The Machinery of Night

Free Peace Prize Inside

As most of you will have found out already, Jimmy Carter has carted away the Nobel Peace Prize.

OK. Whatever. I really don't have anything to say about that.

I do, however, have something to say about this:

"It should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken," Gunnar Berge, chairman of the Nobel committee, said. "It's a kick in the leg to all that follow the same line as the United States."

Dear Gunnar: You are a pathetic drooling halfwit. That should be taken as an insult, by the way, and a kick in the ass.

Look, it's impossible to honor someone with a Peace Prize without an (at least) implicit jab at someone else. If someone is working for peace, then there must be some who do not want peace. That's how it works in principle, anyway, though the situation clouds when you start handing Peace Prizes to the likes of Arafat.

You want to hand Jimmy a trinket as a subtle jab at Bush? Fine. But the key word here is subtle. The Prize Committe should nominally be apolitical---though see the paragraph above on the impossibility of this. This is not apolitical. This is not even the appearance of apolitical. This is blatant, naked politics---worse than that, it is pique. It is childish. It is the gleefully self-righteous pose of a man who feels that he has a sacred bludgeon, and intends to use it. It is unworthy of the Nobel Committee.

Or, at least, it was. That was before they started handing out Peace Prizes to minor butchers, and then wishing they could revoke the prizes of men of good intent who had failed.

There was no need for the Committee to make these remarks, nor the remarks about Shimon Peres. It's time to send the Peace Prize to that land of happy bunny fairies where all the good ideas go to die after they've been poisoned by the embrace of idiots.