The Nobel Peace Prize: Deserved Or Corrupt?

Deserved or Corrupt? The Nobel Peace Prize has always been a respected and dignified award. It is often presented to renowned figures that have helped to shape worldwide communications today. By presenting this award to undeserving figures such as Barack Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize has been seriously undermined of its credibility and prestige. Both Tom Toles and Michael Binyon excellently explain and criticize this absurd handout through their rhetoric arguments. Their logic and argumentation further call into question the validity of the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision. Each argument was also largely successful in awakening its audience and sparking much debate throughout the world through its techniques. Ethos is one of the first …show more content…
Both Toles and Binyon strongly believe that Obama was undeserving of this award. This Nobel Peace Prize was given to Obama in 2009 at the beginning of his presidency. At this point, Obama had not done anything significant in office. In Toles’s visual, Obama is given the gold medal while hunched over at the start line. The fat man then says “Here’s your medal… hope you run a good race.” (Toles). This blurb of text is claiming that Obama is being rewarded before any substantial amount of time has passed, at the “start of the race”, so to speak. Obama could not have done anything to deserve a Nobel Peace Prize because he had not been in office long enough to fully deserve the award. In Binyon’s argument, he claims that Obama’s award possesses “such an obvious political and partisan intent.” (Binyon). Binyon’s major premise is that the Nobel Peace Prize is supposed to acknowledge the actual acts of peace, not peace-filled promises that have not yet been fulfilled. As a minor premise, it is true that President Obama has not completed or execute any true act of peace. Therefore Obama should not have won the Nobel Peace Prize, due to simple logic. By giving this award to Obama, Binyon claims that the Nobel Committee’s values are not only illogical and absurd, but they are also possibly corrupt. The award is also very ironic and paradoxical because the award is preceding the behavior of Obama (Binyon). Obama did have good intentions for peace, but the Nobel Peace Prize was more likely given to him as a figure to encourage peaceful relations throughout the world, not because of the peaceful relations he promised to pursue but had not yet been involved in. Both claims from the authors elegantly slaughter the supposed values that the Nobel Committee holds