Why Not All the Prizes?

Besides being a peacemaker without peer, Barack Obama is an author (Literature), is at work healing the planet and reforming health care (a double in Medicine), will stop the rising of the seas (Physics), has done even more for prosperity than for peace (Economics) and obviously has great Chemistry with Norwegian America-bashers.

The best commentary that I’ve seen on this turn of events is by the Times of London’s chief foreign correspondent:

Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.

Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.

My only disagreement is with the phrase “risks looking preposterous”. That shark was jumped decades ago.

Funniest commentary is by lefty Richard Cohen. Too good to excerpt.

Jonah Goldberg:

The only thing that really bothers me is that this comes just days after the Obama administration turned a blind eye to the Dalai Lama and told the world that it’s at least considering a separate peace with the Taliban. That’s grotesque. Meanwhile, there are real peace activists and dissidents out there whose dungeons will stay just as cold and dark for another year because of this. Indeed, this news comes during a year when the Iranian people rose up against tyranny and were crushed. Surely someone in Iran — or maybe the Iranian protestors generally — could have benefitted more from receiving the prize than a president who, so far, has done virtually nothing concrete for world peace.

But a friend has pointed out the bright side. Anything that the President might have have done in an attempt to earn the Prize was likely to be disastrous. Now that he has it, he can go ahead and reinforce Afghanistan, knock out the Iranian nuclear project, deep six the Goldstone Report, invade Honduras, etc. without fear of losing his Nobel laureate status.

Comments

[pbh51]

In my view, the very existence of the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel is a greater travesty than any misguided Peace Prize (I am thinking Arafat) could ever be. Not only was it not created until 1968, decades after Nobel's original grant, but it exists merely to advance the political philosophy of the then ruling Swedish party, as if internal Swedish politics should be equated with advances in science, greatness in literature or global efforts for peace.

pbh

[Joshua]

While the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics is not technically a Nobel Prize in the sense that it wasn't created under the will of Alfred Nobel, it is presented at the same ceremony as all the other Nobel Prizes except for the Peace Prize, recognized by the Nobel Foundation that handles general administration of the true Nobel Prizes, and selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the same body that selects the winners of the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry.

One can dispute whether it was a good idea for the Nobel Foundation to allow the Bank of Sweden to tack the Economics prize onto the other five, but they did agree to do so -- the Bank of Sweden didn't associate their prize with the Nobels unilaterally.

[pbh51]

First of all, the Peace Prize is obviously the most political of the Nobel awards (with the sole exception of the Economics prize which is not, in fact, a Nobel Prize but rather a Nobel Memorial Prize, a prize not included in Nobel's original grant but which has been forcibly joined to the Nobel Prizes by the economic cabal that sponsors it; as if the Oscars could be similarly joined by calling them Nobel Memorial Oscars).

For the Nobel committee not to use the Peace Prize for political purposes would literally be self defeating. So it should not be surprising that they award the Prize in a way they believe will do the most good. While this particular award is somewhat premature, it is not entirely undeserved.

At a minimum, ending America's use of torture is a significant humanitarian event. Obama signed that order on January 22, 2009, well ahead of the February 1 deadline for Nobel nominations.

pbh