Roger L. Simon: Gore Deserves Nobel Prize More Than Oscar

It is at least conceivable that Al Gore is correct that the anthropogenic causes of global warming are serious and need swift correction. His humdrum and totally conventional documentary, however, is no more worthy of an Oscar than any of several hundred television shows produced annually by National Geographic, Discovery, etc.

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Hey, this is just the Norwegian Nobel 'peace' prize chairman administering his 'kick in the other leg' of the Bush Administration. We needn't take Gore's prize to mean that he contributed anything to 'peace'. That hasn't been the purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize for... decades. Gore's just been snatched up as a symbol to wave around in the air while screeching.

He should be honored indeed to join the august company of leading film directors such as (major hat tip here to the Power Line gents this morning):

Jimmy Carter - devoted much effort to assisting the North Koreans with diplomatic cover for their 'peaceful' nuclear weapons development;

Kofi Annan - loftily ignored the Rwanda massacres, wasn't bothered by his 'peacekeepers' in their strenuous efforts to score more sex than the next guy in Africa, and presided over one of the biggest financial scams in the world (the one that funded Saddam Hussein's 'peaceful' efforts to obtain WMDs);

Yasser Arafat - who presided over decades of murders (now) for 'peace' (in the undefined future).

You simply have to understand that the Oscar, like the Nobel Peace Prize, was given to Al Gore, not to the documentary, and not for any efforts for peace.

Both were political decisions to give added authority to the one man whose prescriptions for the future would criple the U.S. economy while leaving China and India to roar ahead. It didn't hurt that it also made the Bush Administration look bad to all the correct people.

I wonder if next year's Nobel Peace prize winner will be John Kerry or whoever the Democratic nominee for president is. Now THAT will be hard choice for them.

They're both basically the same thing. Hollywood never respected the documentary form so a few years back they decided to start giving the award to filmmakers who reinforce their sense of their own superiority.

It's been a long time since the Nobel Committee respected the peace prize so they gave it to someone who tells them they're right and they're smarter. They care more.

That said, I have to disagree with your "more worthy" assessment. For all its flaws, An Inconvennient Truth was, at least, a movie. Giving the peace prize to Gore for global warming is the Nobel equivalent of giving the documentary award to a cheese burger they really liked.

I'm no math genius, but within the context of Florida 2000, I'm having a hard time putting together Al Gore and peace and understanding.

Al Gore took this country down a dangerous path no presidential election candidate (not even Richard Nixon) has had the temerity to do.

tim maguire, it's not quite that Hollywood disrespects the documentary form. There are other things involved here, including the method for choosing the Best Documentary Oscar. Academy members, like yours truly, are not permitted to vote in the category unless we can prove we have seen the films. This is a good idea in principle,but in practice means you have to go down to the Academy during the work week when they are all screening. Hence a small number see and vote. Those people are a small clique of very pedestrian, conventionally liberal documentarians themselves who have a strong business/ideological interest in who wins. Hence some really good films of recent years like Hoop Dreams have been overlooked. It's pathetic.

Hoop Dreams probably would have won had it been nominated, but it wasn't and the nominating process was finally changed as it became ever clearer that box office success in the genre was too often being penalized so that less well known documentaries/documentarians would be recognized. Hoop Dreams did get a Film Editing nomination. Score one for the Editors.

It is at least conceivable that Al Gore is correct that the anthropogenic causes of global warming are serious and need swift correction.

Not in your wildest dreams. If you believe in the anthropogenic causes of global warming, then the rational approach to solving the problem is the one proposed by Bjorn Lomborg, not by Al "Chicken Little" Gore. Also, what does Global Warming have to do with peace? The answer of course is nothing. However, just like the prize given to Jimmy "I hate Jews" Carter, the purpose was to make an anti-American political statement.

the movie was not a doc'.
and his efforts have nothing to do with peace anywhere and have not led to peace anywhere.

institutions which are dominated by the left use their powers to advance leftist causes.

AGW is a hoax propagated to increase taxes and regulations on industry and trade LONGTIME goals of the left.

co2 does not casue GW. co2 is a lagging indicator and not a cause; it is a relatively small part of the atmosphere (with man-made co2 being an even smaller part), and co2 is an inefficient conductor.

gore is a demagogue of the left.
the left likes him and is rewarding him.
like joe wilson and kerry and bj clinton.

Can it be any more banal than to give a "peace" prize for somebody droning on about "Earth has a fever"?

Historically, the warming of oceans has occurred BEFORE a rise in the co2. (You can google this & find the paper.)

Warmers do not deny this fact. Rather they come up with bizarre* and non-physical "explanations" for it.

But it's a little embarrassing, so the warmers tend not to draw attention to it.

*If you think it is OK for the cause to follow the effect, work that theory in the next time you do homework in physics, chemistry, or engineering. Just see what your professor tells you.

I try to look at the bright side. Gore, one of the most pedantic and boring people on the planet, won an award that his former boss tried everything to win for himself.

No need to worry, though. Emperor Hillary will name the first re-education camp after Gore, and put his head on a pike at the entry gate.

I will slightly disagree with you, in that 'as stated' there is essentially no chance that the Gore Theory is correct, although there is a plausible argument to be made that human activity is contributing at some (most likely small) level.

The most important element of this that I find is the pre-Copernican viewpoint of the Warmers. Originally, humans knew that they did not control things such as weather, but needed to. Thus, they created religion so that they could beseech the gods, who were in control, to do the job for them. Over time, this elevated humans to be the reason for the existence of the universe, leading to the belief that the sun and planets revolved around them. Copernicus, overturned that (credits also to Galileo) by pointing out that humans aren't really all that important after all. Having given up gods, the left still wants to be the at the center of it all, so if the globe is warming, then we must be responsible for it. If we were not responsible, since there are no gods to appeal to, then we could not change it. So it must be our fault. That is the only way we can maintain control (or the illusion of it).

Unfortunately, this veiwpoint carries into otheer areas as well; the 'anti-war' crowd expresses a viewpoint which clearly states that if the U.S. were not in Iraq there would be no war. This is both stupid and arrogant, since any rational observer would conclude that the character of the war would change (and it would get uglier - witness the S.E. Asia wars after we abandoned the people there), but it certainly would not end.

Roger: thank you for describing some of the inside baseball on documentary awards.

Interesting how a perfectly reasonable rule (that voters must have actually seen the documentary they are voting on) could have effects that debase the award (by making it susceptible to manipulation) through the innately obscure nature of most submissions.

October 12, 2007: Gore Deserves Nobel Prize More Than Oscar

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