Keller @ Large: My Nobel Prize Recommendations
BOSTON (CBS) - Congratulations to Bob Dylan for winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, I guess. He is a great songwriter, although his work reads more like poetry than literature.
And now that this precedent has been set, there's the predictable avalanche of advocacy for other accomplished songwriters, like Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Bruce Springsteen to get their turn.
That's fine with me, in part because the Nobel Prize has seemed pretty meaningless since President Obama won it in 2009 for his accomplishments in…well, actually, doing nothing, at least not at the time he won.
But if we're going to start handing out Nobels to pop culture icons, let's not stick with the usual suspects.
I see no reason why David Ortiz shouldn't get a Nobel for his literary effort to rally Bostonians with his impromptu remarks after the Marathon Bombing. He expressed our love for our city in a way that was as profound as it was blunt.
They don't do it anymore but forty years ago someone could win a Nobel posthumously. If they reinstated that rule, I would nominate Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell for the Nobel in Chemistry, based on any number of duets.
With winter coming, I suspect many New Englanders would join me in endorsing Tennessee's own Jack Daniels for the Nobel in Medicine. And for the economics prize, I can't imagine anyone more deserving that the person who invented that little tab on your coffee cup that closes to keep it warm, whoever it is.
The economy would grind to a halt if our coffee kept getting cold on us. Don't you agree?
Know what? Suddenly, the Nobel Prizes are relevant again.
If Mother Nature will give us another winter as mild as last one, I'd nominate her for all of them.
Listen to Jon's commentary: