“The Norwegian Nobel Committee and the Norwegian Nobel Institute receive a number of requests for comments regarding the permanence of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s status. The facts are clear and well established. Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others. The decision is final and stands for all time,” said the Nobel Committee in a statement on Friday, which also linked to an undated page of their bylaws governing the accolades.
“According to the Statutes of the Nobel Foundation, § 10, ‘No appeals may be made against the decision of a prize-awarding body with regard to the award of a prize.’ None of the prize awarding committees in Stockholm and Oslo has ever considered to revoke a prize once awarded. As a matter of principle, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will not comment upon what the Peace Prize Laureates may say and do after they have been awarded the prize. The Committee’s mandate is restricted to evaluate the work and efforts of the nominated candidates up to the moment it is decided who shall be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for a given year. A Nobel Prize can neither be revoked, shared, nor transferred to others. Once the announcement has been made, the decision stands for all time.”
“This does not prevent the Committee from following the future endeavours of laureates closely, even though it expresses neither its concerns nor its acclamation,” said that specific stipulation.
Well they said it right from the get-go that they’re addressing numerous media inquiries about the, uh, revocability or portability of the prizes and since there’s no mystery why there would be such questions the usual sarcastic feigned naivety can be skipped here. That being said it’s worth raising whether Team Nobel did this entirely of their own volition or if they were asked to do it by a certain someone in order to give that certain someone cover to maintain a shred of her dignity when she’s publicly cowed into handing the physical medal over to the Orange Loser to gain his support.
And if that’s the difference between getting US backing to eventually lead Venezuela and sitting on the sidelines while Nicolas Maduro’s minions remain in power then what the hell, why shouldn’t Maria Corina Machado just give the fat fucking baby the stupid medal and just be done with it?
It won’t make him the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate any more than paying freaking $77,000 for this ring makes whichever dickhead who buys it one of the 2010 Green Bay Packers. This listing – on insufferable Pawn Stars asshole Rick Harrison‘s website – specifies “This is a player issued ring.”
Which, aside from whichever poor schmuck former third string offensive lineman got like $9,000 tops for it from Harrison, contrasts it with the “2001 New England Patriots Super Bowl Ring” for $32,000 and requires you to read the description to get why it’s a bargain relative to the Packers ring despite their equally weighted toplines: It’s a “salesman sample of Robert Kraft’s 2001 New England Patriots Super Bowl ring. This ring was made on the same machine and dies as the original and is indistinguishable from Kraft’s aside from the presence of [cubic zirconia] in lieu of diamonds.”
Good God Rick Harrison’s such a fucking weasel. If everything else about him was the same but his last name was “Horowitz” another Jew would have murdered him for embodying stereot- ANYWAY in fact it’s hilarious there’s any pricing difference at all between the Packers player ring and the ones that are specified as being for team staff, like the $55,000 1993 Dallas Cowboys one that’s authentic but says “STAFF” in a spot that is virtually impossible to see if someone’s actually wearing it.
Freaking $22,000 delta between being on and off the field for the winning organization.
The rings have value in that they’re made of diamonds (or “indistinguishable” cubic zirconia) and precious metals but any asshole can be stupid enough to walk into a pawn shop they saw on shitty reality TV and get absolutely schlonged by that bald fuck with his honest, hard-working merchant affect by overpaying for a token of someone else’s achievement. And while that rant about stupid Pawn Stars and Super Bowl rings may seem like an off-topic swerve from Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize it really isn’t. In fact this is the perfect allegory, just with the respective power imbalances not as clear cut as they seem. Unless the Packers ring was sold to Harrison by a friend of Aaron Rodgers who won it in a bet over whether ivermectin could cure a torn achilles, it would appear likely that another member of the 2010s squad down on their luck – or more tragically his widow – offloaded it to the miserable shitbag out of pure desperation when they could’ve gotten a better deal elsewhere.
Yeah, Machado’s in a bad spot too, but is she really? It’s not like the Dalai Lama or Narges Mohammadi or any of the other laureates have been hard up enough to have to hock it at Harrison’s or some other jackal’s shop so there’s no real price point for the medal itself as a collectible.
But even if there was, so what? The dumb mark who thinks he’s the apex hustler holds the keys for another three years. Hand him the medal, let him think he’s the Nobel laureate, get a replica made (or don’t, who cares), and get the real prize of the Venezuelan presidency.
Rick Harrison sure as shit wouldn’t pay her anywhere near that price for an authentic Nobel.