Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize, Oscar and Emmy in a single year

Al Gore and Vince McMahon are twin brothers, separated at birth. Or does it seem that way when Gore gets worked up?

 

jmac,

I'm just saying the Noble Peace Prize is a political prize, not a scientific prize like the medicine award is -- and even that is subjective based on the wind blowing through the windows of the committee in Norway that day.

And yes, the Arafat award discredits the legitimacy of the prize in my eyes. It's like giving Bush the prize in economics along with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs because the stock market is at a record high and technology is in the hands of more people than ever.

Still, Gore winning is fantastic -- not because it's Gore or because I think he is, or is not, a hypocrit or a trendsetter -- because I think the issue is legitimate and I support it, if not some of the methods or people behind the movement. I'm not just trying to push buttons like some here for the sake of getting a reaction. I'd be more of a Gore fan if I didn't think he was at least a little disingenuous with the political undertones to his work.

 

GORE WAS A BAD CHOICE!

Sorry, had to do it. Stuck in my head since someone mentioned "bad choice" earlier.

 

I basically agree, Idy, with the idea that in any given year the Peace Prize is very much an award of its moment. At the time it was shared by Arafat/Peres/Rabin they were believed to be working constructively toward a new balance of relations in Israel. That balance was - again, as always - later undone. And it's safe to say that Arafat will be understood by most historians to be a bad guy.

But if you're negotiating for peace, or at least to ease long conflict, isn't it likely that at least one of the parties involved is going to be a bad guy?

And if the peace you negotiate doesn't hold, how does history judge that? Do we take away Wilson's prize becasue the League of Nations didn't stop World War II?

And what do we make of Kissinger? Who - according, at least, to Christopher Hitchens - could just as easily be tried for war crimes as lauded for winning peace?

Like all awards, the Nobel is in most regards subjective and of its time.

 

No arguments from me.

 

I must have missed that news story. I only read the New York Times, Washington Post and AP every day, and they didn't have that.

 

Not really. Seems to me it underscores how irrelevant he is.

He and Yassir Arafat, that great peacemaker, and Jimmy Carter, that once-great and now-mostly-crazed appeaser, now all belong to the same club?

Fine.

 

If Jimmy Carter is mostly crazed, what does that make George W. Bush?

 

They had one of these conservative nuts on CNN about a half hour ago, ranting about the hoax of global warming and how the award was simply a political ploy. Lord. If she really believed anything she said, she's just delusional. If not, she's despicable.

These idiots would rather spout their political talking points than protect our children's futures.

 

Because, really, even if global warming is a hoax, using lots and lots of fossil fuels is just the right thing to do.

 

Respect from the world?

 

Here's the full list of winners. Perhaps hereafter we can vary the talking points a little. I.e., "That Albert Schweitzer was some miserable bastard, huh?"

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/index.html