LA Times suspends Hiltzik's blog from Pajamas Media
Patterico notes the Washington Post reports that Pulitzer Prize winning LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik's weblog has been suspended because of Hiltzik's practice of praising himself and damning his critics using "sock puppet" identities. Patterico h... [Read More]

Tracked on April 21, 2006 7:22 AM

Good call.

From Canadian journalistic establishments, to Iranian children-minesweepers. It's even better just listening to it...

I had NO idea that Mark Steyn actually sounds like that.

I pictured him as an Albertan or something... instead, he sounds almost refined.

If anyone wants a link to the Los Angeles Assistant District Attorney and blogger who broke the LA Times Reporter/Blogger Fraud Story, you just have to go back a tiny bit and click the blue hyperlink.

He makes quite the thorough case and there's something like a 190+ comment discussion going on now, plus a few new posts, so check out his homepage if the subject interests you.

The "Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in Journalism" -- that's really, really funny. Almost too funny, but not quite -- just in the right spot.

When Hewitt refers to a paper awarded for reporting "myth and rumour" it made me think of the Globe and Mail recently, and their behind-the-bleachers parade of "un-named Conservative sources".

Apparently, committed true-insider Conservatives -- who have endured brutal, partisan, partly-taxpayer-funded media pile-ons for years -- are suddenly perfectly happy to anonymously betray it all to the Globe and Mail, because....psst, who wants to know?

Nothing says "journalistic integrity" like a disingenuous wink.

REACTION TO PULITZER BOARD'S DECISION

Ukrainian Congress Committee of America

Following is the statement of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America on the Pulitzer Prize Board's decision not to revoke Walter Duranty's prize.

On Friday, November 21, the Pulitzer Prize Board decided not to revoke the Pulitzer Prize received by The New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty for a series of reports from the Soviet Union regarding the Five-Year Plan, which The New York Times published in 1931. As the largest Ukrainian representative organization in the United States, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America is affronted by the decision of the Pulitzer Prize Board, which not only sullies the current Pulitzer Prize Board members, but also diminishes the honor of those who have received this prestigious award.

The UCCA conducted a yearlong campaign to prove to the Pulitzer Prize Board and The New York Times that Duranty was deliberately fraudulent in his articles as attested by Duranty himself in 1931, whereby admitting that in an agreement between Soviet authorities and The New York Times, "his official dispatches always reflect the official opinion of the Soviet regime and not his own." In our opinion, the evidence provided to the Pulitzer Committee and The New York Times verifying Duranty's fabrications was clear and more than sufficient to revoke the prize.

In fact, since the Pulitzer Prize is renowned for upholding a standard of excellence in journalism, the Pulitzer Prize Board falls short of its commitments to journalistic integrity and ethics when it surmises that Duranty's articles "fall seriously short" of standards used in journalism today. The lives of as many as 10 million Ukrainians and Duranty's own admission of knowledge about the Famine-Genocide in private conversations with British diplomats are enough reason to revoke the Pulitzer Prize awarded to an immoral journalist who not only denied the existence of the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, but maligned those who had the courage to speak out against the Stalinist government and inform the world of its unfathomable crimes. +
http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2003/500318.shtml

More here: Excerpt:
Furthermore, some prominent journalists of the time, such as New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, aided the Soviets in concealing their crimes by proliferating their propaganda in the West and slandering those who reported on the Famine in Ukraine. Mr. Duranty was even awarded the Pulitzer Prize for ‘Excellence in Journalism’ for his reports on the Soviet Union and its "successful development," while in private admitting that up to 10 million people might have starved to death. +
http://ucca.org/famine/

Chris from Victoria said - I pictured him as an Albertan or something... instead, he sounds almost refined.

And your meaning?

Chris from Victoria, I have heard folks from Alberta and folks from Victoria BC, for many, many years.....

Want to clarify your comment?

Mark Steyn would know well, the 'people' who call themselves Albertans.

I think it is downright clear what he means.
And as my Granny would say, "He's telling on himself."

The supreme irony is that Mark Steyn should have a Pultizer Prize on a yearly basis. Here's a man that can write with elegance, wit and honesty on a vast array of subjects from music to movies to history to current affairs.

