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They Oughta Give Me The Wurlitzer Prize
Members of the Committee, Distinguished guests, Fellow honorees, Friends, and Family Members not too embarrassed to attend:
I humbly and gratefully accept the Nobel Prize in Physics, the recognition, the honor, the plaque, the trophy, the discount coupons, the windbreaker, the keychain, the bumper sticker, the Alfred Nobel bobblehead and the generous cash award which, if I may, I would like to receive in twenties and fifties.
I am as surprised at this as many of you must be, not least those who know me and are all too aware of how far short of my grandiose pronouncements my actual accomplishments have fallen. But do any of us today know that I may not yet, someday, wake up, wise up, get up and get going? That I might not, while sleeping some night, grow a great and sturdy backbone that, upon my waking will support my new found commitment to honoring the dreams and hopes and plans and promises of which I have so often and so eloquently spoken? We do not. For all we know I may even pay off my credit card debt and quit the gin bottle. I believe this high honor may be just the lever that will lift me up and set me again upon the course I have so long advocated for myself and for us all.
But I will tell you that I feel today already on the cusp of great accomplishment. While it is true that as long ago as nineteen sixty-seven opinion held that I would not do great work in the field of physics, there is not an inescapable descent from a grade of sixty-five on the New York State Regents Physics Examination to a life devoid of discovery and productivity in that discipline.
Let me tell you about my recent work. For the last two weeks, for several minutes each day, I have worked toward the goal of teaching an old, slow, fat and dismally stupid (although of the greatest good heart) yellow Labrador Retriever (an uneven, grimy sort of parchment color, really) to understand and apply the science of vector analysis.
Canis familiaris ‘Cody' is, perhaps, naturally adept at picking up dead or wounded waterfowl and returning them to his master while resisting the urge to devour them. He may be, although I have not seen such a performance myself, any more than any of you has seen me calculate an orbital trajectory, accelerate a proton or balance a checkbook. But early in my research I did discover that Cody has absolutely no facility at catching bits of cookie, donut or cheese tossed in his direction. It is this sad lack of ability I have worked so tirelessly to correct.
I can report to you all here today my preliminary findings. Cody can, as of last Wednesday, lift his front legs clear of the ground and lurch forward in a spasmodic way so that I may toss a small bit of food into his open mouth. He can do this approximately two out of every three trials. I am optimistic further work will raise this completion ratio.
While it is true that he would still prefer to eat crumbs directly from the dirt, and does sometimes flinch rather than approach a softly lobbed bit of cheap pastry, there can be no question that together we are bending the curve of his response.
We cannot expect revolutionary changes. We should not ignore, either, the desires, expectations and prejudices of those who think another way is a better way. Perhaps Cody's owner likes him stupid and inept. I shall continue to endeavor to find a middle way that honors stupidity and lethargy for all dogs, although I shall also always urge each of us to put aside our old ways and strive toward the highest goals of both human and canine accomplishment.
Your faith in me causes me to reflect upon my lapses and to renew my commitment to my purpose. And for those who may even now say that my work has demeaned the admittedly more startling and significant accomplishments of previous physics honorees, let me remind you that no less an unprincipled, lying, corrupt war-whore than Henry Kissinger was given the Peace Prize, despite a solitary atom of evidence that he ever considered any principle more great and noble than his own self-aggrandizement and enrichment. Surely, if he was worthy, I am doubly so. Or maybe it's all just a big friggin' joke. Crazy damned Swedes. God Bless you. And may God Bless the United States of America. Thank you and good evening.
Mr. Cooper once won a small award for a reasonably capable poem and another for highest literary achievement by a student in the eighth grade. Everything his editor has ever submitted to the Maine Press Association has been ignored. Municipal annual reports he has crafted have always impressed the judges at the Maine Municipal Association. This is not a strong record, but neither has he compromised away everything in which he has professed to believe, and of that he is proud. He pledges he will try to do better in the future.
33 Comments so far
Show AllThe Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in OSLO, NORWAY by a committee elected by the NORWEGIAN parliament. Holy cow!
Your satire detector might be broken.
Why does the left join in unholy alliance with the right in diminishing the Nobel Peace Prize? Sometimes it seems like many on the left are becoming, to borrow a phrase, useful tools of the right.
