A very sad world we live in when it takes a minority of living Nobel Peace Laureates to point out that:
WAR ISN’T ENTERTAINMENT–
AND SHOULDN’T BE TREATED LIKE IT IS
How could tens of millions of Americans have sat through all the adverts during the Olympics for NBC’s new “reality” show “Stars Earn Stripes” and not been repulsed? The concept alone without video imagery was repulsive.
The letter from these nine extraordinary people brought tears to my eyes and abstracting from it risks lessening the felt experience of reading it in full. However, this point cannot be made often enough:
Trying to somehow sanitize war by likening it to an athletic competition further calls into question the morality and ethics of linking the military anywhere with the entertainment industry in barely veiled efforts to make war and its multitudinous costs more palatable to the public.
Those worthy of being Peace Prize Laureates:
Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize, 1997
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize, 1984
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize, 1977
Dr. Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize, 2003
President José Ramos-Horta, Nobel Peace Prize, 1996
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Prize, 1980
President Oscar Arias Sanchez, Nobel Peace Prize, 1987
Rigoberta Menchú Tum, 1992
Betty Williams, Nobel Peace Prize, 1977
Notice all the living Peace Laureates missing? Not that a few haven’t been more about war than peace.