He's a true Renaissance Man. He's devoid of arrogance. One of the best parts of his site is that he answers reader's emails while his arrogant counterparts in the MSM insulate themselves behind multiple barriers from readers.

Hey, Chris from Victoria, how many of your toes are gone now? You've shot yourself in the foot so many times that I suspect you must wheelchair bound by now.

Theater
Terminal interminable

By Mark Steyn

On The Pajama Game and Parsifal.

This article originally appeared in
The New Criterion, Volume 24, April 2006, page 35

My old—very old—friend George Abbott died eleven years ago. When you’re 107, even most of the available natural causes have given up waiting for anything to happen. So one afternoon he simply dozed off and never woke up. Across his chair was his familiar butcher’s board and on it were his rewrites for The Pajama Game. He’d just had a great hit with a revival of Damn Yankees, and the producers were anxious to push a revised Pajama Game into rehearsal.

A decade on, it’s finally showed up. What I like about the show is the spirit. Mister Abbott co-wrote the script with Richard Bissell, author of the original novel (7 1/2 Cents), but the opening sounds like pure Abbott, and almost the distillation of his approach to show-making on the Broadway of 1954. Here’s the first thing audiences heard at Pajama Game:

“This is a very serious ...

You need to log in to view the full text of this article. +
http://www.newcriterion.com/archives/24/04/terminal-interminable/

Chris from Victoria:

*ahem* The day your city stops pumping ALL of its raw sewage, untreated, into the Georgia Strait, is the day you will be qualified to determine who is "refined" and who is not.

Bruce, bang on, I can't believe that in this day and age the capital of our province still dumps its cramp into the ocean. That is really a statement of affairs in our beautiful province. No toes left! good one!

Chris from Victoria:

LOL.Good one.

Now wipe the drool from your chin and go start your taxi.

I think the world needs an alternative in awards schemes. Who believes that Brokeback Mountain should've won any award other than for social engineering? New York Times wins a Pulitzer Prize for treason? What else is new. All of these ridiculous awards have become corrupt and irrelevant. Just another way for the left to push their agenda. Whatever that is.

Vote: "MOST IMPORTANT STORY OF THE ENTIRE YEAR'. X

Prize: Free online subscription to Mark Steyn On-Line. +

And Ace writes: "I'm going to pretend that this is the MOST IMPORTANT STORY OF THE ENTIRE YEAR, as the left did with Gannongate and l'affaire 'The Nech.'" Thanks to Allah.
"...and fellate themselves off for weeks over how they Spoke Truth To Power and not only managed to survive, but walk away with a glorious triumph."
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/172921.php
via instapundit

Irwin: Agreed. The purpose can only be filling in otherwise empty air time. Who cares about anything the folks from Never-never land do or say?
Entertain me, you airheads, then crawl back into your palaces and shut up.

Bruce,
Thanks for the best laugh I've had this morning!

Chris is just another pathetic latte-sipping, Birckenstock-clad, Bareback Mountain-watching dickhead from the goofy left-coast. Back to class now dooph....

I think the world needs an alternative in awards schemes

That's starting. LGF has had "Idiotarian of the Year" awards for 2 or 3 years.

dmorris - I sent an email when CBS selected vacuous "airhead" Katy Couric for anchor that they just ought to animate the evening news. It would cut production costs and the financial drain of big name(bigger idiot) salaries. I meant it. They are always bitching about loosing the younger audience.

Except for Brit Hume's show, where there is balance and substance, these pathetic lefty MSM news shows should go to cartoon format.

WHOA Slim...

Out here on the west coast, we're not ALL left-wing moonbats (though I guess we have more than our fair share).

And I wear Rockports, not Birkenstocks...'cause of the boat, ya know :-)

Don't fret Bruce and Mary
The Straight of Juan de Fuca does a great job sewage treatment and at little cost.
(And don't worry the lumps are filtered out first)
If the City of Victoria upgrades to secondary treatment it will be strictly for the PR not for environmental reasons.

Keep in mind the volume of water their sewage is dispersed in compared to a city on a river that uses tertiary treatment.

