Kudos to Gore, but who gives a fuck about the Nobel Peace Prize?!

The BBQ Pit
1

I like Al Gore, applaud his environmental work. Wish he’d been prez. But the Nobel Peace Prize is retarded.

I mean, people, this is the prize that was awarded in 1994 to Yasser Arafat (along with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for Oslo, aka another cluster in the clusterfuck), a cold-blooded scumbag killer who, history records, at least was briefed on and approved of the attack on Israeli athletes during 1972 Munich Olympic Games :eek: , and who’s participated in and plotted countless other acts of obscene violence. (Read wikipedia for your cite, thanks.)

To reiterate (just so there’s no misunderstanding here, m’kay?), Gore’s work is invaluable. He’s correct about global warming, and he’s quite effectively educating the world. But his work has fuck all to do with “peace” except but such a loose definition as could apply to nearly any positive, significant act. Invent a new vaccine? Preventing disease could prevent war–PEACE! We should award the prize to the CEO of ADM for inventing frankensoybeans that feed the world, thereby preventing famine, thereby preventing war–peace, mutherfuckers, PEACE!

Why should there be a prize for peace, anyway? It’s pretty much a shortbus idea when you think about it. But why stop there? The Nobel Prizes for science, lit, whatever, are fairly stupid overall.

I mean, the Nobel Prize for literature (shiterature?) was awarded in 1999 to Gunter Grass, who wrote all this shit analyzing and protesting the Third Reich (which is, of course, fine), but then this fucker turns out to have been a fucking Nazi himself, a member of the Waffen SS! :smack: Can you believe that fucking shit, people?!

When you get right down to it, why are these prizes so prestigious, anyway? Who gives two shits what a bunch of Swedish geezers think–I know I don’t. The prize is notable because of the crazy amount of money that’s tossed around, if for no other reason. But I guess fucking Sweden has to have something to do beyond sit in the sauna and eat open-faced sandwiches, right. :dubious:

Anyhow, I wish Gore had something better to do with his time than watch ice melt and hump polar bears (like be fucking president, eh Scalia?!), but he’s done a good job of it, all told. Nevertheless, the Nobel Prizes and the Peace Prize in particular are bullshit, and the warmer the globe gets, the more that shit stinks. :mad:

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In the case of the peace prize, it’s actually a bunch of Norwegian geezers. I’m just sayin’.

So, you’re against prizes for people who do good things? What’s wrong with that? Everyone likes getting prizes!

Well, they tried doing one for war, but the nominees kept competing way too enthusiastically.

3

Sounds like sour grapes to me. You thought you had it in the bag after your Time Magazine Person of the Year award, didn’t you?

Let’s hoist a glass to A. Nobel;
The prize he offered sure was swell,
To honor those who do what’s right.
Quoth Alfred, “Peace is DY-NO-MITE!”

4

Damn it! So not fair after my crusade last year against Circus Peanuts.

5

Hey, don’t be dissin’ that Cecil Research Award – how many others, besides the SDSAB, can boast of having been honored by the Perfect Master?

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:confused: What difference does that make? Grass wasn’t awarded his Nobel for having kept out of the German Army during his teenage years, but for the various literary works he produced starting in the 1950’s.

Is there a rule that nobody can receive a Nobel who has ever served under an oppressive and hateful regime? Because I checked the Nobel Foundation website and couldn’t find one.

7

Lots of people fought for the Nazis who didn’t necessarily support the cause they were fighting for. According to the wiki, Grass was drafted into the Waffen SS in 1944; the Nuremburg Trials ruled that conscripts who were sworn in after 43 were not neccesarily war criminals.

This is really why I responded at all - are open-faced sandwiches a stereotypically Swedish thing? :confused:

8

If Gore’s work is so invaluable, how have you missed one of its key points–that fresh water shortages have in the past and will increasingly in the future be a major cause of war?

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Well, he didn’t keep out, did he? He joined the Waffen SS! That’s “SS” as in dressed-in-black, kill-you-dead-muthafucka Nazi shit!

That goes without saying, doesn’t it? I doubt there is a clause against rapists and thieves receiving it, but it looks like they don’t (certain Peace Prize winners excepted, I guess).

