Instapundit links to this UPI report:
WASHINGTON, June 2 (UPI) — As the U.S. media still digests the shock and lessons of the Jayson Blair affair at The New York Times, a far older and far worse journalistic wrong may soon be posthumously righted. The Pulitzer Prize board is reviewing the award it gave to New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty more than 70 years ago for his shamefully — and knowingly — false coverage of the great Ukrainian famine.
“In response to an international campaign, the Pulitzer Prize board has begun an ‘appropriate and serious review’ of the 1932 award given to Walter Duranty of The New York Times,” Andrew Nynka reported in the May 25 edition of the New Jersey-published Ukrainian Weekly. The campaign included a powerful article in the May 7 edition of the conservative National Review magazine.
Sig Gissler, administrator for the Pulitzer Prize board, told the Ukrainian Weekly that the “confidential review by the 18-member Pulitzer Prize board is intended to seriously consider all relevant information regarding Mr. Duranty’s award,” Nynka wrote.
The utter falsehood of Duranty’s claims that there was no famine at all in the Ukraine – a whopping lie that was credulously swallowed unconditionally by the likes of George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and many others – has been documented and common knowledge for decades. But neither the Times nor the Pulitzer board ever before steeled themselves to launch such a ponderous, unprecedented – and potentially immensely embarrassing – procedure. Indeed, Gissler told The Ukrainian Weekly that there are no written procedures regarding prize revocation. There are no standards or precedents for revoking the prize.
The Ukrainian famine of 1929-33, named the “Harvest of Sorrow” by historian Robert Conquest in his classic book on the subject, was the largest single act of genocide in European history. The death toll even exceeded the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people a few years later.
One of the lesser lies now circulating about the Cold War, Communism and all that is that because it is now history, we should all forget about it.
So, in an attempt to spread interest in this important issue by trivialising it, I have a question. Walter Duranty � Jimmy Duranty. What if any is the connection between these two persons?
Jimmy Duranty was the bloke who sang that song that they used at the end of Sleepless in Seattle, right? And in one of my all time favourite movies ever, What’s Up, Doc?, Ryan O’Neal and Barbra Streisand sing a song called “You’re The Top” or some such thing, and during their version of this, reference is made to “The Great Duranty”. Walter, yes? Or is that Jimmy? If it’s Walter, it shows how the lie has reverberated down the decades, but is it?
It’s not that I’m opposed to writing serious prose about murderous famines and about the scumbags in the West who concoct and print lies about how these murderous famines aren’t murderous famines at all and then spend another seventy years lying about all their earlier lies – merely that joking around is one of the ways you draw attention to such things.
Brian
Except the singer is Jimmy Durante. Also known as ‘The Schnozz’.
Another way of distinguishing is to ask: Do you mean Durante the singer or Duranty the holocaust-denier?
You’re the top!
You’re the Great Houdini!
You’re the top!
You are Mussolini!
The Mystery of Fascism
by David Ramsay Steele
It’s Durante, not Duranty. (Everybody wants to get in on the act.)
D Anghelone:
The Ramsay Steele article is very interesting, but what’s Cole Porter got to do with it?!
Cydonia
The Pulitzer Prize board is reviewing the award…
One wonders what there is to review and exactly what the point is. Are they going to indulge in one of these pointless apologies? Maybe, even rescind the award? Wouldn’t a letter saying: “our predecessors boobed” be sufficient?
Cydonia,
Porter, Churchill and a host of illustrious others were enamored of things fascisma. Many if not most were enamored of things communista. I believe that was part of Steele’s point – fascism rose from the left and not the right.
The thing remains mysterious to me as I now know not with what to curse far-rightists. 🙂
RE: “…because it is now history, we should all forget about it.”
I’ve noticed this a lot lately. People, lefties in general, talk about the Cold War as if it were some kind of mass hysteria. That not only is McCarthyism wrong (it was unproductive, if not wrong), but that being anti-communism was somehow quaintly irrational.
If you bring up a particulary heinous event perpetrated by Stalin and his friends you are dismissed with the assumption being that 1) you believe old propaganda and 2) well, we were doing bad things too.
The Nazis may represent the nastiest form of racism and bloodlust in the 20th century. The Nazis killed for tribe and nation. The Soviets, however, killed for expediency, for beauracracy, for the sake of power and politics. Imagine if the Soviets weren’t held in check by American power.
D Anghelone:
We could call them “national socialists” which would piss off both them and the left
🙂
Cydonia
Never too late for the truth to come out about this despicable apologist for mass murder. Duranty lied while millions died.
There is a petition you can here.
After doing so you are free to sing “Inka Dinka Doo!”
There is no greater honor for a journalist than to receive the Pulitzer. It is a symbol of journalism at its best. By not rescinding the Pulitzer Prize that was given for intentionally false journalism , minimizes the value of the Pulitzer. Although latelely journalistic ethics have been in question, it is imperative that we continue to strive for and demand unbiased truth in journalism. Wrongs must be righted and the truth must be told, so that genocide by any means could never occur again.
Very interesting post