Are you becoming a useful tool of the American Military Empire?
The American Military Empire includes the likes of Obama, Bush, Kissinger, Albright, Clinton, Rice, Powell, etc.
It must warm your Obama heart to know that your Precious One consults Colin Powell on military issues.
Thanks to Mr. Powell's lies at the UN many dopes in the U.S. and around the world went along with the bogus lies that Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction."
If anyone has been co-opted by the American Military Empire it has been those on the 'liberal-left" who blindly supported Mr. Obama thinking that wars and those conditions made by war such as poverty and disease would end once the Democrats were in full control of those levers of power. NOT the case.
If anyone has been co-opted and duped it's people as yourself.
Authentic and true Liberals-Leftists are motivated by principles and Conscience over political party or political factions. This is obviously something you are ignorant of. Being against the American Military Empire is not being co-opted by anyone but being true to one's real and authentic leftist beliefs!
I'm just trying to inhabit reality. But aside from the frequent and justified criticisms of Obama, the article satirizes the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel committee. Commentary on this site expands on the theme of how silly it is to care what Europeans think; that attitude, more than any discussion of whether or not Obama should have received the prize, is what concerns me. I get satire; and understand that satire has its **targets**. I have lived long enough to remember Kissinger getting the prize, so by no means do I think the prize is the unquestionable endorsement you seem to think. However, the European committee which awards the prize is a group of serious thinkers who both care about peace and how to create that peace in the real world. The right wing hates groups like the UN and the Nobel committee. At what point does joining that chorus mean you have joined that church?
comment relocated to most recent post below (later)
Hi agingpacifist,
You wrote: "However, the European committee which awards the prize is a group of serious thinkers who both care about peace and how to create that peace in the real world."
Facts indicate otherwise. The committee appears to me and other intelligent observers to be either fools who think they can influence future U.S. imperialist thrusts with a seven figure bribe or they are sycophants of the NATO Uber Alles mindset who are utterly sold out to the military adventurism of a tourist like Obama.
The only act that Obama engaged in that could remotely be considered sensible regarding lowering the level of consternation between today's new Cold War adversaries was Obama's revisiting the ill-considered aggressiveness of the Nuclear Missile Defense system proposed for Poland/Czech Republic. Let's look st some of the factors involved here. Several months ago now we were informed that Russia had relaxed its prohibition on the provisioning of the U.S. expeditionary forces in Afghanistan via the former Soviet states in Central Asia. Was there a quid pro quo between Putin/Medvedev allowing the U.S. to avoid the embarrassment of a complete collapse of the U.S. follies in Afghanistan after the Taliban/nationalist forces effective cut off the Kyber Pass on an intermittent basis? It sure looked to the logisticians of the U.S. occupation forces that they were "f*cked" for a while. Thus the scramble to get Russia to accede to having our wretched war be furthered by old Silk Road routes to perhaps keep American frogs in an Afghan pot simmering away? It sure looks to me like the end of the NMD follies was timed so that the short-attention span crowd wouldn't think that the relinquishment of the U.S. imperial thrust into Poland/CZ would be linked to the chess move by Putin to allow us to continue to fuel up our Hummer in Helmand at $300 per gallon of gasoline delivered to the front line.
What's not to like about $300 gasoline? It really helps to destroy and destabilize the dollar, eh? Why wouldn't Putin want all the folly he can arrange with a grandstanding anti-Taliban Obama taking credit in a crude sort of way for emptying the American treasury into a deep trench. When the history of the demise of the American Empire is written, it will include a grace note about how Obama was cuckolded by the Eurasians into a conflict that Obama could not fathom and could not finance. It will be dollar diplomacy turned on its head.
