was upped, maybe dou­bled. Ouch.

    Fas­ci­nated by the chat­ter about “Cheru­bim,” the pos­si­ble webonym for Eliz­a­beth Edwards. The anonymity of the inter­net is a curved two-edged sword. Spent the last two days dis­cussing cyber-bullying and inter­net inap­pro­pri­ate­ness with juve­nile court staff from around Ohio, and it does cre­ate new oppor­tu­ni­ties to offend (cell phone pics down your own shirt, for the love of mike), but it also means dumb stunts that once were untrace­able (scratch­ing ex-girlfriend’s phone num­ber on stall door) are now easy to tack to said juvenile’s fore­head (cre­at­ing an e-mail account and send­ing mes­sages to some­one, when con­tact w/ them is barred by court order, is harder to do with­out trace­abil­ity than you might think).

    Big new craze — cre­at­ing a MySpace or Face­book page for a school staffer you’re mad at, and mak­ing it, um, embar­rass­ing. Again, eas­ier to trace back than is gen­er­ally under­stood. “But my name isn’t on it!” Uh-huh.

  50. mark said on October 9th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    Danny-

    Amer­i­can excep­tion­al­ism isn’t and never has been about how much we have or what our pedi­gree looks like. Amer­i­can excep­tion­al­ism is that here, more than any­where else in the world, those things don’t mat­ter. The laws apply equally and oppor­tu­ni­ties are avail­able with­out gov­ern­ment regard for your her­itage, your reli­gion, your fam­ily, etc.

  51. nancy said on October 9th, 2009 at 4:44 pm

    Speak­ing of Amer­i­can excep­tion­al­ism, I was struck by the pho­tos accom­pa­ny­ing this story in today’s Det­News. It’s about the team of Big­brains who are using their math-fu skills to help Ford max­i­mize profit and fine-tune plant oper­a­tions, etc. It’s over­whelm­ingly Asian and at least one-third women. Note the com­par­i­son with the same group from 60 years ago — white men, all.

  52. Jeff Borden said on October 9th, 2009 at 4:46 pm

    On Texas, I would hap­pily see it become a sep­a­rate coun­try. I found it to be the most over­rated state I’ve ever vis­ited. There are some nice spots –the music scene in Austin qual­i­fies– but over­all it didn’t look, sound or smell much dif­fer­ent than Okla­homa.

    On Rush Lim­baugh and the NFL, I think it would be both fas­ci­nat­ing and hilar­i­ous, given the near unan­i­mous hatred black peo­ple feel for the big fel­low, to have the Mar­quis de Micro­phone own­ing a fran­chise in a sport where the over­whelm­ing num­ber of play­ers are African Amer­i­cans. Sev­eral black for­mer and cur­rent NFL play­ers already are say­ing it would be bad for foot­ball and that some play­ers might just walk away rather than play for El Rushbo.

    I have no idea how the NFL goes about approv­ing or dis­ap­prov­ing of team sales. I guess a league where Al Davis can own a team could prob­a­bly han­dle Lim­baugh. Then again, I don’t recall Al Davis ever sug­gest­ing a black caller ring him back after tak­ing the bone out of his nose.

  53. Scout said on October 9th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    Trust the pearl clutch­ers on the right to react in the most inap­pro­pri­ate way pos­si­ble to news that is noth­ing but good for Amer­ica. Just last week they cheered because we lost the Olympics bid. Seri­ously WTF is wrong with these peo­ple? Aren’t these the very same yahoos who annointed them­selves Mostest Patri­otic Evah?

  54. Rana said on October 9th, 2009 at 5:06 pm

    For me, it isn’t so much that we have more pro­por­tion­ately than other coun­tries do; it’s that we’re con­sis­tently reluc­tant to take respon­si­bil­ity for the means we use to get it, or the effects of that unequal dis­tri­b­u­tion. A lot of what’s involved isn’t mere pos­ses­sion of resources; it’s con­sump­tion of them – as in, once used, they’re gone and no longer avail­able to any­one else. And when that con­sump­tion results in an equally dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of waste – waste which is a bur­den on more than our­selves (indeed, many of the dam­ag­ing effects of our con­sump­tion are aggres­sively off-shored) – and we as a nation act as if it has lit­tle to do with us (as in our foot-dragging on cli­mate issues)… well, it starts look­ing less like some­one who has more because they earned it fairly, and more like some­one who gets a lion’s share of the good­ies and shoves the result­ing crap back on the rest of the group. It may be that they earned their share of the good­ies fairly, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of the group agreed to pick up their shit too.

