US more shocked than ga-ga about Obama win

Even general supporters of Barack Obama who voted for him in the US presidential elections were disbelieving when they saw the news on Friday morning that he’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Americans swung into Twitter and Blackberry overdrive to communicate their astonishment. Some weren’t particularly pleased.

“Whatever happened to awarding deeds actually done,” asked US screenwriter Michael Russnow in the HuffingtonPost. “It is traditional for Nobel honorees to be named a long time after their achievements in the sciences and literature. Obama’s designation is akin to giving an Oscar to a young director for films.”

The White House is trying to calibrate its response to the award but what has slipped out so far is plain shock. When told in an email from Reuters that many people around the world were stunned by the announcement, Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, responded: “As are we.”

Ironically, the award arrives at a time when Obama is weighing the recommendation of the US military in Afghanistan to deploy additional troops.

Some Americans said Obama’s actions last week to brush off the Dalai Lama, didn’t sit well on a Nobel laureate. “Obama is so busy cozying up to China which has a dodgy human rights record that he postponed a meeting with the Dalai Lama. Why on earth should Obama get this award when he is prepared to ignore China’s bullying and cruel treatment of Tibetan people?” New York University student Jennifer Seaver told DNA.