Starting off the day Friday with Rush Limbaugh hollering about the secret coded message five guys in Norway sent to President Obama was kind of a surprise.
I never tune in to Rush Limbaugh since I’m more of an exclamation point head.
But, whew, it was just a sound bite from his show on my regular station, Radio Free Livingston.
Of course that sure didn’t explain why Rush’s panties were all in a bunch. I needed the trusty old internet to find that out. And there it was, splattered all over my home page “President Obama Gets Secret Coded Message from Five Guys in Norway.” Or something like that.
Actually the headline was about the Nobel Peace Prize. “Geez,” I thought, “Doesn’t he have anything better to do than sit around all day filling out prize applications?” I remember one time Frito Lay had a sweepstakes and I spent three days filling out 3 x 5” cards with my name and address, which is what you had to send them if you didn’t actually buy their Doritos. But postage was only twenty three cents back then.
And then I found out he didn’t spend three days filling out three by five index cards. He didn’t have to do anything. Some other people took care of everything and he just went about his business and before you know it he had won the most prestigious award ever of all time.
That’s not exactly right either.
But then the you-know-what hit the fan. NOBODY thought he should have won. No one. Not even Bo, the watery dog.
So I felt kind of bad that the President of the United States of America had to apologize about winning the jackpot. If I’d won that Chevy Vega from Frito Lay I wouldn’t have apologized about it to anyone, even if I really didn’t think I deserved it.
Then I got to thinking about who else ever won the Peace Prize. Off the top of my head I actually couldn’t remember that Martti Ahtisaari won last year, which I should have because I was quite a fan of his when he was President of Finland.
So I found a list of all the people who had ever won the Nobel Peace Prize. It was quite a walk down memory lane. Remember 2004 when Wangari Maathai won the prize? I wonder how she’s doing these days.
And I know it’s crude to laugh at people’s names because people can’t pick out their own names, but back in 1994 when Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences shared the prize I laughed so hard beer shot out my nose when I heard the announcement.
Although Rotblat and the Pugwash Conference actually would have been a great name for a rock band now that I think about it.
All day long all I heard was that President Obama should give back the prize. Yeah, right, like they’d do that if they’d won. Some said better people deserved it more but after the Dalai Lama won in 1989 I think the really obvious world peace choices were basically narrowed down by a lot. There’s probably a rule against winners entering twice so everyone has a fair chance.
I like to think that I’m a good sport, so since I didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize I’ll step aside and congratulate the winner. At least he’s someone I’ve heard of before.
And it might just work out like that Christmas when your aunt Donna finally got you a cool present, a black leather jacket. And you looked at the label and it was a size 42 but you wore a size 38. Your mom told you not to mention it to aunt Donna or give it back because it might hurt her feelings. Then a couple of years later you found the jacket way back in the closet and tried it on and it fit perfectly.
I guess sometimes you just have to wait to grow into neat things that people give you.
