Tag: nobel prize

Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize Lecture.

It’s not bad at all. There’s video at the link, but basically Bob Dylan talked about how Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Odyssey influenced his songs. The tale of How Bob Got His Nobel has been such an absurd one from start to finish that it’s hard to tell how much of this was serious and how much was a put-on designed to let Dylan keep the nine hundred grand he got from getting the Literature prize, but either way it was entertaining.  I mean, clearly Bob Dylan has read all three books. It’s all worth a look and a listen.

Via Austin Bay.

So, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Personally, I find it all marvelous fun, to borrow the turn of phrase from our British cousins. Giving Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize for Literature is at the very least the most interesting thing that the committee has done in the arts since, well, for as long as I can remember*.  And I can remember more than forty years.

Moe Lane

*Bear in mind, I’ve also not yet forgiven Phillip Roth for his execrable, ham-handed attempt at alternate history (The Plot Against America), so possibly there’s a bit of schadenfreude there, too.  Also bear in mind: I had no idea before this evening that there was such a thing as Nobel betting pools, although it seems obvious enough in retrospect.  You’d be amazed how much last-minute swotting goes on in this business…

Chris Buckley descends to fanfic.

Let me start off by saying that fanfic is not inherently bad, of course. It is often very, very bad: but then, every so often you get something like The Darth Side, which was infinitely better than 2/3rds of the films that it drew from. However, I’m well aware that to a Yalie calling his work ‘fanfic’ is a bit of a killing insult, which is why I’m using it.

Exhibit A (H/T: Melissa Clouthier): “A Prize Too Far,” which is Chris’ attempt to give voice to the imaginary President Obama that he inexplicably endorsed last year. You see, his President Obama would reject the Nobel Peace prize as being premature:

I don’t know the Norwegian words for “Let’s get real,” but I tried earnestly to convey in plain English that awarding me the Nobel Peace Prize, at this stage of my presidency, opens the committee itself to the charge that it dispenses its gold promiscuously, without regard to actual accomplishment. To give the award to Albert Schweitzer, or Nelson Mandela or Desmond Tutu or Lech Walesa or Andrei Sakharov is one thing. To give it to me is, well, another. To put it in very blunt terms, it is hard for me to believe otherwise than that I have been presented this award for not being my predecessor.

And Chris’ President did it in such a gracious, understanding, wise manner, too. Trulystatesmanlike, it was. I almost teared up at the luminous nobility of it all.  A shame that this is the real world, huh?  And in the real world, the President that we have – which the President that Chris supported – did not make a speech like that.  Will not make a speech like that.  Possibly even cannot make a speech like that.  And no amount of sympathetic magic will change that.

But on the bright side: at least Chris didn’t Mary-Sue himself into the piece.  Although I suspect that this might have just been due to a quick rewrite of the first draft.

Moe Lane

PS: There’s not a chance in hell that President Obama would ever have the nerve to publicly refer to the man who wrote this song.

Crossposted to RedState.

Defining “Republican Party” to include prominent Lefties, of course.

Wow, this is off-message.

The DNC:

“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize,” DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse told POLITICO.

Meet some terrorist lot thrower-inners.

Glenn Greenwald:

there are simply no meaningful “peace” accomplishment in his record — at least not yet — and there’s plenty of the opposite. That’s what makes this Prize so painfully and self-evidently ludicrous.

Peter Beinart:

I like Barack Obama as much as the next liberal, but this is a farce. He’s done nothing to deserve the prize.

Ezra Klein:

How long till the Nobel Committee just gives up the ghost and names “you!” the winner of the peace prize?

Lot of people discovered this morning that they’ve suddenly been made Republicans now, is all I’m saying.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.