So Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh boy. Before everyone gets too far gone in the Algorgasm, I'd like to point out that the following people have also won the Nobel Peace Prize: Woodrow Wilson (how'd that League of Nations work out?), Frank Kellogg & Nicholas Murray Butler (good thing we had the Kellogg-Briand Pact. That certainly prevented war after the 1920s. Whew!), Yasser Arafat (I don't even need to put anything sarcastic in parentheses for this one), the United Nations & Kofi Annan (mind you, this is AFTER they bailed on the genocide in Rwanda) and Jimmy Carter (what genocide?).

Of course, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to truly deserving giants like Mother Teresa, Norman Borlaug, George Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Lech Walesa.

But, as Wikipedia helpfully notes:

A particular claimed weakness of the Nobel Peace Prize awarding process is the swiftness of recognition. The scientific and literary Nobel Prizes are usually issued in retrospect, often two or three decades after the intellectual achievement, thus representing a time-proven confirmation and balance of approval by the established academic community, seldom contradicted by newer developments. In contrast, the Nobel Peace Prize at times takes the form of summary judgment, being issued in the same year as or the year immediately following the political act. Some commentators have suggested that to award a peace prize on the basis of unquantifiable contemporary opinion is unjust or possibly erroneous, especially as many of the judges cannot themselves be said to be impartial observers.

Bingo! So, don't get too upset or too excited about Al Gore. It is history, not the Peace Prize Committee, that'll determine whether he's a hero or a goat.