I got the news at 5:04 a.m.
The vibrations of my BlackBerry, which I sleep with, clutched in my hand, woke me up.
The face of my BlackBerry read, “CNN Alert.”
I quickly pressed the button and this came up:
“CNN Breaking News: Oct. 9, 2009:
President Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.”
Tears came to my eyes. I started to sob.
I reached over and shook my wife, the Beautiful Judy Licht. “Wake up, wake up, this is great news,” I screamed.
“Wha… Wha… What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” she said, her eyes full of sleep.
“Because I’m so happy. Barack Hussein Obama, our wonderful president, has won the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Judy then turned over and tried to go back to sleep.
I jumped out of bed and said, “We must do something to celebrate. Let’s wake up our neighbors—I’m sure they want to hear this great news. I wish we had some noisemakers.”
I remember when I was a kid, we didn’t have noisemakers on New Year’s Eve, so we’d bang pots and pans. But then I thought of Shlomo, my little puppy who was fast asleep next to my bed, and the noise of someone banging pans might give him a heart attack.
“This will show them,” I said.
“Show who?” mumbled Judy from under the covers.
“This will show those racist, conservative dogs on Saturday Night Live and Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, and all the other comedy shows who have been laughing at President Obama because they say he has accomplished nothing in the first nine months of his administration, that President Obama has accomplished winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
“This will show that fat, dope, fascist Michael Moore, who has been saying that President Obama is not doing enough to force health care on every American, even if it breaks this country financially and destroys the quality of health care, that our clever president has just been rope-a-doping everyone until he has a mandate from the world.
“And now our president won’t just be making sure that every American is covered, but has a plan to provide and pay for medical coverage for every single person on Earth.
“Yes We Can, Yes We Can…” I started to chant.
“Go to sleep, you idiot,” Judy moaned.
“Sleep? No, I’m not going to sleep, this is the most important day of our lives. It means, to quote Neville Chamberlain, that thanks to the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize committee we will have ‘Peace in Our Time.’
“President Obama will live up to his award and turn the other cheek should Iran drop the bomb on Cleveland. He’ll never send another soldier to Afghanistan. He will, instead, unveil his Donald Rumsfeld plan to keep enough soldiers there to lose the country to the Taliban. He will negotiate with everyone—the Taliban, Castro, even bin Laden if he comes out of his cave and asks to address the UN. Obama will never defend Israel, even if they are under attack. We will never challenge China. Hell, if Costa Rica invades us, we will surrender right after he makes a stirring speech pointing out it’s only fair, since we’ve been exploiting them all these years.
“And we owe it all to five Norwegians on the Nobel selection committee, whose names we can’t pronounce. They did it because they were wise enough not to judge our wonderful president on his accomplishments. If you’re handsome, intelligent, personable, and have a great ability to make stirring speeches you don’t need accomplishments—you just need to show that you have the potential to accomplish something, some day.”
Then, when I said “potential,” I broke down and started to sob again.
“Now why are you sobbing?” said Judy.
“POTENTIAL,” I said, with tears rolling down my cheeks. “MY UNCLE LOUIE.”
“What about your Uncle Louie?”
“My God, he was just like Obama. He had potential. I remember, when I was a little boy, Uncle Louie would have a few glasses of wine and would tell me how much he loved everyone in the world. Then he’d say if he had the money he would make everyone in the neighborhood happy. Then he would reach into his pocket and give me a nickel for lemon ice. Then he would take another glass of wine and say, ‘I love everyone in the world.’ And when my Aunt Mary would scream at him for drinking a gallon of red wine a day, would he answer her? No sir. Not my Uncle Louie. He would always say, ‘That’s a nice, don’ta fight.’ My Uncle Louie had potential. Did they give my Uncle Louie the Nobel Peace Prize? No! They broke his heart and gave the Peace Prize that year to Albert Schweitzer.”
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