here's the sort of reason that obama shouldn't be gettin no nobel. and here's a piece of the announcement:

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.

one suspects that obama was awarded the prize for the devastating 'hope' poster, which uplifted and yet bored us all; perhaps it should have gone to shepard fairey instead. but wait a second. why should it be a matter of 'sharing values and attitudes with a majority of the world's population'? and what the hell are these attitudes and values anyway? there are a lot of muslim fundamentalists or peasant communists, i believe. if you found that liberty or peace weren't polling very well (and liberty has an advocacy group in the u.s. that's smaller than the margin of error), would you think that our most inspiring leaders must lead on the basis of unfreedom and war? did martin luther king speak for a majority?

other americans who have "captured the world's attention": michael jackson, angelina jolie, charles manson. anyway, the nobel heads might want to re-think their criteria, or perhaps hire someone to try to think through their basic concepts or something so that the text of the next announcement isn't just slop, or is better slop.