Frank Rich doesn't have a twice-a-week column anymore, so when he does opine about politics, it is well worth reading. Here, he attacks the complacent media coverage of The Bush Debacle, and the slow emergence of a press willing to call this Administration on its lies. Disappointingly, he doesn't mention his own paper's sorry track record in this area. The post-Raines coverage of the war and its aftermath has been toothless, particularly over the Plame Affair, where it has been completely outclassed by the Washington Post.

Speaking of the New York Times, a much-derided historical footnote has been in the news this past week. A Russian historian at Columbia, hired by the Times to investigate the reporting of long-deceased correspondent Walter Duranty, has concluded that the 1931 dispatches from Moscow that won him the Pulizer Prize were, by and large, Stalinist propaganda, and has privately urged that said prize be revoked. Duranty, who played the same role with Stalin that Howard Kurtz plays with the current President, with a little Krauthammerian tolerance for authoritarianism mixed in, has been a target for some time; back in the 1930's, his "reporting" was attacked by none other than Leon Trotsky, and Ukrainian groups in this country have more recently focused on his subsequent whitewashing of a famine that claimed the lives of millions. In fact, much of the commentary about the Pulitzer's investigation of Duranty has focused on his coverage of the famine, even though it had nothing to do with the original award.

Here's hoping the Pulitzer Prize Board does the right thing and rejects the efforts at revisionist history. Duranty was a disgrace to journalism, and his stories aided and abetted one of the great mass murderers of history. But the people who dole out the Pulitzer Prize didn't care at the time that it was honoring someone who was explaining away a tyrant's actions, and who was rationalizing the emergence of a totalitarian state. Duranty's columns at the time frankly mentioned that Stalin was an absolute dictator, but said it didn't matter. In 1932, the Pulitzer Prize Board could have cared less.

Revoking an award should be done only if the honoree cheated to win (ie., Janet Cooke making up stories, or JFK winning the award for a book that was ghostwritten for him), or is subsequently discovered to have done something totally inconsistent with that honor (ie., the Hockey H.O.F.'s efforts at revoking the membership given to Alan Eagleson, founder of the player's union, after he pled guilty to embezzling money from said union). It should not happen just because we have changed our minds about obsequious journalism about mass murder. In sports, it is akin to revoking OJ Simpson's Heisman Trophy because he subsequently killed two people; no matter what sort of rat the Juice became later in life, he was still the best college football player in 1968. Letting Duranty keep his dirty honor reminds us that achievement and character are completely different concepts.

UPDATE: The Great Duranty lives !!