This today in Der Spiegel:
“Only rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said in a statement. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.” The committee also noted that Obama’s vision of a world freed from nuclear weapons had played a special role in his selection. Officials in Washington were left speechless by the news, with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs stating in an e-mail to CBS News simply, “wow.” Another spokesman told news agency Reuters the president felt “honored.”
He makes me proud to be an American.
Prometheus Unbound 
I guess now they’ll have to call it the Nobel Prize for Race since the only reason Obama got it was because he was the 1st Black POTUS. 😦
Obama took office on January 20, 2009 and the deadline for nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize is January 31. That’s 11 days. What, other than being Black, did the 44th POTUS do in those 11 days?
Wake up and smell the entropy.
i have to say, it looks like he got this for simply not being dubya.
really: isn’t it kind of like winning an oscar for being a promising actor, instead of for an actual, substantive achievements in the arts? what if watson & crick won for developing the technique that could potentially lead to our first view of the DNA molecule, instead of the discovery itself?
nothing personal against the president, but this is simply bunk.
I like what this guy has to say:
http://markbittner.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/obama-and-the-nobel-peace-prize/
now that i have read a bit, it looks like the peace prize is given often as a hopeful gesture rather than recognition of a particular accomplishment. but i mean, come on– this was about them being fans, and hoping obama has the potential they need for him to have. silly, maybe, but not outrageous or without precedent.
and jared:
do you really think the bush administration was the biggest threat to humanity in recent years? GWB is one of my least favorite american political figures EVER, but he had rules to bind him (stretch them as he did). believe it or not, there are really REALLY mean people out there; to suggest it’s just us bad ol’ americans causing all the problems, well, it strikes me as a bit naive.
Brooks,
Considering that I didn’t state that I believe anything, I have to say no. I merely pointed to another blogger’s thoughts on the subject that I found enjoyable. While he may believe his own thoughts, I do not necessarily believe them by merely placing a link to them.
Your assumption are naive.
jared:
note that i was framing the blog entry itself as “naive”; given that i didn’t state that *you* are naive (which it seems *you* assumed), you would only fall into that catgeory if you were in agreement with the ideas stated there.
but you did say “I like what this guy has to say”; and as agreement/shared belief often comes couched in such terms, i don’t think that my assumption was out of order. so the question remains: what, then, did you “like” or “find enjoyable” about the entry, enough so to post it here, if you did not in fact agree with its sentiments?
Thanks for the clarification, Brooks!
I believe that the commission should have woken up President Obama at 4am, just like all the rest of the nobel peace prize winners. He got off too easily.
I like that Mark Bittner brings up that the neocons and Republican Right are angry about the award to Obama.
gotcha.
i do think the prize was a little silly, but given the context of the award and its history – given, especially, that henry kissinger and yassir arafat both received it – well, it’s probably silly blowing a gasket over it.
and yeah, the far right and far left are both great at the histrionics; but you really gotta hand it to the right, when *they* hem and haw they sure do know how to get all sweaty and red-faced and put on a show.