FACES AND PLACES: Arrogant condescension: the truth be damned! (11/23/03)

THE 70th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FAMINE-GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Arrogant condescension: the truth be damned!

As Ukrainians wait for a decision from the Pulitzer Committee regarding the prize awarded the notorious Walter Duranty, the latest issue of the Columbia Journalism Review published an opinion piece on the matter. Authored by Douglas McCollam, the article offers some hints about what we can expect.

Columbia University is the home of the Pulitzer Committee and it is not unreasonable to assume that Mr. McCollam's commentary reflects the thinking of many, if not all, of the Pulitzer Committee members.

What strikes the reader from the beginning of Mr. McCollam's commentary is his arrogant condescension. He met with Michael Sawkiw and describes the UCCA president as follows: "Well-groomed and affable, Sawkiw nonetheless exuded intensity when he spoke of the determination to see Duranty stripped of his honor."

Well-groomed and affable? What did he expect, a disheveled UCCA president waving a sabre, wearing red boots, Kozak trousers, embroidered shirt?

And are "well-groomed and affable" people never "intense?" What's with that?

In his defense of the Pulitzer Committee's probable decision, Mr. McCollam quotes Andrew Barnes, chairman and chief executive officer of the St. Petersburg Times and Pulitzer board member for seven years. "It's all a bit odd," puzzled Mr. Barnes. You bet it's odd. Media moguls aren't accustomed to having their actions and motives questioned by the "uninitiated masses."

Mr. Barnes also "feels strongly that reopening the Duranty case is a bad idea ... I can't imagine what good this will do," he opined. Really? How about the good that will come from recognizing a monstrous injustice? How about the good that will come from rehabilitating the badly scarred Pulitzer Committee itself? How about the good that will come from finally recognizing the truth?

Former Pulitzer board member David Klatell is quoted as admitting that the board received "tens of thousands" of cards and letters. "Whoever funded the card campaign spent a good deal of money," he said. A good deal of money? Hardly. A few thousand dollars is not a good deal of money. Nor is a 23-cent stamp from tens of thousands of concerned people throughout the world. Am I surprised by Mr. Klatell's response? Not really. People associated with The New York Times have been out of the mainstream so long they just can't identify with an authentic grass-roots campaign initiated by real people.

The thinking of the privileged Pulitzer elite cited in the article was summarized best by Mr. Klatell when he said, "It's an extraordinarily difficult thing to recreate the historical and intellectual context in which many of the Pulitzer jurors were working." Translation: Never mind that Duranty lied about the death of 7 million men, women and children. Never mind that he slandered Gareth Jones and reporters who wrote the truth about the Great Famine. Never mind that he lived like a tsarist prince in Moscow while Ukrainians starved. What is important is that the Pulitzer folks retain their sacrosanct status.

Mr. Klatell is right about one thing, of course. It was a different time. Many of America's cultural leaders admired Stalin. They were true believers who envisioned a bright new future for the world. To judge them on the basis of what we know now about Stalin today is "unfair." Today we can condemn Thomas Jefferson and James Madison for having slaves 205 years ago but please, please don't judge the Pulitzer Committee of 1932.

Duranty was the darling of the 1930s literati left. Their pilgrimages to Moscow were brilliantly chronicled by Paul Hollander in his classic "Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba." It was a time when movie stars, playwrights, prominent authors, religious leaders and politicians were singing hosannas for Stalin. Those reporters who criticized Stalin, as well as those Ukrainians who took to the streets to protest the Famine, were dismissed as addled.

Mr. McCollam mentions Prof. Mark von Hagen, the Columbia University history professor The Times hired to analyze Duranty's work. He concluded that Duranty's Pulitzer should be revoked. But, suggests Mr. McCollam, resurrecting a tired canard, since Prof. Von Hagen analyzed the totality of Mr. Duranty's work, it's not fair to revoke a Pulitzer awarded for his work prior to the Famine. As if what Duranty wrote about Stalin before 1931 was accurate and unbiased.

The New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has argued that the Pulitzer board would set a bad precedent by revoking the award, akin to the Stalinist urge "to airbrush purged figures out of official records and histories." This type of moral equivocation is typical of the left. Given Mr. Sulzberger's bizarre political biases, I'm not surprised by his statement, however.

Although Mr. McCollam doesn't say it, the bottom line to his puff piece is best summarized by Times spokesman Toby Usnik: "The Times has reported often and thoroughly on the defects in Duranty's journalism as viewed through the lens of later events." Conclusion: 70 years have passed. Let it go. Time to move on.

One doesn't have to be conservative to understand that in America the intellectual left never apologizes for its addlepated pronouncements. They were wrong about Stalin, wrong about the Communist Party USA, wrong about Soviet goals, wrong about the Great Terror, wrong about Mao Tse Tsung, wrong about Ho Chi Minh, wrong about Pol Pot, wrong about Fidel Castro. It doesn't matter. What matters is that they had the best of intentions. Their heads may have been muddled but their hearts were pure.

Being "pure" translates into being "objective" and it is because of this kind of übermensche self-perception that the media, led by The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC and countless other newspapers through America, will continue to spin the news until it fits their delusionary mold.

So, dear reader, hope for the best but expect the worst from the Pulitzer folks and the tainted Times.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: [email protected].

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