Harold Pinter

I quote from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, although most of you have probably already heard it:

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. 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."

This reminds me of the Cannes Film Festival giving the Palme d’Or to Michael Moore Farenheit 911. In fact it’s even worse, although longer in the making. The Nobel committee has, for years now, turned the Nobel Prize in Literature to a political appointment, a selection of the author that best represents their world view. And in so doing, is gradually turning the prize into a joke. Not that Pinter isn’t a great playwright, in fact he’s probably the best writer to get the prize in recent years, but unlike the Nobel Prizes in the sciences, that are arguably a selection based on merit, the prize in literature is inarguably based on politics. Which makes it pretty ludicrous. The Nobel Prize committee should be ashamed. I don’t think they will be, but on the other hand the prize that they dispense is rapidly becoming known as third rate. Which is its own sweet revenge.