Saturday, October 10, 2009

Nobel Peace Prize right on the money


Farmgirl is one of the few that think US President Barack Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sure, there's thousands of candidates out there who have swam 100 miles through crocodile infested waters, survived under a hail of bullets and rescued millions of starving children. No, I'm not taking the mickey but I am saying that the judges got it right because they awarded the one thing that is not quantifiable, not easily seen, nor able to be scored on a human rights ledger - they recognised the value of HOPE.

That many are critical of Obama's victory show how materialistic this world has become. Unless someone is starving to death for a cause and giving us a visual recount of suffering, we can't connect the dots. We seem to only understand the concrete.

Yet there was one thing we understood last year...one day where it wasn't about the visual, where we felt good, where unity abounded. Don't deny it..Obama's Presidential win made you feel good because it meant that there was HOPE - hope that we might solve this religious mess, hope that we might overcome the obstacles we see in other human beings who might not look like us (ironically, his win was about overcoming the visual).

You might think then that we as the people deserve the prize for getting him there, but you have to look at Obama's extraordinary journey. He dispenses the HOPE and is working for a bigger cause than you and I...he's working for a peaceful solution, a listening America and just because he hasn't got down in the swamps and saved the many that are drowning in the poorer countries, it doesn't make his journey any less award able.

It took courage for the judges to choose him...just as it takes courage every day for him to be in the highest office in the world.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry Farmgirl, couldn't agree less with your reasoning on this one.
Printing money will be his downfall,as will his apparent failure to produce his birth certificate for scrutiny.
Good orator--- that is until you think about what he actually says, which translates to hype.

Tired Farmer posting under anonymous.

Anonymous said...

No, no, no, no. This is a victory for spin, hype and proof of the gullibilty, complacency and naivete that is afflicting the world.
A victory too for the PR men who must hardly be able to comprehend the enormity of their success.

Sally said...

Lech Walesa, won the Peace Prize in 1983. He helped free Poland and became their President. He was quoted in The Times with this. “So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far.”

What it tells the world is that anybody with aspirations to lead and hope to bring about peace in the future, now don’t actually have to bring about the peace.

The HOPE you refer to is nothing more than HYPE.

Anonymous said...

Just like Australia's Rudd, he's all spin and no substance! Controlled by left wing factions. I remember when George W Bush got Israel and Palestine together for peace talks but he is yet to receive a Nobel???
Andrew.

Anonymous said...

bravo - i agree whole-heartedly. of course many can find fault with obama, particularly when it comes to his fiscal track record, but he gives hope and he knows how to make the dysfunctional political system work. i highly recommend reading his book, audacity of hope, for a glimpse into the inner workings of this gifted and brilliant man!