While researching my book about prostitution, one of the more remarkable clients I met at the brothel was Albert. Albert had been going there for twenty or thirty years. Albert bought a couple of hours with a prostitute two or three times a week. As a pervert, he paid the special "pervert premium", which nearly doubled the price he paid. Several times a week for double and even triple sessions during an entire generation - it adds up to quite a sum that Albert has paid for his kind of sex, and my contacts in that world tell me that it is still adding up. Albert continues to make his contribution to the financial welfare of prostitutes, and they satisfy his emotional needs even more.

I met many women who had had him as a client. They all described the same action in which Albert took such delight. Born with a tiny and abnormally shaped penis, he paid the women to point at it and chant, "It's big! It's big! It's big! It's very, very big!", for a couple of hours. Albert then went home smiling.

DavidFarer.com is now instituting a new prize, to be called the Albert Award, which we shall present to those who conduct their political, intellectual, or social affairs in a manner most nearly embodying the spirit of the original Albert's contribution to sex.

Today we make our very first award.

In recent years, many people in Europe, to a lesser extent the United States, and even in Israel herself have maintained that Hamas, the leading Palestinian Islamic terror organization, has been misunderstood. These people maintain that Hamas is only joking when it constantly repeats that it seeks to destroy Israel as a country, and that when it sends suicide-bombers and other terrorists to kill civilians randomly in cafes, buses, and shops, it is only because Hamas is underloved.

Politicians in Europe and elsewhere are doing what they can to rectify this situation. Among the steps they are taking:

The European Union and several of its members are establishing low-level diplomatic contacts with Hamas as needed to do various helpful things on the ground. In many municipalities in the West Bank and Gaza, the local Arabs have elected city councils that are dominated by Hamas. The theory is that Hamas is not specialized ONLY in terrorist attacks that kill Israeli civilians, but also runs local schools in which they teach the glories of suicide-bombing, love of death, hate for Americans, Jews, homosexuals, Israel, and democracy. Many of these educational institutions are supported in part by European tax-payers, because education is always a good thing. The aid organizations reason that they will be unable to help Palestinian schools unless they deal directly and personally with those who administer them.

Hamas performs a number of other social functions among the Arabs, such as making welfare payments to families whose finances have been wrecked because of the war the Palestinian leadership started with Israel a few short years ago. Hamas is known to be much less corrupt than Fatah, the party of Yassir Wasafart. They are idealists; what kind of bribe can you offer somebody who is thinking about seventy-two virgins?

Hamas has great and heartfelt sympathy among the Palestinian people. The reasoning goes that if Arabs vote for a particular party, then the world should accept their choice.

My favorite quote: "help them overcome extremism". The reason why Hamas is not particularly reasonable right now is because the world had not helped them enough. If we give lots of money to a terrorist organization that actively organizes and encourages suicide-bombing, then it will become less extreme, just as if you write a check to a serial murder he will take up chess.

And so, on behalf of DavidFarer.com, we proudly present those politicians, journalists, and others with the very first Albert Award. They deserve it, because they do for the Arab-Israel dispute what Albert did for sex. They point at Hamas and chant, "They want peace! They want peace! They want peace very, very much!"