Fred Armisen offered the most precise answer this Saturday as to why President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in a surprise Oslo announcement on Friday: "Because I'm not George Bush."
Armisen's Obama then accepted another reward, a Powerball lottery check worth $70 million. All the sweeter, after all, because it was his character's first time playing the lottery.
It's clear that the humorists at SNL have tapped into the hilarity of the president's good fortune and his seemingly affable air about it.
Even still, the announcement from Oslo was met more with gasps of shock than laughter of irony. Rush Limbaugh and his anonymous "dittohead bootlickers" nearly fell into cardiac arrest spurred from their anger. Bill Kristol declared he should have received an award for his efforts at peace, and across the nation people of all political affiliations scratched their head in surprise, turning to each other to ask, "for what?"
By now, my opinion of President Obama is fairly evident to regular readers of this column: He could screw up bigger than 43 ever dreamed of, and I still wouldn't harbor a single doubt about not voting for McPalin and Co.
Just the same, after the initial euphoria of knowing the leader of the United States was at least respected and not disdained by some in the international community, I found myself reaching for the phone.
"Why did this happen?" I asked a more politically conservative friend. The reply, unfortunately, is not fit for print, and there was more hissing than a coiled up ball python on the other end of the line.
"It's a shame the award didn't go to someone who put their life on the line and had accomplished an actual concrete peace, rather than someone who has just spoken of this peace," said another conservative friend, Will Motch, an Applied Physiology and Kinesiology sophomore at UF.
The latter, levelheaded response is the opinion I fall into. President Obama may have felt humbled by the prize and the company of people the award places him in, but it's not an incredibly peaceful list. Henry Kissinger is on the list. Yasser Arafat won the prize in 1994. In 1912, Elihu Root, a former secretary of state and war who pillaged the Philippines, is also a Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
As much as I like Obama, and as much as I want him to succeed - a stark contrast to some of our more "patriotic" and sanctimonious conservative pundits and congressmen - the Nobel Prize committee shorted themselves and devalued the award by naming Obama the 2009 winner. Or did they?
The office President Obama holds has the ability to effect more change around the world in one day than many people can accomplish in a lifetime.
He has made great promises to seek peace, to renew dialogue with nations that we have previously ignored, and has sought a more multilateral, rather than unilateral approach to foreign policy.
Over the next three years, Obama has the opportunity to prove the Nobel committee right by using our military might to make right, by leading any international discussion away from impetuousness, but towards prudence, and by leading the way in reducing the world's dependence on oil, lessening the grip petro-dictators hold on their people and world stability.
Now that's the peace I could believe in.
Matt Christ is a political science sophomore. His column appears on Mondays.
