by Migeru
Fri Oct 9th, 2009 at 06:18:21 AM EST
The personality cult of Obama, sometimes referred to as Obamania, continues unabated. In the latest display of fawning by serious, well-meaning people, he has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize
for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples
His efforts (note, not his achievements) must have been truly extraordinary if it's taken him a bare 8 months in office and 11 months since election to win the prize. But this should have come as no surprise.
News was broken for ET by Melanchthon Turambar
I guess I wasn't paying attention in the weeks following his inauguration. The following story is from February 27, barely 5 weeks after he entered the White House: Obama 'in running for Nobel peace prize' (The Independent)
This year those names include Mr Obama, Mr Sarkozy, American musician Pete Seeger, Macedonian humanitarian Zivko Popovski-Cvetin, Austrian children's charity SOS-Kinderdorf International, Vietnamese religious leader Thich Quang Do, and American Greg Mortenson for his Asian school-building charity.
Look, if Sarkozy had won the Prize for his role in the Georgian crisis last Summer, one could disagree but
at least he would have done something. I mean, the guy bribed Khadaffi to free some Bulgarian nuns, too.
But what has Obama done in his 8 months in office? Maybe this
Barack Obama cancels meeting with Dalai Lama 'to keep China happy'
Or
thisUS President Barack Obama has said his review of Afghan strategy will not look at pulling out or cutting troop levels.
You have to give it to him, he has done his darnedest to close Guantánamo. But there will still be people held without charges and without trial. And he hasn't invaded Honduras, in fact he threw the Monroe Docrine out the window in his (and Hillary Clinton's) reactions to the situation there. And he goes out of his way to be
reasonable and talk to everyone. Or, at least, say he'll talk to Iran, for instance, which is enough to make the wingnuts crazy even if Bush was
already moving in that directionThe US plans to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years as part of a remarkable turnaround in policy by President George Bush.
I mean, is the moral level of humankind so low that just not being a war criminal and acting diplomatically is worthy of a Nobel Peace Price? Or is the Nobel Peace Prize so blatantly politicised that they don't even pretend to hide it any longer? What's next from Oslo? Silvio Berlusconi in 2010? (h/t de Gondi)