Was there anyone who DIDN'T know that AlGore was going to win the Nobel Peace Prize? Let's see by a show of hands how many of you were surprised at the "news" that Al had been awarded his Peace Prize .... um hmm, I see one ensign down on Deck Ten who says this was a total shock. Anyone else? I didn't think so.

I sure knew it was coming -- but it is still embarrassing to see such a ridiculous public spectacle, all the same. And to have to share it with a panel from the UN, well, I wouldn't want to admit to such a thing in public even if I were "honored" in such a way (which, thankfully, I don't have that problem). Entertainingly, this week another court -- this one in the UK -- has officially ruled that, upon their measured consideration and in light of all the evidence they can find and review, the "Inconvenient Truth" is more aptly about "Convenient Partisan Exaggerations" but that doesn't matter, either. This award is truly a world-class Liberal Love Fest -- and they are welcome to it. Any scrap of credibility that might have been left with the Nobel Prize Committee is now officially gone. They might as well celebrate that at the same time.

The only remarkable moment to me is that they seem to be totally unaware of how they have embarrassed themselves publicly. This brings me to my question -- if you are too gauche or oblivious or too crudely raised to know that you have embarrassed yourself, have you actually embarrassed yourself? I mean, what level of self-awareness is needed? When the "grieving widow" cries out at the funeral service, "Can you PLEASE get on with this and get this jerk into the ground, so I can get my check?" .... has she embarrassed herself? Or does she need to know that she has said something crude, or at least indelicate, in order to have the rules of embarrassment and humiliation apply? It seems to be the newest restatement of the question of the tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear it -- does it make any sound?

Without question, there is no shame among the Love Fest revelers. Secure in their intellectual cocoons, they are thrilled to continue to award themselves and each other these great honors. Never are they ever actually required to be held accountable for their great plans. AlGore isn't going to have to give it back when history judges the actual events against his predictions. There will be plenty of room for him to take his seat next to Edgar Cayce, who predicted that Atlantis was going to rise in 1952 and flood the Eastern Seaboard. But as Country Joe said so many years ago, "Whoopee! We're all going to die!!"