Sunday, December 6, 2009

Nobel Peace Prize Travesty

Paul Johnson published an excellent article: Nothing Noble About Nobel in Forbes Magazine. Mr. Johnson writes:
"Awarding President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize does him no good and devalues the prize. This award has gone to some dubious recipients in recent decades, but at least they had demonstrated their virtues (and vices) by actions as opposed to mere words."
Tom Tooles also has an excellent cartoon concerning the insolence of granting the award.


In theory, we need to earn our "awards" through actual performance. Obama has yet to perform. In fact, he is sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan clearly prolonging an existing war.

Leaders serve as role models for the citizens of our country. As such they are supposed to lead by example. Obama will not be setting a good example in accepting an unearned award. Along those lines, the news this past week was unfortunately not kind to Tiger Woods. He projected a squeaky clean image, unusual for most so-called sport "heroes". Unfortunately he has now joined the ranks of those (political, corporate, Hollywood, and sport) leaders who have tarnished their image through scandal. In this case, the scandal was one or more mistresses.

So what sort of message is sent to the citizens of this country when the President receives and unearned award and other people who are perceived to be highly regarded role models turn out to be nothing more than fictitious constructs?

2 comments:

Sonya said...

gag. First Al Gore, now this. The whole institution is getting more and more worthless.

Steve R. said...

Quite true, then there was Kissinger getting this prize in 1973 for selling out South Vietnam.