Word: awarding
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...world believes is taking the U.S. in the right direction - a new survey out earlier this week showed that the U.S. global image had soared in the past year - but who is meeting stiff resistance at home; indeed in his comment Jagland noted "we would hope this (award) will enhance what he is trying to do." Still, Jagland tested credulity of listeners when he stressed "we are not awarding the prize for what may happen in the future, but for what he has done in the previous year." (See TIME's photo-essay "Fun with Photoshop: Obama's Other Awards...
Valode is torn between two clashing theories. The first suspects the committee cynically sought to lift the award's profile and restore some of its star-quality status, "and what better way of doing that than to give it to the most popular man on the planet today?" Valode asks. Conversely, Valode says the committee may have gotten pragmatic by making a fundamental change in who it sees as most likely to promote and obtain peace today. "Previously, it was the charities, the non-governmental organizations, the brave diplomats who dared to believe," he says. "Now, perhaps the committee...
...president after so short time. For a long time the Swedes have argued that they should take over the responsibility for the prize. Now they have really good arguments for that." Echoing that sentiment, Jan Arild Snoen, columnist for the conservative Norwegian website Minerva, said, "To award the peace prize to a sitting president during a war which he not only supports but actually wants to increase troops for, is very peculiar. I think there is a danger that it will make Norway look silly...
...wasn't Barack Obama's fault that the Nobel Committee awarded him the Peace Prize, and it needs little imagination - looking at the first reactions to the honor in the U.S., which were hardly positive - to believe that the award was one that he would rather not have been granted. But granted it was, and Obama had to say something about it. Without being showy or dynamic, his brief speech in the White House Rose Garden...
Obama said that he was both "surprised and humbled" by the award, and there's no reason whatsoever to think that he wasn't. But that word humbled is an interesting one to think about. Humility is a virtue - except when it isn't. We think of it as one of the attributes that make up a certain quiet acceptance of one's lot, even saintliness - think of Pope John XXIII. At the same time, what the books call false humility - the act of constantly saying that one is not worthy, a not-so-subtle way of provoking someone else...