Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize
When I heard the report that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize, my reaction was two questions: “Huh?” and “What for?” I suspect that many millions of other people had the same reaction. Absurd awards of the political Nobels (Peace and Literature) never really surprise me, but this one is over-the-top.
The President said:
To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize….
…throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.
I agree on both points. I also agree with what Ruth Marcus wrote:
This is ridiculous — embarrassing, even. I admire President Obama. I like President Obama. I voted for President Obama. But the peace prize? This is supposed to be for doing, not being — and it’s no disrespect to the president to suggest he hasn’t done much yet. Certainly not enough to justify the peace prize.
“Extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples?” “[C]aptured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future?” Please. This turns the award into something like pee-wee soccer: everybody wins for trying.
Obama isn’t going to decline the award, as some have suggested that he should. Fine — let him keep it, and the tidy sum of cash that comes with it. After all, when you compare his award to past awards, why not? Anyone can be a star in the theater of the absurd.
A closing thought — why not Bill Clinton? He’s raised probably a billion dollars for humanitarian causes since he left office. And, like Obama, he isn’t George W. Bush, an important qualification in the minds of the leftist loons of Europe.
But what the heck; let’s take the Nobel Peace Prize for what it’s worth — not much — and be happy our President won it. And who knows, it may motivate him to step back from that bottomless swamp that awaits us in Afghanistan.
(This article was also published at Opinion Forum.)
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Obama is a good man, indeed a great man, and i praise his efforts to fight for world peace.
To bad book advert(aka ConditionYourMind), just exactly why do you feel he deserves it?
The deadline to nominate anyone for the Nobel Peace Prize was February, 2009. Nominations came in long before that deadline. President Obama was President Elect until his swearing in ceremony in January 2009. People seem to miss this. President Obama was nominated and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize folks. Congratulations President Obama! I am proud and happy that you received it. I feel you deserve it.
Hail Satan, I hope you’re not a brit like me because you are clearly a paranoid moron with no actual contribution to make, so unless you actually have something intelligent to say then shut the f**k up(P.S. You really shouldn’t have shaken your brain free, as you appear to have lost it).
Regarding the article, I have to say that I am hard pressed to think of a reasonable justification for him to get such an award, however having said that if you look at not just the nobel awards,but also many others, I.E, the british knighthood award system I beleive that you will find that the standards are lowering for such awards, perhaps because there are fewer really deserving such types of honour. I believe that they should do as they already do with the V.C medal and make it harder to earn such notable achievements, but perhaps it’s just me who thinks like that. An honour earned is truly an honour, an honour that is given because of lowering standards or because someone is rich or famous, etc, to me is just a meaningless bauble.
He’s just a banker puppet. wake up you dumb yanks.
shake your brains free for f**k sake.
And Mark, we are only being critically thinking citizens, and that’s far better than lavishing praise on a leader absentmindedly.
I agree, although it should be noted that the Nobel Peace Prize is not necessarily meant to be based on accomplishment, but rather intent or effort.
But I agree completely, and find that this is more of an attempt to stick it to our last administration than anything else.His nomination came less than two weeks into his administration, so they basically nominated him on political speech.That seems like a dangerous thing to do.
There were other nominees who deserved to have their causes, which they have devoted their whole lives, highlighted and given an international platform.I was very disappointed. But I think that Obama’s reaction was a good one, and he did concede that maybe he wasn’t the best man for the prize.
I am an American broadcaster who speaks with people around this great country as well as those who live elsewhere. It’s sad to me that while people around the world choose to honor one of us, we take the opposite stand and act like ingrates. Kinda like sending your child out the house and s/he finds more love from strangers at the mall than from the family in their own home.