Well it was around the time I was halfway through my cinnamon roll when someone said, "Hey, did you know Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize?"
At first I laughed and wondered what acid-dropping hippie's twitter feed they had been reading and why they were working here if they were gullible enough to believe it. After all, I had just finished reading the paper on the Metro and only saw that some Romanian woman living in German had won the prize for literature.
It was at this point, though, that the icy cold wave of dread began to consume my once gaily beating heart, because it turns out other people had heard this news too. My hope that it had all be some random Onion article that the Chinese had misinterpreted (again) slowly began to die.
Can this be true, I thought to myself, I mean, come on. What has he done? Wasn't the deadline for nomination about ten days after he was inaugurated?
I rushed to the New York Times web site because like a small child setting out cookies for Santa Claus I still unfailingly believe in newspapers. There it was. In big bold letters.
And why did Obama win? Apparently because he's got a lot of spunk and said some things that people liked and once he shook and Arab's hand right after shaking an Israeli's hand.
That's right. The same logic that keeps the roguishly handsome yet harmlessly evil antagonist from killing the youthful version of a Hollywood hero ("You got spirit, kid") is enough to get Obama the Nobel Peace Prize.
Now I am not saying that he might not deserve the prize later on in life. After all, the world loves him, he's more popular than God, he makes great speeches (at least in a syntactical way) and he's idealistic to a fault. And yea, while idealism and optimism are annoying when applied to people you know in the real world - like that friend who tells you "everything happens for a reason" after your girlfriend runs over your cat while driving off in a sports car with her Italian lover - those are the qualities you want in a person working for peace. If they faced reality like normal people they'd give up on world peace and surrender to the cold unfailing logic that the rest of us had.
However, giving a man a prize because he says he wants to do something is completely counter intuitive. Sure, he's on the right track, but it's sort of like firing the gun at the start of a race and then immediately waving the checkered flag and tossing wreathes on people. You're awarding their unfailing ability to make a show of starting something.
Imagining apply this logic to real life. I sit down and write my name on a test, at which point the teacher gives me an A. I apply to college and in the middle of my orientation seminar I'm given a mortarboard and a diploma.
"But I haven't done anything," you'd say in a baffled tone of voice as suddenly your parents show up on either side of you and your aunt who smells like chewing tobacco begins flirting with your friends.
"That's ok," the dean says, "you said you wanted to, and for that you deserve something."
So Obama says he wants to end the wars in the Middle East and close Gitmo and free the world of nuclear warheads. Cheers to him, the guy's got ambition. But shouldn't we hold off on congratulating him until after he's made a move to even try to do these things?
Remember that paper I was reading on the subway? According to it, Obama is thinking about adding 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Ooh, what a pacifist.
The fact is the man has promised a lot of things, and while I don't doubt that he wants to do them I sincerely doubt his ability to actually do it. You know why?
Because he's a goddamn politician.
Mother Teressa and Gandhi spring to mind as people who started off small and became huge through sheer dint of their unfailing will and their desire to create a better world. They were beholden to no one and had endless faith not only in the goodness of man but in God as well. They weren't worried about polls, they didn't care if people liked them or not. They weren't driven by ambition of politics but by an unchained sense of duty.
Allow me, before I go, to address what I am sure will be one of the main talking points for people who want to see their own personal Jesus (Wooo, Depeche Mode!) defended against the slings and arrows hurled by anyone with half a brain:
"Obama got the award because of his ability to bring people together and to remind him of his promises so that he won't let us down. It will encourage him to keep his word."
What? Have you never seen a movie involving a contract killer?
Killer: "Four million dollars, right?"
Hirer: "Yea. Half now, half when the job is done."
See? See how that works?
If a baseball team makes it to the World Series (topical sports reference) you don't hand them the damn title without making them work for it first, otherwise they slack off because they have nowhere else to go. We've already won, they will say, what's the point?
Sure, maybe Obama will be encouraged by his win, but only encouraged enough to hold back on ethnically cleansing the mid west, not enough to actually follow through on his promises.
When you get paid all at once you aren't more encouraged to do the job, or even to do the job better. You're just encouraged not to screw up badly enough for people to ask for the payment back.
Meanwhile, a group of Chinese activists who are trying to end travesties there were passed over for the prize, much as Obama passed over meeting with the Dalai Fucking Lama.
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