"Wake up, Michelle!"

"...we didn't get the Olympics, but..."

John J. Miller on NRO appears to have been the first responder on this, and, as usual, I couldn't have said it any better.

Part of this reminds me of episode 30 of Hogan's Heroes, where Hogan tries to bolster Klink in the eyes of the Kommandant's prospective step-daughter by telling her that Klink is not only a Baron and the recipient of the Iron Cross, but also the Victoria Cross because even the British admire him. What's next? HEADLINE -- "OBAMA ELECTED EMPEROR OF JAPAN"

It's just not been a good decade for the Nobel Peace Prize. We've gone from General Marshall, Dr. King, the Red Cross, Mother Teresa, Lech Walesa, Elie Wiesel and the Dalai Lama to a failed secretary-general, an anti-semetic ex-president who lobbied shamelessly for the award for 20 years, an agency and its head who are more interested in appeasement than non-proliferation, and a filmmaker with some questionable scientific views.

So, since the turn of the century, if you bashed America, Israel, or just Republicans, and if you raised your profile by jet-setting around the globe doing the same, you could expect a call from Oslo.

Rather pathetic credentials in the eyes of this reporter, but credentials nonetheless. Now, as we embark on a new decade, it appears that the standards have been lowered even further to simply looking good on TV. Make a few good speeches, say the right things, and you're right in the running even if your resume could fit on a business card. Sorta like those baseball publications every March that project the "Rookie of the Year" winners for the upcoming season -- yeah, the potential's there, but they . . . haven't . . . done . . . anything.

So goes the world. It's just a shame to see a once-prestigious award that should be beyond politics being further debased. One last analogy -- that of the commentator in the 1880's who allegedly remarked that the progression of the presidency from Washington to Grant was the strongest case he knew against Darwinism.