Author/blogger Diana West thinks so, and she makes a pretty good case in this column. Even this year’s Pulitzer for commentary to conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is somewhat tainted, West writes, because Parker furthers the liberal agenda by occasionally bashing social conservatives including – most prominently – Sarah Palin.
Here’s her column:
By Diana West
Just as the Pulitzer Prizes come around every year, a conservative columnist comes around after them, dusting off the hard fact, as measured in an ever-expanding set of tally marks, that conservatives rarely get to pop a champagne cork over one of their own.
Take the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Since George F. Will won in 1977, William Safire (1978), Vermont Royster (1984), Charles Krauthammer (1987), Paul Gigot (2000) and Dorothy Rabinowitz (2001) have won as well, and good for them. But that’s six conservative columnists in 33 years.
This year’s winner, Kathleen Parker, is sometimes seen as Rightish, but, with a penchant for smacking down social conservatives, she is perhaps too enlightened, Pulitzer-ainly speaking, to count. As Parker herself put it: “It’s only because I’m a conservative-basher that I’m now recognized after 23 years of toiling in the fields, right?”
Hard to say. But it fits the Pulitzer pattern. Read more »
