Reality kills satire. Film at 11.

Jon Stewart used to call it Your Moment of Zen: A news item so profoundly bizarre you felt sorry for the folks at the satirical news site The Onion, because its thunder had been stolen yet again by stuff that was (no, we are not kidding) actually real.

And so to today, when this happened.

No, really. This happened.

Vladimir Putin really did say defrocked FIFA czar Sepp Blatter, the most corrupt man in sports,
 should win a Nobel Prize.

"I believe that people like Mr. Blatter, the heads of major international sports federations, deserve special attention and gratitude from public organizations," Putin said. "If anyone should be awarded Nobel Prizes, it is these people."

 

Bizarre as that statement is, it should not have surprised anyone. Putin has been in Blatter's corner since FIFA picked Russia to host the 2018 World Cup. He doesn't think the man is corrupt at all. Then again, we're talking about Putin, so there's a pretty high tolerance at work here. What the rest of the world calls corruption (bribery, extortion, all that good stuff) Putin simply sees as the way things get done.

 

Besides, did we mention FIFA picked Russia to host the 2018 World Cup? Oh, we did?

 

Well, I'm sure Putin's fondness for Sepp has nothing whatever to do with that.

 

His pounding the drums for a Nobel Prize for his bestie does, however, invite some intriguing Nobel possibilities not previously entertained.

 

For the Nobel Peace Prize: Whatever raving lunatic is running ISIS these days, on the grounds that no one wants a Piece of everyone else in the entire world the way he does.

 

For the Nobel Prize for Literature: Hiram P. Fudderman of Squirrel Droppings, North Dakota, for his Wal-Mart shopping list, hailed as a "riveting blend of pathos, wry humor and bitter loss involving the protagonist's increasingly desperate search for Archway Coconut Macaroons and Crisco Lite."

 

And finally ...

 

For the Nobel Prize for Economics, the resident of Woodland, N.C. who, in a debate over a proposed solar farm, said it wouldn't be worth the savings because he feared the solar panels would "suck up all the energy from the sun."

 And, no, I'm not making that one up, either.