The Balloon Boy Presidency

I just finished watching President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. I don't know that I've ever witnessed a sadder event that didn't involve human tragedy.

In accepting the prize, Obama compellingly argued that he neither deserved it nor understood it nor felt any obligation to its earthly intention. For the months leading up to his election, we shared Obama's campaign of HOPE and believed his rhetoric to signify a significant political intellect.

In Oslo, Obama's speech could have been delivered by the Orwellian errand boy, George W. Bush. Obama's message justified and romanticized war as our only comforting peace. His references to mankind extended no further than the borders of the United States and his historical context for action was no broader than the experience of an entitled black man empowered through his vicarious associations with actual civil rights activists.

This year's award of the Nobel Peace Prize is a hoax no grander than that of the balloon boy whose family's dream was to live life on a reality show. Obama too wants us to believe that the war he wages affects the television reality where humans observe the world instead of engaging in it. Obama's idea of Peace is getting re-elected and not giving the perception of being weak.

Like the boy who was never in the balloon, Obama was never in the movement that elected him. Tonight the Obama that was hiding in the barn in Kansas arrived like a Jerzy Kosinski character walking into a situation that he had no context for being in. The Peace Prize could have just as well been given to a General or Comedian or a barnyard animal.

His speech was awkward and disturbing. I felt as though I was watching the wrong channel or that maybe a conservative group had invented an anti-YES men and had fooled the audience.

The air of HOPE has leaked out of Obama's balloon. He tells us WAR is PEACE, that insurance companies can tax citizens, and that we are Racing to the Top for education.

This is not the man I voted for and he's not the man the Nobel Peace Prize committee thought he was.

What we are left with is yet another empty suit.

On War and Peace

I just read an interesting story about Columbine survivor, Craig Scott. It's worth posting. A few years ago, I worked a contract for a major children's publishing house and I had to test their search engine to be sure kids and parents could find the correct books. So I entered the words 'war' and 'peace'.

War books showed up like shoppers at a Going Out of Business sale. But books on peace were virtually absent except for peace as death, isolation, or spiritual search. Try it with your favorite children's books publisher. It will tell you a lot about what children learn.

From Bill Clinton, George Bush and Craig Scott: Nation's Leaders">Bill Clinton, George Bush and Craig Scott: Nation's Leaders Mislead Youth by Preaching Peace, Practicing War by David Cook, Common Dreams

Flash forward to last week, as the Amish school shooting in Pennsylvania prompted President Bush to call a similar, post-Columbine conference on character and school violence. Present during the Maryland conference (alongside Attorney General Gonzales and Secretary of Education Spellings) was Craig Scott, the now-23-year-old who had lost his sister and friends in the Columbine shooting. During the only meaningful moment of the conference, Scott stood and addressed the president.

"I've grown up in a culture today that doesn't teach me anything of substance, of value, how it bombards me every day with messages of emptiness and shallowness. And the youth are crying for something to stand for, something to believe in. If it weren't for my faith or my family, I possibly could have fallen into the lies that our culture tells us. But now I've traveled, I've spoken to over a million teens across this country.... I've seen depression, anger and loneliness, students without direction or purpose.... I've seen students who called themselves cutters, have cut themselves because that's the way they know to take out the pain that they're dealing with. I've learned a lot about my generation. And I've learned a lot since I lost my friends and my sister.''

And then Scott said the greatest words the president or anyone else could hope to ever hear:

"And the main thing I've learned is that kindness and compassion can be the biggest antidotes to anger and hatred, and I believe the biggest antidotes to violence.''

The president responded in the only way he could, which was to thank Scott, applaud him and then ask for a copy of his speech.

The next day, researchers from Johns Hopkins released an updated body count for the war in Iraq. An estimated 600,000 civilians have died since the war began. These are not soldiers or armed resisters; these are mothers, grandfathers, children playing outside. Families, just like yours, just like mine.

God forgive me should I ever truly understand how presidents Clinton and Bush are able to mouth the hollow words about protecting children ("We must ... teach them to express their anger and resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons") and then, hours later, give the damnable blessing for military movements that kill other people's children. This is madness, and it is the hell-bent delusion of violence that allows the president of the United States to stand up before a crowded room of parents, reporters and survivors and announce his intentions to better protect American schoolchildren, and then, before the same day's sun sets, continue to sit on a war that has killed more than half-a-million souls.

And a nation of 300 million barely opens its mouth.