10

Grass is hypocritical cunt. He raved and ranted against against the Nazis in holier-than-thou fashion for decades, then all of a sudden–oopsie!–forgot to tell ya, but “Ich bin ein Nazi too, baby!”

Yeah.

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My rejoinder to this reasoning is in the OP. You missed my preemptive strike, dumbass!

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:rolleyes:

Shouldn’t you and magellan01 be watching the baseball playoffs instead of competing for the world’s stupidest troll honors?

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Fuck off, I hate baseball.

14

Your loss.

15

Oh, bullshit. Tiresome bullshit. There is no evidence at all that Grass’s condemnation of the Nazis during his entire literary career was hypocritical, or anything but completely sincere. He did not hold secret pro-Nazi beliefs while publicly condemning Nazism, which is what “hypocritical” would imply. He is not “ein Nazi too, baby”.

He was ashamed of his teenage enlistment in the German Army under the Nazis, and hid the fact for decades. Yes, that was cowardly and he should have been honest about it earlier, but there was nothing hypocritical in it, nor does it invalidate any of his later condemnations of Nazism and its actions.

Nor does it affect the quality of his literary work, which is what he got the Nobel Prize for. Nor, as you seem to imagine, is there any kind of “goes without saying” rule that disqualifies Prize recipients on the grounds of having served under an oppressive regime.

If you really want to give your hysterical outrage a workout, go look at the biography of 1965 Nobel Literature Prize winner Mikhail Sholokhov, a member of the USSR CPSU under Stalin and Krushchev, and for much of that time a representative in the Supreme Soviet. It’s odds-on that Sholokhov, just by virtue of his position in his era, was complicit in much more brutality and oppression than the teenage Waffen-SS Grass ever even saw in his few months of service. But he was still a major writer and he still scored a Lit Prize on account of it.

Or how about 1948 Lit Prize winner T. S. Eliot, a former supporter of totalitarianism and Mussolini’s government? Just another hypocritical cunt, eh? If association with or support for nasty regimes is really that upsetting to you in a Nobel Prize winner, you won’t run out of stuff to froth and fume about for a long time.

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First off, fuck you. Now let’s examine your puerile blatherings.

He’s a hypocrite because he was condemning others for something he was himself involved in–too a small extent but still involved. His career was built on his being an fully, 100% innocent commentator on Nazism. He misbranded himself and made out like a bandit.

Yes, not just a pussy for not fessing up but a guy who built his career on a false brand. He would never have been able to portray himself the same way or write in the same way had he made the confession in the beginning, as he should have. Would he have achieved even near the same level of success as he did? It’s quite debatable.

I agree 100%. My friend and I still count The Tin Drum as the stupidest and most unwatchable movie we’ve ever seen. Grass’s works fuckin’ suck!

The examples you cite seem to confirm your statement, which only further undermines the legitimacy of the Smokem-Peace-Prize.

I’m an avid poetry reader and I hate Eliot. I think he’s an arrogant, elitist cunt and it surprises me not in the least that he supported fascism; it fits his character.

17

I used to watch back in the 1980s before MLB became RPB (Roid-Pumped Bulgers).

18

My my, you are upset about this, aren’t you? There, there.

Mmm-hmmm. You’re basing this appraisal on what, exactly? Having watched one movie (which Grass did not write or direct) that was based on a novel by Grass? Have you ever actually read anything Grass wrote?

Even if you haven’t, of course, you are still at perfect liberty to think anything you want about Grass or his writings. But your opinion on them might be of more interest if you’d actually read any of them.

Interesting. You seem to be arguing that not just the Peace Prize but the prizes for major literary or scientific achievement are “undermined” if the recipient ever had any political leanings or affiliation that you disapprove of.

Well, I guess the Nobel Foundation will reluctantly have to get along without your support. Don’t turn them down too brusquely when they call you up to tell you you’ve won one of the Prizes, though; their feelings would be hurt.

19

Mmmm, feels so good.

Fuck no, I’d never read that shit. And can you deny that the movie is a fucking abomination, man?

I don’t consider my opinion interesting, either. It’s a flat-out rejection of his entire oevre. His shit sucks, and can anyone say any of it is any good?!

Lessee, Nazis, killers, etc. Not savory characters. I would not choose to reward them for anything.

I would reject it, actually.

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Hypocritical cunts can’t produce great literature? Seriously?