Good thing that Barack is thinking about saving the taxpayer's grandchildren's future by stopping the NMD deployment in Poland/CZ. Too bad it won't really staunch the flow of blood our of the American treasury and keep this crazy empire capable of holding its center. No empire has ever endured once it gets to the point of doing this to its own citizens: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rep-marcy-kaptur-some-reality-ground-zero
The question has to be -> how do you recruit among the very people you've just betrayed?
we spent 8 long years condemning bush (and rightly so)for his actions and policies- if we now ignore the same things when our side does it - doesn't that make us hypocrites? I'll follow the actions and not the words of Obama and his cult of personality.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been reduced to less than the Boy Scout merit badge.
very good - very funny
in addition, i somehow now feel connected to cody and his learning curve which i am quite sure will one day flower into a long succession of properly interdicted flying bits of food
clearly sir, your award is well earned and as you point out eclipses that of kissinger's by photonic light years
today, and only for a moment, we should, all of us, embrace your success as our own
your potential sir is ours and together there is nothing we cannot do should we work as a community
i applaud you and your what could have beens as a testimony to the inherent greatness that resides in all of us
as for obama's award - well that one is total busllshit
Retrievers, Labrador, yellow, black, or Chesapeake-Bay, are not exactly known for their intelligence. You should have gotten a border collie, or, (don't laugh) a toy poodle. Those are some smart dogs. You even have to spell most of your words around them, like being around a human child.
i even got my cats trained to retrieve toy mice.
To expand on my earlier comment, since everything coming in since then, only confirms what I said: To wit, a certain portion of the left enjoy being tools of the right wing, if from that they can wallow in some sense of moral superiority. Since when does the left disdain the Nobel Prize in exactly the same way the right does: this who cares what those silly Europeans think; Oslo, my God, Oslo, why they have no power so no one cares what they think anyway!! Okay, in step, who wants to joke about eating herring? What a bunch of super hypocritical elitist a-holes the left can show itself to be.........
"a certain portion of the left enjoy being tools of the right"
such as 0 himself.
"a certain portion of the left enjoy being tools of the right"
A certain portion of the "left" have joined the right in their advocacy of the American Military Empire and support of torture, rendition and other war crimes which the Obama administration now dutifully employs around the globe.
The Obama administration has continued the Bush Doctrine and of ignoring human and international laws around the world.
The Obama administration is working behind the scenes to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act even as Obama publicly states he is "against it." Obama who pals around with anti-gay preachers is well known. Obama is set to suppress the release of the torture photos which happened on Bush's watch, yet, he is still going to bar its being shown to the public. Obama is nothing but Bush's THIRD TERM!!!!!
So, the "left" who blindly follows Obama and his criminal polices are the ones who have joined the "right."
You know, maybe some people appreciate the difference between someone who struggles with issues of war and peace, and someone who saber rattled at every opportunity; Cheney et al appreciate that difference and they are horrified by Obama. Europe appreciates that difference; I think they got sick of bombing a generation or two ago and identify with others who do. I know, no one has to jump in and tell me this, the bombing by drone and otherwise continues. To quote my favorite quote of the year, said to the right wing nut, On what planet do you spend most of your time? The one where a left winger enters the White House, and puts the military industrial complex in its place on Day One?
I think you've got it. The Bush cabal was so horridly beyond the pale, that someone who acknowledges the existence of other countries, and who wishes to kill more of their citizens in only one (Afghanistan) rather than two (Afghanistan plus Iraq), and who still hasn't invaded (or permitted the invasion of) yet another (Iran), looks like a harbinger of peace and a saviour of all that is good and holy.
A very sad commentary on our standards of pacifism.
From Europe;
I'm not so sure Europe got so tired bombing, i mean France gets it's way bombing in Africa whenever ( Tchad,Centre Afrique ...), the UK Irak since 1991, all participants of the coalition of the willing, remember that new brave Europe Aznar (Spanish) bragged so much about. We may not bomb each other anymore but there is plenty bombing to do in this world...
Congratulations, Mr. Cooper, for the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Like you, I don't think you really deserve it, but I have every reason to believe that the award will make you feel very guilty about receiving a prize you didn't earn and that you will promptly begin to do some physics that go even beyond your experiments with Cody (by the way, please convey my congratulations to him as well, along with an extra pat on the head and two dog biscuits, which you can certainly now afford to buy him.)
