Last night I attended the Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo, which was extremely entertaining. As most of you know, the guest of honor was rather conspicuously absent. Personally I was glad about this. The award was more than enough of a political hot potato for our president, and I think he got through it all as graciously as possible. Had he not accepted the award, Europe would have turned against him. At the same time, had he spent the entire two days of celebration in attendance and appeared to be reveling in his role as a symbol of peace — just as he was beginning to ramp up a new war effort in Afghanistan — his political enemies at home would have had a field day.
So mostly we in the audience were relieved that he wasn’t there. Although it was fascinating to watch the hosts — Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith — try to maintain a happy show-biz level of celebration at a birthday party for a conspicuously absent birthday boy. I actually preferred the approach taken by Wyclef Jean, who electrified everyone (including the Norwegian royal family) by performing a bold and baldly political rap — one written for the occasion — about peace and antiviolence. You can see it here – starting at 6:34. Among other pointed things, he said, speaking to Obama’s critics: “..,sometimes, to get to peace starts with war …. equal rights and justice, that’s what we’re fightin’ for. You dig?” His performance was the only political moment in the entire evening other than the video replay of Obama’s speech from the ceremony of the previous evening.
Other than that, it was mostly show business — although show business of a very high order. Donna Summer astonished everyone by showing that her voice has lost absolutely none of its power in the last thirty years. Lang Lang (with able assistance from the Norwegian Radio Orchestra) played a version of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” that had me almost in tears of joy — one of the best performances of this piece I have ever heard, period.
Natasha Bedingfield was great until she tried to talk. Her attempt to say a few words about “world peace” was so resoundingly inarticulate, so alarmingly, painfully, blazingly inane, that you could practically hear the sound of several thousand jaws simultaneously drop, as the entire audience stared at her, agape with dismay. But then she started singing again, and everyone politely forgot that the unfortunate moment had ever transpired.
By far the most musically sophisticated performance was from Esperanza Spalding. Each year the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize gets to choose a personal favorite performer, and it seems that Obama chose her. Her performance was wild, soaring, a jazz-inflected avant guarde tour de force that was uncompromisingly experimental, rhythmically daring, yet unfailingly lovely and melodic. By the end of it everyone was breathless.
Not a bad evening. Complex and multifaceted, sometimes frustrating, at times downright disappointing, yet often glorious. Like the guy it was celebrating.
How cool to be able to participate in this.
I found your insights interesting. As everyone is aware, including the President, he did nothing to earn a Nobel Peace Prize. Not that he won’t during his tenure, but, the recipient was decided long before Obama had any effect on anything. (This was clearly based on campaign promises- the jury’s still out on the actual scorecard).
I saw this as a European effort to steer US politics and foreign policy. You seem to have the same opinion, based on this note. Where we differ is that you are much more diplomatic than I. You suggest that Europe would take a refusal of the prize as an insult and that Europe would have turned against him. So, it was good that he didn’t refuse the award.
As for me, I don’t mince words. I would have refused the prize as it represents a political motive and not an actual award. I wrote a letter to the President asking him not to accept it back in October: http://troydowning.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/letter-to-the-president/
But, again, I’m not a diplomat. I didn’t see Europe turning against the US simply because a bogus award was clearly seen to be just that. Being the Anti-PC person that I am, I prefer to call it as I see it.
I just read your letter to the president. Wow, you think he has embarrassed the U.S. “by repeatedly apologizing to the world for who we are and what we do”? The speech he gave in Oslo was an unambiguous and agressive assertion that the U.S. has a right to wage war in pursuit of larger goals of global justice. Exactly the opposite of an apologetic tone.
It was good strategy: He used the peace prize to justify waging a war.
Also, I am very happy that on September 24 our president got the U.N. Security Council to unanimously (15-0) adopt his Nuclear Weapons Resolution, containing agreed upon steps leading to “a world without nuclear weapons”. That’s the first time any American president has ever pulled off something like this. This accomplishment was cited in the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize.
I’d be amazed to find that you were not also happy about that accomplishment.
Look Troy, we don’t always agree with our presidents. But for the most part they are generally good at what they do, and for the most part they are realists. That’s the job we hire them to do.
The Oslo acceptance speech was 2 months after my letter was written. So, yes, I do think he set a precedent of appologizing for the US that I find distasteful. I applaud him, however, for his recent show of strength.
