Current events: Nobel prize as encouragement?

I am certainly an Obama supporter, but I think his Nobel win is not such a good thing at a time when he is subject to such merciless criticism over his 9 month tenure as president; some of the criticism is justified, and some of it is based solely on our overblown expectations of the man we assigned the job of “hero”.

From a CNN.com article:

Jagland said he hoped the prize would help Obama resolve the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, last year’s laureate, said it was clear the Nobel committee wanted to encourage Obama on the issues he has been discussing on the world stage.

“I see this as an important encouragement,” Ahtisaari said.

What I and I’m sure many others on both sides of the debate are wondering is whether or not this form of incentivizing is really helpful, and what kind of message it sends to the people with whom Obama is trying, albeit sometimes passively, to influence in a positive way. If someone was trying to negotiate with me, and I hated everything that person stands for, I don’t think I’d be encouraged by that person getting rewarded preemptively for an assumed victory in pressing their agenda upon me.

That said, I do hope it works.

The timing is terrible. The announcement of the Nobel award comes just days after Obama’s decline to meet with the Dalai Lama, which has been criticized as a placating move to appease China, a renown human rights offender. Also, Obama’s under fire from the LGBT community for his lack of follow through on his promised support for gay rights, including his policy on repealing the “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy, which is that, well, they’re just not going to deal with it right now.

But the biggest problem with this award is that he’s under fire from pretty much everyone in the U.S. who went to bed on election night with Utopian dreams of equality, peace and prosperity on January 21st, only to discover nine months in that unfortunately, Obama is human and not miraculously flipping off the partisan bicker switch, pulling money out of his ass, and making everyone in the world love each other. We had high hopes for him–what happened? Well, we saw an imaginary superhero, and some people don’t want to admit that maybe our expectations were a little bit deluded. And some people have elevated themselves to Lex Luthor status to foil the plans of this superhero, also not willing to admit that maybe it’s all a bit overdramatic.

So I think this award is a bad thing for Obama because it reinforces the delusion. I’d rather wait until he actually stops a speeding bullet.