Your inspiring story has prompted me to follow through on a festering thought that I should nominate Mr. Roberto Micheletti of Honduras for the Nobel Prize in Democracy Promotion. He has repeatedly justified the coup as necessitated by the need to rescue Honduran democracy from the elected dictator, Zelaya; even though the majority of Hondurans would no doubt, according to a just-released poll, vote the dictator back into office. Still, he has spoken in inspiring rhetoric of his intention to restore democracy, even as his jack-booted police have raided and dismantled a television state which has dared to criticize the coup. My friends Lanny Davis, Roger Noreiga and Otto Reich agree that the Nobel Prize will encourage Mr. Micheletti to cease these democracy-challenging practices and emerge as the Thomas Jefferson of the Latin American world, ready to do battle with another notorious dictator, Hugo Chavez. Mr. Cooper: as a successful applicant for a Nobel Prize, will you join Lanny and Otto and Roger and me in forwarding Micheletti's application for the Democracy award?
Ay-yi-yiiieee! This is a full-tilt masterpiece, the best political writing since soldier-cult saboteur John Kerry inflicted Obama's blathering birthday suit on the formerly-Democratic Party.
Is "Christopher Cooper" really J.D. Salinger? Whoever he is, maybe if we invoke the presidential lemon law . . .
agingpacifist writes:
"the European committee which awards the prize is a group of serious thinkers who both care about peace and how to create that peace in the real world. The right wing hates groups like the UN and the Nobel committee. At what point does joining that chorus mean you have joined that church?"
Ah, the five magic Norwegians! THEY are "serious thinkers"?
At what point does pointless O-poligetica become its own church? (Can its non-profit status be revoked)?
Worshipping Oblabla because He's NOMINALLY not-the-"right-wing" makes no sense at all -- especially when His ACTIONS (including the pending covert mandate of millions of poor people into the sadistic rolling Death Panel of Medicaid), and appointments -- as opposed to the boring endless blather of His perma-campaign -- suggest that he IS, EXACTLY, "right wing".
"PEACE"?? Oblabla's latest peace effort is a plan to bribe the Taliban to support Obama/Karzai. (Will He think of bribing the fierce, and nearly-starving, US underclasses NOT to rise up against this crap? . . . )
It's hardly surprising, I guess, but you haven't read my comments very carefully. I don't worship Obama. I said criticism of him is justified. Every time someone on the left doesn't attack anyone who would even consider running for an actual elective office, the always Purer Left, accuses them of various ways of selling out. In Obama's case, I get pretty tired of engaging in a hero worship which I do not, or of being taken in by charisma. Ad hoc reasoning of this type really is a specialty of the right. I will not even concede that you are in some sense "further" left than I; my desired goals would include one in which serious Norwegians would not be called the "five magic Norwegians" as a way of making a point; what point doesn't matter. By the way, the process does involve more than those 5, but I hardly think that concerns you. Making fun of names, countries, cities, whatever, shows you can out Limbaugh Limbaugh. My congratulations.
NB: I originally posted this in response to a previous comment, but I'm moving it here because it's pertinent to later comments as well:
___________________________________
"However, the European committee which awards the prize is a group of serious thinkers who both care about peace and how to create that peace in the real world. The right wing hates groups like the UN and the Nobel committee. At what point does joining that chorus mean you have joined that church?"
___________________________________
Serious thinkers is as serious thinkers does, I always say.
Not grammatical, I know-- but then, perhaps I'm not a "serious thinker".
All day yesterday, on another site, I kept "running into" a VERY angry and not very intelligent commenter who was beyond furious at the justifiable criticism and antipathy towards the Nobel Committee.
One of his recurring epithets was "Ivory Tower"-- all of us who took the Nobel Committee to task were living in Ivory Towers, he bellowed repeatedly.
HE lived in the "real world", needless to say, in which a chap could take pride in his president getting a prestigious award, even if one didn't agree with EVERYTHING said president was doing.
I mention this wretch because he would have us believe that he possessed the requisite sophisticated understanding of the matter to call us out as unregenerate yahoos, repeatedly excoriating our lack of "class" in a manner comparable to a rowdy drunk mooning people out of a car window.
He's the kind of Europhile you're looking for!
