Similarities Between Tom Toles And Michael Binyon

The process of assessing and comparing the life achievements of various world leaders is never easy. Such is the burden of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, who annually sift through dozens of political leaders, activists, and trailblazer’s efforts to award the world’s most prestigious prize in conflict resolution. Their choice, however, sometimes garners more hostility than harmony. This irony was especially exemplified in President Obama’s 2009 win, which was awarded less than nine months into his presidency. Various critics emerged, each lambasting the irony of the award’s timeframe. Two of these critics, Tom Toles and Michael Binyon, specifically provide relevant examples as to the diversity of viewpoints and techniques used to condemn Obama. Toles’ Washington Post cartoon, Heavy

Rather than exaggerate the emotional reactions of readers, Biyon attempts to simplify the argument of Obama’s undeservingness of the Nobel prize into one of facts and figures. He weaves in counterclaims to both refute the nobel committee's reasoning for the award and address its situational irony and stitches in allusions to discuss the severity of the Nobel Prize. Binyon explicitly explains how “There is… irony in offering a peace prize to a president whose principal preoccupation at the moment is when and how to expand the war in Afghanistan” (Binyon ###), and sews in allusions of past unjustified prize winners like, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and, of course, the infamous Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. The fabric of his argument is sewn with great attention to logic and little else. Though Binyon occasionally quips with dry British wit, his overall tone and rhetoric is formal and straightlaced, a stark departure from Toles’ absurdist and emotional