Anyone who can fall off a bar stool knows that George Strait is THE MAN in country music this year. Fourteen out of 10 regulars at the Dew Drop Inn can name greatest Strait hits like my favorite, "Oceanfront Property in Arizona."
But ask the same crowd to name this year's winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics, and you will get a last-call, closing-time stare. Outside of a few suits who work on Wall Street, named Merrill Lynch and Dow Jones, nobody cares that Robert Merton and Myron Scholes invented a new way to value stock options.
Ordinary folks who think "stock option" means a pickup without a stereo could not care less. And they are right. A news story about the prize-winning breakthrough admitted: "Nevertheless, even this method of investment is a risk and results can be either extremely lucrative or disastrous."
That also describes my own Nobel Prize-winning method of choosing investments by sneezing on the stock pages.
In other words, once again the Nobel winners are losers - as useless in real life as high school calculus.
Dario Fo, an anti-American, church-hating Italian playwright who has been described as a less polite Lenny Bruce, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Fo what?
Asked to name the winner of the coveted Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, most Americans would guess, "Princess Diana" - not Jody Williams, the anti-landmine crusader Princess Di supported. Who cares? Outlaw landmines, and only outlaws will have landmines.
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry went to scientists who discovered molecules that create adenosine triphosphate, or ATP - which everyone knows is a tennis tournament in Cincinnati! Go figure.
The Nobel winners must have been picked by the intellectualoids at the National Embarrassment for the Arts, who give our tax money to "artists" who skinny dip in chocolate sauce or fill bottles with "samples" no doctor would send to the lab.
If the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences were run by the Grand Ole Opry House, the selection of individuals who have "conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" might make actual sense. Such as:
- The Nobel Prize for Medicine goes to the great humanitarian who discovered that drinking wine prevents heart attacks. Two miles of jogging, or two goblets of jug wine? No brainer. (And next year, let's double the prize for anyone who discovers that double-cheese Whoppers prevent cancer.)
- The Chemistry Prize goes to the magician at the White House who makes incriminating tapes and files vanish, then reappear when the coast is clear.
- The Physics Prize winner is a single word that has repealed nearly every law of physics since Sir Fig Newton: Velcro. It's the greatest invention since duct tape, which aircraft mechanics call "100-mile-an-hour tape" because . . . well, if you plan to fly anywhere again, you don't want to know.
- Economics Prize: The Bengals, for turning an O-fer-ever losing record into a $400 million taxpayer-financed stadium.
- The Peace Prize: A long overdue award to Ronald Reagan, who ignored chicken-little critics and drag-raced the Soviet Union for pink slips in the arms race - and blew their doors off.
- Literature: The best piece of writing in 1997 is an Oct. 10 column in The Wall Street Journal by contributing editor and novelist Mark Helprin.
"Impeach" says what everyone else lacks the conscience and courage to say:
"Here we stand in the clearing of the most difficult century of human history, wanting our deserved rest, and standing with us may be the most corrupt, fraudulent and dishonest president we ever have known." That's just the beginning.
After compiling a short list of Bill Clinton's tawdry scandals, Mr. Helprin writes, "The consequences of letting it all pass would expand through generations to come . . . If it is left to stand it will shift power insufferably toward a class of manipulators and cheats. We have moved in that direction before, but have always pulled back. Now we are in danger of not pulling back."
His answer: Senate impeachment trial. "The task is to address the question of President William Jefferson Clinton's fitness for office in light of the many crimes, petty and otherwise, that surround, imbue and color his tenure."
Knock me off a bar stool, that's 100-proof stuff. Radical. Inspiring. It reads like American patriot Thomas Paine - who probably would have lost the 1776 Nobel Prize to the inventor of powdered wigs and scientists who discovered the "snuff" molecule.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
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