Well, one thing you can be sure of is that I am in good company. It looks like I’m not the only one who got hosed by the Nobel Committee.
It seems the president of the U.S. of A. was also passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize, even though he said he had stopped eight wars. (It might have been nine, but as of this writing, Minnesota has not surrendered.)
The Nobel Committee awarded the 2025 Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who then passed it on to Donald Trump. I was hoping the guy in Hungary with the unpronounceable name who got my much-deserved Nobel Prize for Literature would take the hint and give me his, but so far at least, that hasn’t happened.
I guess when you are “Leader of the Free World,” you can expect this kind of thing. Not me. I will just have to settle for continuing to be a modest, yet much-beloved columnist who bears a striking resemblance to a young Brad Pitt. Life can be unfair.
The Nobel Committee said Machado could give the medal to Clarabell the Clown for all they cared.
She was and always would be listed as having won the 2025 Peace Prize, never Trump.
I don’t think that sat well with the president.
He had already told the Nobel Committee he deserved the Peace Prize. He should have talked to me first. That is not the way to get it. That will sull up folks real quick. In my corporate life, if someone told you they were going to be president of the company one day, the rest of us who knew we wouldn’t be, would make sure he wouldn’t be either.
I have a feeling the Nobel committee felt the same way.
In fairness to His Eminence, Barack Obama got his Nobel after having been in office for less than eight months, and for no good reason. He certainly hadn’t single-handedly stopped eight wars. He hadn’t even found the White House dining room. The Nobel Committee said he made “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
Oh, please. He should have been embarrassed and told them to give it to somebody more worthy — like Clarabell the Clown.
In what I would deem a rather unpeaceful gesture, Trump ripped into Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere because his country “decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight wars, PLUS.” (The “PLUS” is a development I wasn’t aware of. Maybe Minnesota did surrender.)
In his reply to Trump, Stoere explained that an independent committee, not the Norwegian government, awards the prize. Meaning don’t blame him anymore than he would blame the United States for not giving Norway’s Kristofer Hivju an Academy Award for his role as Connor Rhodes in “The Fate of the Furious,” not to mention a groundbreaking, Emmy-worthy performance as Tormund Giantsbane in “Game of Thrones.”
In the same message to the Norwegian prime minister, Trump insisted the U.S. needed “Complete and total control of Greenland.” I’m not sure what Herr Stoere’s response was, but I expect it was “Go for it, kompis; that’s Denmark’s problem, not mine. Just keep your henders off Austvågøya, Vestvågøya, Moskenesøya, and our other 238,997 islands.”
I’m not sure what good it did to threaten Norway over Greenland, which is an autonomous Danish territory. Why not threaten Iceland or Sweden or — say — even Denmark?
Admittedly, I am not in the loop on this, but maybe we could work out a swap.
Give us Greenland, and we’ll give you Vermont — but you’ll have to take Bernie Sanders, too.
On second thought, that could be a deal breaker.
I will leave the heavy lifting to Mr. Trump on this one. As for me, maybe I need to threaten the guy in Hungary with the unpronounceable name who got my much-deserved Nobel Prize for Literature. Either I get what is rightfully mine, or I will give it to Clarabell the Clown.
It’s all just a circus, anyway.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@dickyarbrough.com or at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.