The Nobel Peace Prize was announced this morning, and will be split between an international panel and everybody's favorite PowerPoint presenter:
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.
There's long been a tradition of inviting American Nobel laureates to the White House for a dinner honoring their achievement. What are the odds that that gets cancelled this year?
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Apparently George Bush has been on the phone to the Burmese leadership to get some tips on how to handle this.
The White House spokesperson will deny that it ever happened.
For some reason, I can't imagine Bush and Gore sitting down to have dinner together.
Congratulations to Gore and the IPCC.
On the amusing question of the traditional honorary dinner at the White House, I'd be surprised if it didn't happen. My previous guess is the Bush II goon squad will try to spin ("frame"?) the award, and possibly ignore the committee's stated reasons for the award, but will acknowledge (however reluctantly and disingenuously) that the award happened, that Gore (at least) is a USAian, and that there is such a tradition.
An amusing side-issue, in terms of the honorary dinner, is Gore is, I think, so far the only named(?) USAian to win a Prize this year? That means diddly-squat, but I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of other winners to honour results in the goon squad swamping/surrounding Gore with other guests, most of whom are either known for other issues or are even AGW denialists?
The way of think of Bush II's reaction, I continue to suspect, is spin, spin, spin; toothiness or framing; turn attention away from at least the reasons for the undenialable award... Petty measures like not congratulations Gore, or not having the traditional dinner, are (it seems to me) more likely to draw attention to Bush II's denialism, destructive actions and inactions, et al.
blf: You're operating under the mistaken impression that Bush gives a fuck what other people think.
To be fair to the Bush people (insert Mencken quote about morals and honor), they wouldn't be the first to mess about with the honorary dinner for PR reasons. In 1997, the Peace prize went to an anti-landmine activist who made it clear that she would make a scene at the White House over the US failure to sign the landmine treaty. There wasn't a dinner for the laureates that year, but Clinton invited the other winners to the White House individually for other events over the next several months.
So, um, "Clinton did it first!"
Did he do it for Carter?