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Meanwhile, if the criteria and selection process for the peace award appears a bit hazy, those in the other areas are far from uniform either. Notes Philippe Valode, a French historian and author of a book on France's six Nobel winners in various categories; "Criteria for the scientific award are fairly clear and consistent, while those for economics are mostly firm - but open to subjectivity when social considerations factor in," Valode says. "Literature must have broad messages and allure to world-wide readers, But - being about art - a lot of creativity goes into the selection process, too. When...
Valode says that's not new- and that almost all Nobel winners provoke debate, at times fierce. But he says the reason Obama has taken that controversy to new heights is because, in choosing him, the committee seemed to ignore the two main reasons the prize's founder Alfred Nobel stipulated for awarding it. "Either the person must have embraced the cause of peace and obtained results towards obtaining it," Valode recalls. "Or the person had to have demonstrated a commitment to peace through a lifetime of work for it. Obama hasn't had enough time to accomplish much...
Even in the peace prize's home country, there was widespread disapproval of the choice - so much so that some critics suggested it was high time for Sweden, which manages all the other Nobel prizes, to take back the peace prize. "Obama said today that he was surprised and humble, and even that he did not honestly feel he deserves the prize," Jan Gunnar Furuly, writer for Norway's biggest newspaper Aftenbladet, said in an Email to TIME." I think most Norwegians do not understand the decision to give Obama the prize, and a lot of us are really embarrassed...
...when reality bites, it chomps down hard. The Nobel Committee cited "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." Some of those efforts are faulted by his critics - those who favor a missile shield for Poland or a troop surge in Afghanistan or a harder line on Iran. But even his fans know that none of the dreams have yet come true, and a prize for even dreaming them can feed the illusion that they have. (See the top 10 Obama-backlash moments...
...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...