A Peace of the Prize

Yeah, sorry, I simply couldn’t resist the urge to lampoon this historical bungle. Some funny and rather appropriate quotes:

“The whole business of a bunch of Scandinavian worthies doling out the profits of a long-gone dynamite maker’s fortune has always smacked of the worst sort of self-satisfied plutocratic worthiness. But this takes the biscuit. President Obama remains the barely man of world politics, barely a senator now barely a president, yet in the land of the Euro-weenies (copyright PJ O’Rourke) the great and the good remain in his thrall. To reward him for a blank results sheet, to inflate him when he has no achievements to his name, makes a mockery of what, let’s face it, is an already fairly discredited process (remember Rigoberta Menchu in 1992? Ha!). That’s not the point. What this does is accelerate the elevation of President Obama to a comedy confection, which he does not deserve, and gives his critics yet another bat to whack him with. Shame on the Norwegians.” –London’s Daily Telegraph chief political commentator Benedict Brogan

AND

“I can’t agree with my colleagues here on CONTENTIONS that a) Barack Obama should reject the Nobel Peace Prize or b) be embarrassed by it. The Nobel Committee chose him wisely because he does, in fact, represent the organization’s highest ideals. He is an American president queasy about the projection of American power. He is an American president who rejects the notion of American exceptionalism. He is an American president eagerly in pursuit of legitimacy to be granted him not by those who voted for him but by those who do not cast a vote and who chafe at American leadership. It is his devout wish that America become one of many nations, influencing the world indirectly or not influencing it at all, rather than “the indispensable nation,” as Madeleine Albright characterized it. He is the encapsulation, the representative, the wish fulfillment, the very embodiment, of the multilateralist impulse. He is, almost literally, a dream come true for the sorts of people who treasure and value the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s the most obvious choice, once you think about it, since Michael Moore won an Oscar for Bowling for Columbine.” –columnist John Podhoretz

So, I guess that makes it official – the Nobel Peace Prize is more about what some Euro-Weenies think somebody is going to do – that by the by aligns with their ‘enlightened’ view of how the world should be – rather than actual accomplishments. That cinches it, eh? The world is now officially become form over substance perceptive.

Hey, I have some pretty good ideas…do you think I might be up for the award next year? I could sure use some of that prize money, I need to seriously update my wardrobe.

WC

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