Peace Out

Clearly, I am not getting enough irony in my diet. The last column I posted urged President Obama to win the war in Afghanistan (as opposed to abandoning it). Not too much farther down the road, he gets awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It is unlikely that this prestigious honor will prevent the administration from following an honorable path with respect to the war that George W. Bush - himself a finalist for the Jonas Zavimbi War Prize - started and never wanted to finish. Never mind all that; the story's more interesting tangents lead into the murky world of right-wing media.

Even Obama acknowledged that he hadn't yet really accomplished so much as to be awarded the Nobel, so the conservative avalanche of disgust was easily anticipated. For them, any excuse to ridicule the president will suffice, but they went after more than just the man this time.

Conservative commentators, from Rush Limbaugh all the way down to the lowest intellectual termite, made the time to actually denigrate the notion of peace itself. They equate it with weakness. They label it appeasement. They consider it next to evil.

Okay.

Today, then, is a red-letter day in American politics. It means that there are no more so-called "Christian conservatives". Such a thing can no longer be. It would make no more sense than a "man fish", or a "dirt beverage".

Can't happen. Doesn't exist. It just... isn't. Why? Because a Christian believes in peace. Every single mass, regardless of denomination, is briefly paused so that the parishioners can greet everyone around them with a handshake (or, I suppose, a fist-bump) and the words, "Peace be with you."

Who are we honoring with this pacifist gibberish? Jesus Christ, that's who. The Prince of Peace himself. The man who reportedly said, "Peace on me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised alive." If you go to any popular search engine and type in "Jesus Christ Peace", you will find some 38 million results.

Therefore, if you consider yourself a Christian, you cannot be aligned with conservatism. And those who identify with conservatism (and its most voracious partners in capitalism) cannot get into Heaven. But you already knew that. You just refuse to act on your faith and your beliefs.

Anyway. I really felt that Obama, as awesome as he obviously is, should not have received the award. He's just doing what he feels is right. The real credit should go to the one person most responsible for getting him into the White House where he could be most effective. That person is, without a doubt, Paris Hilton.

After all, Barack Obama was running neck and neck with John McCain last year, right up until the time that McCain put out that Obama-as-celebrity commercial (in which McCain strategists played up the images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton). Britney did nothing more than smack her bubblegum in response, but Paris came back with an ad of her own.

In it, she put the devastating hit on Arizona's senior senator, calling him a "wrinkly white-haired guy." That was all she wrote for John McCain. Obama went into cruise control at that point, and the rest is history, right up to the point where "the guy who promised change" won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Paris Hilton may not exactly be royalty, but she's as close as we can get to that in America today.

Nobility.

pH 1o.1o.o9