Weekly Jackass Number Forty-Seven: Harold Pinter
Let us now praise famous men…British playwright Harold Pinter is the recipient of the latest Nobel Prize in Literature, and while I’m not concerned with his literary merits here, I’d like to add yet another award to his mantle.
Here’s Pinter in 2003 (hat tip to Little Green Footballs):
The playwright said: “The US is really beyond reason now. It is beyond our imagining to know what they are going to do next and what they are prepared to do. There is only one comparison: Nazi Germany.
“Nazi Germany wanted total domination of Europe and they nearly did it. The US wants total domination of the world and is about to consolidate that.
“In a policy document, the US has used the term ‘full-spectrum domination’, that means control of land, sea, air and space, and that is exactly what’s intended and what the US wants to fulfil [sic] (the use of [sic] in this case was improper. As cat points out in the comments, it is the correct spelling in the UK. I stand corrected – Mark). They are quite blatant about it.”
Pinter blamed “millions of totally deluded American people” for not staging a mass revolt.
He said that because of propaganda and control of the media, millions of Americans believed that every word Mr Bush said was “accurate and moral”.
The US population could not be let off scot-free for putting the country under the control of an “illegally elected president – in other words, a fake”.
He asked: “What objections have there been in the US to Guantanamo Bay? At this very moment there are 700 people chained, padlocked, handcuffed, hooded and treated like animals. It is actually a concentration camp.
“I haven’t heard anything about the US population saying: ‘We can’t do this, we are Americans.’ Nobody gives a damn. And nor does Tony Blair.” Pinter added: “Blair sees himself as a representative of moral rectitude. He is actually a mass murderer. But we forget that – we are as much victims of delusions as Americans are.”
From a speech in London’s Hyde Park, February, 2003:
The United States is a monster out of control. Unless we challenge it with absolute determination American barbarism will destroy the world. The country is run by a bunch of criminal lunatics, with Blair as their hired Christian thug. The planned attack on Iraq is an act of premeditated mass murder.
Here’s a poem, it’s called The Bombs:
There are no more words to be said
All we have left are the bombs
Which burst out of our head
All that is left are the bombs
Which suck out the last of our blood
All we have left are the bombs
Which polish the skulls of the dead
In fact there are at least 2 more words to be said, the first is “Resistance”. And the second I address to Tony Blair “Resign! Resign! Resign!”
Wow! No wonder he won the Nobel Prize…what a poem!
In fact, I’d like to close with an admittedly abstract poem myself, recently composed on the occasion of the dual Nobel/Jackass awards. It’s called Pinter:
A fool, yes…
A jackass I am called
Yet awards, I win them
And nothing’s left but this stale bowl of Fruit Loops
Pain
Money
Dreams
Chomsky!
My destiny awaits…
Congrats, Harold, you deserve one of these awards more than the other – I’ll leave it to my readers to determine which one that is…
UPDATE 2:22 p.m.: My thanks to the lovely and talented Michelle Malkin for the link…and thanks to Ace, as well!…
Who even pays attention to the Nobels anymore? I stopped when they gave Arafat the Peace Prize. Where it’s really at is the IgNobels.
http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2005
This year’s IgNobel laureates for literature were “The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters — General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others — each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them.”
(Am not much of a fan of Pinter in any event. The political spewing makes me like him even less.)
It’s about time those Nigerian spammers were recognized for the creative genuises they are!…
Geez, and I was basing my retirement planning on the payoff I’m expecting from Zambia…
If you think Pinter is off the wall, take a look at the things which William Butler Yeats said — basically he was a Nazi who would make your friend George Galloway look like the exemplar of wisdom –
“Lament”
Oil in the sand
Blood stains the sand
Blood for oil and oil for blood
And I thought it was supposed to be
Oil for food
Now those were the days
Days of wine and roses before George W
And his bombs
Before this damned rag of a constitution
Oh for those halcyon days
Now they call a Nobel Laureate a Jackass
Injustice! Injustice! Injustice!
