The No Bell Pizza Prize

Maybe I'm having a "don't you talk about my momma/Obama!" moment, but now I'm just getting angry.  Because while I'm upset over the lack of "change" going on right now, I can't take it anymore.  And since I just wrote about this particular subject to friends, I thought I would share it here.

Okay, I'm doing it: 

First of all--in response to criticisms that he received the prize just because he's "not George Bush"-- that's stupid.  No one on the list of peace prize laureates is like George Bush.

Moving on.  Why the uproar?  Has everyone who has received the prize in the past achieved great things by the time they were nominated, even by the time they received the prize?  More recently, Al Gore received the peace prize in 2007 (w/ the UN panel) for his work on climate change awareness.  Yet two years later, we have yet to see any comprehensive energy reform in the US, much less in the entire world.  Hell, we haven't even convinced everyone climate change exists.  I don't remember an uproar there-- "But, why Gore? He doesn't deserve it! It's all talk!  He hasn't done anything yet!" 

How about in 1964, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the peace prize.  By the time of his nomination, the civil rights movement had not yet won the Civil Rights Act, or the Voting Rights Act.  Furthermore, did he deserve the prize over the people in Alabama or Mississippi or North Carolina who spearheaded the movement rather than figureheaded it?  Let's not forget the efforts of Abernathy, or Robinson (to name a couple).  --"But, Dr. King? He just gave a nice speech in Washington.  He hasn't really done anything yet!  In fact, it's been years and no laws have been passed!"

I don't mean to downplay the achievements of these men or anyone else who has received the prize in the past.  But to pretend that this is the first time the award has been given to someone who has not yet achieved the successes for which they aim would be an ill-informed criticism.  And it's not like he nominated or chose himself-- he was just as shocked as anyone else, and said himself that he didn't deserve to be among the other winners. 
(What he said: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7bHkH779qg)

I am just as impatient as everyone else.  But when Obama says that this prize is a "call to action," I get happy.  Period.  Because, I'm sorry, he got elected.  No, no--rather, we elected him.  Let's not forget that, it's not a passive sentence, we performed the action.  And now what?  We are just sitting here, waiting to be transformed as a nation.  He told us to hold him accountable.  How many of us, how many of the people who elected him, are doing that?  Are we putting pressure on him to pass health care reform?  To pass immigration reform?  To pass energy reform?  No, but the minority of the nation is pressuring Congress not to, or at least not to pass it in the ways Obama said we'd see it. 

On that note-- have we forgotten that Obama doesn't make the laws? He doesn't write them.  He doesn't pass them.  If we want to see these things happen, and are angry that they haven't happened as quickly as we see fit, we are placing blame in the wrong place.  Maybe we should look at our Congressmen and Congress women.  Or, to get to the root of the problem, maybe we should look at ourselves.  Whose country is this, anyway?

But whatever.  It's easier to email/gchat/tweet/facebook message our friends about how he hasn't done anything yet. 

There.  There's some perspective for ya.

/rant.