Actually, one of the silliest twists to this story is the sudden abundance of Nobelphiliacs popping like microwave popcorn to edify and edumacate the rest of us; everywhere, one is inculcated with Chapter and Verse about the True Meaning of the Prize. Obviously, critics lack the requisite cosmopolitan sensibility and abiding knowledge of European history and customs required to appropriately "get" it.
I never knew all of these closet Nobel devotees even existed, much less that they would be aghast at the mere possibility that anyone would fail to swoon at its esteemed authority. Geez, what will we peasants do next-- question the VATICAN?
The term "myopia" has also been thrown at Nobel/Obama critics a lot this weekend. From my perspective, the "myopia" is within both the Nobel Committee, and those who suddenly express a reverence for the committee that it doesn't deserve.
So: Having been "Ivory Towered" to a fare-thee-well, I'll turn the metaphor around and apply it to the Nobel Committee.
I would never "not care what Europeans think", but this is manifestly a case of the Nobel Committee viewing Obama through Old Europe opera glasses that both magnify and distort his virtues, and diminish his vices and flaws. As the always intelligent and insightful commenter RichM has noted elsewhere, the Nobel Committee is the voice of Old Europe, and seeks to preserve European elite interests and values. As Nobel Laureate Kissinger once observed: ve ALL vunt piss! Yes, we do, but of course the devil's in the details.
Obama is an appallingly lousy choice, period.
I am not obliged to make a study of the individual Nobel committee members or Scandanavian politics to obtain an overarching mastery of the entire history of the Nobel Prize in order to reach this conclusion. His selection exposed a major awkward disconnect between the Nobel Committee and the "reality" which you claim you're trying to inhabit. The roars of disapprobation should be a wake-up call to force them to examine their flawed process; instead, with the help of shocked or shamed devotees, they'll write off the backlash as the howls of inexplicably embittered or ignorant barbarians.
And your rhetorical question is a variation of the canard often chirped by exasperated "moderates" here: "Oh noes-- the Obama criticisms supposedly from the LEFT sound just like those from the RIGHT!"
That's as may be, for any number of reasons. So what? This observation is invoked to float an inane implication that the merit of the criticism is subordinate to the crucial issue of what "side" benefits most from its being voiced.
Thus, I'm not moved to clutch my pearls and moan that ignorant, provincial, and worst of all, GAUCHE angry progressives are dissing the NOBEL Committee. No offense to a fellow aging pacifist, but though I haven't joined "that church", I'm not a member of yours, either. I remain an agnostic freethinker.
I can't help being a benighted Amerikan at this late date, and to the extent that the Nobel Committee and its sycophants regard informed, righteous contempt as a faux pas, I offer the quintessentially Amerikan response: I got your "faux pas" right here, pally!
My hat is off to your physics achievements and your well deserved prize. May I suggest green energy as a direction of your future fruitful research? Something like placing Cody on an oversized hamster wheel... This would be a lot more promising than the current green projects in development. I have only one serious apprehension, how would we call the abundant energy produced by Cody and his green canine colleagues? "Green" energy won't do if they are yellow, "yellow" won't do if they aren't yellow... May be we should paint them all green and call the enterprise "solartopia"... as proposed by the just announced Nobel Laureate in Literature...
Homework for the adventurous: try the same thing with your cat. Hint: wear protective gear... at least a spacesuit...
agingpacifist writes:
"my desired goals would include one in which serious Norwegians would not be called the "five magic Norwegians" as a way of making a point; what point doesn't matter."
The point matters: it's that Oblabla's birthday suit is the Emperor's New Clothes, and that it's silly to consider His moderate-Republican cult "left", just because He got His start with some corporate Weathermen -- who managed to destroy the Movement -- from Chicago.
Does "miraculous Norwegian penta-pack" come any closer to satisfying yer message-discipline guidelines? Nah, I bet not.
Maybe "Christopher Cooper" is really Garrison Keillor ... premier US expert on Norwegians . . .
I'm sure Keillor's THRILLED at Obama's copping the prize.
It's almost like giving Keillor himself the prize for championing "moving forward" and letting bygones be bygones, and forgetting about investigating US government-sanctioned crimes and atrocities.
