You are quite correct. And Carter missed an opportunity to stand up for America. Instead, he allowed himself to be used as a pawn in people shitting on our President. The fact that he was President, and not a very good one, stokes the fires of irony. And seals his disgrace as a holder of the office.
His Habitat work, now that’s a differetn story.
Besides the two clunkers you mention, which other winners of the Prize would you say devalue it?
I mean, yeah, they blew it with Kissinger (1973) and Arafat (1994).
But how about Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Dalai Lama, Oscar Arias, Elie Wiesel, Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, Mother Teresa, Sadat and Begin, Andrei Sahkarov, and Amnesty International, just to consider some of the nominees from the period between those two mistakes, let alone recipients from earlier years such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Albert Schweitzer, and George C. Marshall?
Speaking personally, and discounting my own political bias as much as I can, I’d say Gorbachev, Rigoberta Menchu, and Kofi Annan.
Keep in mind, Arafat won the prize split with his antagonists, Peres and Rabin. So its not like he won it himself, but more like a recognition of effort. Same thing with Kissinger, if I recall correctly. And if the only way to stop people from killing each other, even briefly, is to heap a ceremonial honor on an asshole, I say have at it!
So you’re saying Reagan and Thatcher should have been honored along with Gorbachev?
Sounds OK to me.
This not being IMHO, got anything in particular against them?
Can’t remember what the Nobel committee specifically honored him for, but ISTM that his most significant accomplishments towards peace and freedom were: letting the Warsaw Pact go its own way, his nuclear arms agreement with the U.S., and enabling greater openness within the USSR itself.
Reagan of course played an equal role in one of those three accomplishments. I have no idea how Thatcher figures into this at all.
Sure.
Rigoberta Menchu was the subject of a story that is likely a fraud - drafted by her to lend support to her political movement. Now, that sort of thing isn’t a dealbreaker in politics usually, but since Menchu’s political stance is so tied with her identity, it affects things a good deal.
The various ways Kofi Annan mismanaged the UN and the Oil for Food program would have been the dealbreaker for me there.
In the case of Gorbachev, he was recognized mostly for the peace process improving relations between East and West. But there were others in this process - and his own role in it was an imperfect one.
I personally knew someone at the time who was still a “Soviet” citizen with his family in Lithuania when Gorbachev sent the tanks in. And I’m sure you recall that this event wasn’t bloodless.
So perhaps he should have been honored alongside some of the Western leaders who held the line against Communism for those years, and who managed with him the transition. Or perhaps he shouldn’t have been honored. \
Again, I’m not getting worked up over it much. But let’s not obsess over these things the other way either. A Nobel Prize is a great honor, but it doesn’t insulate anyone from criticism, nor should it. And the Nobel Prize process isn’t perfect or free from politics or controversy - it never has been, so we shouldn’t suppose now that these arguments are illegitimate.
That’s all pretty vague, IMHO - plenty enough to say why you feel that way, but not much in the way of saying why anyone else should consider the validity of the Prize weakened. While I’d never heard of Menchu before finding that link, the Oil for Food program has been debated at some length on these boards, to no definite result, IIRC.
I think that should have definitely disqualified him from sainthood.
Exactly my point: it may be far from perfect, but its fundamental validity and worthiness is intact.
I don’t know about that. Pile up enough embarrassments and that validity and worthiness become not so fundamental.
The 2004 laureate, Wangari Maathai, used the occasion of her award to publicize her belief that AIDS was a man-made disease. That led to a lot of tiptoeing around her statements by an awful lot of people.
Would you agree that that episode was unfortunate, even if you agree that Dr. Maathai does good work and may deserve the prize?
Thanks, but that’s not what I meant. What does “politically correct” mean in the context of the Nobel committee?
I don’t understand your question. I was saying the Committee too often makes it’'s choices (on those prizes) for PC reasons. What’s hard to understand about “Literature and Peace are very very PC awards” if you know what “PC” means? :dubious:
A few hints on what “politically correct” could mean are provided in Wikipedia.
The Nobel prize for literature is not supposed to be awarded to a writer of a great or even an interesting work of literature. According to the guidelines for awarding the prize outlined in wikipedia
So it does not mean the prize for literature is awarded to a writer of any real worth but is more usually awarded to a political hack. That usually means selecting a writer with similar marxist views that characterise Scandinavian governments.
As for the Peace Prize, the criteria used would accord with the ideological bent of the type of government that usually ends up in control of Scandinavian countries which have the kind of governments that would order their country’s flags to fly at half mast if an ideological soul mate and mass murderer like Castro should happen to die.
Any selection for the Peace Prize would be made with a view to making a political statement relevant to the here and now. That’s why someone like Arafat can be awarded such a prize, even in the presence of abundant proof that all he had ever achieved in his worthless life was to plan and commit murder.
So far, we’re still at two, by my count.
Sure, it was unfortunate.
Interesting editorial in todays SJ Mercury news “Gore’s rightness drives Right nuts.” 
Is that the same as Krugman’s column?
Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace prize and the American right responds by denigrating the Nobel Prize as a whole.
How many people around the world do they think are going to side with them as opposed to how many would further stiffen their resistance to them? “Gee, if Yasir Arafat and Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize, then George W. Bush must not be so bad after all”.
If someone you oppose wins the Nobel Prize, that doesn’t exactly end the debate, but it’s points for them and against you. There’s no way to spin it otherwise.
As others have mentioned, there are ample other opportunities to discuss the particular prize awarded to Mr. Gore. I think that my OP addressed a distinctly different question from the appropriateness of that particular award.
That’s it.
I don’t agree. As has been pointed out, the Nobel committee has shown itself to have a strong political bent. To view it as some pure, ideal recognition of workinig toward peace ignores reality.