The Nobel and My Friends

Last Friday I received several e-mails and texts from Italian friends, full of exclamation points, saying "complimenti!!!" (congratulations). Why? Because the President of the United States unexpectedly won the Nobel Peace Prize. As an American, they thought I would be pleased and proud. I am.

Many of my American friends, almost all of them Democrats, don't share my point of view. I discount views of Republican friends on principle. Anyone who willingly cast a vote for the possibility of Sarah Palin becoming president deserves to be discounted. But I digress.

"It's too soon!"

"What did he do to deserve it?"

"What about the surge in Afghanistan?"

"Gandhi didn't get a Nobel!"

"The Norwegians are know-nothings!"

"It's only because he is not Bush."

"Yeah, well, Yasser Arafat won it, too." (Note to those who say that: Don't leave out that he won it with Israeli Yitzhak Rabin)

Can I just put it out there that the President did not campaign to win the Nobel Peace Prize? By all accounts, the White House was taken by surprise. But if you win it prematurely do you turn it down? Get real.

Obama accepted it graciously: "...I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations."

But even those words cause criticism: "All he can do is talk. What has he accomplished in nine months?"

Can I just say that even rural people in a small Italian village, many of whom are uncomfortable with blacks (okay, racist) acknowledge that his election was "buona per tutto il mundo" (good for all the world)?

Can I add that changing the way the world views the United States overnight is not nothing?

I expected that the right wing of the States would heap scorn on the Nobel Committee (they're Scandinavian socialists!) and President Obama. I did not expect it from those on the left or in the middle. Or my friends. It is disappointing.

Obama said, "To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize."

Whether you agree with those words or not, Americans have reason to be proud of their president for the first time in almost nine years. The Nobel Peace Prize is an honor. Anyone who criticizes it would be deliriously happy to be its recipient.

Why not just revel in the fact that the President of the United States, the guy we elected, won it, and be proud?