Also, the submissions for candidates for the prize are due in February. What, exactly, had he accomplished in February? (other than a knee-jerk passing of a stimulus bill and a promise to close Gitmo before the end of the year) Was he simply nominated for what they thought he might do in September?
Troy, the reason I originally said it was prudent for Obama to leave Oslo early was that he had just made a declaration in support of military build-up at his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. It would have looked like hypocrisy to then spend two days celebrating.
Why do you think he was unqualified to be nominated? When Mother Teresa was nominated, she had not yet wiped out poverty. When Albert Schweitzer was nominated, he had not yet wiped out disease. When Martin Luther King was nominated in 1964, he had not yet wiped out racist laws in the U.S.
In fact, even at the time these and other winners accepted their awards, they had not yet “solved” the respective problems they were tackling. Obama was nominated on the basis of an ambitious and consistent agenda of focusing on peace through international cooperation. He won on the combination of that agenda and the concrete results he had demonstrated between the time of the nomination and the time of the decision.
Troy, you could ask yourself why you went through all the trouble to send a letter to your president to tell him that he had accomplished nothing to further world peace, when a simple Google search would have told you otherwise. I don’t like everything this president does, not by a long shot. But I try at least to keep enough emotional distance so that I can get the basic facts straight about what he has or hasn’t done before trying to give him advice.
Wow, this is probably the strongest example about how different you and I really are. I really like the condescending nature of the response.
I made an effort to say what I believe. I do appreciate the somewhat insulting attitude that I did this without “googling” Obama, who, apparently is much like Mother Teresa.
I am not a knee-jerk reactionary. I commend when He does something I like and I criticize whe He does something I don’t like. And, as I mentioned in my letter, I would absolutely stand up next to Him if and when it was appropriate.
Barack Obama is much like Mother Teresa??? Are you just trying to say something crazy, to kind of mix things up?
I don’t think you are a knee-jerk reactionary, any more than I am a knee-jerk reactionary. If I did think such a thing, I wouldn’t be discussing this with you.
It was not condescending of me to point out the factual errors in your letter — it was respectful. Pandering to you would have been condescending; holding you to the same standard to which I hold myself is respectful. You are a friend, and that’s why I do that.
Sorry if I took that the wrong way Ken. I basically took “ask yourself why you went through all the trouble to send a letter to your president to tell him that he had accomplished nothing to further world peace, when a simple Google search would have told you otherwise.” As the intellectual equivalent of calling me a poopy-head.
I, really thought it was a funny thing to say. Perhaps something like “Obama outlined a viable plan to achieve world piece in his campaign speach to XYZ, did you consider that?” Rather than citing a speech he made 2 months after my letter or simply stating, you’re wrong, you should have googled him.
I just googled “Obama is Mother Teresa” and got 606k hits… the top few inserted the word “no” after Obama, so, I guess the jury is still out on that one. 🙂
I guess the bottom line is this, Ken. I state my opinions with the hope of two possible outcomes. Either, 1. Educate and push my agenda -or- 2. Have someone respectfully correct or dispute my facts or assumptions. I actually like it when someone gets me to look at something differently, but, get a little taken aback when I’m simply called a poopy-head.
I still think it was pretty cool that you were able to participate in that. Obama doesn’t like me… he never invites me to any of his shindigs.
OK, this is getting difficult. I did not mean to insult you, or call you a poopy-head. I meant the question seriously. I was jumping a step (which I now see was a mistake), assuming that if you found out you’d had your facts that wrong then you’d want to engage in the question of why you had your facts that wrong. I would have asked myself exactly the same question — and I still think it’s an important question, not just for you but for any of us. It was meant respectfully, not as an attack, and I am very sad that it came across to you as an attack.
And now, descending to the delightful game of pop-cultural deconstruction… “Elvis is god” gets 13,100,000 hits. “Bono is Jesus” gets 1,780,000 hits. Unfortunately if you put actual quotes around these searches, the game falls apart. With explicit quotes, “Obama is Mother Teresa” gets only 4 hits, and they are all copies of the same post. Oh well.
A clarification: Our president did not invite me — I was there as part of a CISCO sponsored forum on public policy. Heck, the guy didn’t even show up. As far as I know, you have a better chance of getting invited by him than I do.
Well, aparently, anyone can walk into the White House and have breakfast with Him. So, perhaps we both have a chance if we simply try.
