Not much peaceful about Nobel Peace Prize

Well, one thing you can say for sure, I am in good company. It looks like I’m not the only one that 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 Nobelians gave the 2025 Peace Prize to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who turned around and gave it to Donald Trump. I was hoping the guy in Hungary with the unpronounceable name who got my much-deserved Nobel Prize for Literature would get the hint and give me his, but that hasn’t happened. I guess when you are Leader of the Free World, you can expect this kind of thing. Not me. I guess 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 it to Clarabell the Clown for all they cared. She was and always would be listed as having won the Peace Prize, not 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 the feeling the committee felt the same way.

In fairness to His Eminence, Barack Obama got the thing after having been in office less than eight months and for no good reason. He hadn’t stopped eight wars. He hadn’t even found the White House dining room. The Nobel Committee said he had 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 8 Wars PLUS.” (The PLUS is a new development I wasn’t aware of. Maybe Minnesota has surrendered.)

In his reply to Trump, Stoere explained that an independent committee, not the government of Norway, 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 performance as Tormund Giantsbane in “Game of Thrones.”

In the same message to the Norwegian prime minister, Trump insisted the US 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 territory of Denmark. Why not threaten Iceland or Sweden or – say – even Denmark?

I am admittedly not in the loop on this, but maybe we could work out a swap. Give us Greenland and we will 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 a circus, anyway.

You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@dickyarbrough.com or at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.