First Blog

Hello all. Will recently invited me to join this blog, and having deeply considered the implications of such participation, I have decided it would be best for Will’s morale to contribute. The tremendous aftershock from taking such a rare firm stance on a personal issue left my mind utterly confused about a topic to blog about, especially since I am decidedly ill-informed on matters that tend to entertain Will, such as the economy, the formative history of the Wu-Tang Clan, modern jazz, and royally beating up rival fraternity members.
Luckily enough for me, as soon as I began traversing this blog, Will’s blatant conservativism manifested itself in the form of an article which Will determines to be “One of the more insightful takes on Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize that (he) has read.”

Now, I think it would be difficult for me to prove the entire gist of the article wrong, but I do think that I can show that the esteemed writers over at “Chicago Boyz” are in fact, far from insightful. First of all, the writer is determined to show that Obama’s success has been more a result of his race than his accomplishments—that he has never had to “knock down a door with his skill,” but rather has enjoyed the fruits of being the prospective first black person to gain the particular office or accolade. This writer points to Obama’s selection as the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review as an example of this exact situation, but I feel the need to point out that he is not correct. The writer proclaims: “Any black Harvard law student with acceptable grades could have served such a symbolic purpose. Obama was nothing special.” I’m at law school now, so I’ll enlighten you folks on how this works. First of all, to even be considered for a law review, a student has to be in the top ten percent of the class. This means that at Harvard Law School, where students almost entirely attended the nation’s top undergraduate schools, scored in the 99th percentile on the LSAT, and had GPA’s near 4.0, Obama had better scores than nine out of ten students. To be voted the editor (and it’s possible that his race may have helped him here), he would have necessarily had to commit hundreds of hours spent on meticulous research and writing to gain any sort of respect from the other members. If “Obama was nothing special” for accomplishing this task, then I am in fact convinced that he is still a genius for somehow achieving this accolade without skill and hard work.

My second problem with this writer is that he asserts that he would like to see much of Obama’s domestic plans fail. This seems to be one of the most arrogant political statements that anyone could make. This writer determines here that he would rather his own political views be proven correct than the country actually be a better place under an opposing party, and I find this to be a major problem with the current state of politics. Shouldn’t we be rooting for the United States to improve all the time, not just when our guy is responsible for it?

Finally, I have a couple of questions about the main argument concerning the Nobel Peace Prize. First of all, I agree that Obama has compiled very little tangible evidence of promoting peace. However, I would have liked to see this writer respond to common counter-claims: is it possible that the objective to instill peace is sufficient? That such an objective is a symbol of something greater? At the very least, such goals represent the desire to transfer one of the most powerful nations in the world from a state of war to a state of peace, and if we know anything from Vietnam, we know these things take time. Also, doesn’t the argument for refusing the prize carry with it some possibly disturbing implications? Our perception in the world is just now improving from probably its worst point ever under good ol’ GW. Part of this improved perception is the belief that by voting for Obama, we have rejected Bush’s war policies. What does it say to the world if our president rejects the international award for peace? How arrogant do we appear for telling the Nobel Prize Committee that we know better? Where are the answers to these possible solutions in this article? Sorry it’s so long, won’t happen again.