For Whom the Nobel Tolls...

Y'know, I got to thinking about Al Gore getting a Nobel Peace Prize, and rather than get in an uproar over an award that's almost always been a politicial machination, I started thinking about the folks who are, in my humble opinion, just as entitled to one as Der Woodmeister. Such as:

Michael Crichton - Hey, if Gore deserves one, then shouldn't his "player on the other side"? Crichton has written some brilliant stuff regarding radical environmentalism as a new religion, and it makes at least as much sense (oh, ok, it makes ten times more sense) as anything Senor Carbonfootprint has said to date.

Mahatma Gandhi - Yes, Gandhi, while nominated several times, was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But Al Gore was. Y'see why these things mean so little?

Frank Capra - For my money, there may be no one else on the planet who has done more to shed light on the human condition, on the commonality that brings all men and women together, and on the hope we need to keep in our hearts. Here's just a small sample of Jefferson Smith as he speaks to the Senate in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington":

"Now, you're not gonna have a country that can make these kind of rules work, if you haven't got men that have learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose. It's a funny thing about men, you know. They all start life being boys. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some of these Senators were boys once. And that's why it seemed like a pretty good idea for me to get boys out of crowded cities and stuffy basements for a couple of months out of the year. And build their bodies and minds for a man-sized job, because those boys are gonna be behind these desks some of these days. And it seemed like a pretty good idea, getting boys from all over the country, boys of all nationalities and ways of living. Getting them together. Let them find out what makes different people tick the way they do. Because I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a—a little lookin' out for the other fella, too…That's pretty important, all that. It's just the blood and bone and sinew of this democracy that some great men handed down to the human race, that's all."

The guy that invented that thing on pop machines that whips them up to waist level, sitting upright - Hey, I don't know about you, but if there's one thing I hate, it's bending over to get the pop out of the machine, only to find the bottle is stuck in there at some odd angle, or trapped by the little flap thingy, or---ugggh. The guy that came up with this simple but oh-so-welcome device has done a hell of a lot more for any of us than Al Gore.

On the other hand, Al did give us...uh...well, these quotes:

"He is proposing to privatize a big part of Social Security and he's proposing to take $1 trillion, a million billion dollars out of the Social Security trust fund and give it as a tax incentive to young workers."

"A zebra does not change its spots."

"We can build a collective civic space large enough for all our separate identities, that we can be e pluribus unum -- out of one, many."

While watching the Chicago Bulls: "I tell you that Michael Jackson is unbelievable, isn't he. He's just unbelievable."

If this kind of dickery is what it takes to get the Nobel, why hasn't Dubya gotten one yet?