I'm really annoyed by the negativity, envy and outright bitterness of the Sunday morning bashing of the president because he won the internationally prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.
What's up with these folks?
The banter on the morning talk shows went from suggesting the president should have declined the award to berating his selection and even calling the choice anti-American and an insult that now lessen the importance and prestige of the honor.
It's becoming clearer every day the President Obama can't win with his critics on things like this because it has now surpassed disagreements on foreign policy, health care reform and how to deal with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is about a Black man in the White House and how it is being translated into "anti-American" rhetoric.
This theme took root and has been nurtured by the right and ignored by the left. It's not new. It started during the campaign with reports Obama "wasn't a Muslim" (rather than he is a Christian) and the question continued to arise. All of this just feeding the doubt he was not "one of us."
Since his election it has persisted into his policy with suggestions defeating health care would be a personal defeat for Obama; and just last month conservatives called U.S. loss to host the 2016 Olympic a vote against Obama not a blow to the U.S.
I'm not privileged with the information the selection committee used to select Obama but neither are any of the other folks bashing Oslo's decision and the president so freely this weekend. The Nobel committee said they based their decision to select Obama because his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism.
But I do know this, President Obama is now the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, he isn't giving it back, it hasn't loss the prestige and folks need to understand he is the president of the "United States." Let's try uniting.