Originally posted by missvicky
reply to post by Benevolent Heretic

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All sorts of reasons will be given for why this is a terrible thing, but the truth is, Obama was honored with an prestigious world-wide award, meaning that a lot of people like him, appreciate him and his vision for the relationship of the US in the world... and some people just can't freaking stand that.

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I couldn't agree with you more!
this country is going to hate and gripe itself to death. Much easier than getting behind positive vision and plans.

Obama Wins Booker Prize

The Mann Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award, has been conferred for 2009 on President Obama, it was announced yesterday. Not only is this the first time the Booker Prize has gone to an American. It is the first time the prize has gone to someone who has never published a work of fiction. By the terms of the Mann Booker Trust, the prize is awarded annually to “the author of what is judged to be the best novel published each year in the United Kingdom.” Obama has written two highly regarded memoirs, but neither was published in 2009 in the United Kingdom, and neither is a novel. At the press conference where the award to Obama was announced, the chairman of the judges said, “He’s bound to have a short story or two shoved into a drawer somewhere. That’s good enough for us.” And besides, the chairman noted, it was the unanimous conclusion of the judges that the president’s “whole life is a great novel.”

Although as recently as 24 hours ago, the president’s name was entirely absent from the traditional frenzy of speculation about the Booker Prize, he is now considered the leading candidate for the Prix Goncourt, which is the French equivalent of the Booker and possibly even more prestigious. Among past winners are Marcel Proust and Simone de Beauvoir.

Traditionally, as a prize for novel writing, it has gone to someone who has written a novel. Obama got the award, according to the judges, for “smoking cigarettes and wearing those Euro-cut suits and skinny ties, and generally looking like a French intellectual.”

The president is considered a shoo-in for an Oscar in the category of best cinematography at next spring’s Academy Awards. “We had to give him something,” a spokesman said, “and nobody knows what the heck cinematography is anyway.”

Obama is also expected to win this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics, for an experiment he conducted two decades ago in a science course at the high school he attended in Hawaii. By dropping two coconuts from the top of a tower, he determined that gravity works in Hawaii just like it does in England, where Newton had conducted a similar experiment several centuries earlier, using apples, even though Hawaii is much closer to the equator. “Whether distance from the equator might make some difference in the way gravity works is a question that nobody had thought to ask,” the Nobel citation declares. “Now, thanks to Mr. Obama’s research, we have the answer.” Obama will be the first person to win two Nobel prizes in the same year. “Next year, he’s going for three,” said presidential adviser David Axelrod yesterday.

Among other prizes Obama has won or is expected to win in 2009 are Scariest Costume at the annual Halloween Ball of the National Press Club (he came dressed as Elizabeth McCaughey), Parent of the Year at the Sidwell Friends School (“So what if he missed all the PTA meetings?” the citation read), and Most Hot Dogs Consumed in Five Minutes (14) at this year’s White House staff July 4 picnic. A controversy broke out when the Post reported that they were actually veggie-dogs, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ruled that the new-age sausages should count. “Next year he’s going for 16,” said Axelrod. “Eyes on the prize.”

After Nobel, what's next for Obama - sainthood?

Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for one thing - getting elected president in a country that has never had a woman or a person of color as its leader.

I expect an Oscar, a Tony and a Pulitzer will all follow, and all will be equally deserved.

The Nobel is great news for Obama and for America, but is bad news for the Rev. Al, Jesse and me, as the prize committees have now met their quota.

Whether you voted for Obama or not, you have to admit his election has finally, and forever affirmed that, in the USA, a person's race is not an impenetrable barrier to the highest and most poweful office of our government.

Sun Tzu suggested the importance of positioning in strategy and that position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of competitive actors in that environment. He thought that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through an established list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions.