Posts Tagged ‘Nobel prize’
Women Weigh in on Barack Obama’s Nobel Win
Guest post by regular contributor Lee Reid Taylor.
Barack Obama and the world woke up Friday morning to the unexpected news that the president had received the Nobel Peace Prize. Women’s responses to the announcement ran the gamut: from accolades, to shock and even disbelief. Some question whether the award is premature, while others believe it is a call for Obama to act on his political oratory of peace.
Obama is the third sitting president, following Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to receive the honor. The first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize was a woman, Bertha von Suttner, in 1901. Female recipients of the Peace Prize include: Jane Addams, Ayn San Suu Kii, Betty Williams, and Wangari Maathai (just to name a few). Of the ninety-six Nobel Peace Prizes awarded, only nineteen were given to women. The fact that Obama is now a recipient leads some to ask, “Why him, and why now?”
Women have different interpretations of why this award was given and what impact it will have on the president’s policies.
Read MoreObama’s Nobel: Premature Adulation
As thrilled as I am that the world has such a positive view of Obama, for him to be given the Nobel Peace Prize at this stage of this presidency is premature adulation.
I was at my computer frantically trying to finish a book chapter in the wee hours this morning when I noticed a tweet saying Obama had won the Nobel. I thought it was one of those Twitter rumors that spread like wildfire, but it piqued my interest enough that I clicked BBC, CNN, and AP until I was convinced this was no hoax.
My first reaction was a feeling in the pit of my stomach that winning this global prize so soon on his presidency would be a political loss at home. It’s not going to help him pass health care, and there’s going to be a lot of skepticism—not just from the right–about whether he’s earned such an honor yet. Because he hasn’t, really.
And I hope there is never a hint that any kind of campaign was waged for him to receive the prize, for that would devastate his standing and sully the honor.
No matter about any of that, I still see a hugely important message to America in this award. It starts with “Thank you.” The same “breathing out” moment many of us had when Obama won the election reverberated around the globe, and it was as much about what a bad leader George Bush was on the world stage as how good Obama might be. So the promise of Obama is almost as important as the performance.
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