The value of a Nobel nomination

Oh, good. Someone (Jill Stewart) wrote an intelligent article about one of my pet peeves (op-ed, San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 23, 2005). I am so tired of people getting attention for being nominated for a Nobel (or a Pulitzer). Excuse me, but the way things are set up, just about anybody can get nominated. Anybody. Honest. For anything. Or for nothing at all.

In the newsroom where I used to work, we joked about nominating friends, each other, enemies and, ahem, the lions in the Portland zoo for Pulitzers. I never went beyond the joshing stage, but I'm pretty sure some of my less constrained colleagues followed through.

Nominations are, sometimes, a joke. Sometimes they are a campaign by a truly slimy person out for a bit of fame and fortune by hook or by crook. Sometimes they represent honest but perhaps wildly misplaced optimism. Nominations are as close to wide open as things get. It's during the selection process for finalists and the actual selection of winners where things are supposed to get serious. (Whether they are or not is another story.) But I'm fairly sure that anybody with half a devious brain (or friends possessed of certain brands of humor, for that matter) can get nominated.

My rule of thumb is that anybody who makes a big deal about having been nominated for either a Nobel or Pulitzer is to be treated as a flake unless there is just an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary.

Having a bit of fun with it is one thing. Trying to trade on it is quite another, in my book.

And, no, in case you were wondering, off the top of my head I can't think of anybody who didn't continue to strike me as a flake once I found out they were trying to impress people with their Nobel nomination. So far, in my experience, it seems to go hat in hand with other questionable behavior.

hat tip: Patterico's Pontifications.