gimme the prize, just gimme the prize
I've been sort of paying attention to media (mainly BBC News) coverage of the campaign to halt the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams (I thought "Tookie" was a nickname but I recently read somewhere that it's his actual middle name). A lot of the articles I've read and the news item I heard on the local entertainment news - entertainment news because of Snoop Dogg's association with the case - keep mentioning that Tookie (I'll call him that because I like how it sounds) has repeatedly been a Nobel Peace Prize nominee (he's also been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature). The first time I heard that my reaction was Yeah, but is that really a big deal? I mean George W. Bush has been nominated for that prize too (at least twice apparently, once after initiating the "War on Terror" and then again after the invasion of Iraq. Both times jointly nominated with Tony Blair, and both times by the same Norwegian politician, it would appear) so it's not as if the nomination process is highly selective... According to this story (which was apparently later edited by some news outlets) Slobodan Molosevic and Adolf Hitler have also been Nobel Prize nominees.
A quote in the Free Republic article, from the Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, confirms what I was thinking:
Lundestad said many people wrongly believed being a "Nobel prize nominee" was itself a kind of honour. ... "There are many who do not understand the difference between a nomination and getting the prize," Lundestad said.
A point which is also made in an op-ed piece by Eugene Volokh. (A rougher form of that article may be found at Volokh's blog here.*)
According to Nobel Prize nominating rules, any "professor of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology" and any judge or national legislator in any country, among others, can nominate anyone for a Nobel Peace Prize. Past nominees have included Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini and Fidel Castro. Any "professor of literature [or] of linguistics," among others, can nominate anyone for a Nobel Prize in literature.
Naturally, many nominees have real merit. But being nominated by one or a few of the hundreds of thousands of eligible nominators is little evidence of such merit. This is especially so when the nominee is a source of controversy and when it may seem that nominating him may prevent his execution in California on Tuesday.
It would surely be helpful to readers if news stories mentioning Williams' nominations - or, for that matter, any Nobel peace or literature prize nominations - stressed how unselective the nomination process is.
More about Tookie's clemency case from Volokh. I also came across this post about Tookie's nominations. This lengthy comment to that piece says a bit more about the Peace Prize nomination process.
(x-posted)
A quote in the Free Republic article, from the Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, confirms what I was thinking:
Lundestad said many people wrongly believed being a "Nobel prize nominee" was itself a kind of honour. ... "There are many who do not understand the difference between a nomination and getting the prize," Lundestad said.
A point which is also made in an op-ed piece by Eugene Volokh. (A rougher form of that article may be found at Volokh's blog here.*)
According to Nobel Prize nominating rules, any "professor of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology" and any judge or national legislator in any country, among others, can nominate anyone for a Nobel Peace Prize. Past nominees have included Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini and Fidel Castro. Any "professor of literature [or] of linguistics," among others, can nominate anyone for a Nobel Prize in literature.
Naturally, many nominees have real merit. But being nominated by one or a few of the hundreds of thousands of eligible nominators is little evidence of such merit. This is especially so when the nominee is a source of controversy and when it may seem that nominating him may prevent his execution in California on Tuesday.
It would surely be helpful to readers if news stories mentioning Williams' nominations - or, for that matter, any Nobel peace or literature prize nominations - stressed how unselective the nomination process is.
More about Tookie's clemency case from Volokh. I also came across this post about Tookie's nominations. This lengthy comment to that piece says a bit more about the Peace Prize nomination process.
(x-posted)