Newsweek Article on Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

I think the post remarks from MWalimu from LA really describes the meanness of spirit and jealousy that has been going on politics (and to some extent American society). Since 2001 there has been a polarization of America and Americans. What I mean it seems you are either a conservative vs liberal. Or Democrat vs Republican. No longer can you just be an American with an opinion. So all this hatred, jealousy and anger keeps showing up. Hence instead of ALL Americans being proud that a sitting president (notice I don't mention name or party affiliation) was nominated and won a Nobel Peace Prize [1 of 3 Presidents in US History], they attack the president's basis for the it. Although I did not vote for this president, I do hope that he can somehow heal the hurts that divide our country and make it the great country that immigrants for generations have aspired to make a home.

jp

President of Planet Earth
Why Obama's Nobel was inevitable.

By Howard Fineman | NEWSWEEK
Published Oct 10, 2009

Posted By: Mwalimu @ 10/10/2009 4:44:23 PM
Haters.

That's the term that best describes all of those critics who have gone on warpath the moment Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize. As a retired teacher who spent a life time teaching in an inner city high school in south Los Angeles, I am quite familiar with that term. My students used it to describe a clique of students, usually girls, who refused to accomplish anything productive, and instead spent their energies bad-mouthing students who tried to make something out of their lives.

I also saw the same mentality behind a bumper I saw one day which said "MY KID BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT." Recently an honor student in Chicago was beaten to death by a gang of thugs. That tragedy is NOT new. Killing like that have occurred in Los Angeles on a regular basis, and one of the reasons I rarely left my classroom was to provide a safe haven for students during the school day.

So all the hatred and animosity that the GOP and the right wing spews simply proves that they are no better than the thugs and know-nothings back at my former school.

NOTE what Obama himself said when he received the news:
Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations."

I was particularly moved by another statement made by Obama: "We can't accept a world in which more people are denied opportunity and dignity that all people yearn for -- the ability to get an education and make a decent living; the security that you won't have to live in fear of disease or violence without hope for the future."

In view of the current atmosphere of violence, ignorance, fear and hatred, not the mention death threats, that exist in this country, anyone who dares to make such a visionary statement - a risk to his own life - deserves a Nobel. You won't find such quality of leadership in the GOP, Wall Street, and certainly NOT in the media.

Obama made it clear that the Nobel Peace Prize was his prize but a prize for the American people. The gang of GOP, right-wing haters who are no on the attack don't hate Obama - they hate America. Like the ignorant, indolent adolescents I described, they have not positive vision for themselves or for America, and they cannot stand to America transcend the gutter if ignorance, violence, hatred, and fear that they themselves inhabit. Just like the Taliban, they want to see America fail.