It must be hard being a right winger in the US at the moment.
Not for the few remaining sane ones of course, but those of the Limbaugh/Beck/Teabagging/Christianist crowd.
For months the shrill voices on the right have gone up octave by octave to the level that only small dogs can hear as smear after smear, attack after attack, hyperbole after hyperbole, still hasn't dragged the President's poll numbers to under 50%.
Kos Diarist Nashville Fan gave his own list of reasons for why Obama was awarded this great honour, and no matter what those on the right think, the world still sees this as a great honour.
Lawrence O'Donnell got the ball rolling on Countdown last night reminding us of the "if you cannot say anything nice, say nothing at all" response, and while they bleat on about this they look dumber and dumber to people who are not in their base. Rachel Maddow gave a pretty concise list of those who had been given a Nobel Prize for things they were doing, not what they had achieved, and her own reasons why the award was given.
My personal views on all awards (and this is based on sports, which l use as a template for nearly everything) is that you have to have done something to get it after a few years, but the pridictable reaction of the far right both in the US and here in the UK has moved me to side with those cheering on this award because anyone so churlish, so childish, so angry, and so small minded do not deserve support.
The eye-rolling sneer that President Obama has been awarded "Yasser Arafat's prize" while the infinite void of the right wing echo chamber conveniently forgets the fact that Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize while Vietnam was still raging shows a level of understanding which is oblivious to those in a party when empathy is shunned.
But it's not just empathy thats been shunned.
Even with all the teabagging protests, townhall screaming, right wing media pounding, and the insistance that America is still a right wing nation what have we seen in regards to Poll numbers?
Well, the latest Research 2000 Poll has the president at a 54/34 approval/disapproval rating, pretty steady with all that has happened.
But the summer has done NOTHING TO INCREASE THE FORTUNES OF THE GOP.
The Republican Party is at a lowly 22% approval and congressional Republicans at an even lower 17%. How much lower will it go after the negative reactions over the last two weeks with the glee about the failed Olympic bid and the howls of anguish over this, expecially with all their crowing about President Obama's failed status as a world leader last week?
And remember, this is before any Health Care reform has been passed, the thing that the right has been battling all summer to stop, as they know how bad it would be for their poll numbers before the midterms.
President Sarkozy said:
"The award marks America's return to the hearts of the people of the world"
How on earth is this a bad thing?
On Thursday freshman Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida (D) during his non-apology to the GOP said this:
They understand if Barack Obama were somehow able to cure hunger in the world, the Republicans would blame him for over-population.
They understand that if Barack obama could somehow bring about world peace, they'd blame him for destroying the defense industry.
In fact they understand that if Barack Obama has a BLT sandwich tomorrow for lunch, they will try to ban bacon.
Two days later President Obama is awarded the Nobel Prize and the right wing make his case.