City man: I merit Nobel, not Donald
A MANHATTAN man, outraged over the Nobel Peace Prize buzz surrounding President Trump, says the commander-in-chief should get in line.
Stanley Tannen (photo), 86, whose foundation promotes peace through literary readings, has been nominated for the prize twice, and has letters from former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush endorsing his work.
His group, the Toward International Peace through the Arts Project, or TIPA, is in its fifth decade, and Tanner shows no signs of slowing down.
“This is a New Yorker who really should win,” Tannen, a Democrat, said of himself Thursday from his Hell’s Kitchen apartment.
“Not Stanley Tannen for Stanley Tannen, but for what the project’s doing. It’s very easy to seem vain and matter-of-fact, but I’m living on Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps because all this time I’ve been working for a nonprofit organization. I used my own money and I was able to raise whatever money I could.”
Tannen’s organization teams top actors with classic literature readings at venues throughout the city. Since 1984, artists such as Jeremy Irons, Martin Sheen, Whoopi Goldberg and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman have read everything from William Faulkner to Anton Chekhov.
In a plot twist, Trump was nominated Tuesday by 18 congressional Republicans who said the President “has worked tirelessly to apply maximum pressure on North Korea to end its illicit weapons programs and bring peace to the region.”
“The sanctions decimated the North Korean economy and have been largely credited for bringing North Korea to the negotiating table,” the GOPers said.
For Tannen, just the idea of Trump and Nobel Peace Prize uttered in the same sentence is something out of a bad Russian novel.
“I’m an optimistic person,” Tannen said. “I believe that when Mr. Trump goes back to his gold palace in Trump Tower, he’ll be back there, but the presidency and the future of America will be in the hands of the people who will continue to bring us forward.”