“The Case Against Awards; Why the Wrong Person Always Wins”
(By Jonathan Chait, published 19 October 2009)

This article presents the view that awards are always given out to the wrong people. However, while some interesting examples are raised about how awards are given out to seemingly undeserving people, the writer fails to prove that awards are ALWAYS given out to the wrong people. He completely disregards any examples of people who are actually “deserving” and are “correctly awarded”, such as the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to the organization, “Doctors Without Borders” (Medecins Sans Frontieres), for their international work in treating the injured and saving lives in war-torn countries.

While Chait agrees that awards are presented to people based on a very subjective judgment (“Declaring one great work of art superior to others is like having an official ranking for best ice cream flavor”), he does not seem to realize that he himself is being very biased. His language is sometimes sarcastic to mock the prize committees for their seemingly ill-made decisions:

·    “This year, the committee decided to give it to Obama because, well, he seems like such a nice young man.” – He clearly disagrees with the prize committee’s decision and mocks them by making them seem silly with this comment.

·    “What do people expect? It’s not like they gave the award to Hitler.” – He says that as long as the prize committee does not award a murderer the peace prize, we should all just be contented with the outcome, while implying that we should lower our standards and give up hope that awards will ever be given out to “rightfully deserving” people.

Actually, in retrospect, perhaps we are all biased in some way. I agree with the writer that a lot of world-renowned prizes are rather vague in criteria, such that there is no way to decide on a clear winner from the multitude of factors that are brought into consideration. For example, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded "to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."¹ Should the prize go to a medical researcher who discovered a cure for cancer, an environmental activist who persuaded politicians to work together in cutting down their countries’ carbon dioxide emissions, or a Prime Minister of a country who managed to negotiate with others to achieve peace in their war-torn region? Who is to say which type of work is MOST beneficial to Mankind?

I do not think that there is a perfect solution to this problem. After all, everyone has differing opinions and for every award, everyone has different ideas about who is most deserving. (At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, there were people who cheered for Taylor Swift when she was announced the winner, and there were people who cheered for Beyonce as well when Kanye West praised her music videos.) Perhaps we place too much emphasis on material awards and achievements, and this is what we should be more worried about.

¹ ("The Nobel Peace Prize: From Negotiations to Human Rights". Nobelprize.org. 13 Jan 2012 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/articles/sejersted/)

Reflections

For Putin, a Peace Prize for a Decision to Go to War
(By Edward Wong, published 15 November 2011)

The prize committee members admire Putin’s heavy-handed approach in quelling the terrorist forces of Chechnya. Yet the writer puts down the prize committee in his article and mocks the Confucius Peace Prize as being an unknown and silly award that no one cares for. Perhaps he cannot accept their opinion that true peace is gained through war. The decision made by the committee to award Putin a peace prize would probably seem like a ridiculous one to him (and probably to the Westerners in general), who think the ideal peace prize-winner should be one who abhors violence and achieve unity through “nobler” means.