Another Cuckoo in the Nest

Nobel Prize Medal

When I reacted to the ludicrous news that Al Gore had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I made the mistake on commenting somewhat favourably on the Literature Prize award to Doris Lessing.

I admitted that I knew nothing about her, but from the Radio 4 precis she seemed not to quite fit the bill of the typical leftism victim who normally come out on top in such awards and she made a point a eschewing the various politically correct labels that some tried to attach to her. Perhaps I was also just enjoyed her reaction at hearing about her award as she got out of a cab, taking the whole thing very much in her stride.

Of course, I should have known better. The Nobel Prize Committees are, I am sure, very professional, and such a lapse could never have been tolerated.

The International Herald Tribune reports:

MADRID: The recipient of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, Doris Lessing, said in an interview published over the weekend that the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States were not "that terrible" when compared with attacks by the Irish Republican Army in Britain.

"September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible," Lessing told the Spanish newspaper El País.

"Some Americans will think I'm crazy," she said in the interview published Sunday. "Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think. They're a very naïve people, or they pretend to be."

...

Lessing added: "As for Bush, he's a world calamity. Everyone is tired of this man. Either he is stupid or he is very clever, although you have to remember he is a member of a social class which has profited from wars."

Source: International Herald Tribune

OK, she did go on to have a pop at the Iranians too, but overall it was just pretty standard anti-American, anti-Bush bile.

To consider a whole nation "naïve" simply because they find a single incident in which just under 3,000 people perished as bad as 3,700 dying over a 30 year period in Ulster's sectarian strife, sounds like a case of trying to find a justification for an extant prejudice.

As for the Bush diatribe, frankly it's just boring. Blah blah "stupid", blah blah "evil", blah blah "class". To be honest, I'll be glad to see the back of Bush myself, but when I look at him I don't just don't see the creature that the left are so desperate to see.

Perhaps he isn't the sharpest intellect ever to grace the White House, but he is clearly far from the moron that the true idiots wish to believe he is on the basis of occasionally poor public presentation. When I look at him I see a man of simple faith and of convictions that may be not that politically correct but are clearly heartfelt; I'm also never convinced I'm seeing someone who is doing a job that at heart they really want to do, more someone following an unavoidable destiny of going into the family business.

Most of the same crap was thrown at Regan through much of his presidency, but he had the charisma that ensured it never really held water. Sadly the left's simplistic tarring and feathering of Bush will probably stick.

It looks as though whatever may lie within Lessing's worthy tomes, I wouldn't expect much in the way of insight, more likely an artistic dressing up of threadbare themes, if her views on current affairs are anything to go by.