I keep going back and forth on this -- is it malice, or ignorance, or malice taking advantage of ignorance?
Within hours of the announcement that Al Gore had received the Nobel Peace Prize, I received this email from a reader:
"Al Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize ... Yes the Nobel Prize was also given to Stalin, Mussolini, Castro and even to Hitler ... how good a trophy can it be????" The reader also remarked on Nobel as the inventor of dynamite, "as if it is a useful invention."
Where to begin to answer such a missive? Stalin, Mussolini, Castro and Hitler never won a Nobel Peace Prize. All of them were indeed nominated, but unlike the science Nobels, all it takes to be put on a "nominees" list for the Peace Prize is a nomination from a "qualified" person -- like a history professor, the Internet tells me. It's like saying Donald Duck was "nominated" for president because he got some disaffected or sarcastic write-in votes.
Hitler was nominated in 1939 by a Swedish politician who pulled the nomination shortly thereafter. A few years before, it seems that the Fuhrer was so miffed that an imprisoned anti-Nazi writer was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize that he banned Germans from accepting the prizes.
Where, I emailed the reader, did he learn all of this? It was on CNN, he responded -- Headline News by Glenn Beck. Now that I was asking, he wasn't sure that someone had said they'd actually won the Nobel Peace Prize; maybe someone had just said they were nominated.
Winners or nominees, what reason would there be even to mention Gore and his fellow winners and these killer clowns in the same breath -- except to try to take the shine off? Is it malice, or ignorance? I inquire -- you decide.
As for Alfred Nobel, he invented dynamite and founded the prizes -- the latter because his obituary, printed in error by a French newspaper eight years before his death, labeled him "The Merchant of Death," an epitaph he obviously did not relish carrying to the grave.
He left much of his fortune to the prizes whose renown and high purpose have almost obliterated "The Merchant of Death's" original notoriety. He was lucky -- he died before the age of cable and the Internet.
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However, while it was created for a "Nobel" purpose (pun and misspelling intended), I don't know what connection he had with the arms industries other than possibly as a producer of dynamite. But if that qualifies him as a death merchant, then so is every producer of steel, rubber, copper, silicon, microchips, planes, satellites, antennas... even schools and universities back to the first Greek philosopher/scientists. Also to blame are the laws of chemistry and physics which allow such energetic explosions in the first place. And we all know who is credited with intelligently designing those.
And ask the early robber barons who made money off the railroads built with the use of dynamite and human blood if dynamite was a good invention. They represent the epitome of unbridled greed, power and soullessness that is the goal of unfettered capitalism. And the Republic party.
Now if Al would put as much effort into fixing the US as he has into his global warming work, then we'd be a lot better off. He could do a lot more to deal with GW as president of one of the worst global warmers.
"Parents should put on their own oxygen masks before assisting children." Or, for the W-luvvers, "childrens."
EPN
But that e-mail had some people foaming at the mouth.
On another thread someone posted that Bill-o was irrelevant and many agreed.
My good hearted and loving a mother has been taken in by Hannity, Bill-o, Rush and the repugs. It makes our conversations very divisive. These hatemongers are destroying this country.
GWW
It is ignorance. Most of those repeating these lies are informed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
It is malice taking advantage of ignorance. This is the new political strategy.
We've seen Hannity say he wouldn't accept the prize because it's a sham and then moments later say he would give it to the troops--which is it, a sham or something worthy of our service men and women?
It is funny in one way to see the scrambling to find a way to demean what is to most a highly coveted, well respected prize. It is also very sad to see the many who follow them blindly decide that the Nobel Peace Prize is just another liberal institution for academic elitests.
I never would have thought that this country would become one in which a president and his clan would proudly deny health care to children, denigrate a child and his family for asking the president not to veto such a bill, prize ignorance, hatred and fear over all things and vilify the Nobel Prize. It is stunning to see what we've become.
Dear Patt, it's both malice and ignorance only it's willful on both counts.
And more than that, disappointing that anyone believes them.
Like O'Reilly saying when Abizaid said that some parts of the media was playing a negative role in the occupation Abizaid was talking about LIBERAL media. I laughed out loud and turned the channel.