    If you have 5% of the pop­u­la­tion, con­sum­ing 25% of the resources, and pro­duc­ing 25% of the waste and pol­lu­tion – then you need to man up and accept at min­i­mum 25% of the respon­si­bil­ity for deal­ing with the prob­lems caused by the sys­tems pro­duc­ing your dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of the good­ies and by your dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of waste and resource exhaus­tion. Right now we’re insist­ing on our right to an out­sized share of the ben­e­fits, while at the same time demand­ing that we bear an under­sized bur­den when it comes to the costs. That’s sim­ply not fair, and it’s not rea­son­able to expect that such behav­ior should be ignored or con­doned by the peo­ple pick­ing up our slack while we con­tinue to go on our blithe and merry way. Nor is it rea­son­able for us to get all huffy and indig­nant when other nations point this out.

    Yet that’s what’s going on, and it’s not sur­pris­ing that the rest of the world is rather tired of it.

  55. coozledad said on October 9th, 2009 at 5:18 pm

    Scout: Here’s a neat encap­su­la­tion of the world view that makes this pos­si­ble. It’s equal parts David Lynch, Ernest Angley, and Clau­dio Bravo, if he’d been in a freak con­struc­tion acci­dent and had his brain impaled by a sec­tion of rebar:
    http://​www​.mcnaughtonart​.com/​a​r​t​w​o​r​k​/​v​i​e​w​_​z​o​o​m​/​?​a​r​t​p​i​e​c​e​_​id=353
    H/T actor212.

  56. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9th, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    Update — Cooze, you’ll like my link bet­ter:

    Really shouldn’t give y’all this kind of cat­nip –
    http://www.shortpacked.com/McNaughton%20Fine%20Art.htm

    Watch the box on the right as you mouse over. But here’s the prob­lem — why is it that this is so vis­cer­ally creepy to many of us, and warmly appealling to many oth­ers? Is it just that those who are moved by this are igno­rant and unin­formed or vic­tims of dem­a­goguery, or is there an ele­ment worth con­sid­er­ing?

    I’m torn: this is dreck, kitsch, and apoc­a­lyp­ti­cal smarm, but it also neatly echoes what i see in Cru­ci­fix­ion tableaus of the late 1500s, with Mar­tin Luther and other “good guys” on one side of the cross, and pig-nosed ren­di­tions of Catholic princes and preach­ers (Tet­zel) on the other. That we see as sim­ply polit­i­cal com­men­tary. This is Thomas Kinkade crossed with Tim LaHaye, but it’s also inspi­ra­tional mate­r­ial that taps into a vein of ide­al­ism and hope that we don’t seem to have access to in any other art form.

    Are the only choices kitsch or irony? A Nobel Prize for the first per­son who can help me spot a solid patch of mid­dle ground between those two in the world today (Nor­man Rock­well doesn’t count.)

    Update post­script: i hadn’t read Coozledad’s post when i wrote the above, it’s just a rumi­na­tion, not a reac­tion.

  57. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9th, 2009 at 5:37 pm

    Speak­ing of creepy, the col­lege stu­dent on the left hand side, next to the Marine, is hold­ing a copy of the Skousen book that Glenn Beck relent­lessly flacks on his shows . . . i’m told, haven’t seen the show, but that’s the book.

  58. brian stouder said on October 9th, 2009 at 5:53 pm

    First, any­thing that merges David Lynch with any­thing else, I like.

    Sec­ond – regard­ing ‘mid­dle ground’ – I almost reflex­ively recoil from terms like “Amer­i­can Excep­tion­al­ism”; I pre­fer the mar­velously earthy descrip­tion of Amer­i­cans (from some other Illi­nos politi­cian): “God’s almost cho­sen peo­ple”

    http://​www​.amer​i​can​her​itage​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​m​a​g​a​z​i​n​e​/​a​h​/​1​9​7​7​/​5​/​1​9​7​7​_​5​_​4​.shtml

    When the arrival of reli­gious free­dom brought the pos­si­bil­ity of free­dom from reli­gion two cen­turies ago, few cit­i­zens lost faith and many gained it. With the onset of moder­nity, what­ever it was sup­posed to mean, prophets pre­dicted the death of God and the demise of reli­gion. Not all believ­ers try to account for God’s ways, but reli­gion itself did not die. It was sim­ply relo­cated, some­times dis­guised, busy seek­ing to fill society’s many nooks and cran­nies that offer growth to both old and new reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions and pri­vate emphases. If the polls are cor­rect, few are try­ing to evade religion’s claims or appeals. So long as cit­i­zens seek free­dom and jus­tice, hunger to be whole, want to be saved, and wish to know who they are and to whom they belong, many are likely to find new ways to give sup­port to the Court’s claim that “we are a reli­gious peo­ple.” The Amer­i­can major­ity, for all their sec­u­lar styles and worldly con­cerns, are likely to see in such expres­sions what Jonathan Edwards per­ceived in the 1730’s, “the Sur­priz­ing Work of God.” And they will gladly say so to Dr. Gallup or any­one else who asks.

    by way of say­ing, we’re all human; and it’s hard to revere the ‘found­ing fathers’ of 1776 as much as our “re-birth”ers of 1865….although it WAS an excep­tion­ally bloody sec­ond rev­o­lu­tion, even by mod­ern stan­dards of cru­elty

  59. Jean S said on October 9th, 2009 at 6:30 pm

    …I’m just won­der­ing what he’s gonna do with the money. I wish he’d donate it to the South­ern Poverty Law Center–they’re a deserv­ing and wor­thy group, and as a bonus: explodo-Rush!

