your winnings, sir.

[topaz]

The current story of the day is: Obama wins the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize!  OMGWTF?  He hasn't done anything for it yet!  He got the prize for not being George W. Bush!  This is just cheap politics!

To which I say: I am shocked, shocked, to learn that politics may have been behind the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize!

Comments

[coastergalwdw.livejournal.com]

My first reaction: you're joking. But apparently not.

Well, the prize money could be a drop in the bucket toward reducing the deficit. --'cause the first family doesn't get to keep gifts they get while in office, right?

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I'm not shocked anymore when an Illinois governor gets indicted, but I'm still disappointed. Likewise, here. (Shouldn't they have at least waited for him to spearhead a temporary cease-fire somewhere or a tissue-paper international agreement first?)

[dajt.livejournal.com]

As usual, there's lots of good discussion of this issue over at Making Light: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011728.html

My take on the discussion is that he got the prize for his work dealing with Russia, North Korea, and Iran.

[harimad.livejournal.com]

My take is that he got it for not being Bush the Younger.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that's a ten-yard penalty! Reiterating a section of the original post as though it were a new contribution.

[khedron.livejournal.com]

Does it help if I say you're both right?

[harimad.livejournal.com]

I'll take it. Work today has been like being on the firing line; 10 yards back would be a distinct improvement.

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

It'll look great on the mantle next to the bowling trophy.

[kcatalyst.livejournal.com]

Well, there's cheap politics and then there's a global-scale "Buh?"

(Ok, the latter has ALSO happened already in this prize's history. But I still feel the need to go "Buh?")

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

I admit, he's no Henry Kissinger...

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I'd still draw a line between prizes for pretend or ephemeral accomplishments (peace between North and South Vietnam, peace between Israel and the PLO) and nonexistent ones. It's the difference between giving an Oscar to Helen Hunt for "As Good as it Gets" and giving it to an ingenue generally agreed to be really talented, but whose only film work to date is still in the production stage.

[kcatalyst.livejournal.com]

He was who I was thinking of as a previous "Buh?" moment. But as I say, that doesn't eliminate the need to say it again when new circumstances inspire it.

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

Um, looking over the list of Nobel Peace Prize winners...politics is nearly always an issue.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

To which I say: I am shocked, shocked, to learn that politics may have been behind the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize!

yeah. the problem with that line of thought is that if you pursue it, it ultimately drains the purpose from everything; or at least, all purposes other than direct contention for personal power.

everybody knows that politics is corrupt, right? that the government is by the rich, for the rich? that minorities and the poor have no rights that the majority is bound to respect? that the purpose of the courts is to ratify the decisions of the political branches; which is to say, to protect the interests of the powerful?

cynicism drains the world of outrage at the transgressions of institutions against their ostensible purposes; and so moves to change those purposes to the basest impulses of the worst imagination, and ultimately proclaim the pursuit of base impulses a virtue. everybody knows, the game is fixed, etc... and you're a fool not to know that too, or even to say anthing about it... right?

no. i remain upset when people betray their public faces, even when i expect it.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Can I just say "Thanks" for wiping the snarky grin off my self-satisfied cynical face?

[vespid-interest.livejournal.com]

I agree that it is a weird and surprising decision, but it does remind me that Obama's policies are a fundamental change from Bush's in a way I think is quite important. Our previous approach was making a lot of people mad at us (appointing ambassadors who were dicks, posturing about various issues like global warming, talking up missile defense, etc.) so by trying to be cooperative now the world feels better about us even without sweeping changes like ending wars.

It's an approach that I think is extremely important. A few years ago people were talking about the havoc a terrorist could cause by bombing a random day-care facility. The "fix" for this would be to put armed guards at all day-care centers (or ports, or wherever). But that's impractical and scary -- a much better approach is to be a friendly country that makes people not want to bomb us in the first place. That's the approach I think this administration is taking and I feel much safer for it.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I'm certainly less concerned about being bombed by Norwegian academics. I'm not sure that the sorts of people who plan terrorist attacks (who formulated their plans to bomb our ships, embassies, and buildings during the Clinton era and earlier for the most part) are swayed by the same kinds of considerations.

But whether world peace will benefit from Obama's policies seems like an empirical question rather than a theoretical one. If his approach is going to have an appreciable long-term effect, why not wait for it to happen and award the prize for that? The hasty award gives the opposite impression, if anything: that they fear that there won't be any Camp David level achievements in Obama's future to recognize, so they'd better honor him while the issue is still in doubt.

Has there ever been a prize where the reason for giving it was such a Rorschach blot? Even in cases like Arafat or Kissinger, we knew, immediately, just what the prize was being awarded for, however skeptical some might justly have been of whether the proffered peace in the Middle East or Vietnam would actually follow. But this is for withdrawing missile defense from Russia, or for making overtures to Iran and/or North Korea, or for instituting an era of good feeling, or for giving a really good DVD collection to Gordon Brown, or... well, no one knows, do they?

And whatever it was, it had to be so apparent that someone either nominated him by February first, or the committee added him (ahead of at least 185 other nominees) at their first meeting afterwards. So apparently he was worthy of the Nobel short list, at least, before he did any of those things.

[kcatalyst.livejournal.com]

The stated reasons seem to focus on mainly in who he is and what he represents, in terms of a change in America's stance to the world. Which on the one hand they could have judged based largely on campaign rhetoric and so been ready to go when he was sworn in. On the other, I can't shake the feeling that Obama stole MY Nobel Prize and what they should have done was awarded it to the American people for electing him.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

Do we really want to make the Nobel like Person of the Year (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html)?