October 12, 2009 at 22:09:43

Obama's Down-Payment Nobel Prize - What's Next?

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By J. Edward Tremlett (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

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You hear that noise? Somewhere, over the horizon, is a strange tinkling, like metal wind chimes. That, my friends, is the sound of Hades freezing over, because the Left and the Right are actually agreeing about something, other than the Jonas Brothers sucking.

They're both having a massive WTF moment about President Obama's Nobel Peace prize.

The Left's wondering what he's done to deserve it, thus far, given that he hasn't exactly impressed across the board. The Right's equally perplexed, and using this as an excuse to harrangue the Left, the Nobel Prize itself, Obama, and Frosty the Snowman who, as we all know, almost won in 1949. The far Left and far Right, which have met in the middle directly overhead in paranoid space, are wondering why a warmongering SOB who now appears to be W in disguise is getting anything with the word "peace" in it. And Frosty's still wondering why he got snubbed.

Yes, Hades freezeth over. But then this wouldn't be the first time people had a massive WTF over who won, and who didn't. I think the difference here is that, as the Board that decides these things has more or less admitted, they didn't give it to President Obama because of anything he's done, but rather WHAT HE MIGHT DO.

In other words, he's getting it for potential energy, rather than its actual expenditure. Which is kind of like announcing what state the cat in Schrodinger's box is in before opening the lid, and kind of defeating the whole purpose of putting the poor kitty in there in the first place.

(The West End Feline's Anti-Schrodinger's Coalition can stop sending me hate mail any time now, thank you)

A prize is supposed to be given for something you have done, not something you could do, or a condition that exists simply because you woke up this morning. As such, I don't think Obama deserves this prize, as it's described.

But if we're going to be giving out Nobel Prizes to well-meaning people who may one day deserve them, I think we should apply that set of criteria to other fields, if only to be fair.

So why not...

The Grammy: I think we should award the Jonas Brothers a Grammy. They seem like some good kids - maybe a little too good - and it stands to reason that, sometime in the future, when they are no longer controlled by The Mouse, they will achieve some level of self-awareness and actually make music that a childless adult would want to listen to without any sense of irony or hipness. Something on the level of David Gray's "White Ladder," for example. And on that day, they will have proven that at least one of the many Gods of music has a very odd sense of humor. Hopefully this sense of humor will not entail their dying in a weird and ironic manner shortly thereafter their having truly earned this prize. Like being eaten by a shark while onstage at a waterpark concert.

The Booker: I get the Booker, dammit. No one's heard of me and no one ever will, at the rate I'm going, but I think some of my pieces are just as good as some published authors and I know that, one day, I will deserve this prize. I also know that most of the people who've gotten it are slime-eyed, self-adoring goobers who put way too much pretention into their works. And that's NOT me. Booker, here I come.

The Emmy: Stargate: Universe is my pick. It's only three hours into the first season but I can tell this is going to be a wonderful science fiction story. It's already playing out like Battlestar Galactica meets Lost In Space by way of Stargate, and we know how well BSG was regarded (and how much LiS should have gotten an Emmy for its tender, yet subdued portrayal of forbidden love between a camp, older soviet spy and a mouthy robot). So I say we just hand over the Emmy and be done with it. Frak, give them three, and make up the categories as you go.

The Oscar: Rob Zombie should get the lifetime achievement award. So long as there are classic horror movies for him to remake in his own, post-MTV music video style, he will remake them in his own image, and I think by the time he gets to Halloween 20 he'll have perfected it enough that he'll deserve this award three times over - if only for making a Halloween 20 that was vastly superior to the sorry POS that the original was.

I could go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on but I think you got the idea.

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J. Edward Tremlett is a lot of things, currently. He's back in the states after a seven-year stint in Dubai, UAE. He's been published in such diverse places as The American Partisan, the International American, The End is Nigh, Pyramid (more...)

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