As published for the Cleveland Plain Dealer on October 11, 2009:

I found my calling in high school when I was suspected of cheating.

At the start of my senior year I wrote an essay on William Faulkner’s 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech in which he called on writers to inspire humanity to overcome its fear of the then-new threat of nuclear annihilation.

While I cannot recall what I wrote, I remember my English teacher, Mrs. Gentry, calling me up to her desk the next day to ask if I wrote it myself. When I said yes, she paused, looked me in the eye and said, “Are you being honest? No one helped you?” “No, ma’am,” I replied. “OK, go sit down. It’s very good,” she said. I went on to major in journalism.

The news that President Barack Obama won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize made me think of him, not as Faulkner in this example, but as myself.

In awarding the prize to Obama – and nominating him a mere 14 days after his inauguration – the Nobel committee has again voiced its opinion, not of the achievements of a man unknown to the world just three years ago, but about U.S. foreign policy. His award marks the third Peace Prize handed out as a protest against the policies of my former boss, President George W. Bush. In announcing its decision, the committee cited Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” during his presidency, especially his push for reducing nuclear weapons.

Read the full article here