NRO's Claudia Rosett has won a prize:
She should have a Pulitzer and maybe even a Nobel on her desk, but today Claudia Rosett has a true truth-teller's prize in her possession — the Eric Annual Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism.
The $10,000 prize, given by Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp in honor of former New York Post columnist and editor Eric Breindel, is awarded to "the columnist, editorialist or reporter whose work best reflects the spirit of the writings by Eric Breindel: Love of country and its democratic institutions as well as the act of bearing witness to the evils of totalitarianism."...
Very confusing. Rosett's work on the Oil-for-Food issue may have been good, even groundbreaking -- but how does it bear witness to the evils of tyranny or prove a love of country? Is the worst you can say about Saddam Hussein that he parceled out oil contracts so as to bolster relations with sympathetic countries? Tyranny, now, is low-order corruption? More to the point, is there some love-of-country aspect I'm missing? Didn't we account for 50% or so of the contracts? Didn't we insist on the oil-for-food regime in the first place?
Awhile back, the award went posthumously to Michael Kelly, who died in Iraq after agitating against the dictator for years. Rosett, by contrast, seems to have done nothing for country nor against tyranny, she merely unearthed, or helped unearth, a scandal that tars the UN. That, of course, is worthy of great praise and celebration among the right, but it's really not in the spirit of the award. Meanwhile, Samantha Powers, Nick Kristof, and all the others who've darted into Sudan amidst an ongoing genocide to sound the alarms, expose a genocidal autocracy, and call forth the better instincts of their countrymen stand unhonored. Maybe if they found Kofi Annan piloting a gunship the right would offer some recognition?
Update: August's comment is too good not to promote out of comments:
"She should have won a Nobel?" Do they even know the categories? What an amazingly ignorant statement. They must think A Nobel is a generic prize for doing something they think is cool. They might as well have said "she should have a Country Music Award on her desk." Her story is SO GOOD it TRANSCENDS the very purpose of whatever award they pulled out of their ass.
