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Christopher Hitchens manages to wake me up anent the presidential contest, which isn't easy since it feels like a slow-running soap opera these days. Hitchens is speculating that Al Gore, a.k.a the Goracle, will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and this will move him to get into the presidential race:
I cannot help but think that Hitchens is bored, too, and is just stirring a little mischief. Although Gore has favored the removal of Saddam from power, Gore was very much against this war, whereas Hitchens has been a soaring hawk. Even so, I'm now looking forward to the Nobel announcement.
(Source: Christopher Hitchens for Slate.com)
xXx
Christopher Hitchens manages to wake me up anent the presidential contest, which isn't easy since it feels like a slow-running soap opera these days. Hitchens is speculating that Al Gore, a.k.a the Goracle, will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and this will move him to get into the presidential race:
On Oct. 12, we shall hear again from Oslo, and I will be very surprised indeed if the peace prize is not awarded to Albert Gore Jr. (Don't ask what a campaign against global warming has done for "peace"; that would be like asking what Mother Teresa or Henry Kissinger had ever done to reduce global conflict. The impression is the main thing.)Hitchens also reports rumors that Gore is waiting for the Nobel committee's announcement before he makes up his mind.
So, and if I am right, the former vice president will then complete a year in which An Inconvenient Truth has been awarded an Oscar and he has authored a best seller. Roll it round your tongue again: an Oscar, a best seller, and a Nobel Prize in the space of 12 months or so. Not bad. And meanwhile, the field of Democratic candidates looks—how shall one put it?—a trifle etiolated. Sen. Clinton may have succeeded in getting people to call her "Hillary" and to have made them feel resigned to her front-runnership, but what kind of achievement is that? Sen. Obama cannot possibly believe, and doesn't even act as if he believes, that he can be elected president of the United States next year. John Edwards is a good man who is in politics for good reasons, but there is something about his populism that doesn't quite—what's the word?—translate.
I cannot help but think that Hitchens is bored, too, and is just stirring a little mischief. Although Gore has favored the removal of Saddam from power, Gore was very much against this war, whereas Hitchens has been a soaring hawk. Even so, I'm now looking forward to the Nobel announcement.
(Source: Christopher Hitchens for Slate.com)
