Obama Deserves a Nobel Prize But

     Not in Peace category.

     Publicity is the correct slot for Obama but unfortunately the Nobel Prize Committee is limited to only a few categories. These include physics, chemistry, medicine(physiology), economy, literature and peace. Criteria followed by committee members to determine the ”transformative” personalities who deserve a prize are not that hard to discern within the fog of liberal wishful think.

      The Nobel Peace Prize is a controversial honor. Nominations are kept secret but it is now revealed that Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini also made that list in their time. Other, clearly deserving nominees like Mahatma Ghandi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pope Paul II, and Vaclav Havel have also been disqualified. Go figure the liberal reasons.

      There is wide agreement that Obama does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize and he himself appears to think so too. One Norwegian source reports that negative responses outnumber the positive by five to one. On the other hand a Nobel Prize for Publicity or Transformative Rhetoric would fit him like a glove. Perhaps it’s time for the Nobel Committee to realize we are in the 21st century and there are new activities that infuence war, peace, and  the human condition which did not exist during Nobel’s lifetime.

       Or perhaps Obama should have been given a Nobel Prize for Literature. If we stretch the concept of literature as ideal communications category , then Publicity, Promotion, Rhetoric, Radio, Movies, TV, Blogging, Twitting, YouTubing and Social Networking would all yield many Nobel Prize deserving nominees. Old Nobel knew nothing about these domains that are so influential today. During his lifetime the telephone was only just coming into play within a very limited segment of the global population. It took a couple more generations since Nobel prizes began in 1901 before radio and TV became significant communications media with  transformative potential.

      Nevetheless Nobel may have envisaged the need to reward achievements in future diverse and as yet unknown areas during his time, by creating the Prize for Literature. The objective could have been to distinguish idealistic championship of human rights. This category is prone to more liberal interpretations than others because many literary laureates gain fame through works of fiction or poetry. There is  room to bet on expectations and inevitably politics can play an even greater role in these awards.

      After all Winston Churchil got the Literature Prize in 1953 for having been a ”brilliant orator exalting human values”. Sounds familiar. But Churchill was an accomplished warrior and author. Then there were George Bernard Shaw in 1925, Bertrand Russell in 1950, Boris Pasternak in 1958, and Alexander Solzenitzyn in 1970 and over 100 lesser known scribes of fact and fiction since 1901. Most received Nobel Prizes for Literature after producing their bestsellers. On the other hand if any one of them was chosen for espousing political ideas and actions that did not materialize you could always blame it on  poetic license.

       Now it looks like we can expect another major Obama photo-op saturation of the cyberspace from Oslo come December. But what I’m waiting for is when Nobel Peace laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu will invite enNobelled colleagues Dalai Lama and Obama to have a Nobel Beer Summit atop Table Mountain near Capetown in South Africa. (536)