Adrastos on how universal the ridicule of Obama's being awarded the Nobel is:

I've found it a bit disturbing that some on the Left seem to be ridiculing Obama's peace prize in a way that *almost* echoes the Right Wing noise machine. Remember, nobody campaigns for a Nobel Prize, they sometimes emerge out of nowhere and are often awarded to *encourage* good works in the future as well as to reward past performance.

Having said that, here's your reading assignment and, yeah, I'm bit late: I was at a meeting of the procrastinators club and our starting time kept getting put back. Now where was I? There are two fine pieces at Salon by Juan Cole and Joan Walsh that place the whole thing in historical context. Imagine that....

...Obama is not perfect and has moved more slowly on some things than I would have liked BUT he's trying to do the right thing, which is something that should be encouraged. The Bushies left an unholy mess on so many fronts that it is IMPOSSIBLE for all those wrongs to be righted in a mere 9 months. I don't need to go into chapter and verse on the many problems inherited by Obama that predate the last 8 years. Remember: don't ask, don't tell was the end result of Bill Clinton's ill fated attempt to end the ban on gays in the military. Holy backfire, Batman.

We all knew that anyone who ended up in the White House after the Dubya years was going to have a very hard row to hoe. In some ways, Obama's receiving this award makes it even harder on him...but if it does get him considering what he's doing and why a great deal more, then the Nobel committee will have helped do us all a great service.

Go read the Salon articles A references for more.

And applications for Obama town hall tix end today at 10 AM CST.