So now we know that roads paved with good intentions lead not to hell, but to Nobel peace prizes. Or so the five clueless Norwegians on the prize committee appeared to think.

In our disputatious, divided world, I can’t remember the last time a consensus of opinion developed so quickly and so strongly: the Norwegians’ decision to hand the Nobel prize to someone eight months into a so-far undistinguished term in office is a bit odd.

But the very fact that this consensus has developed is actually even odder than what caused it. After all, in some ways, awarding the prize to the pre-eminent spokesman for a cause the committee wants to further — even when the spokesman hasn’t yet achieved what he set out to do — isn’t unusual: Al Gore hasn’t fixed global warming, nor has Aung San Suu Kyi freed Burma yet. But this time, the reaction was immediate and near-universal: he hasn’t done enough.

Indeed, nothing was more certain to focus the resentment of those who already felt that Obama was showered with more adulation than he deserved, or to crystallise the disappointment of those who were beginning to feel that he wasn’t living up to the hopes he raised. The reason that the reaction has been so all-encompassing and severe is that the backlash had begun in people’s heads — they just hadn’t known how to express it.

So it was that these five Norwegians — who are no doubt now hiding from puzzled, questioning friends in their holiday cabins in Lapland — have managed to accomplish what his Republican rivals, the Clintons, and all America’s late night television hosts failed to do: turn Barack Obama into a figure of fun. A few months ago, people were worrying he was unmockable. But now, within a few hours, there were dozens of Obama-jokes doing the rounds. Everyone had one.

... contd.