What is the world coming to? I mean, I can deal with the idea that the Academy Awards, the Grammys, or even Cannes Film Festival juries base the selection process on sympathies and politics, but it’s totally different thing—grossly offensive, if you ask me—to realize that if you are a politician with a big name they also give you a Nobel Peace Prize:. Just for helping granny cross the street, or for winking at Junior who’s sitting with his family at the table next to yours at McDonald’s. And I am sure I’m stepping on some toes but I don’t think that Barack Obama has done anything to really deserve an award of that caliber. Yes I know, who said you need to do anything to deserve it? But that only goes to show, once again, how messed up this world is and how much politics affect things more and more every day.

Even Henry Kissinger got a Nobel Peace Prize—yes, you heard that right—and Yasser Arafat, as far-fetched as it may sound. But, on the other hand, people like Mahatma Gandhi and Vaclav Havel were left out of the jackpot for no convincing reason. And the latter two were the real thing; they didn’t just play the part. They weren’t just two guys pretending to be nice or, even phonier, a savior. They really walked the line, in Johnny Cash’s sense of the phrase.

I don’t know, but I just can’t buy the story of the politician with a messianic calling to save the world. Actually, American Presidents who play “good cop” always arise more suspicions in my already apprehensive and conjecturing heart.

Bill Clinton is a good example of the typical politician with the nice guy façade, since he has always tried to present himself to people as just the middle-class regular-Joe. He plays saxophone, hangs around with the boys, and cheats on his wife at the work place. How much more common can you get? But behind that front, there has always been a huge apparatus of deception and sneaky tricky-dickiness; ask Rwanda genocide victims of 1994 if you don’t believe me. Oh, and he also hangs around with the father of you-know-who, and I’m sure is not too hard for you to guess who I am talking about.

And we have another Nobel Peace Prize laureate in the person of Al Gore: the man with the master plan. They say that Albert Einstein was smart; well his legacy would look goofier than Goofy if you compare it to Al Gore’s, because this guy really came up with the perfect scheme to conquer the hearts and wallets of the millions of believers that bought into the global warming chimera. His “An Inconvenient Truth” documentary—followed by the book with the same title—has made him richer and richer as days go by, and even earned him the title of the Eco-Messiah, while more evidence disproving Mr. Gore’s “stance” keeps coming to the surface.

I am not saying that those are the only examples—or the worse ones, for that matter—of the bad judgment behind the Nobel Peace Prize selection process; I’m just choosing to mention the ones that have happened in my time. And I didn’t imply that all the selections have been faulty ones, either, since we have some fortunate instances of Nobel Peace Prize winners in Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa, among a few others.

As a conclusion for this note, I would like to say that is not a politically-biased point that I’m trying to get across, since I consider myself a free-thinker (in the real sense). And I don’t hate any of the men I’ve mentioned, and much less for political reasons. I am just questioning the integrity of some institutions—in this case Nobel Prize committee—and the judgment they use to select awardees. One thing I can say, though, as Mexican author Jose González-González put it: “The better I get to know politicians, the more appreciation I have for my dog.”

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