While Newsweek turned to Christopher Hitchens to make sense of the surprising choice of President Obama as this year?s Nobel Peace Prize winner, TIME addressed the issue in at least three places within its latest issue.
Comedian Tracy Morgan offered one take:
I think he deserves it. I think he’s really trying to stop nuclear war. I love Obama. You see how cool he is? You see the way he gets off of Air Force One? He kicks that leg just like Richard Roundtree. Ain’t no other countries gonna mess with us.
On a (slightly) more serious note, a brief article about the history of the Nobel Peace Prize offers this line:
Much has been made of Obama’s seemingly premature win and the committee’s vague reasoning (he promoted “international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”).
Seemingly? Seriously? At least TIME includes one acknowledgement that the award is premature at best. You might be surprised to learn that the author responsible for that line of thinking is Obama apologist Joe Klein:
The Nobel Peace Prize, presented prospectively ? a triumph of hope over inexperience ? threatens to become a central metaphor of Barack Obama’s turbocharged political career. He seems fated to be feted for who he is not (George W. Bush) and who he might turn out to be, but not for things he has actually done. This is dangerous stuff, politically. It almost guarantees disappointment.
