Friday, October 9, 2009

Nobel Peace Prize

When I awoke this morning to learn that Barrack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize I first thought it must be a joke, how could anyone in their right minds give any award to someone who has never accomplished anything but to pad his resume in his entire career? After I wiped the tears of laughter off my face, I realized that I had to thank Obama for giving me such wonderful moments of mirth two Fridays in a row first his snub on the Olympics, and then this absurd award. Not since Sarah Palin was brought in as the VP candidate were we shown so vividly how totally unaccomplished Obama truly is. Personally I love Sarah Palin, but we have to admit that her resume was a bit thin to be a VP candidate, yet with her resume exposed next to Obama's you would have to be a hard core Kool-Aid drinker not to realize she was much more experienced and qualified than was Obama himself.

As the day progressed and having thoroughly enjoyed the lunacy of this award I finally came to realize that there may have never been a more perfect choice to honor the origin of the Nobel Peace Prize than is Obama. Are you aware of the original reason that Alfred Nobel created the Nobel Prize?

We all know that every October all of the world’s media turns its attention to Stockholm, Sweden as they wait to hear the recipients of the Nobel prizes. When you hear the word “Nobel” what do you think of….. Peace.

Several years before his death, at the death of his brother, Alfred Nobel opened the paper to read his brother’s obituary. He wanted to make sure that the paper had done it correctly. What he saw to his horror wasn’t his brother’s obituary at all, but his own! The obituary of Alfred Nobel, the paper had the wrong brother dying. As he read it, he was further shocked to realize how they were summing up his life. They described him, accurately, as one of the inventors of Dynamite. However, they outlined all of the death and destruction that had come from the misuse of Dynamite. It dawned on him that if he died right then, he would be forever remembered as a man of destruction. So, he decided that he had a rare opportunity, a chance to rewrite his own obituary. He made a decision, if it was the last thing he did, he was going to change how he would be remembered. So, he created the Nobel Peace Prize.

He did it, who thinks of Dynamite when they hear Nobel? We think peace don’t we?
He arranged that at his death in 1900, his fortune, most of which came from Dynamite would start the Nobel Prize Foundation.

The Nobel Peace Prize was created by Alfred Nobel to hide his true story from history and to create a new image for himself. It was about style over substance, and about self aggrandizing himself building a manufactured legacy for his name. When we consider the origin of this prize who better represents it than does Obama?

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for reading my post on FaceBook. You make a good point:

    "The Nobel Peace Prize was created by Alfred Nobel to hide his true story from history and to create a new image for himself. It was about style over substance, and about self aggrandizing himself building a manufactured legacy for his name. When we consider the origin of this prize who better represents it than does Obama?"

    Well Said!

    Dr. Bill Smith
    Editor, ARRA News Service

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  2. Great point. I never thought about the Nobel Prize(s) that way before.

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  3. Thanks for reading and for commenting Steve!

    ReplyDelete