h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, I'd say a medal given for something one has actually done would be a real medal, even if one disapproved of the action, and possibly the medal, or the group giving the medal out.

Giving a 'glorious leader' a medal for, say, winning a battle he had nothing to do with would classify in my mind, anyway, as sort of a bogus honour.

I suspect Goering had a lot of medals for General Wonderfulness, largely because he needed to decorate the uniform (which he designed himself), and he had quite a lot of space to fill.

If there are bogus honors, they should go to fake news agencies.

Medals are often earned and treasured by combatants, but the whole notion of honouring citizens is a bit dodgy. I am very proud that my country has no honours list, but our government does ask the universities to give out honorary degrees which muddies things a bit.

That is a very good thought, and I see what you mean.

Yesterday, I found out that Australia has designated a number of people 'national treasures' by popular vote.

On the one hand, that means they recognised Thomas Keneally, who is a treasure of an author and good for Australia.

On the other hand, they later had to drop some politician or other from the list because of a scandal.

My country has the Congressional Medal of Honor. What we don't have is Life Peers, which is just as well. I don't relish the thought of some corrupt administration giving such honors to the Kardashians . I wouldn't mind seeing Meryl Streep or Stephen Sondheim being honored in some way, but they already have plenty of other honors, and people already know what treasures they are./

We have no lack for "honors" in the US. There's this huge list of civilian honors and awards from the government: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awards_and_decorations_of_the_United_States_government

There's the Kennedy Honors, and the Mark Twain Award.
And then there's the various insipid award shows; Oscars, Emmy's, Grammy's, Golden Globes, MTV Awards, People's Choice, BET, ACE, ACMs, AVNs, BMIs, CLEO, Independent Spirit Awards, Peabody, Tony, &c.


And yes, we give awards for best award shows.

I was only thinking about government awards.

I started with those and proceeded on in loosely descending order of hierarchy.





The AVN awards are listed far above their merit.

I bet they're not handing out any Year 2000 conversion awards nowadays.