No ‘peace’ of mind with Nobel nominee

It’s official: The Nobel Peace Prize nomination process, and maybe even the way the victors are chosen, is about as legit as an MTV Movie Awards.

The Nobel Foundation still has its awards for medicine, physics, literature, chemistry and economics, all high-powered, highly regarded and well-earned distinctions in disciplines where almost all the subjectivity and novelty has been filtered out.

But the peace category, well, it’s gotten a bad rap for decades with questionable nominations and suspect wins, and this year it stoops to the level of “Best WTF Moment” or “Best Shirtless Performance.” What would make this year’s ceremony complete would be a gala performance by Justin Bieber with a hologram Tupac thrown in for flavor.

Instead, American exile and federal leaker Edward Snowden may actually have a shot at cruising the red carpet in Stockholm, Sweden, with Selena Gomez on his arm en route to a peace medal.

The rest of the world is just mad enough at the United States to consider it. That’s got to be the only reason Snowden could have received such a nomination; that and the fact that Channing Tatum made no shirtless films in 2013 — “Magic Mike” came out in 2012.

See, I’m getting the Peace Prize and the MTV Movie Awards mixed up again.

Every year it seems as if someone in Norway with the keys to the Nobel Peace Prize nomination-mobile makes some crazy left turn into a wall that sets tongues a-wagging and eyes a-rolling with ridicule. Last year it was crazy-eyed Vladimir Putin; this year it is Snowden.

In 2009, the prize was awarded to President Barack Obama after just one year in office and little more than a couple years on any sort of world stage. While you could argue that prize stands up to scrutiny — and I would be one to attempt to make that case — just as many people could’ve pulled it apart then, and even more so now; all justified.

Is it a symptom of the process, or a skewed European vision of what constitutes heroics and greater ideals?

Snowden was nominated by two qualified Norwegian Socialist lawmakers Baard Vegard Solhjell and Snorre Valen on the grounds that the National Security Agency documents Snowden leaked revealing America’s domestic and international spying programs “contributed to a more peaceful and stable world order,” the politicians wrote in their nomination letter.

Excuse me? The definition of the Nobel Peace Prize is to promote more widespread global peace and peace initiatives, and the fallout of what Snowden leaked and what the U.S. did has had the reverse reaction. Political tensions between world leaders are worse today than they were 12 months ago, especially among longtime, rock-solid allies like German Chancellor Angela Merkel; she is so totally over Barry.

This is not a debate about Snowden. He is a hero to many and a criminal to others; abroad and in this country. But the idea that what he did has done anything but create discord between the United States and its allies, between the U.S. and its citizens, is anything but peaceful.

What’s up with the Norwegians anyway, and why can’t they be more like the Swedes?
Maybe it’s a little-known fact, and maybe not, but the committee that chooses the final nominees and selects the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize are from Norway; all other Nobel Prize committees come from Sweden.
Are the Norwegians smoking their pickled herring, while the Swedes are eating it? Just sayin’.

In 1994 Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat shared the award with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. While history more widely credits Arafat as more terrorist than freedom fighter, the same can be said to some extent about Rabin. It’s all perspective, hence:

In 1973 U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger earned the award for working in Vietnam while the U.S. was still carpet-bombing Cambodia (very similar to Obama’s win as the U.S. fought wars on multiple fronts).

Maybe the Nobel Foundation needs to step in and hand the keys to Swedes in the peace category; I think the Norwegians have been drinking. Until then, it might as well be MTV’s “Best Gut-Wrenching Performance” for the diarrhea scene in “Bridesmaids.”

This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, Jan. 31, 2014.