Look, there are a half-dozen obvious ways of interpreting what the Swedes were thinking<\/p>\n

This was the left-of-liberal left congratulating itself.\u00a0 This was the left-of-liberal left honoring the President who will lead the US into retirement.\u00a0 This committee was trying to encourage him in a Young-World-Leader-Most-Likely-to-Succeed sort of way.\u00a0 The committee really believed what it said about “outreach.”\u00a0 The committee was meeting in Malmo.\u00a0 The Scandanavians were sorry about how the IOC treated him the last time he was over there.<\/p>\n

What’s clear is that this award isn’t for actually having done anything.<\/p>\n

There was a time when Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” was eagerly awaited.\u00a0 Right up until they named. “The Computer” the Person of the Year, never mind the actual, you know, people <\/em>who had invented, marketed, and exploited it.<\/p>\n

This is a continuation, almost a logical conclusion, of the phenomenon of being famous\u00a0 for being famous that Daniel Boorstin wrote about in The Image<\/em> all those years ago. It’s a world where celebrity is based on prior celebrity, rather than on concrete achievement or accomplishment.<\/p>\n

In a way, it’s a surprise that it took this long.\u00a0 We’ve had science-by-press-conference, wherein little actual peer-reviewed science is done, but plenty of politics is practiced.\u00a0 And the Middle East has long been a bastion of “peace by press conference,” where meeting and negotiations are announced, and everyone sits around reading the coffee grounds to see what they mean.\u00a0 (Hint: they still hate us.)<\/p>\n

The worst thing about this prize is that it’s not likely to encourage actual peace-making, it’s just going to encourage all that’s worst about the Cult of Obama, and its practitioner-in-chief.\u00a0 Winning what used to be the world’s greatest secular moral award is likely to reinforce Obama’s sense of his own magnificence.\u00a0 Any hopes – and they were slim – that he might have learned something from last week’s Denmark Debacle are dashed.\u00a0 The man could probably walk away from the Infinite Perspective Vortex unscathed at this point.<\/p>\n

If this were just the Nobel Equivalent of 4th grade social promotion, it might not be so bad.\u00a0 That’s what it’s been in the past.\u00a0 You collect your prize, you go home to Georgia or Ramallah and hang it on a wall.\u00a0 (In Al Gore’s case, you find some way to electrify it so it lights up the night sky.)\u00a0 But this is to a sitting President, with real duties to discharge.\u00a0 Failures have real-world consequences for the US and its citizens, and nurturing Obamanian Infaalability isn’t likely to help him avoid them.<\/p>\n

If the Nobel Committee had really wanted to do what all of its apologists suggest – encourage peace prospectively – they could have given it to the Iranian opposition, who are busily dying in the streets for their liberty and their country.\u00a0 Hanging the mullahs by their turbans in the public square and establishing a decent secular regime there would do more to promote peace at this point than just about anything.
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