Hey, has my twin brother Steve been around today? He also has an interest in dispersing crap.

Alberta Girl, you said:

"Chris from Victoria said - I pictured him as an
Albertan or something... instead, he sounds almost
refined. And your meaning?"

My meaning? I didn't realize he had an educated British accent, Alberta girl. I pictured him as being an Alberta hick.

I'm kidding. My meaning is that I respect Alberta greatly and thought his sharp ideas had to be forged there (or were likely to be).

And he is often so forceful, if humorous, in his writing that I imagined his voice to be so.

Instead, he is very soft-spoken. Not that he wouldn't get along well at one of your redneck parties whoopin' it up with a cowboy hat on....

Steve TSE:

Every time the issue comes up, the same response...the volume of water, speed of flow, blah blah blah...

It's (literally) crap and you know it as much as I do. The analogy would be...hey, the factory is dispersing the pollutants in the atmosphere, and it's a biiiig atmosphere, gets diluted right nice.

I own a boat, I navigate those waters frequently, and you know what, your sh!t DOES stink...nuff said.

If you're talking about Steve from BC, he was shown the door a couple of days ago when he decided to put Michelle Malkin's house address in the comments.

One troll down, a few more to go!

The broadbanders amoung you can catch Hewitt and Steyn live every Thursday at 3PM Pacific on KRLA's webfeed - http://www2.krla870.com/listen/

Medved is on from 12 - 3.

Now if Hugh can hook up a regular interview with V.D. Hansen, the cream of Center Right apologia is available on a weekly basis everywhere except Iran and China.

BTW, some of that sewage in the strait is probably drifting up from Seattle and Bellingham.

I pictured him as being an Alberta hick....I'm kidding.....Not that he wouldn't get along well at one of your redneck parties whoopin' it up with a cowboy hat on....

So, Chris from Victoria, BC, you've run out of toes to shoot off and now you're back to cut your nose off.

Playing the game that stupid utterances will cost you a body part, I'm guessing you'll soon be incoherently slamming the keyboard with your torso.

Bruce
You have some very spooky powers.
Not only do you know what I know but you know what my crap smells like. This is a bit worrying since I haven't visited the Capitol for over 2 years.
But I'll take you at your word, perhaps send a note off to the Guinness Record's people about the Victoria yachtsman with the world's most sensitive nose.

I was going to send some facts and figures but realized that I am at a severe disadvantage when an opponent has the deadly "blah blah blah..." in his debating repository. It's almost as devastating as the yada, yada, yada... manoeuver!

When pushed for time I depend on the great Canadian sage, Dr. Suzuki. Just need to find out which side he is on. He's not on mine so I know I'm right.

Happy sailing, there's a fine wind out there today.

Oh, I was once a commercial clam harvester in the pristine northern Gulf Islands. Sometimes beaches at low tide just naturally stink.

Penny, it's interesting that you're intepreting my using humour and the odd over-the-top statement to call Mark Steyn "refined", etc. in a negative way. Considering that Mr. Steyn, who is a genius, uses such rhetoric and devices constantly and better than I ever could.

I like Alberta. Because of the people there. It's my second favourite province. If they ever get an ocean, it might be my first.

I know you hate me ever since I pointed out the intellectual disingenuousness of your position defending a REPREHENSIBLE position (or more accurately, denying it outright despite clear language that it meant exactly what it sounded like) and that you ran away from that debate.

Oh, you didn't stop the attack, you just stopped debating the issue at hand since the facts were against you and the position you were denying is disgusting.

I know you're intellectually disingenuous and form your arguments on raw emotion and tribal (as opposed to reasoned) conservativism.

That's cool. It's no skin off my missing nose.

Whatever happened to the Pulitzers?

Radio Blogger has an interesting discussion--probably the one to which Kate refers--between Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn on this very topic.

I'm with Alberta girl on this lame-ass quote...
"I pictured him as an Albertan or something... instead, he sounds almost refined."
What IS the point?
Albertans know nothing of "refinement", I guess...

Chris, I don't hate you. You make statements that incur my and the wrath of others. "Humor"? It's not coming off that way.

