Tom Lehrer abandoned his piano and stifled the urge to write satirical songs in 1973 when Henry Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize. Lehrer reasonably concluded that if a man who had paved the way for Pol Pot by bombing neutral Cambodia ‘back to the Stone Age’ was to be blessed as a peacemaker, ‘political satire had become obsolete’.
(Reported by Nick Cohen in Cruel Britannia)