While making the 500 mile drive home today I was thinking about Obama's Nobel Peace Prize and the very mixed blessing it will be for Obama (I was bored). To my knowledge there has never been a Peace Prize recipient for whom you couldn't draw at least a crooked line to some sort of accomplishment that justified consideration for the award. There have been some real doozies, like Jimduh Carter and Yasser Arafat, but if you squinted real hard and tried your very best you could come up with some sort of reasoning by which they might be qualified for a good look by the Nobel Committee.
With Obama, not so much. He's the first Peace Prize winner in the history of the formerly prestigious award who will have the unenviable task of creating the accomplishments necessary to live up to the award. Instead of the award recognizing actual accomplishment, Obama's award will require some future accomplishment lest it forever be a joke.
For the first time good intentions have been recognized as a prize worthy achievement. But good intentions without concrete results are meaningless, and sadly that's what the Nobel Peace Prize has become.
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2 comments:
I don't see good intentions there, not by my definition of good. As a matter of fact, if you take into consideration Arafat and Carter and some others, my definition of good intentions is very different than the definition the Nobel voters have.
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