You've stood corrected by your own post as of our last interaction on another thread when you accused me of lying. At issue was my very specific response to someone. Remember? I wasn't defending killing kiddies. It's still out there. You are being disingenuous.

Surmising you are young, I'll give your nose back.

Nonesense, Penny. The core thrust of my point was correct.

The only thing I retracted is an assumption I made because of unclear grammar about the words "who said" in one of your comments.

As I stated then:

"You never called for the extermination of kids, Penny. Previously, you were stating that Duke didn't when it appeared clearly that he did.

"I figured you were continuing that indefensible chain of thought — indefensible, at least, unless and until Duke decides to clarify or retract his statements, which he hasn't, despite my call for him to do so. He's entitled to his opinion.

"I understand now that you used the term "Who said..." as a figure of speech to describe yourself and not literally "who" (the clear answer apparently being Duke)."

We were discussing Duke's statements. He said (in response to Kate's post about Iran ordering their kids to death in minefields during the Iran-Iraq war):

"I think they should consider doing a lot more of that sort of thing. Those kids only grow up to do much worse ... to us.

"Think of all the ammo we could save. It adds up over time."

To which people began responding in the negative because of how offensive it is. But not you.

And Duke said this:

"Although this sort of thing will continue in those country where the sub-humans dwell ..."

And then this:

"And for the last time ... I have never said we should target children ... Islam does that for us and I don't happen to consider that reprehensible in their specific case ... a baby crocodile is still a crocodile. I see them all as the enemy and the more of them that blow up at any age is irrelevant in the big picture."

And then this:

"The children of Islam are Isalm and islam is our mortal enemy. The men, women and children of that so called society are all the same. They are of single mind. You are of two minds. You excuse their children but condemn the parents. You think the children of Islam are somehow like our children. They are not."

And finally Duke said this:

"You can't kill Allah so you must kill his followers. It is the opposite kind of fight than they are used to.

"You still don't get it and it appears you never will.

"Your thinking would put us in a snake pit with the task of trying to decided which ones are poisonous. Rmember, baby snakes can be poisonous too."

To these incredibly offensive statements calling every Muslim (every Muslim... even our allies and the people we are fighting for/alongside in Afghanistan... even their children) sub-humans and advocating and encouraging our enemy to continue sacrificing their children... despite my repeated calls for you to stop denying that he had made these statements and that they meant what they sound like, you replied thus:

"Chris, I think you are off base in suggesting that Duke was implying targeting children. He did not."

To this, I responded:

"And Penny, the plain reading of Duke's comment was that he was encouraging Iran to sacrifice more of their children in war, in combat. That is abhorrent. And yes, I have a solution to the problems you have posed — war.

"In war, children die, yet decent nations do not intentionally magnify childrens' deaths nor call for their enemies to kill their children. If our enemy commits war crimes by intentionally using children (or western hostages) as shields — as they have done in the past — then we are entirely within our rights, in accordance with western military tradition including the Geneva Convention, of striking valid military targets regardless of collataral damage.

"Obviously you engage any armed combatant regardless of age. I'm not saying the Iranians didn't use their children in combat; clearly they did.

"I'm saying that encouraging them to do so again is immoral."

And then you said this:

Chris, if you read closely what Duke wrote he did not suggest genocide. He simply noted the difference in the values/mores/culture of Islamic children vs Western children at this time and place in the backdrop of militant Islamic fundamentalism today.

[I think they should consider doing a lot more of that sort of thing... think of all the ammo we could save... sub-humans... children as snakes... the more of them that blow up at any age is irrelevant in the big picture... kill Allah's followers... etc.... no killing of Muslim kids called for by Duke here]

My apologies Chris in Vic

Never heard Marks voice before.
Just listened and it was a shock for me too.

For the record, I like Alberta and Albertans. Probably more than average. Develop a thick skin. You're supposed to be tough or conservative or something (according to the stereotypes), on balance. And you DO have more cowboy hats than us, so there.

:-)

And this is a good thing....

Great read, Kate. And the comments here were almost as fascinating as the Hewitt/Steyn conversation.

-Michael