The reviews are in and as you would have expected, the conservate pundits and the Beltway wise men are all in agreement: winning the Nobel Peace Prize was bad for Barack Obama and will inflict fatal damage on his presidency.
Those were the rational critiques from our friends on the right. There were also the predictable racial taunts from folks like Georgia’s Erick Erickson, the white supremacist who runs the Red State blog: “I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota, but that is the only thing I can think of for this news.”
I am confident that Congressman Lynn Westmoreland (R-Dachau), who considers Obama to be too “uppity” for his taste, had a similar reaction.
Here are the words Obama actually uttered after learning the surprising news that he had won: “Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations. 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.”
That’s about as modest as you can get. He clearly stated that his accomplishments probably weren’t enough to merit the award and that he considered the Nobel committee’s decision to be instead an affirmation of American ideals.
But the facts, as we know, have a liberal bias, and conservatives across the board held up the Nobel announcement as “proof” that Obama is an arrogant, elitist egomaniac who’s out of touch with America because he cares more about the feelings of all those wimpy Europeans.
“This fully exposes the illusion that is Barack Obama,” said talk radio’s Rushbo. “And with this ‘award’ the elites of the world are urging Obama, THE MAN OF PEACE, to not do the surge in Afghanistan, not take action against Iran and its nuclear program and to basically continue his intentions to emasculate the United States . . . They love a weakened, neutered U.S and this is their way of promoting that concept.”
As a former lieutenant governor might have put it: Cry me a river.
Of course, conservatives did receive a ringing endorsement of their position from a very credible source. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi in Afghanistan condemned the Nobel committee’s decision, declaring that Obama had only escalated the war and had “the blood of the Afghan people on his hands.”
The top prize for stupidity goes to the Morning Joe talk show on MSNBC, where Mark Halperin of Time magazine said Friday morning: “I predict right now that he will find a way to basically turn it down. I think he is going to say, I share this with the world or whatever. I don’t think he’ll embrace this. Because there is no upside.”
“The damage is done,” Mika Brzezinski agreed.
Halperin’s prediction fell apart as soon as Obama announced later that same morning that he would, indeed, go to Oslo to accept the award. I’m sure Brzezinski’s statement that “the damage is done” will prove to be just as accurate. After all, Martin Luther King was another black American who won the Nobel Prize and nobody remembers him or even observes his birthday anymore because of all the damage the prize did to his reputation. Keep raving, Mika.
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