I can't believe how whiny some people can be. Those folks bitching because the Prez got nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize less than a fortnight after his inauguration? What a bunch of haters!

Many Best Picture contenders get nominated a few days after they hit the theaters. It seems like some Tony contenders get nominated before their shows even open. And the Grammys? Don't even get me started.

Yes, the Nobel Peace Prize is a bigger honor than some entertainment statue. For starters, the prize doesn't include a statue. You get a medal and a big fat wad of cash (10 million Swedish Kronor, or about $1.4 million American), plus the opportunity to go to Stockholm, Sweden in December. A medal and cash is much classier than a heavy chunk of plastic and metal, though the value of the junket is questionable.

So the Nobel Prize is one of the biggies. The Prez is now up there with Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Andrei Sakharov. He's also up there with Yassir Arafat, Henry Kissinger, the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, F. W. de Klerk and a whole bunch of folks few people would recognize.

Whatever. The real question is: What did he do to deserve such an honor?

Um, let's see. He got his ass elected to the White House, and did so in a manner that actually seemed to make our country (by and large) feel good about itself. He himself presented his election as simply the choice of the better person for the job, not any sort of redress for historical wrongs or that sort of thing. That's peaceful, right?

I must admit, though, that twelve days in office isn't much time to establish a big peace resume. Maybe his election was simply the result of the committee being made up of wimpy elitist European liberal types. Alrighty, then. That doesn't make Obama the bad guy here.

The cranks see things differently. Screw 'em. Some of these are the same folks who claim that Obama's mom falsified his "native birth" so that, forty-some-odd years later, he could illegitimately claim the presidency. Never mind that he was born a citizen (since his mother was a citizen), which is what most legal scholars say is the definition of "natural born." Never mind that his opponent was born (to American citizens) in the Panama Canal Zone, which is not exactly part of the fifty states. Never mind rationality. Anything is fodder for whining.

Like the Prez's plan to donate the money to charity. "What charity?" all the haters screech. "Why won't he tell us?" they rant.

Dudes. The guy doesn't even have the cash in hand yet. He found out about it a couple days ago. If you won the lottery, maybe you'd rush right in with the ticket and claim the bucks. If you did so, though, you'd be morons. What you do is hire a tax lawyer, figure out what you want to keep, what you want to give to friends and family and what you want to give to charity. And you get the lawyer's help in dotting the i's and crossing the t's. Then you claim the money.

But again, the haters aren't about rationality. They're about, well, hating. And it's not even real hatred, for the most part. It's politically-motivated bloviation, knee-jerk "he's ruing the country!" nonsense. It's tedious. I don't like reading that kind of stuff, no matter its political bent.

Look. It's a good thing for the country when the Prez wins an award like the Nobel Peace Prize--even if he may not, in fact, deserve it. Who gives a rat's ass, anyway? It's a big prize, our leader won it and I think he deserves a toast.

To a man who has the chance to be truly great. Let us hope that he finds and comes into that greatness.

Skal!

Jon Worley had to look up the proper Swedish drinking toast, and he's not entirely sure he's spelling it properly.