Can you tell I’m supposed to be grading mid-terms?
Hey, that’s pretty good…maybe we should have a poetry day soon…
Yeats was a political idiot, Peter, but he wasn’t in Galloway’s league. Yeats didn’t actually pal around with Fascists (so far as I know); he just admired them from afar. And the Baathists don’t really merit comparison with a guy like Mussolini. Saddam always saw himself as cast more in the mold of a Stalin, and for once I agree with him.
Anyway, Yeats wasn’t the first fascist-sympathizing Nobelist. That honor goes to Knut Hamsun, who won the prize for literature in 1920 and was later a Nazi pure and simple, or at least a supporter of Quisling’s puppet government in Norway. Looking down a list of the prizewinners (here), you don’t have to be a philistine to see that many winners haven’t had enduring reputations; conversely, quite a few literary giants are missing from the list. The Nobels for the sciences are pretty solid, but the winners for Literature and Peace have been dodgy for a long, long time.
I heard that the author of :
“I think that I shall never see,
a thing more lovely,
than a beheaded Iraqi…”
Was runner-up.
or the ever famous:
“The brains in Spain, explode mainly on the trains…”
Is the Ezra Pound Memorial Ward for the Criminally Insane still open at Saint Elizabeth’s?
So Now You Care About Literature; or, Suddenly Everyone’s a Literati
Today Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize in Literature … and now everyone cares about literature again. Now it’s become the Ignobel Prize, says one commenter so sure his fellows will miss his pun he feels compelled to add [sic]
[...] I’m blessed right now to be riding one of the hot streaks: my post on the RNC conference call and the Mother Sheehan / Mother Mary post are ranked #3 and #5, respectively, at Blogniscient among political posts, and my Weekly Jackass piece on Harold Pinter is getting good play, too. [...]
Acephalous: Those of us who’ve always cared about literature tend to be interested in these things. I don’t pretend to be one of the literati (a literata?), but I can say with a fair bit of certainty that Pinter is no Tagore or Naipul.
As for the IgNobels, they’re a Harvard/MIT institution brought to us by the Journal of Improbable Science. My favorite event is the 24/7 lecture (formerly known as the Heisenberg Certainty lecture). They have a contest where someone can win a date with a Nobel Laureate. I dream of winning a date with William Lipscomb. He’s adorable and plays a mean clarinet.
It’s all in good fun, for crying out loud.
Hey, that Ignobels web site is good for hours of wasted time…my kind of place….
Acephalous, peers and sneers over the specs at us for poking a bit of fun at the larboard-leaning literati and their brandy newest Nobble Prize winner. Please, Acidophilic, take a gander at “American Football,” recently penned Pinter trash, and tell us you wouldn’t have followed it with [sick]. It is posted by Michelle Malkin today.
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Just a reminder, Decision, the general convention for using “[sic]” is to place it after a mistake that appeared in the original text being quoted. Most educated Americans do not usually insert it after non-mistakes like “colour” and “labour.” And most educated Britons do not use after non-mistakes like “fulfill.” Perhaps you could learn from these people. Otherwise, when you are trying to appear clever you might find that you have actually created the opposite impression.
Hmm
‘And most educated Britons do not use after non-mistakes like “fulfill.”’
I think that sentence calls for a legitimate use of…. “[sic]“
wee wee, poopy, piddle, thingie, crap crap crap. Uncle Sam is a bad man.
I will be expecting my Nobel Prize for children’s literature to be arriving in the mail shortly.
thank you.
Quite right, cat, my mistake. Yes, you have caught me in a blunder – to be truthful, I did not know that fulfil vs. fulfill was a UK vs. US spelling difference. I will correct the post. Gloat away…
A poet has no rules in writing and is not bound by the standards of english…the mistakes are part of the art.
Isn’t poetry great?
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