Decline and fall of the Nobel Peace Prize

[turbo]

And how many pages must a thread run down before we see any sign of substantiation for the assertion that the selection of Obama was so dumbfoundingly ill-deserved that anyone who calls it merely "hard to defend" ought to be labeled a "cheerleader"?

Much of the anti-Obama material seems to me to be on no more lofty a level than Kanye West's rants about Taylor Swift's VMA award.

I could go on and on about her achievements at age 18-19, but Wiki has a pretty good run-down.

According to Nielsen SoundScan, Swift was the biggest selling artist of 2008 in the United States with combined sales of more than four million albums. Swift's Fearless and her self-titled album finished 2008 at number three and number six respectively, with sales of 2.1 and 1.5 million.[6] She was the first artist in the history of Nielsen SoundScan to have two different albums in the Top 10 on the year end album chart.[6] Fearless has topped the Billboard 200 in 11 non-consecutive weeks.[7] No album has spent more time at number one since 1999-2000. It also was the first album by a female artist in country music history to log eight weeks at #1 on The Billboard 200. In mid-January 2009, Swift became the first country artist to top the 2 million mark in paid downloads with three different songs.[8] As of the week ending February 8, 2009, Swift's single "Love Story" became the country song with most paid downloads in history and the first country song to top the Mainstream Top 40 chart.[9][10] Swift then subsequently went onto replicate the feat, reaching #1 again on the Mainstream Top 40 in September 2009 with "You Belong With Me", making it just the second country song in the chart's history to reach the top. [11] According to the 2009 issue of Forbes, Swift is ranked as the 69th most powerful celebrity with over $18 million in earnings this year.[12]

Now, she hasn't earned any "life-time achievement" awards, but she has been incredibly popular and influential in her field, and at a very young age. Most musicians would be proud and happy for her, but not Kanye. He hadn't the insight, the maturity, nor the class to graciously acknowledge her accomplishments and the fact that she just "might" have earned that award.

 

[seycyrus]

Much of the anti-Obama material seems to me to be on no more lofty a level than Kanye West's rants about Taylor Swift's VMA award.

If this isn't the one of the greatest derailments of a thread in the history of PF...

Yeah, so now if you think that Obama winning the peace prize when he had only been in office for a couple of weeks is fishy, you're just like Kanye!

Someone tag this post to the thread about the decline of PF.

 

[Gokul43201]

Sure, Gokul.

And that archaism has never been observed, neither in the scientific prizes or elsewhere.

If you read a little carefully, you will note that the "archaism" isn't the only phrase that I underlined.

Furthermore, Morgan Tswangerai did more than Obama last year as well.

And even if you didn't read too carefully, you'd have noticed that I mentioned Tsvangirai in a more-than-one-person-long list in my earlier post, of deserving candidates. And if you wanted to make a coherent argument, couldn't you, at the very least, take the trouble of enumerating what it is that Tsvangirai did more of, last year, than Obama?

 

[seycyrus]

..enumerating what it is that Tsvangirai did more of, last year, than Obama?

Since you are talking about *last year*... What did Obama do last year besides run a winning campaign?

 

[Gokul43201]

Yeah, so now if you think that Obama winning the peace prize when he had only been in office for a couple of weeks is fishy, you're just like Kanye!

If this isn't one of the greatest misrepresentations of the word "week"...

And I obviously meant, "during the past year". But at least you have now graduated from making no contribution at all, to nitpicking language errors. Congrats!

 

[Hurkyl]

In this case, Obama did not seek the award - it was bestowed upon him by an independent committee, but still it is used as en excuse to attack him.

I guess I haven't been following the thread closely, but I thought we^* were using the award to attack the Nobel Prize Committee? (And to a lesser extent, the politicians who have decided to play along with it)

*: And that includes you, at least originally.[/size]

 

[seycyrus]

If this isn't one of the greatest misrepresentations of the word "week"...

And I obviously meant, "during the past year". But at least you have now graduated from making no contribution at all, to nitpicking language errors. Congrats!

Excuse me sir, you have made an error!

The post that you respond to was my response to turbo-1, you you.

I will graciously ignore this error, but must ask. What did Obama do during the past year, prior to when the nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize were closed?

 

[Evo]

Locked.