What A Nobel Laureate!
It used to be one of the highest honors of the human race. Nobel Laureate. Much gravitas and profundity wrapped up in those words.*
It still counts for something in the sciences. In literature, it has come to mean largely, “Hey Sven, my bedside table has even more obscure titles than yours!” Winter months are long up there, and apparently they spend them scouring Amazon Romania.
Economics of course is not a science, and Paul Krugman, that Nobel laureate, scored big when he hit on a Nobel-winning combination of old world socialism and high-profile Bush-bashing.
But it is the Nobelest of the Nobels, the Peace Prize, that has reduced this exaltation of human achievement into a playground jibe. Peace prizes for terrorists. Peace prizes for ranting alarmist prevaricators. And now, a Peace Prize for earnestness. You can’t call it entirely untested earnestness. Because so far, it is already showing strong signs of being amoral, despot-appeasing earnestness. Of the America-bashing variety, which is the most earnest and most important part of it.
Anyway, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has make a joke out of it. Sounds like something the neighborhood ruffians will be shouting when they drop teacher’s pet upside down into the geopolitical trash can of history.
“What a Nobel laureate! ”
“Ha ha, that guy’s such a Nobel laureate!”
“Hey, Nobel laureate, whatcha gonna do, go cry to your United Nations?”
In other notable Nobel mockery, here’s P.J. O’Rourke from 2002. Nobel Sentiments. It’s prizeworthy.
Ha ha! The United States Department of State, via CNN: “Better to be thrown accolades than shoes!” Not so diplomatic, but funny. I actually like the comparison of the Norwegian Nobel Committee with an unhinged egomanical Iraqi freelancer. It works.
I don’t believe this is satire, but it reads like it. James Fallows at the Atlantic admiring President Obama’s Nobel remarks: “Four very skillful paragraphs.”
HotAir, you can be a laureate, too. “Have you dared, my friends?”
Steyn: Step aside, SNL.
Legal Insurrection, Obamist dialetic: Farce repeats itself as history.
Malkin, hurtfully, “Story of Obama’s life: ‘Rather than recognizing concrete achievement … ‘”
Here’s a good punchline. Surber, “Will the Nobel raise money for Republicans?”
Gateway, “Obama becomes the first Nobel laureate to endorse genocide.” Hey, that’s not funny! I don’t think it’s true, either. How about Yasser Arafat and Jimmy Carter?
Maguire: “It’s better to be loved than feared.” That sounds like a good epitaph …
Speaking of epitaphs, Bolton’s recommendation is pretty much the death knell on this idea. NRO: Decline It. He made it pretty clear when he humbly, undeservedly accepted it yesterday, but there is no way he’s taking advice from Mickey Kaus and John Bolton. Or me. Declining it is the first step to securing, make that earning, a place in history as a world leader.
Nothing funny or satirical about this. Reynolds: “So IF OBAMA IS AMERICA’S GORBACHEV, who will be America’s Putin?”
Melanie Phillips, The Spectator: “Some facts appear to be more sacred than others at The Guardian.”
This, I regret to report, doesn’t even read like a good Andrew Sullivan parody, though the closer has a certain melodramoire-faire:
And, in the darkness that still threatens, know hope.
(Italics mine. It looks more darkly threatening, yet hopeful that way.)
No worries, Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly leaps into the breach, superlatively parodying himself: “What kind of question is that?” Well, it’s basically a question about how any White House administration that has accomplished zip could possible talk about any of this with either faux humility or a straight face.
As long as Comments from Left Field and I are in the middle of this lovefest, more props for more clarity of thought in channeling TPM channeling Ana Marie Cox. It’s the Anyone-but-George-Bush Prize.
* So, who died and gave a handful of snooty Swedes and Norwegians with funny accents the power to determine who and what is the best, brightest and most exalted the human race has to offer?
Alfred Nobel, that’s who. Nobel, 1833-1895, is one of only a handful of Scandinavians to capture the world’s attention since Viking longships stopped spilling berserkers on European shores, and that’s because he played a key role in the development of modern explosives. These, particularly his signature invention, dynamite, have proven very useful in any number of modern wars. Cynics might say he is indirectly responsible for the leveling of European cities and that to this day, the explosive descendants of his invention have made life hell for people from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, and even inspired home chemistry projects of the sort that leveled the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, parts of the mass transit systems of London and Madrid, and hotels, nightclubs, US military facilities and UN offices from Bali to Jakarta to Islamabad to Khobar to Beirut. However, it is important to note that Mr. Nobel’s invention also has cleared the way for human advancement in areas such as quarrying the rock that is used the construction of modern cities and highways, and leveling the earth for the accommodation of all manner of mechanized transport. Which has made this world a better place, even if some people would say it’s upping the temperature a little.
So, how did Mr. Nobel’s name become synonymous with things like peace, environmentalism and general do-gooding earnestness? Reportedly, he felt sheepish about inventing a better means of killing large number of people more efficiently, and was sensitive to teasing about it. He was determined not to be, historically, the butt of jokes. He had scads of money, which exalts any cause.
That alone wasn’t enough to make his name the household word it is today, so that even middle-schoolers like Malia and Sasha were well-enough informed of its significance to run into the president’s bedroom yesterday morning shouting excitedly, “Daddy, you won the Nobel Prize and it is Bo’s birthday!”
Mr. Nobel had the good sense to place his big pile of money in the hands of a government-run Scandinavian academy, which lent it an air of serious academic legitimacy. And, he had the tremendous good fortune to be named “Nobel,” which sounds a lot like “noble,” the English word for all things exalted and good and worthy of admiration, only with the emphasis on the second syllable, actually sounds nobler than the common English word “noble.” That is, it sounds snootier, more la-di-dah, and in every way that much more exalted than you and me, and anything we are likely to accomplish.
So back to Mr. Nobel’s goal, to avoid having his name associated with death, destruction and cheap jokes, has his gambit more than a century later proven successful? By and large we’d have to say yes. Though like the source of Mr. Nobel’s pile, the product of his legacy project has not been without irony.
Topics: Obama, explosives, moronocy, shameless self-promotion
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:40 am on Saturday, October 10, 2009
3 Responses to “What A Nobel Laureate!”
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October 10th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
[...] though, I think the spirit of Chamberlain is alive and well with this year’s winner. Filed under: Bobos In Paradise, Liberal Fascism, Muggeridge’s Law, War And [...]
October 10th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Whatever the Nobel Peace Prize committee intended, this is not a positive for Obama. His detractors (well, yes, I am one) will simply ridicule the award, and his believers will be encouraged to expect yet more walk-on-water miracles (despite having witnessed none, so far).
October 11th, 2009 at 12:48 am
I thought you made up the Sullivan quote so I checked. Once again, I had to read his words. Once again I regretted it right away. Like a guilty habit. You can help me by not mentioning him anymore.
Steyn sums up the spirit of the age: “to persons who can use phrases like “creating discourses for workability” with a straight face, Obama remains an heroic figure.”
Right on!