Pinter Pontificates Pointlessly
The Nobel committee doubtlessly got exactly what it was looking for yesterday from its decision to confer the Nobel prize for literature to Harold Pinter. In his acceptance speech that doubled as a salivating rant against Bush, the U.S., Blair, and England, Pinter managed to attain to the heights of absurd incoherence as well as plumb the depths of despicable character assassination against Bush and Blair. Some lowlights:
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?...We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East.'
Actually, that would be a much better description of how things were under Saddam before the U.S. arrived (although I guess you could substitute depleted uranium for nerve gas). One really must have a tenuous grasp on reality to actually believe Iraqis were better off under Saddam than the U.S.: the evidence is so overwhelmingly to the contrary that there is little reason to get into it here.
Some more gems: Pinter accused the United States of supporting 'every right wing military dictatorship in the world after World War II, from Chile to the Philippines. Um, but I thought we were bastards for deposing Saddam Hussein...unless he suddenly doesn't rank in the pantheon of military dictatorships.
'The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them,' he said. 'It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.' While in my more bitter moments I might be inclined to believe saving France in both world wars may have been a bit of a blunder, I can't quite bring myself to consider the stopping of the Holocaust a "vicious, remorseless" act.
And finally, I think it's an embarassment to compare Pinter with Alexander Solzhenitsyn as this article did: The Nobel committee has not shied from rewarding writers who make a stand against authority, notably in rewarding the literature prize to Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1970. Solzhenitsyn was an actual literary genius and a man who took a stand against totalitarianism that cost him greatly. Pinter may fancy himself such, but he is neither. He is rather pathetic, a moral preener who apparently cares about the suffering of the Iraqi people only if the U.S. can somehow be blamed for it.
--Josh
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?...We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East.'
Actually, that would be a much better description of how things were under Saddam before the U.S. arrived (although I guess you could substitute depleted uranium for nerve gas). One really must have a tenuous grasp on reality to actually believe Iraqis were better off under Saddam than the U.S.: the evidence is so overwhelmingly to the contrary that there is little reason to get into it here.
Some more gems: Pinter accused the United States of supporting 'every right wing military dictatorship in the world after World War II, from Chile to the Philippines. Um, but I thought we were bastards for deposing Saddam Hussein...unless he suddenly doesn't rank in the pantheon of military dictatorships.
'The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them,' he said. 'It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.' While in my more bitter moments I might be inclined to believe saving France in both world wars may have been a bit of a blunder, I can't quite bring myself to consider the stopping of the Holocaust a "vicious, remorseless" act.
And finally, I think it's an embarassment to compare Pinter with Alexander Solzhenitsyn as this article did: The Nobel committee has not shied from rewarding writers who make a stand against authority, notably in rewarding the literature prize to Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1970. Solzhenitsyn was an actual literary genius and a man who took a stand against totalitarianism that cost him greatly. Pinter may fancy himself such, but he is neither. He is rather pathetic, a moral preener who apparently cares about the suffering of the Iraqi people only if the U.S. can somehow be blamed for it.
--Josh
posted at 6:22 PM
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