The Nobel committee’s announcement last week of former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as co-recipients of this year's Peace Prize came as an odd package, wrapped in inevitability.
Up to now, the award has been given either to people who worked to bring foes together, or promoted the cause of peace or charity, especially amid adverse political environments. Last week was the first time it has been awarded for a mixture of science, politics and Hollywood.
Not that anyone was surprised. Gore has won every major award for his film, "An Inconvenient Truth," including two Oscars, so the Nobel is just one more.
Still, how a group of researchers and a politician who knows a bully pulpit when he sees one fit in company with, for instance, Linus Pauling and Lech Walesa, presents us with a puzzle - until we consider who didn't win, and, possibly, why.
Paul David Hewson is known to us as Bono Vox, lead singer of the perennially popular Irish rock band U2, and an example among celebrities of social consciousness and involvement.
His history as such goes back almost 30 years, to include participation in concerts and tours that promote help for Third World countries. Along with Band Aid and Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof, a fellow rocker and champion of the poor, he has promoted the cause of African nations smothered by monumental poverty and stalked by AIDS.
Bono infuses his activism with a distinctly Christian character, which does not disqualify him - Mother Teresa received the Peace Prize in 1979, and the Dalai Lama won it in 1989. He reads and knows his Bible, and his speeches are demonstrations of his command of Scripture.
And he has been nominated for the Peace Prize, as many as three times.
Perhaps his associations put his name at the bottle of the pile in Oslo.
When the Nobel committee announced its choice, its chairman, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, took care to note the prize was not a slap at the Bush administration, which hasn't been as enthusiastic about "An Inconvenient Truth" as, for example, mainstream nationwide media.
Mjoes might have believed the qualification was necessary after his predecessor characterized the prize given in 2005 to Mohammed el-Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency - another U.N. subset - as a "kick" against President Bush's attitude toward Iran's and North Korea's nuclear ambitions and the rationale for the invasion of Iraq. The secretive committee doesn't like its inner workings hinted at, and prefers to be regarded as apolitical.
However, Mjoes’ denial may have tipped off something about the panel's attitude toward someone like Bono.
He has worked longer than Gore, raised more money - billions, in fact - and promoted his cause above himself. So far, so good.
His problem may be that while doing so, he forged alliances with conservatives no less than former North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, Bush's former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Bush himself.
In fact, it was his intuitive understanding of Jesus' message that turned Helms, reviled and dubbed "Senator No" by the left, from his previous disregard for victims of HIV and AIDS to become an ardent campaigner for American funds to fight the disease in Africa.
Bono's strategy, then, differs from Gore's, and has attracted criticism. Many who agree with his mission express distaste for his and Geldof's willingness to meet and work with the likes of Blair and Bush.
Some prefer instead to fire volleys from afar via confrontational, media-based campaigns.
Even Jesus entered the houses of his ideological opponents, the Pharisees - in at least one case, to have dinner - and reasoned with them.
But, then, Jesus might not have passed muster with the wise men of Oslo, either.
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