Predictably, the conservative chattering class and its amen corner in the right-wing blogosphere are apoplectic about the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore. But their rage and angst about the Nobel Committee's "politicized awards" for "mass exaggerators" and "deceptive rhetoric" isn't merely a function of the inconvenient truth of the success of Gore's global warming campaign. No, the rugged individualists of the right are just hopping mad that they never win prizes designed to recognize contributions to, well, the rest of humanity.
To remedy this perpetual slight, here are Nobel prizes for conservatives we'd like to see:
Physics: George W. Bush. President Bush is awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his groundbreaking work on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which declares that the entropy, randomness and chaos of the universe are ever increasing. The Bush Doctrine, with its three tenets of no safe havens for terrorists, preventive war and democracy promotion, has produced sectarian conflict and civil war in Iraq, Hamas control over Gaza, centrifugal forces in Lebanon and an Al Qaeda safe haven in Pakistan. Like global warming, Bush demonstrated that global chaos can be indeed caused by human action.
Literature: Lynne Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, Scooter Libby. The Nobel Committee split its prize for literature among three hard core conservatives whose works of soft core pornography provide a sharp contrast with the family values they espouse. Second Lady Lynne Cheney was recognized for her 1981 novel Sisters, a steamy tale of forbidden lesbian love in the Old West. O'Reilly's pre-falafel depiction of oral sex in his 1998 classic Those Who Trespass earned him honors, while Libby's haunting tale The Apprentice with its portrayal of child prostitution and bestiality in 19th century Japan impressed the judges.
Medicine: Dr. Bill Frist. The former Senate Majority Leader was recognized by the Committee for lifetime achievement in the teaching of medicine and medical ethics. Frist, who as a young man dissected adopted cats for fun and profit, famously offered a videotape misdiagnosis of Terri Schiavo on the Senate floor. Having briefly insisted that AIDS could be transmitted by tears, Frist also took both sides in the debate over stem cell research. But despite serving as a horrible example to future doctors everywhere, Frist finds his own career not in a permanent vegetative state, but as a front man for Save the Children's global campaign against childhood disease.
Economics: George W. Bush. The President captured an unprecedented second Nobel for his radical Universal Theory of Tax Cuts. Upon entering office in 2001, Bush described his massive tax cuts for the wealthy as the needed remedy for a burgeoning federal surplus. Just months later as the Bush recession deepened, tax cuts were needed to jumpstart the flagging American economy. Despite being responsible for virtually the entire annual U.S. federal budget deficit, Bush just this week claimed that the slowly shrinking deficit is attributable to his tax cuts. While denying that his unprecedented wealth transfer to the richest Americans is helping fuel the highest income inequality since the 1920's, Bush's research team next plans to test his hypothesis that tax cuts can cure erectile dysfunction.
Chemistry: Alberto Gonzales. The former Attorney General was awarded the Chemistry Prize for his revolutionary work refuting the claim that oil and water don't mix. During his tenure as White House Counsel and at the Justice Department, Gonzales demonstrated that torture is apparently both consistent with and encouraged by American law and the Geneva Convention. Gonzales also showed that repeatedly lying to Congress under oath is no barrier to service as the nation's highest law enforcement official. (His bedside manner during his 2004 visit to the hospitalized John Ashcroft almost earned him the prize for medicine as well.) His chemistry with President Bush wasn't too shabby, either.
Peace: Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol, Norman Podhoretz. Cheney, Kristol and Podhoretz shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their work demonstrating that absence (of peace) makes the heart grow fonder. From their PNAC collaboration on regime change in Iraq, their false claims in 2002 and 2003 about the threat from Saddam's weapons programs to their desired confrontation with Iran, the trio showed how much you can miss something when its gone. For their work unleashing the forces of war and conflict, the Committee greeted Cheney, Kristol and Podhoretz as liberators.