Peace In Our Time

Excitement continues to build for tomorrow's announcement of the recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Fresh off his Oscar, and soon to receive an Emmy, Al Gore is rumored to be a front runner for this award as well. Then all he'll need is the Tony to achieve his dream of becoming the Rita Moreno of his generation. (Suggestions for the Broadway treatment of his masterpiece: The Inconvenient Truth of Being Earnest. Or, The Music Man.)

It is difficult to properly handicap Gore's chances of winning since, by Nobel Committee rules, the nominations are kept under strict secrecy for half a century:

The statutes of the Nobel Foundation restrict disclosure of information about the nominations, whether publicly or privately, for 50 years. The restriction concerns the nominees and nominators, as well as investigations and opinions related to the award of a prize.

No reasons are given for this Nixonian level of paranoid control. I suspect it has something to do with never having to say you're sorry for granting a "peace" award to the likes of Yasser Arafat (1994) instead of some poor less prominent nominee slaving away to feed the hungry or cure the sick, or just not facilitating suicide bombing of innocent women and children.

However, I must salute the Nobel Foundation for their fresh air and sunshine approach once the five decade interim has passed. Right here, a complete database of all nominees and their nominators, updated to the minute, circa 1955. (Come to think of it, they're still two years behind. What are they trying to hide about their actions in 1956!?)

It is interesting to plug in some names from the pre-War era to see who the august Nobel Committee was considering in the past. For example, you may have heard of this Peaceful gent, Hitler.

According to some reports, that nomination in 1939 was actually a protest against a flood of nominations submitted for appeaser extraordinaire, Neville Chamberlain.

However, I see Hitler's ideological paisano Mussolini was also nominated, back in 1935, well before the world new him as the junior partner in Euro Fascists Inc. And nominated by no less an authority than the "Professors at the Faculty of Law at Giessen University". I image in GU's alumni fundraising newsletter, sometime around 1945, there was an article entitled something like "File that one under whoops!"

Alas, we won't know the full extent of the whoops factor for this year's vote until around 2057. But we do know Al Gore is there as a nominee.

If the Nobel Foundation won't tell us who the other contenders are, we'll turn to the second most prestigious judging authority of peace prize legitimacy, Irish book maker PaddyPower.com.

Interestingly, they see Gore as only the third most likely winner (at 9-2 odds). Perhaps he's splitting the global warming hysteria vote with the person trailing him, climate change activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier. No she doesn't have an Oscar, Emmy, or Tony for her efforts. But she does have it all over Gore in the diversity star power department, being female, Inuit, anti-American, and suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (I'm assuming that last one). I fear her presence may sink the both of them.

Who then would dare take this award away from our champion Al and his planet saving crusade? According to Paddy Power, shortest odds are on some conniving little snip named Irena Sendler (at 10-3).

OK, she did rescue 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis' clutches back in 1942. But come on Irena, what have you done for Peace lately? I doubt she's even purchased one-one hundredth the carbon offsets Al Gore has. And if Gore wins, no doubt he'll be happy to purchase even more to balance off the estimated 1.2 tons of carbon his round trip flight to Sweden to pick up the award will produce. Can you say the same, Ms. Sendler?

We'll find out tomorrow who the deserving Peace laureates REALLY are. Stand by, announcement at 4 AM Central Standard Time.