Feelings

Feelings

I started out my morning with my usual Drudge fix and was stunned to see that Obama had won the Nobel Prize. I was even more stunned when I learned that the nominations for the prize had to be submitted by February. Obama would have been in office for just a month. Maybe this was an April Fools’ joke. What had Obama done prior to February 2009 that was worthy of being awarded the Nobel Prize? Were community-organizing lawyers such rare and valuable contributors to our society that they would even be considered for the prize? What was I missing? Had Obama qualified for the prize simply because he was able to get himself elected? It made no sense.

I thought that I truly must be some Neanderthal knuckle-dragging throwback like the mainstream press always accused conservatives of being. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Surely the stolid Norwegians had not been caught up in the magic of the Obama rhetoric. While it is true that blue blood hating, blue collar Harry Reid once said that Obama was a gifted orator (Mr. Obama graciously agreed with Harry that he indeed did have such a gift) surely, I thought, the gift had been lost in translation by the time it hit Norwegian ears.

Last week in Copenhagen, the IOC was under-whelmed and sent the President and his Chicago entourage packing. A former Danish IOC representative explained in the Berlingske Tidende that Mr. Obama’s five hour blitz was simply too business like and had not addressed the spirit and feeling the IOC had for the Olympic games. So last week Obama lost the games for Chicago for not having enough feeling for Olympic spirit.

Miraculously (would you expect anything else) things turned dramatically better for the president today. Still I could not understand why that was. Was the IOC just feeling sorry for our new President? That could be it. The Russians aren’t playing well with Obama. Neither are the Iranians despite a lovely speech by Mr. Obama earlier this year. The Chinese are seeking to establish a new reserve currency. Domestically Obama’s agenda for change has hit a snag due to a bunch of pitchfork wielding hate speaking Limbaugh zombies taking their elected officials to task.

Later in the day, the IOC seeming to anticipate my question explained that the prize had been given in anticipation of the things Obama hopes to do as opposed to what he has accomplished to date. This explanation suddenly gave me hope for a change in my own bottom line. I have some ideas on cold fusion (it involves a can of Coke a nail and two wires) and faster than light rocket engines that could change the world, as we know it. Could not the Nobel committee anticipate that I could use the $1.4 million prize to achieve limitless power and to reach out to the stars? What is Obama’s goal of emasculating the United States’ super power status (so that we can be just like Norway or Iceland) in comparison to my goal of providing cheap unlimited power to all of the peoples of earth? Obviously Obama’s goals are small potatoes compared to mine.

And yet it is finally clear to me that my goal of doing something concretely beneficial for humanity just won’t cut it with the Nobel folks. It is far better in the committee’s eyes to feel good about something or someone than to actually do something good for society. Feelings are so much easier to deal with than the hard and sometimes messy work of doing good deeds.

Like the old song says, “Feelings, nothing more than feelings …”