I missed most of the haters on the right reacting to Obama’s peace prize, partly because I was traveling but partly because I’ve been to the sewer, thanks. Now I’m reflecting more on the response of those with whom I more politically aligned, and cogitating on just what the hell the Nobel Committee was thinking. 

In an interview the committee’s secretary Geir Lundestad said not only were the Norwegians betting on the future (Nobel To President: Don’t Screw It Up) but claimed that he has “produced an entirely new international climate.” 

Looking with some skepticism at the president’s achievements to date, a lot of Americans forget what he means to the rest of the world — all those people in all those  places we so perfectly alienated over the last eight years. Of course Rush & Beck & company don’t care about them — but you should. 

I remember seeing Yossou N’Dour performing at BAM before a largely African and Muslim audience shortly after Obama’s speech in Cairo. The occasion was the premier of a documentary about the singer, I Bring What I Love, and the director in her opening remarks referenced the speech — and the place went nuts. Five minutes of sustained prolong unprompted applause, all because our leader had said the equivalent of: Let’s Talk. 

Granted, Bush set the bar pretty low and any number of candidates for the peace prize stood in contrast to the forever-war politics of the GOP. And yes, Obama has not been bold (or reckless) in his decisions about the conflicts in Iraq & Afghanistan — but bold and reckless aren’t really his style and was not why many people pulled the lever to make him president. Give him time. Give the world time. Consider the alternative. 

I heard a podcast of a dharma talk this morning by Paul Haller of the San Francisco Zen Center: it was early, we were in a hotel, I was trying not to wake my daughter. In the lecture (called Divine Discontent, available here for those playing at home) he tells the story of guy who goes a hundred miles to see some famous Buddhist teacher and says, What have you got? “Do less harm,” says the master. 

That’s it? says the pilgrim, incredulous. I come 100 miles and you say, “Do less harm”?!

“A child of eight knows it,” says the monk, “but can a person of 80 practice it?” 

Good question! Let us all live to be so old.

First came the news that Archie, who had been on the fence for almost 70 years, had picked Veronica over Betty. This decision was not well-received by Archie’s fan base, which is legion and universal. The consensus seemed to be that Veronica, rich brunette vixen, was the darker choice while fair & forgiving Betty was a safer bet. (Talking about all that dough Mr. Lodge had was considered gauche.) 

Now comes word that Archie, in an alternate universe, is also marrying Betty. Aw, come on! What kind of lessons does this teach our children? That would be like Gilligan getting with Ginger and Mary Ann. Life isn’t like that! You can’t have both!

Unless you’re a comic book character. Or a rock star.

For kids who grew up reading Archie comics, which is pretty much every kid in America, the eternal fence-sitting was the stuff of pre-adolescence. You didn’t have to choose because, frankly, neither of those girls was getting any older and school was never getting out. Forcing Archie to choose is like forcing him to grow up, which seems rather unfair (even if you can now read his exploits in graphic novels). I think of young Mick Jagger, who has never quite grown up himself, singing “Sitting on a Fence,” a song I listened to incessantly about the time I traded Archie for Zap Comix: “All of my friends from school grew up and settled down/And they mortgaged up their lives/One things not said too much but I think it’s true/They just get married ’cause there’s nothing else to do.”

Of course Mick — and his Jughead, Keith — don’t exactly look the same. Seeing those two is kind of like Dorian Gray in reverse. Somewhere there are portraits of them, fresh and innocent as babies.

You probably didn’t see Bill Clinton on Meet the Press Sunday. Given the number of televised sporting events to choose from — the Mets and the Jets and the Giants and the Yanks were all on TV, at the same time! — it was hard to fit him in. But for a president with a famously low opinion of reporters, he treated the all-too affable David Gregory mighty kindly.

Most journalists offer only slow pitches to ex-presidents (though they might start getting a little wary of Jimmy Carter) and the only real headline-maker here came when Gregory asked Clinton if the “vast right-wing conspiracy” Hillary famously limned was still out there. “Oh, you bet,” Clinton replied. “Sure it is. It’s not as strong as it was, because America’s changed demographically, but it’s as virulent as it was. I mean, they’re saying things about him–you know, it’s like when they accused me of murder and all that stuff they did. He–but it’s not really good for the Republicans and the country, what’s going on now. I mean, they may be hurting President Obama. They can take his numbers down, they can run his opposition up. But fundamentally, he and his team have a positive agenda for America. Their agenda seems to be wanting him to fail, and that’s not a prescription for a good America.”

Pretty good answer, I thought; when he wasn’t obfuscating Clinton was always one of the best politicians in the US when it came to straightening bent facts. (He even made John Kerry’s famous avowal that he was for the Iraq war before he was against seem sensible.) And even if he managed to twist the knife a bit in the end, he has always understood that politics is a knife-fight.  What has been surprising since then is the reaction of some on the left. Take Lawrence O’Donnell, subbing for Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s Countdown last night: “Mr. Clinton,” he said in reaction, “we have some 21^st century news for you here.  The vast right-wing propaganda machine is not shrinking; it is growing.”

