Nobel Committee gives gift to our shallow culture
We still care too much about J-Lo’s dress and the Summer of the Shark. Now, we get around the idea that we are shallow for giving a shit about such things by infusing them with pseudo-political importance and our current national drug of choice, outrage. Everything is an outrage. Everyone is outraged. Every turn of the news cycle gives us a new opportunity to pound the table. Every item that crawls across the newsfeed at the bottom of our screens is an excuse to stab one’s finger into one’s chest and declaim, solemnly and with vast consequence, “I, for one, am sickened.” This is how a shallow culture convinces itself that it is deep. This is how a child’s culture convinces itself that it is adult. Every new twist requires the expression of acute emotional energy, and every expression reinforces that whatever we are, we are a deep, responsible people. 9/11 didn’t stop us from caring about the stupid nonsense. It didn’t turn our attention from little contrived controversies to major historical events. It just inspired us to elevate those contrived controversies to the level of history. The other two options were beyond the pale: give up on caring about bullshit, or admit that this is a shallow culture. Neither could be countenanced. Instead, we’ve chosen to live in a world where the next outrage is just moments away, and where the vast import of everything our minds light upon ensures that whatever else we are, we are all of us Very Important People.
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21 comments
USA! USA! USA! USA!
Hey, Scott! How many peace prizes have Prime Ministers got between them?
Katherine
October 10th, 2009 at 8:38 am
One, to Lester Pearson for initiating the use of UN peacekeeping forces during the Suez Crisis.
To your point on the Nobel prize – when I heard about that this morning I had a similar reaction. Oh what a hue and cry this will raise! This is perhaps the first time someone who promised to withdraw from at least one war, has instead maintained troop levels in two wars and still gotten the bloody Peace prize. Words, words, words. But no actions.
Indeed, the outrage expressed inevitably on all the movement conservative blogs will have enough of a hint of justification to it to keep the fires stoked. How silly that the folks at Nobel thought this would be anything but another political distraction for Obama.
To your points on our culture – well yes, we do have a fairly shallow culture. Though I’d take a slightly more optimistic angle. I think we see the shallow, pop-culture side of things more because it is presented more by its purveyors – the media. The deeper, more thoughtful, less materialistic side of our culture is of necessity the under-represented. The slam poets don’t show up for American Idol. There is no America’s Next Great Novelist, because no great novelist would stoop to being harangued by sappy judges on television, and because not even the most loyal reader would watch such a show to begin with.
So what portion of our shallow culture is merely perception, and what is the truth of the matter?
Freddie
October 9th, 2009 at 7:09 am
Honestly, it’s incredible to me that they wouldn’t say to themselves, “Hmmm, I wonder how this will play in America?”
Bob Cheeks
October 9th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Freddie, I am in such high snark, I can’t speak, nor type, nor do anything but tune into Glenn Beck.
I must rest now, but this is soooo good!
Thank you, Oslo!
Freddie
October 9th, 2009 at 7:19 am
I’m glad Bob!
E.D. Kain
October 9th, 2009 at 7:39 am
I know, it’s like we’re a foreign country to them or something…
What we’re seeing is not a rebuke of Obama, it’s a rebuke of the Nobels. The awards given to genuine heroes like Lech Walesa are now demonstrated (again, in my opinion) to have less meaning than the pomp and circumstance in which they were given. I agree that many of the right-wing kool-aid drinkers can’t make that distinction, so bad on them.
Obama’s test will come in a few hours when he reacts to the award at a press conference.
Dave
October 9th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
No, this is another rebuke of Obama. If GWB or Cheney were to have received the Nobel, regardless of whether they deserved it, the same people that are outraged would have used this as a validation of the Bush 43 presidency.
So, I tried to write a post suggesting that maybe the Committee intended this as something other than a condescending pat on the back for Obama being “not Bush.” I was going to write about how maybe we were underestimating the global import of the missile defense decision and the fact that Obama got the Russians to start taking Iran’s nuclear ambitions more seriously; that maybe, as such, this award was really intended to put some pressure on Iran and to give the West some additional moral leverage over Iran.
Then my sense of reality returned, and I deleted the post.
Well let’s be honest, the world is probably a lot safer than it would be if Sarah Palin were the heart failure of a passionate elderly man who has endured much stress in his life, away from the oval office.
That said, I rather enjoy one aspect of the shallow culture: it can handle anything. Hmm, maybe that’s just the internet though, everything is absorbed and reprocessed as various types of humor.
Tremendous article.
Chris Dierkes
October 9th, 2009 at 10:29 am
seconded.
I blame Bil Gates, Steve Jobs, those punks at Twitter, that weasel who stole Facebook from his college buddies and the Google monolith. And The Onion. And Al Gore. And Chris Matthews. And Sean Hannity. And Keith Olbermann. And Rush Limbaugh. And Ariana Huffington.
It is what it is, an immature Empire on steroids – in premature decline.
It is my fervent wish that someone could invent an airborne agent for distributing shame and deploy it in Brad Woodenhouse’s office. The RNC offices and the offices of every pundit or politcal host.
Maybe if we triggered it everyday their might be some small improvement.
“the Nobel committee’s silly, indefensible decision”
It may be silly, but the decision is hardly indefensible. If you wanted to form a committee and issue a LOG Peace Prize to whoever you wanted, even someone I deemed unworthy, I might scratch my head and I might laugh and I might disagree with your reasoning, but I’d certainly defend your right to do that.
Freddie
October 10th, 2009 at 6:06 am
Fair point Herb!
Ordinary gentlemen don’t wear hats like the one shown atop this blog. Also, the deadline for nominations to the Nobel committee was February 1st of this year. The award has nothing to do with Obama’s presidency – it is obviously a nod to a renewed emphasis on diplomacy. And no, whether the support is there or not, you have to pull out in a responsible manner. Cleaning up after hawks is messy work that always creates a catch 22 political situation for the follower.