Harold Pinter's Incredible Nobel Speech

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press Thursday December 08, 2005 04:13 by eeekkkk

This was incredible riveting tv and seemed like a drama. A sick old man in a wheelchair allowed some space to state eloquently and angrily the unvarnished truth of our age. I saw it on E4 and it reminded me forcefully of the fact that nowadays you never hear anyone allowed to lay out a coherent analysis of anything important on tv. TV is toxic but this wasnt. He lifted his fist and shook it at the camera in this excerpt. In other parts of the speech his distaste and hatred for blair seemed to channel all the distaste and hate for him that festers outside the bounds of polite TV in the UK.

Excerpt:

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man’s man.
‘God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden’s God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam’s God was bad, except he didn’t have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don’t chop people’s heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don’t you forget it.’

Video is here: Watch it if you have the opportunity as text does not do it justice
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture.html

Full Text of Speech at Link below