To Be Clear
Apparently various "moderate Democrats" are concern-trolling that President Obama should reject the Nobel Prize as a gesture of humility and/or to try and mitigate the negative reaction from the sort of people who are going to be affirmatively upset that he won it in the first place.
That's not at all what I was on about; the sort of people who are affirmatively upset aren't the sort of people who can be mitigated. It's also unnecessary for him to demonstrate any more humility than he already has in his remarks on the subject. Outright giving your award to someone else is kind of a weird maneuver.
Rather I intended to suggest that by the lights of the award's purpose he does not deserve it (more in a minute) but also intended to imply, but then removed the text which would make it clear, that such rejection would be not an act of humility but an act of rejection. Indulge the idea that you've always disdained [award show of your choice] but that one day you are in fact nominated for such an award. Well, it's very nice of them to be so sweet, but presumably you might entertain the idea of not showing up because you really don't give a fuck about the [awards] and couldn't really respect it if you were to receive one. That's what I was intending to suggest by noting that the Nobels seem like the sort of thing you can't just politely avoid the way a musician might skip the Grammys.
Back to the issue of whether President Obama deserves the award; the prize-giving committee has noted that there is a tradition of giving the award in a hopeful spirit, and that this is what they intended by honoring President Obama. My response would be that if the Nobel Prize is intended to be more than simply a pat on the back and a speech - whether for accomplishments achieved or anticipated - it is squandered in this case. The Nobel prize comes with publicity and money, neither of which are any help to Obama: his profile cannot be made any higher than it already is, weight cannot be added to the force of his words (in this way the Prize functions as an acknowledgment that Europeans like him, which we already knew, rather than the pleasant revelation of same), and whatever agenda he chooses to pursue internationally could not be accorded more attention than whatever naturally pertains to someone who happens to be the President of the United States, and in particular a President who everybody knows is well admired by the sort of international set that might care about Nobel Prizes. And of course he's going to donate the money to charity, because he doesn't really have any other use for it; he can't particularly do anything with it during office (nor does he need to) and on leaving office the odds are that he's going to become very, very rich very, very quickly, and his fundraising capabilities for anything like the Clinton Global Initiative are going to vastly outstrip the value of the prize money, which I believe is about $1.5 million.
Instead, the same attention and money could have been directed towards someone who would actually be in a position to benefit from it, whose cause would gain notoriety and admiration on the international stage, who could use the funds productively in its furtherance, and whose voice, validated by the Nobel committee (for whatever that's worth), could be lent a weight it would otherwise lack. This is basically the same theory behind an argument in the jazz community that says people shouldn't give prizes to the likes of Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, because they're not going to benefit from the attention or funds involved, whereas a MacArthur Grant can make a huge difference in the life of a scuffling young musician. I don't know if it's actually true that Hancock and Shorter can't do anything productive with $500k (I have no idea how much money either one has, although both had a period where they approached mainstream commercial success during the 1970s), but I think the same logic applies, perhaps more forcefully, to the subject of the Peace Prize. (With exceptions noted perhaps for the recognition of truly astounding accomplishments by people who don't necessarily require the attention; I think it's the thin nature of the argument for Obama that lays bare the somewhat perverse logic behind so many Prize recipients to begin with).
That's not at all what I was on about; the sort of people who are affirmatively upset aren't the sort of people who can be mitigated. It's also unnecessary for him to demonstrate any more humility than he already has in his remarks on the subject. Outright giving your award to someone else is kind of a weird maneuver.
Rather I intended to suggest that by the lights of the award's purpose he does not deserve it (more in a minute) but also intended to imply, but then removed the text which would make it clear, that such rejection would be not an act of humility but an act of rejection. Indulge the idea that you've always disdained [award show of your choice] but that one day you are in fact nominated for such an award. Well, it's very nice of them to be so sweet, but presumably you might entertain the idea of not showing up because you really don't give a fuck about the [awards] and couldn't really respect it if you were to receive one. That's what I was intending to suggest by noting that the Nobels seem like the sort of thing you can't just politely avoid the way a musician might skip the Grammys.
Back to the issue of whether President Obama deserves the award; the prize-giving committee has noted that there is a tradition of giving the award in a hopeful spirit, and that this is what they intended by honoring President Obama. My response would be that if the Nobel Prize is intended to be more than simply a pat on the back and a speech - whether for accomplishments achieved or anticipated - it is squandered in this case. The Nobel prize comes with publicity and money, neither of which are any help to Obama: his profile cannot be made any higher than it already is, weight cannot be added to the force of his words (in this way the Prize functions as an acknowledgment that Europeans like him, which we already knew, rather than the pleasant revelation of same), and whatever agenda he chooses to pursue internationally could not be accorded more attention than whatever naturally pertains to someone who happens to be the President of the United States, and in particular a President who everybody knows is well admired by the sort of international set that might care about Nobel Prizes. And of course he's going to donate the money to charity, because he doesn't really have any other use for it; he can't particularly do anything with it during office (nor does he need to) and on leaving office the odds are that he's going to become very, very rich very, very quickly, and his fundraising capabilities for anything like the Clinton Global Initiative are going to vastly outstrip the value of the prize money, which I believe is about $1.5 million.
Instead, the same attention and money could have been directed towards someone who would actually be in a position to benefit from it, whose cause would gain notoriety and admiration on the international stage, who could use the funds productively in its furtherance, and whose voice, validated by the Nobel committee (for whatever that's worth), could be lent a weight it would otherwise lack. This is basically the same theory behind an argument in the jazz community that says people shouldn't give prizes to the likes of Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, because they're not going to benefit from the attention or funds involved, whereas a MacArthur Grant can make a huge difference in the life of a scuffling young musician. I don't know if it's actually true that Hancock and Shorter can't do anything productive with $500k (I have no idea how much money either one has, although both had a period where they approached mainstream commercial success during the 1970s), but I think the same logic applies, perhaps more forcefully, to the subject of the Peace Prize. (With exceptions noted perhaps for the recognition of truly astounding accomplishments by people who don't necessarily require the attention; I think it's the thin nature of the argument for Obama that lays bare the somewhat perverse logic behind so many Prize recipients to begin with).
Labels: Vaguely Political
posted by medrawt at
17:33
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