One of the reasons I was skeptical of President Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize is that in my adolescence I saw people like Nelson Mandela and Yitzhak Rabin win the award. So I've come to associate it with accomplishment rather than aspiration, which I understand is not necessarily how the Nobel works.
In the aftermath of Obama's win however, the right has taken to delegitimizing the Nobel by saying "Yasser Arafat won." From Hot Air:
Dude, they gave a Nobel to Arafat. Any credibility the prize once had is long, long gone. Serious question, though: Is today's announcement good news or bad news for The One? The last thing he needs with the press buzzing about last week's SNL skit is a global reminder that his stature is grossly disproportionate to his actual achievements.
Yeah, Yasser Arafat won that prize along with Shimon Perez and Yitzhak Rabin for the 1994 Oslo Accords. Rabin later paid for his attempts to make peace with his life. Saying Arafat didn't deserve it is the same thing as saying Rabin didn't deserve it -- and if you believe that, fine, but at least have the courage to include the name of the man who was shot to death in the street for trying to make the world a better place if you're going to argue he didn't deserve to be recognized for his work.
Plenty of left-leaning folks, including me, don't think Obama "earned it" -- and it's a self-evident farce for the president to win the peace prize while he's still in the middle of two foreign wars. Spencer Ackerman and Tim Fernholz make the best arguments for the president accepting the prize anyway -- and I can't help but be moved by Shimon Perez' statement. But the reaction of some on the right--from smearing former Nobel recipients to frothing at the mouth with racial resentment, is absurd.
-- A. Serwer