  60. joodyb said on October 9th, 2009 at 7:12 pm

    for­give me if i missed men­tion of this, but i’d put al gore right in there with arafat and kissinger, to jason t’s orig­i­nal point. and yeah, it’s their prize, they can give it to whomever. crazy nor­we­gians. cul­tur­ally speak­ing, the whole nobel thing has kind of a car­toony image in mod­ern times.
    wit­ness al’s per-usual luke­warm com­ment today. that right there would pre­vent a lot of folk from actu­ally giv­ing a rip.
    did any­body parse/see how much the peace prize is worth?

  61. MarkH said on October 9th, 2009 at 7:39 pm

    What joodyb said. After sam­pling opin­ion of Obama’s Nobel award from around the world today, I think it’s clear that more peo­ple than (most of) you care to admit will be lean­ing the way of your reviled right. All Rush, et​.al. have to do is sit back and tally those who agree that this is wholly pre­ma­ture.

    In any case, it’s clear the Nobel com­mit­tee in Nor­way missed or are not fans of SNL:

    http://​www​.nbc​.com/​s​a​t​u​r​d​a​y​-​n​i​g​h​t​-​l​i​v​e​/​v​i​d​e​o​/​c​l​i​p​s​/​o​b​a​m​a​-​a​d​d​r​e​s​s​/​1​1​63263/

  62. moe99 said on October 9th, 2009 at 8:54 pm

    The com­mit­tee and its advi­sors pre­pare a short list in March, and review things from March to late Sep­tem­ber. Then they vote. The idea that Obama was awarded the prize based on his first two weeks in office is cute, funny and wrong.

    Obama is giv­ing the money away.

    Here is an email an Amer­i­can friend liv­ing in Aus­tralia received from the Obama camp today. She was impressed enough with it that she sent it to a bunch of her friends:


    Vir­ginia –

    This morn­ing, Michelle and I awoke to some sur­pris­ing and hum­bling news. At 6 a.m., we received word that I’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.

    To be hon­est, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the com­pany of so many of the trans­for­ma­tive fig­ures who’ve been hon­ored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their coura­geous pur­suit of peace.

    But I also know that through­out his­tory the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor spe­cific achieve­ment; it’s also been used as a means to give momen­tum to a set of causes.

    That is why I’ve said that I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peo­ples to con­front the com­mon chal­lenges of the 21st cen­tury. These chal­lenges won’t all be met dur­ing my pres­i­dency, or even my life­time. But I know these chal­lenges can be met so long as it’s rec­og­nized that they will not be met by one per­son or one nation alone.

    This award — and the call to action that comes with it — does not belong sim­ply to me or my admin­is­tra­tion; it belongs to all peo­ple around the world who have fought for jus­tice and for peace. And most of all, it belongs to you, the men and women of Amer­ica, who have dared to hope and have worked so hard to make our world a lit­tle bet­ter.

    So today we humbly recom­mit to the impor­tant work that we’ve begun together. I’m grate­ful that you’ve stood with me thus far, and I’m hon­ored to con­tinue our vital work in the years to come.

    Thank you,

    Pres­i­dent Barack Obama

  63. Jolene said on October 9th, 2009 at 9:08 pm

    joodyb, the award is worth $1.5 mil­lion, which, as oth­ers have noted, Obama has said that he will give the entire award to char­ity.

  64. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9th, 2009 at 9:19 pm

    You mean he sent that same mes­sage to her, too?

  65. Deborah said on October 9th, 2009 at 9:23 pm

    Moe, Thanks for includ­ing Obama’s response. I hadn’t read it and it makes me proud once more that he’s our pres.

    I’m off to Abiquiu tomor­row for our annual fall trip. Look­ing for­ward to some time off. I’ve been burn­ing the can­dle at both ends since they laid off every­one else in my depart­ment.

    Hope to have inter­net access this com­ing week but you never know in remote north­ern New Mex­ico.

  66. moe99 said on October 9th, 2009 at 9:31 pm

    Jeff tmmo: you will note I said the Obama camp. I know that was a broad­cast email and so did she, but it still was nice and you can’t make me believe he didn’t have a hand in draft­ing it.

