Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

Dude, I’m tellin’ ya……….

I don’t have a lot against our President, Barack Obama.

I really don’t. I try very hard and purposely to live a life as detached from politics as possible. To me, the President is just a figurehead anyway. He’s the guy we send to summits and photo ops to represent the United States. He’s a hand-shaker. An extremely important position for sure. This is our representative on the world stage. The guy we send to meet other world leaders.

But I don’t buy into the notion that the President actually runs this country. Or he is the “most powerful man” in the world—-let alone the US. There’s a handful of groups more powerful than the Prez. I believe that the media controls the United States more than anyone. They control elections, including the presidential election every four years. If they want to destroy a candidate, they will. And have. Like Gary Hart back in the ’80s.

One might say that Gary Hart brought himself down. But the media controls the dissemination of information. There are sports media guys who have known all along about steroid use and who was using them. And there are media people who have known that Tiger Woods was a philanderer for months and years now. But they protect those people in the spotlight that they might benefit from. Ride their coattails. They only skewer those public figures that can’t further their own personal media careers.

If the media wanted Hillary Clinton to be President, she would be. They would have dug up dirt on Obama—–true fact or fiction—–and blew his Presidential aspirations out of the water. Manufactured negative rumors and situations. They control the mindset of most of America. More than ever before.

So back to my original thought…….the title/position of President doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot to me. And I don’t follow politics as much as possible. So I don’t have much of anything against Barack Obama. Don’t know much about the health care deal. Don’t know much about additional troops. Hell, I do appreciate his extending unemployment benefits or I’d be sleeping in my truck already. And he threw in a small weekly raise via the stimulus plan. The last real boss I had in the work world stole my last two paychecks, months of health insurance deductions, and is under federal indictment. President Obama gave me my first raise in over two years in my unemployment check !! He’s the best boss I’ve had in a long time.

But this whole Nobel Peace Prize thing is something else. Just another example of the fouled up way of the world these days. That boss I referred to under federal indictment…..the man who took a 35 year old company and ran it into bankruptcy in 24 months…………..last January he was awarded the Quad Cities African American {QCAA} Businessman of the Year Award in Illinois by his cronies. And now a guy just a few months in his new office wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Welcome to wacky world 2009 !!

Obviously, I’m not the first to smirk at this strange choice for the award. I’m about the ten millionth. Probably more than that. I received a humorous email joke yesterday mocking the awards. It showed Obama as the recipient of the Peace Prize. Then it showed Mr KoolAid (the glass pitcher with the happy face on it) as the winner of the Chemistry division. And then they had the children’s book See Spot Run as the winner of the literature division.

Even for many of Obama’s supporters, that’s the popular outlook on his getting this award. It’s a ridiculous selection……just like See Spot Run would be. Only the most starry eyed, manic supporters who would give Obama their kidneys and lungs would think he was deserving when it was announced he won. That was a few months ago when he was only 9-10 months in office.

I remember Jimmy Carter helped negotiate the Camp David Accords in late 1978.  The Accords led directly to the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. They also resulted in Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin sharing the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.

That’s how you win a Nobel Peace Prize. And Carter didn’t even share in the award. His endless diplomacy efforts during that summit are stories of legend. He even took the two men to Gettysburg in an effort to parallel their situation. Did I miss something or has Obama helped bridge any feuding countries together lately? Ended hostilities between Israel and Palestine? Iran and Israel? Pakistan and India?

 Beuller? Beuller?

What a joke most awards are really. From the QCAA giving their award to a criminal (my former boss), to Jethro Tull getting that Grammy award in the heavy metal category years ago, to Obama getting this Nobel Prize. They’re all a bunch of bullshit. Truly.

Perhaps Barack Obama will be deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize someday. I don’t put it past him. He has a strong desire to repair the damage done in the eyes of the world by the Bush administration. To repair relationships. He very well may be the chief diplomatic connection in a historic peace treaty between two current enemies.

But to date, he hasn’t done much of anything to earn this prestigious honor. I did read where it didn’t matter who we elected to take office this past January. They would have won the award. It could have been Hillary Clinton. It could have been John McCain. As long as in their inauguration speech they spoke of peace, unity, tolerance, and bridging gaps…….they were in line for the Nobel Peace Prize. That’s how much the rest of the world hated the last administration and the man “in charge”. Our photo op guy.

Whatever the reason he won, I hope over the next three years Obama does do some really fantastic things that bring people together and promote peace.

We can either mock the timing of the award. Or we can adopt a more hopeful approach for the future.

It reminds me of the end of the movie Saving Private Ryan. After several valiant men sacrificed their lives to save one particular man, Tom Hanks’ character used his dying words to implore that person to “Earn this. Earn it.”  

Let’s hope that’s exactly how this (currently) ludicrous award situation eventually works out.

Go out and earn it, Obama.