Nobel Decibels

[babylonsister]

http://firedoglake.com/2009/10/11/nobel-decibels/

Nobel Decibels
By: Glenn W. Smith Sunday October 11, 2009 9:30 am


An American president wins the Nobel Peace Prize and the curtain goes up again on the Great Vaudevillian Media Exploding Head Follies. Limbaugh’s head goes “poof!” Beck’s goes “shree!,” and even the slightly cooler heads of the New York Times get in on the ridiculous burlesque of responsible journalism. According to the NYT’s Adam Nagourney, President Obama’s Nobel is a “mixed blessing.”

snip//

In his will, Alfred Nobel committed part of his estate for a prize “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations.” Any successor to George W. Bush was going to have a head start in a fraternity-of-nations contest. The purchase of a nice globe for the Oval Office and the placing of a few inter-hemispheric phone calls seems like world peace in comparison to Dick Cheney’s international crime spree.

Fact is, Obama deserves this award, and I believe he also accepts it on behalf of the American people who had the good sense in 2008 to repudiate Bush’s global belligerence and domestic neglect. Congratulations, America.

But how do we account for the clownishness of contemporary media? I know it’s popular to rant about media bias, corporate consolidation, elite protectionism and simple laziness, and sadly, the media often earn the criticism.

snip//

Mockery seems the best medicine, but the mental and moral infirmities that plague our media are serious disorders. The American president won the Nobel Peace Prize, you nincompoops. At the very least responsible journalists owe it to the prospect of a safer world to treat the occasion with a little dignity and respect.

But no, such was not to be. These are, by and large, the same media clowns who invented Sarah Palin, only to have Ms. Palin explode in their faces like a trick cigar. Instead of falling back on a lesson from Journalism 101 — accept no trick cigars — they’ve turned the prank into a principle of reporting and see exploding cigars in every circumstance, even Obama’s winning of the Nobel.

As noted above, the world hasn’t yet achieved world peace. Our very existence is threatened by nuclear proliferation and the global climate crisis. The world is in the midst of a financial catastrophe that’s due, in part, to journalists’ failures to look behind the curtain on Wall Street.

If ever we needed the news media to pull the cigars and helium tubes from their mouths and return to the streets with us, now is the time. An idle hope, I fear.

There is no Nobel prize for journalism, and now we know why.

[treestar]

1. In the last year, too

So it depends what's going on in the last year.

Yasser Arafat got one and he never did anything regarding the fraternity of nations in general - his area only was his concern. Yet the President has been involved world wide. I think we just don't have perspective on that, with our inward looking media.