  67. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9th, 2009 at 9:43 pm

    I kid, i kid. My wife read it over my shoul­der, and said “what is that?” I pointed out that like going to a col­lege, you give ‘em a lit­tle money, and they never leave you alone.

    But are you sure Bill Ayers didn’t help draft the let­ter?

    ;-)

  68. Ricardo said on October 9th, 2009 at 11:06 pm

    1 Obama will grow into the award. He will end up earn­ing it.

    2 Now I want to go to the Nobel Prize museum.

    3 Waaaaay off sub­ject: I got my pack­age from UPS which con­tained all of the Bea­t­les albums and sin­gles remas­tered. I’m very famil­iar with all of the record­ings, hav­ing bought my first LP in 1963 about this time of year. I didn’t get the MONO ver­sion, the Bea­t­les pri­mary mix, I got the Stereo ver­sion. I was very curi­ous about how it would sound, I couldn’t imag­ine the adver­tised “notice­able improve­ment”. Every cut is dynam­i­cally improved, the old ones as well as the later, spacey tracks. I hear lit­tle parts that were more obscured by vinyl maser­ing, now as they were intended. Lit­tle gui­tar parts, per­cus­sion instru­ments, and strings are dra­mat­i­cally enhanced, and the nuances of Lennon’s voice have won­der­ful inti­ma­cies. Addi­tion­ally, there is a computer-playable video on each disk along with a mas­ter ver­sion video, plenty of art­work, and a nice box for stor­age.

    I made work­ing copies of each of the 18 audio disks (2 for the White Album, and 2 for the sin­gles and EP disks), and put the orig­i­nals back in the box. The CDs are the British releases, each album in the orig­i­nal order rather than the jum­ble of songs on the Amer­i­can Releases. That exposes the only part I don’t like about Bea­t­les stereo releases, that is the orig­i­nal stereo mix. Some­times it is vocals mixed on the right and instru­ments on the left, or Paul on one side and the string sec­tion on the other, like in ‘Eleanor Rigby’. But I have a pretty good play­back sys­tem and I can always mix it back to MONO. If you have the means, you should get a set for your music col­lec­tion.

  69. Dexter said on October 10th, 2009 at 1:37 am

    I down­loaded a video player to watch “Red Dawn”. I made it through 20 min­utes and I bailed out. Geez.

  70. coozledad said on October 10th, 2009 at 7:37 am

    The life of the Party, really. The engine of its dod­der­ing, can­ker­ous super­flu­ous­ness. The robe vis­i­ble through its open closet door.
    http://​nomoremis​ter​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​1​0​/​o​h​-​h​e​s​-​j​u​s​t​-​j​e​a​l​o​u​s​-​a​n​d​-​n​o​t​-​o​n​l​y​-​o​f.html

  71. alex said on October 10th, 2009 at 10:20 am

    Pity the pageant con­tes­tant who wants world peace with her dia­mond tiara.

  72. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 10th, 2009 at 10:32 am

    And sweet ver­mouth, with a twist.

  73. Jeff Borden said on October 10th, 2009 at 4:29 pm

    Dex­ter,

    You must view “Red Dawn” as a com­edy. Once you start laugh­ing at the absurdly heavy hand of direc­tor John Mil­ius –ie., a Com­mie pulling a pis­tol from the hands of a dead man in the street, who lies next to a car with a bumper sticker read­ing “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hand”– you’ll never stop.

    Only the silly peo­ple on the far right fringe take this film seri­ously. I believe they see them­selves as Wolver­ines, who would take to the hills in the event of an inva­sion and bravely fight on. My guess is that most of them would act as the mayor in the film and col­lab­o­rate to get along with the invaders, but then, I have an extremely low opin­ion of loud-mouthed chick­en­hawks.

  74. Crabby said on October 10th, 2009 at 5:45 pm

    This is pretty cool, Antwerp Cen­tral Sta­tion flash mob:

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​0​U​E​3​C​Nu_rtY

  75. Deborah said on October 11th, 2009 at 11:35 am

    Greet­ings from Abiquiu, New Mex­ico. Inter­net access is just fine.

    Crabby, that was an amaz­ing flash mob link, made me cry it was so sweet. I love those flash mob events, I’ve seen some very cre­ative ones and then some not so great on You-tube. It’s a great con­cept. I’d love to be present when one is hap­pen­ing some­day.

  76. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 11th, 2009 at 9:37 pm

    Deb­o­rah, are the aspens in the Chama val­ley yel­low yet?

  77. Deborah said on October 11th, 2009 at 11:59 pm

    Jeff (tmmo), Aspens are golden and the cot­ton­woods are turn­ing. Before we leave next week­end the cot­ton­woods should be at their peak. My favorite time of year here. The Chama is gor­geous right now, and get­ting bet­ter every minute.

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