Tookie’s Nomination Takes the Prize

Much of our lives, we get encouragement to set our sights high. “Reach for the stars.” “Think big.” “You can do anything you put your mind to.” “Go for it!”

Maybe you don’t buy it.

Maybe you believe that no matter what you do or how hard you try, you’ll never make history, never amount to anything too grand, never attain true immortality.

But maybe you should think again.

Because face it, if Stanley “Tookie” Williams can be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, then there’s hope for all of us.

Tookie’s sitting up there in San Quentin Prison, where he’s spent 19 years since killing a man at a convenience store and slaughtering a family that ran a motel.

You don’t find a whole lot of Peace Prize contenders in San Quentin. In fact, if they ever give out prizes for disturbing the peace, guys like Tookie Williams would find themselves among the heavy favorites, year after year.

But now that Tookie’s been officially nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, it just goes to show you that if a guy can go 20 or more years without murdering anybody, good things can happen.

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I am not sure exactly what Tookie Williams would do with a Nobel Prize on his cellblock, except try to trade it for cigarettes.

But jealousy is clearly an issue here, since Tookie now has his eyes on the prize and I never will.

For all my years writing, I have never dared to dream even of winning a Pulitzer Prize, since my awards up to this point have pretty much been topped off by a 1983 Associated Press Best Story Under 1,000 Words honorable mention.

I am rethinking my goals, however, thanks to Tookie, who writes children’s books in prison, where fortunately he’s being kept a safe distance from children.

No longer will I set my sights so low as a mere Pulitzer. From now on, it’s Nobel or nothing for me. See you in Sweden, baby.

All I need is a sponsor. Tookie Williams has one in Mario Fehr, a member of Switzerland’s Parliament, who says he nominated Tookie because he wants to demonstrate that “a person in the abyss of a wretched prison cell can be responsible.”

Tookie’s responsible, all right. Responsible for co-founding the Crips street gang. Responsible for killing at least four people, including a man, woman and their daughter with a shotgun.

This was his own original spin on the life of Alfred B. Nobel himself, inventor of dynamite. Al and Tookie both were experts at blowing things up.

Each of the Nobel Prizes handed out in 2000 had a cash value of $900,000 or more. Presumably, the warden at San Quentin would hang onto this, along with Tookie’s other valuables.

I did a little checking to see what kind of company Tookie would be keeping, in case he wins. You know, for when he joins up with the Nobel peace gang.

Jean-Henri Dunant (1828-1910) won the first Nobel Peace Prize, for creating an organization to aid wounded soldiers, for inspiring the Geneva Convention and for forming the International Red Cross. As far as I know, he didn’t rob any Swiss convenience stores.

Later winners included Baroness Bertha Felice Sophie von Suttner (1843-1914), an Austrian writer, and Paul-Henri-Benjamin Balluet d’Estournelles de Constant de Rebecque (1852-1924), a French politician. Each lived a long and productive life, helping mankind while signing extremely long autographs.

It’s an impressive list: Teddy Roosevelt, Albert Schweitzer, Henry Kissinger, Lech Walesa, Mother Teresa, Tookie Williams . . .

Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Tookie’s not even in yet. They might even hold it against him that he’s done 92 months in solitary confinement at San Quentin for striking inmates and for threatening members of the staff.

Hey, a guy’s got to do something to kill time in the abyss of a wretched cell, when he’s not writing children’s books.

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My own category will be literature, not peace, so it’s not as if Tookie and I are rivals.

Just like him, I would be running with a fast crowd: Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, Eugene O’Neill, Saul Bellow, Gabriel Garcia Marquez . . .

But I’m gonna go for it.

Unless to my amazement a Nobel Peace Prize actually does go to a convicted mass murderer, in which case I’ll have to do what Boris Pasternak did in 1958, what Jean-Paul Sartre did in 1964 and what Le Duc Tho did in 1973.

I’ll have to decline.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to: Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com