Take the 2-minute tour ×  According to the man page for pbpaste,
-Prefer {txt | rtf | ps}           tells pbpaste what type of
data to look for  in  the  pasteboard           first.   As
stated above, pbpaste normally looks first for plain
text data; however,  by  specifying  -Prefer  ps  you  can  tell
pbpaste to look first for Encapsulated PostScript.  If you spec-
ify -Prefer rtf, pbpaste looks first for Rich Text  format.   In
any  case,  pbpaste looks for the other formats if the preferred
one is not found.  The txt option replaces the deprecated  ascii
option,  which continues to function as before.  Both indicate a
preference for plain text.  However (in my experience with 10.6
Snow Leopard at least), pbpaste -Prefer rtf never, ever gives up
the RTF data even when it exists on the pasteboard. Is there any
other simple way to get the RTF text of whatever’s ready to be
pasted?  I tried AppleScript, but osascript -e 'the clipboard a