Harold Pinter's Incredible Nobel Speech

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press

Thursday December 08, 2005 04:13

by eeekkkk

This was incredible riveting tv and seemed like a drama. A sick old man in a wheelchair allowed some space to state eloquently and angrily the unvarnished truth of our age. I saw it on E4 and it reminded me forcefully of the fact that nowadays you never hear anyone allowed to lay out a coherent analysis of anything important on tv. TV is toxic but this wasnt. He lifted his fist and shook it at the camera in this excerpt. In other parts of the speech his distaste and hatred for blair seemed to channel all the distaste and hate for him that festers outside the bounds of polite TV in the UK.

Excerpt:

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man’s man.
‘God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden’s God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam’s God was bad, except he didn’t have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don’t chop people’s heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don’t you forget it.’

Video is here: Watch it if you have the opportunity as text does not do it justice
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html

Full Text of Speech at Link below

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Comments (3 of 3)

ALL-CAPITALS

by your name or pseudonym - qua-ngo

Fri May 15, 2015 21:11

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/aug/03/comment...shing

bit of clarification there from pinter on his milosevic stance.

Double Standards

by Omarska

Thu Dec 08, 2005 20:25

This would'nt be the same Harold Pinter who is a member of the 'Free Slobodan Milosevic Campaign'? His excellent critique of Bush would be far more credible if he was'nt a supporter of the author of Europe's worst genocide since world war two. Either you are against mass murder, dictatorship and occupation regardless whether its perpetrators are Bush, Blair, Sharon and their allies or by so-called enemies of the west such as Putin, Mugabe or Slobo or your words are meaningless.

blinding. olé Mr Pinter.

by iosaf

Thu Dec 08, 2005 11:13

when I get my Nobel I'll be hard put to beat that. But Pinter might not have been the best so far. The Nobel for literature has seen a few "statements" made in the past.
W.B. Yeats only gave a one sentance reply to the official notification - "How much is it worth?" & Samuel Beckett noting that he had to share the prize with Borges is rumoured in Parisien literarary circles to have quipped "I know how much its worth, I'm not going" which to this day explains his absence at the award speech.

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Harold Pinter's Incredible Nobel Speech

Comments (3 of 3)