A billion bloggers will be speaking as one but what the heck, why shouldn't I be the billion-and-first? Nobel Peace Prize now definitively worth one bent halfpenny.
I hope that in ten/twenty/thirty years' time we will look back and say they were right. Really. Though actually, on a more visceral level I also hope they will look as foolish as their predecessors who picked Kissinger. So I can't be disappointed either way.
Even the Beeb's man has to admit that the award "might be regarded as more of an encouragement for intentions than a reward for achievements". So prizes for everyone motoring down the highway to the big bonfire, then. Hurrah!
"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population" saith the committee. Where do you start with that one?
Remember Tony Blair and his ethical foreign policy? Shame he couldn't have got his gong as a reward for pious words spoken in 1997. Why did the Nobelity have to hang around and pass their judgment on him after he'd quietly shelved the whole concept in favour of old-fashioned national self-interest?
No risk at all of history repeating itself, is there?
I'd say it would even have been a shade premature to pick Morgan Tsvangirai. But at least he can point to some solid achievements in hauling Zimbabwe out of the abyss. Not to mention stuff like getting his skull cracked by Mugabe's thugs and losing his wife to what may well have been an assassination attempt.
But who actually gives a monkey's about Zimbabwe and its people's empty stomachs, anyway? In a world of hype, nothing breeds hype like hype. And as of today, that's all the Nobel Peace Prize is about.
Here endeth the rant.
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1 comment:
And each time I curse self for getting here too late for a timely link. No more.
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