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The President’s Peace Prize Problem

by Mark Drapeau | 7:32 am, October 9th, 2009

» 8 comments

The same week that Saturday Night Live skewers President Barack Obama for accomplishing absolutely nothing, he has won the Nobel Peace Prize? Spin this: President Obama was 11 days into his presidency when nominations closed for the Peace Prize. What exactly was he nominated for? Forget Jimmy Carter waiting over two decades for his – One could argue that George W. Bush should have gotten the Nobel Peace Prize, since he literally may have done more for world peace by leaving office than Obama did by entering it.

But let’s pretend that in a fantasy world, the winner of the Peace Prize could loan it to someone they felt was additionally worthy. Since the Obama win was silly enough…why not write a post about how it should have done to Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter??

I’m a big user of Twitter, and so is Jack. And what he did a few years back really did change how the world communicates. In a recent issue of Washington Life magazine, I wrote about how Twitter played an integral role in information about the aftermath of the Iranian elections getting to CNN and other international news services. But even before that, Twitter played diverse critical communications roles in earlier crisis situations like Mumbai, Madagascar, Gaza, and Pakistan, which was something I earlier studied for the Defense Department.

People, including me, make fun of Twitter’s lack of reliability and other quirks all you want, but at least they’ve had impact.

I like President Obama, and I suppose I’m proud that the U.S. President won the Nobel Peace Prize. But I don’t think I’m going to go to parties at the Swedish Embassy for a while. In the meantime, I’m sure Kanye West plans to disrupt Obama ‘s Nobel ceremony, saying that the award should have gone to Beyonce.

Dr. Mark Drapeau is a scientist, consultant, and writer for True/Slant, Federal Computer Week, and other publications on social behavior at the intersection of science, technology, government, politics, and society. This article is modified slightly from one which appeared earlier at True/Slant.

Facebook User

Whether you agree with the decision or not is moot. He won. The Nobel Foundation committee members saw it fitting to give him the award. He won for his “efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.” He won for trying to promote peace. He talked about diplomacy while he was running and we see his efforts now. Congratulations President Obama!
ChrisNH

Aside from laughing hysterically at this Nobel Prize announcement (‘FREE! In every box of Cheerios!’), I’m not quite sure how Twitter measures up as worthy when you have nine ‘Twitterers’ all claiming to be ‘Tom Cruise.’ And you’re supposed to know you’re ‘following’ the right one, how exactly?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Drapeau/504549610 Mark Drapeau

Chris, that’s easy – they’re ALL Tom Cruise!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ted-Silliman/1203235293 Ted Silliman

Obama winning the peace prize is great just to imagine CaptainAmerica’s head expoding this morning. He’s probably yelling at his mom from his basement lair as we speak.

On a more serious note, I think I understand what the Nobel committee is doing. At a time when conservatives are ratcheting up the war rhetoric by demanding troop surges in Afghanistan and military strikes against Iran, they have strengthened Obama’s hand as a Nobel laureate in ongoing peace talks. Whether it backfires on them depends on how Obama proceeds going forward, but no one can dispute that he has changed the tone of international diplomacy for the better. We are safer today because 99% of the world doesn’t hate us today as they did under GWB.
libra blue

So now the Nobel Peace Prize committee is rewarding mediocrity. I guess we should have seen this one coming. What makes this award even more curious is the fact that the nomination process starts a year before the winner is announced. Obama has not accomplished anything as president even up to this point, and accomplished nothing as a senator, why would anyone even put his name up for nomination?

The Nobel Peace Prize, like the Oscars, is just becoming another politically correct exercise in awarding prizes to the best “trier,” which makes it meaningless.
whatdebpours

Mark -

Why are you boycotting the Swedes? Aren’t the Norwegians the Nobel Peace Prize grantors?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Drapeau/504549610 Mark Drapeau

It’s sorta both.
alex020588

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