This past week, Abel Tesfaye lost his shit for not being given any Grammy nominations for his fourth (and probably second best) album. I want to like The Weeknd. I understand he’s a nice guy behind the brutal, drug using and self-abusing persona. He’s a very confident performer and songwriter. His albums have a big budget production that sounds fresh, not generic. But last week’s news reminded me that awards generally suck. And perhaps no awards suck more than the Nobel prizes.
While I respect a miniscule number of lauderates over its 120 years, I cannot ignore the overall failure of the Nobel prizes and most awards in general. We know the Nobel Peace Prize is laughable. And the Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences is not really a Nobel Prize.
The last few years have given us further proof that the Nobel prizes are bullshit. The Peter Hanke saga has been dirty, even by the Nobel Foundation’s low standards.
https://theintercept.com/2019/11/14/peter-handke-nobel-prize-bosnian-genocide-conspiracy/
I don't know about you, but I have zero respect for all prizes and awards. Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. Henry Kissinger!! Bob Dylan won the Nobel for literature. Every year the Academy awards are given to people who are nominated because the producers and the money men see that bloated and grotesquely un-entertaining show as great publicity for their crappy products. So I just ignore those with the temerity to tell us who are the best at anything.