Then, with the help of Crooks & Liars‘ Dave Neiwart he enumerated all the familiar evils out there: Rush, Beck, death panels, birthers. No doubt, a smoldering cauldron of BS is a-brewing. And you don’t have to look far to find it. But you don’t have to look far to find it refuted, either (hence Countdown, Rachel Maddow, Huff Post et al) — a more emboldened liberal counterpoint-machine than existed in Clinton’s time. And remember, this ex-president who generally chooses his words very carefully was talking about demographic change. The ground is moving under the right — where the people are and what colors they be —  and those shifts leave some on the right sounding slightly unhinged. He’s just saying they’re not as potent.

Clinton saw his administration grievously wounded (though not capsized) as much by his own foolishness as the VRWC. (And where do you put papers such as the NY Times in the spectrum of his enemies?) He knows the difference, I think, between a white whale and Whitewater, and he sees the tide a-changing…

Those of us opposed to the Atlantic Yards project were alarmed by the news this week that Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov was to acquire a majority stake in the New Jersey Nets — as well as the responsibility for moving the team to Brooklyn and pushing through Bruce Ratner’s benighted attempt to give us a score of skyscrapers we never asked for. Bad enough that members of the loyal opposition such as Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn have always seen this as a David v. Goliath contest. Now we have an actual Goliath: the 6’7″ Prokhorov has designs on American basketball and about $10 billion to play with. 

In other parts of the country people paid less attention to this story; the big takeaway nationallywas “Russian guy buys US team.” This might have produced yowls of protest in the Cold War days, but when the Chinese own most of our debt and our baseball players are all Dominican, foreign influence seems relative.

Fortunately, the New York Times helpfully explains it all for us in a typically condescending editorial in today’s Week in Review. Moscow correspondent Clifford Levy first gives DDDB (of which I am a proud member) points for being “resourceful, tenacious and just plain ornery.” (“Get off my land, ya varmint!”) Then he establishes his bona fides by saying he now lives just blocks from Prokhorov’s office but used to live right near the site of the Nets proposed arena. 

That’s just to show he’s not biased as he lampoons “denizens of Brownstone Brooklyn” who “like to pad around in plastic clogs.” It is Mr. Levy’s unoriginal thesis that our once mighty borough — “land of Walt Whitman and other luminaries” —  could get some class back with an NBA arena. The development would, in his words, “accentuate its renaissance.”

I wish he still lived here; I would supply him with a map of the stars’ homes that he somehow missed when he lived here. Within a ten-minute walk of his old digs he could drop in on such modern luminaries as Jhumpa Lahiri, Jeffrey Wright, David Salle, Michelle Williams, Jennifer Egan and many more — nearly all of them opposed to this project. But Levy has already bagged his prey; he mocks a Park Slope public forum he attended in 2000 that debated the merits of Bush v. Nader, “as if the idea of even considering voting for George W. Bush was preposterous.” What were we thinking?!

Still, Levy thinks Prokhorov might have a hard time adapting to the idea of community resistance. He quotes Alec Brook-Krasny, a former Muscovite who now represents Brighton Beach in the state assembly on the difference between the two cultures. “Things are still done in a very simple way in Moscow,” he says. “Whoever is the main person in the neighborhood, the main official in the city, that person makes the decision. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s the final decision, and the community has no say.”

Crazy! Here we let three people — usually the mayor, the governor and whoever is running the legislature at the moment — make the decisions. And the community has no say here, either. This project was never put to a vote, the public hearings have been free-for-alls in which unions and others who stand to benefit financially have shouted down the opposition, and the city and the state have bent over backwards to make sure Ratner gets his way. Because here, as in Moscow, the guy with the most money wins. 

Sometimes with an assist from a journalist.

Did you dig Obama on Letterman last night? Most of today’s commentary focuses on the fact that he was serious after making with some jokes. (“I was actually black before I was elected” may have been scripted but it still played like a snap.) This after a Sunday full of talk show appearances – all in the same chair! — talking about health care reform, the economy, the wars…

Difference is the audience. The ratings for the Sunday talk shows are always actually rather low — but the demographics are primo! Well-to-do older viewers tune in (hence all the luxury car and financial management ads) and they have mostly made up their minds about those issues, or are at least paying attention. 

The average Letterman viewer is more, well, average. They tune in for some laughs, some celebrity sightings (and sometimes mishaps), some music. And the idea that this articulate, well-meaning man could actually convince a few of them to put down the bong or the beer or the cup of cocoa for a minute and actually grapple with the benefits of a better run health care system is quite moving to me, in a small d democratic way. We elected Obama — we did! — and most of us are still pulling for him. The fact that haters don’t like it can’t change the path we chose unless we let them. These are the same people who put an inept puppet and his evil henchman in the driver’s seat and looked the other way as he drove the country off a cliff. They had their chance. Now get out of the way. 

My favorite ad lib was actually Dave’s. After the president said that he let his daughters relax this summer he allowed that he didn’t have that option. “I couldn’t goof off all summer,” he said. 

“Others have,” said Letterman. 

‘nuf said.