ยท Yr Obd't Servant
"There can be no question that together we are bending the curve of his response".LOL!Is this the award stimulus for bending the curve of his resonse?Is it going to be like Pavlov's dog and do 2 dogs make a right?AP took a beating today but he is still a pacifist and that is high in my award presentments and takes great courage.Tony
Hey Dem-dat-dare,
You wrote: "His moderate-Republican cult "left", just because He got His start with some corporate Weathermen -- who managed to destroy the Movement -- from Chicago."
Bitter much? Has your mind been addled by too much tear gas inhalation? Why the hostility toward Ayers and Dohrn? They were friends of friends of mine back in the day and they were 100% American patriots, fighting as best they could conceive to reject the empire's worst impulses. Just because people eventually make some effort to change the system from within doesn't make them destroyers of movements.
Far from it. The greatest damage to the movement undoubtedly came from COINTELPRO agents provocateurs. And from the consistency of human nature which put a fork in the road for the radical left which was best exemplified by Abbie Hoffman's rude rejection by the Woodstock dancing bears and drug-addled crowd.
If you want to harangue someone for the destruction of the Movement, why not accuse Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger of engaging in the willful introduction of massive amounts of drugs into the U.S. in order to stupefy the Woodstock generation? Why not look into how clever Nixon was to "divide-and-conquer" the opposition to the Viet Nam War by creating the draft lottery which brilliantly divided the anti-imperialist opposition into those Nixon could corrupt by giving them a get-out-the-draft card or else giving them a doobie? There's your Movement's enemy. Not the Weathermen, as you so naively surmise.
Ray Duray:
"The greatest damage to the movement undoubtedly came from COINTELPRO agents provocateurs."
No doubt.
How many instant ultra-leftists from the corporate classes -- glorifying the Manson murders (as Dohrn did), pressuring un-rich radical students to leave the universities, etc. -- were/are among them?
Too funny, and too short...the end almost gave me whiplash...
these Nobel prizes are stupid...how easily one is given, and received...
actual peace, on the other hand, would be dfficult, but meaningful, and be, in and of itself, a prize unmatched...
maybe one should demonstrably aspire to, and bring home, the actual thing, rather than the statue, or ribbon and medal, or whatever they give you...that would, indeed, be No-ta-bel...
keep the peace, give back the prize...
I don't get it. Why would you refer to yourself as "aging pacifist" if you're okay with a PEACE prize being given to someone who has continued the Iraq war, ramped up the Afghanistan war, worked to shield all the Bush people from accountability for lying to set up the war and for torture...and yes, who has better rhetoric, in regard to Iran and the Israel-Palestine issue (but no talk of cutting off funding for Israel).
This is exactly the same thing we get when we complain about ACES and the Kerry-Boxer bill, each of which are nearly 1000 poages long and contain big giveaways to polluting industries while doing little or nothing to reduce greenhouse gases, as scientists scream that it's very nearly too late to address what is likely the most serious crisis humanity has ever faced. If we don't support these bills, we are told, we are supporting coal! We are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good! We are sabotaging the best hope of realistic policy just because it isn't as perfect and pure as us extremist lefties want!
Horseshit. There is a difference between policy that is imperfect but a large step in the right direction, and a total giveaway to industry. There is a difference between a politician who "isn't perfect" in foreign policy and one who continues the polciy of enriching bankers with tax dollars while having the US' main national export continue to be widows and orphans. Imagine what a cruel smack in the face this news must have been to the people of Afghanistan. It has nothing to do with how we feel about the opinions of Europeans (as though the people of Europe were consulted!) I'm really tired of rhetoric that pretends the only choices are Bush's policies and anything-from-a-Democrat which must automatically be labelled "left" even if you need sophisticated equipment to detect the difference. Likely Obama would be more inclined to live up to some of his campaign promises (besides widening the Afghanistan war) if he were not confident of support from a significant number of Democratic voters no matter what he does.
mwildfire writes:
"keep the peace, give back the prize"
Oops, too late: He's already declared it a "call to action".
A call to action? Even for goose-boy Obama, all things to all people, you'd think obtaining the presidency should have been enough to rouse Him to "action" -- especially after all those bait-and-switch campaign speeches.
Well, look at what the award has done already: Obama haters on the right and Obama haters on the left now are united in opposition to the award.
You make a cute couple.