The ignoble peace prize

Nearly everyone I talked to yesterday had the same reaction when they heard Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for his stunning diplomatic efforts as president in the first nine months of office: This is a satire, right? This is a joke. This is someone's idea of high comedy. This is a "Saturday Night Live" routine that someone mistakenly interpreted as a news story. This is the lead story in the Onion, not the New York Times.

Personally, I had to read four or five different news accounts before I believed the report yesterday morning.

There was no way this could be true!

But, indeed, it was. This is the reality of the now shamefully politically correct Nobel Prize. We should realize this by now. Remember, Jimmy Carter won this award. Yasser Arafat won this award. Kofi Annan won this award. And, yes, Al Gore won this award.

So, why should it surprise us when Barack Obama, a new president with no accomplishments to his credit, wins the once-coveted prize.

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There's just nothing noble any more about the Nobel Peace Prize. They ought to rename it the ignoble peace prize.

For instance, do you know who Al Gore beat out for the prize in 2007?

Irena Sendler was a senior administrator in the Warsaw Social Welfare Department in Poland in 1939 when Germany invaded. She began rescuing Jews, hiding them, providing them with fictitious identities, bringing them food, clothing and offering shelter – all at great personal risk.

When 5,000 people were dying every month in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, she smuggled out 2,500 children – in gunnysacks, body bags, toolboxes, potato sacks and coffins.

By 1943, the Nazis were on to her work. She was arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo. They broke her feet and legs – but she would never give up the whereabouts of those children or the names of those who aided her in rescuing them.

She was sentenced to death, but managed to escape. She was crippled for life as a result of the injuries. But she never pitied herself. She never thought of herself as a hero.

"I could have done more," she said. "This regret will follow me to my death."

That's the kind of person who did not win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Instead, it went to Al Gore. Why? Because he put together a slide show on global warming that was full of lies and was purposely designed to mislead people around the world to give up their freedoms in favor of more government control over their lives.

It's the ignoble peace prize. No other name will do.

Its image has been permanently and irrevocably tarnished for its association with terrorists, anti-Semites, evil people and fools.

The reaction around the world to the Obama award has been interesting to say the least.

Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic had it about right: "It might be smart for Obama to turn this prize down, at least until he achieves peace somewhere. Or trade for Olympics."

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said: "He should decline it and then ask to be considered again in three or four years when he has a record."

Time's Nancy Gibbs wrote: "The last thing Barack Obama needed at this moment in his presidency and our politics is a prize for a promise."

The Washington Post's David Ignatius said: "The Nobel Peace Prize award to Barack Obama seems so goofy – even if you're a fan, you have to admit that he hasn't really done much yet as a peacemaker. But there's an aspect of this prize that is real and important – and that validates Obama's strategy from the day he took office. ... America was too unpopular under Bush. The Nobel committee is expressing a collective sigh of relief that America has rejoined the global consensus. They're right. It's a good thing. It's just a little weird that they gave him a prize for it."

"Goofy" just doesn't have enough outrage associated with it for my stomach.

But so goes the ignoble peace prize. It just doesn't have the meaning it once had.