Narcissistic Norwegians

It would seem that the Norwegians, having decided to bestow this year's Nobel Peace Prize on a sitting US President who clearly had done nothing to deserve it - he'd only been in office a month before being nominated! - are now throwing a tiff because the President of the United States has more important things to do with his time than spending three days in Oslo swanning about with the Norwegian figurehead.

US President Barack Obama has irked some Norwegians for truncating a three-day schedule of events organised around his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize.

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He is due to meet the Norwegian prime minister but has turned down an invitation to have lunch with the king.

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According to a poll in the Norwegian tabloid VG, only a third of those questioned believed it was acceptable for Mr Obama to cancel his lunch with King Harald. Some 44% said they thought it was rude.

These Northmen seriously need to get over themselves: we're talking about the leader of the world's greatest superpower here, a guy who has an economic crisis, a stalled domestic political agenda and two foreign wars to deal with. Do they really think he's going to be setting all of that aside just for the sake of a few photo opportunities with the figurehead leader of a country of just 3 million people? One has to be delusional or living in a bubble of parochialism to believe for a minute that such a thing is possible.

If this was one of the reasons to award the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama - to bring the President of the United States to Norway for the entertainment of the populace as if he were the leader of a pop band - then count gross narcissism as yet another of the sins of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, alongside pandering and "right on" political gesturing.