oh, that’s good. i got to use that one at work today. thanks
Call me another liberal who believes this was a very bad decision. My also quite liberal husband emailed me the first thing in the morning about it, calling it quite stupid.
I think you may be overestimating how much the USA and Obama means to the rest of the world. Obama is just another US president. He represents US power. But US power isn’t what it used to be.
I have never been so glad to add my voice into an echo chamber.
I support my President, went door to door for him, and am generally pleased with his rhetoric (though I think SNL got it right in criticizing him for not following through with his promises).
But he does not deserve the nobel prize, yet.
Well, the choices are unfortunately limited: economics, medicine, physics, literature…perhaps if there were a specific Nobel Prize for awesome…
Well, then he should win an American prize for overcoming racism. That isn’t about world peace.
Usually, the Nobel Peace Prize says to the recipient, “Well done!”
But, in this case, I think the message is, “Hint, hint!”
Perhaps you understand better than the Nobel Committee what the reasons are for awarding the prize. I know that I don’t. The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, said after the announcement:
I think there is some fixation here that one can not bring about peace by abstract or symbolic means. Perhaps to some people the much-needed injection of genuine, geopolitical game-changing hope is somehow not good enough to merit a Nobel. I disagree, and it seems the Nobel Committee does too.
The Committee also noted:
It’s hard to disagree with this sentiment. But that isn’t good enough? There should be some minimum amount of time one must be on the world stage before he/she can be awarded a Nobel? Apparently, that isn’t the case.
Another big fan of the man, somewhat disappointed at the award.
I’ve been a tad disappointed so far at his failure to lead and/or take bolder unilateral action on issues such as Guantanamo, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, or bringing the troops home. And am disappointed at the difficulty he is having organizing his own party in Congress.
My initial thoughts were the award was to dissuade him from attacking Iran and ramping up in Afghanistan. Tho I also thought it reflected how much the world (justifiably IMO) despised his predecessor.
Turning it down would be the classiest move.
Obama walks on water! Well, sure he did, he can’t swim!
Only because they know they’ll be slammed for it. In RL, how can we really tell? 
I’m pleasantly surprised to find myself in the majority here. I voted for Obama, have been pretty pleased with him so far, and think he has great potential. But it’s way, way too early to be giving him Nobel prizes. He hasn’t accomplished anything yet except get elected.
Yes, after the right’s shabby show of hatred for America and the President, it’s only fair that Obama get the Peace price.
I wonder how W is taking it?
The pain in the ass about the whole thing is that Obama is totally behind the eightball on this one. It’s not like he had a full page ad in *Variety *lobbying for the prize. I’d read that he was woken with the news and that he was “humbled.” I’d imagine “embarrassed” would be a better descriptor.
It doesn’t matter what he says or doesn’t say - accept it or not accept it - this is just going to wind up a big mess of “Obama the Messiah” shit from the right.
Thanks Nobel Committee for throwing another grenade into the mix.
Living up to it would be better.
Apparently this year there was a record number of 205 nominees.
I actually really think that this was one of the reasons, and not a bad one. It will be difficult for him to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan for starters.
Well if he declines it and then lives up to it, maybe they’ll award him the Nobel Peace Prize!
It would be difficult, as books don’t win the Noble Prize for Literature. Authors do.
You’ve never read anything by Kipling, Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill, Pearl Buck, T.S. Eliot (perhaps you’ve seen Cats?), Faulkner, Churchill, Hemingway, Camus, Pasternak, Steinbeck, Sartre, Solzhenitsyn, Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, William Golding, Nadine Gordimer, or V.S. Naipaul? Granted, I don’t know all of the laureates in literature (probably not even half) but that doesn’t speak to their low quality, it speaks to my ignorance of world literature.
This is just the break the McCain camp was waiting for!
Another baffled supporter checking in. As filled with repugnance for GWB as I am, and as human as I am (which means I can’t quite completely excise getting a small kick out of the slap in the face), I yet think even an insult of this magnitude is offensive. Granted, the committee has greatly diminished themselves with this–what was once an icon is sliding towards irrelevance–so the insult isn’t that great. But just as celebrating Obama’s loss of the Olympics was absurdly partisan, so is celebrating a global insult to Bush.
Trying to fathom some shred of reasoning beyond he’s not GWB, the best I can come up with is that he’s an African American, son of an immigrant, raised by a single mother who rose to the Presidency of the United States. A lot of the Right Wing Marketing Machine, Rovian division, successfully diminished it with a quick acknowledgment as part of the get-over-it-it’s-not-a-big-deal, but it’s symbolic import is astronomical. This suggests what an earlier poster mentioned – the Time magazine route – might have been more appropriate.
I’m not saying that this is the reason. It’s just expressing befuddlement and thinking that there must be something more than he’s not GWB. Other suggestions? (This is GD, after all.)
What’s to understand, its a love letter to America, and some of you guys are bitching because the sentiment is corny. Well, of course it is! Does he deserve it? Do we? Does anyone, can anyone, actually deserve such a thing?
He hasn’t given them peace, he’s given them hope for peace. And we gave them him! Obama couldn’t have happened anywhere else. America, number one!
One flag-waving, red-blooded All American radical says “Yeeeeee-haw! Ride 'em and spank 'em, Barry!”