[Paine in the Neck]

A very Mark Steyn-ish send up of today's most popular topic. Make sure you read to the end to get the Chico Marx reference.

[D-fendr]

Margaret MacMillan in her book Nixon and Mao,

During the Cultural Revolution, an American remarked casually on an attractive view to a Chinese diplomat, who promptly answered, “Yes, it is; but not as beautiful as it is in Beijing where the glorious sun of Chairman Mao Tse-tung shines upon the Chinese people twenty-four hours a day.” Years later, after Mao’s death, the two men met again in Tanzania. The Chinese looked at the American and said, “It is a beautiful day, but not as beautiful as it is in Beijing where the glorious sun of…” and started to laugh. “I look back often on that conversation,” he said. “By God, how stupid it was.”

[lapsus calami]

 

 

 

I haven't seen the text of the cite for the award anywhere, so here it is. Would like the see the nomination itself, and from whom.

 

 

 

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/press.html

 

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

 

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.

 

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."

 

Oslo, October 9, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[La Lydia]

This wins hands down the BEST assessment of what happened this morning. And you're right, the Chico comment topped it off. What a fine writer. But he also had me screaming with laughter with this passage here:

..right out of a Monty Python sketch. The fainting, the crying, Chris Mathews’s vaguely homoerotic tremors up his leg, the slathering, worshipful press corps doing their level best to explain that the whackjob preacher and the geriatric terrorist were just local eccentrics, the exhortations about the rise of the oceans slowing and the planet healing, the acceptance speech delivered in front of a mini-Parthenon, all served to create an atmosphere in which at any moment one expected to see a rather stout gentleman in drag step out from behind the curtain and shriek, “He’s not the messiah! He’s a very naughty boy! Now pi** off!” ... With this announcement, Obama and his supporters have officially become a joke.

[workerbee]

Speaking of Steyn, I can't wait to read his take on this. Sure to be one for the history books.

[anymouse]

[Yardstick]

*bump*

[kcar]

Would be great if someone could create an online Nobel Prize generator ...of whatever for whoever, e.g., Nobel Prize in Knitting to Wilma Smith, etc...Authentic looking in honor of Alfred Nobel. Crank them out in the thousands.

They really jumped the shark with this award.

[dead]