President Obama has been chosen as the winner of the latest Nobel Peace Prize. Now the PR campaign has begun by the Right to paint the award as a “popularity contest” and one that they don’t recognize or don’t want to be associated with.
Back when I voted for Obama I stated that my main reason for doing so was that I had hoped that after eight disastrous years under George W. Bush, if Obama did nothing else, he might at least help to turn around our pitiful reputation in the larger world view. I’ve seen and heard conservatives ridicule the President as hurting our reputation globally. I’ve heard a couple, including Sean Hannity, comment that his use of a teleprompter puts us in bad light (as if not being able to pronounce “nuclear” or complete a phrase reliably without one in some way does help).
The other argument is that Obama got it after only being in office for 12 days. The nomination deadline was February 1st. The joke of this is obvious. First of all, his impact was felt long before he took office on January 20th and also this ignores the definition of nomination. Nothing says your work after being nominated is not to be considered.
This award goes a long way towards proving the point that the world clearly sees us in better light now as a result of our choice of electing him. As far as the history of the award it includes (among others):
Theodore Roosevelt (1905 Peace Treaty Russia/Japan)
Woodrow Wilson (League of Nations)
Cordell Hull (United Nations)
Albert Schweitzer (Missionary Surgeon)
George C. Marshall (Red Cross, Marshall Plan)
Linus Pauling (Peace Advocate)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (Civil Rights Advocate)
UNICEF (United Nations Children Fund)
Henry Kissinger (Secretary of State)
Andrei Sakharov (Human Rights Advocate, Nuclear Physicist)
Amnesty International (Protection of the prisoner rights)
Menachem Begin & Anwar Sadat (The Peace Accords)
Mother Theresa (Order of the Missionaries of Charity)
Lech Walesa (Poland Founder of Solidarity)
Desmond Tutu (Work against apartheid)
Elie Wiesel (The President’s Commission on the Holocaust)
14th Dalai Lama (Religious Leader)
Mikhail Gorbachev (Helped end Cold War)
Nelson Mandela (Leader of ANC)
Anyone who doesn’t want to be associated with the people and groups on that list is a fool or simply devoid of any cognitive ability.