🙂
Good point! 🙂
My question was serious though – and I’ll explicitly state that it’s meant respectfully. How do you think it came about that you wrote a letter to the president based on a premise that wasn’t factual? Do you think it was a fault of the way the U.S. news media reported the award?
It’s a point of consequence, since you only get so many chances to send a message to the top, and you want to make every one of them count.
You’re a serious person who really thinks about things, so I think you might have some useful insights here, since you actually experienced it.
I don’t believe that I wrote the letter on a premise that was not factual.
I don’t believe that he had a viable plan any more than an average left-wing activist (no disprespect intended).
By the time that he was nominated, his biggest accomplishment was declaring a closure of Gitmo. I believe that this was a mistake, and I believe that he now knows that this was a mistake. It was a political move that didn’t weigh facts or knowledge. He made up his mind about the closure before being throughly briefed or having access to intel. This was pure recklessness and he is now trying to make the best of the situation that he created. Politics should not take precedence over National Security.
I did “google” him. I am not convinced that he accomplished anything or that his intentions were anything more than average prior to his nomination.
So, Please, tell me… 1. What specifically he did to be nominated last february and 2. what has he actually accomplished between the nomination and the decision? This doesn’t need to be an exhaustive list, just the hightlights.
I’m not suggesting that there aren’t good reasons, I’d just like to know what they are.
The letter that I wrote has been published in papers with a predominantly Left readership and has received overwhelmingly positive responses. So, I would love to correct or respond in light of unconsidered facts. The Liberal editor of my local paper in Montana would jump at the opportunity to print something like that.
My intention in writing it in the first place, was not to discredit Obama but simply to shed light on what was, apparently to me, a manipulative ploy. I really hope that He does succeed in spreading peace… I’m not a Rush Limbaugh who will somehow find the negative side of that. I will write and commend when and where it is due.
Troy, we’ve already established that your letter was based on a premise that’s not factual. I’ll go over it again.
The Nobel Peace Prize this year was given to the U.S. president who achieved unprecedented success in reversing the course of Nuclear Proliferation. As the Nobel committee stated — and as I already told you — the unanimous 15-0 adoption by the U.N. Security Council on September 24 of this administration’s plan to phase out nuclear arsenals was specifically cited as a major reason for the award.
As I already said to you (I’m starting to wonder whether you actually read what I write) the answer to your question (1) above was the comprehensive plan laid out by this administration, and the answer to your question (2) was the decisive achievement of a major component of that plan (see my previous paragraph).
When I told you all this the first time, you seemed to hear me. Now you write as though that conversation had never happened, which I find confusing.
Since you are asking my opinion about how to “correct or respond in light of unconsidered facts”, here it is: I think you should send a follow-on letter to all those people, including your Liberal editor friend, saying something like “I have learned, since writing that first letter you published, that our president did not win the Nobel Peace Prize for ‘nothing’. In fact, he won it for, among other things, the achievement — unprecedented by a U.S. president — of getting the U.N. Security Council to unanimously sign onto a plan to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear arsenals.”
In your follow-on letter, you could then — having now stated the facts as they actually are — still proceed to argue against the awarding of this Nobel Peace prize, but this time from a basis in fact. For example, you might argue that the complete elimination of nuclear arsenals might lead to a greater incidence of conventional warfare.
My confusion seems to be with timing.
I read and understood what you said, but, had trouble corrolating that with the timing of a nomination and a selection. September 24 has to be dangerously close to the time of final decision if it was announced early October.
So, is it your opinion that his plan to denuclearize the planet, as it was in January, was the reason for the nomination? Is it your opinion that this is reasonable? Not intending to weight that in either direction, just a question about your personal opinion…
As for your assertion that the premise of my letter was not factual, I disagree. I asserted, correctly, that the world was surprised at his award. If you took a poll, even today, I think that you’d still have the same result. I didn’t do an exhaustive search of online polls, but, the most recent I saw had 66% polled saying that they didn’t believe that he had done anything (yet) to deserve it.
Although, Huffington post had a high, 48% saying that he did deserve it. Even the President seemed confused about the award. Do we disagree here? Just Curious…
Doesn’t really matter, I will definitely write something about the nuclear disarmament stuff. I wrote article on my fear of his naive ideas about national security a year ago (my opinion, of course), I’ll have to revisit that. It does seem, that he is slowly maturing as he grows into his role. I have hope…